Introducing the Apocrypha: Message, Context, and Significance

[Full Review]

The last two decades have seen a revival of interest in the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, especially since James H. Charlesworth published the two volumes of his collection. This surely has its grounds not only in the growing acknowledgement of the importance of the Dead Sea Scrolls but also in the fact that more and more scholars have begun to take seriously the fact that Jesus was a real Jew of his time. This new trend revaluates the time of Jesus, and the study of the Apocrypha (and the Pseudepigrapha) is central in the new picture that is beginning to take shape. This explains why so many new introductions to this corpus of writings, canonical for both Orthodox and Catholics, have been produced in recent years. Some of these introductions are of very high value, such as this one by David deSilva, probably the best published thus far, surely by far the most complete. The presentation follows a traditional pattern: first an overview of the apocryphal writings and their significance for todays reader, where the author focuses on their place in Christian Bibles; then a historical survey, from Samarias destruction in 721 B.C. to the Jewish wars against Rome, which ended with the destructions of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 and 135. [Full Review]