ARE THERE HIDDEN BOOKS OF THE BIBLE?

Are there hidden books of the Bible? YES.

Well, who “hid” them? ST. JEROME, a Christian monk.

Why? Because he thought they were supplemental books helpful for edification but not for establishing church doctrine. So when St. Jerome translated the Hebrew and Greek Bible into Latin in 410 A.D., he put these books at the back and called them The Apocrypha, the “hidden” books, like First Maccabees, Wisdom of Solomon, Wisdom of Ben Sirach, and others.

Where did these “hidden” books come from? From the LXX or Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures or Old Testament. The Old Testament was translated into Greek between 250 B.C. and 100 B.C. for the many Greek speaking Jews who migrated to Alexandria, Egypt and other Greek speaking places. The translators wanted to show the benefits of the Torah (the Laws of Moses) to the intellectual circles of Alexandria. And they added these extra “hidden” books, the Apocrypha, to their translation.

But in 410 A.D. St. Jerome, working in Bethlehem of Judea, thought they were of secondary authority.

When the Jews in their Council of Jamnia (on the coast of present day Israel-Palestine) in 90 A.D. met to decide on their “official” list of books to be in their Bible, they omitted the so- called “hidden” books or Apocrypha. They thought prophesy (divinely inspired writing) ended with Ezra in about 425 B.C. Since these “hidden” books were written after 425 B.C., they excluded them from their official list.

So did St. Jerome who put them in the back of the Bible. But gradually the Apocryphal books were interspersed into the Old Testament in the Latin Vulgate. But German reformer, Martin Luther, excluded them from his German translation of the Bible in 1534. And so did many English translations. Consequently, most Protestant Bibles exclude the Apocrypha.

But the Roman Catholic Church in their Council of Trent (northwest Italy) in 1546 declared the books to be a Second Canon, a part of the official list. So Roman Catholic Bibles have more books in their Old Testament than Protestant Bibles. So do Eastern Orthodox Bibles. They included the Apocrypha or “hidden” books.

Do I think the “hidden” books are profitable for study? YES, because they provide an important historical resource for the period 250 B.C to 70 A.D. Do I think they are equal in authority with the other Bible books? NO. Like St. Jerome, I think they are supplemental and helpful.