Origin of the
English Bibles

Canonize?

Apocrypha is a Greek word meaning things hidden. "Canon" means "measuring rod," or some means by which an item or issue may be gauged: a standard. Following the periods of oral tradition, written letters or books became the means of spreading the message. The matter of determining which letters or books were truly Scripture and belonged in the set of accepted truth was the process of canonizing and was not an instant, all-done matter, but occurred over many years.

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The Apocryphal Writings

In ancient times and largely in the Catholic Church, apocrypha refers to those writings which are almost scripture and can be read at least casually as such and are thus accepted as "Bible" material. Protestants, on the other hand, view apocryphal material as that which has wrongly been accepted in the past.

The Council of Trent, which settled, among many other things, the Catholic canon, took over 27 sessions spanning eighteen years and five popes. The Council of Trent was a reaction to the Reformation, but was delayed by twenty-five years after Luther's call. The Council of Trent declared that interpretation of Scripture was the exclusive preserve of the Catholic Church and that the Latin Vulgate was to be the sole public access. The Vulgate included the Apocrypha.

English-language Protestant Bibles in the 16th Century included the books of the Apocrypha—generally in a separate section between the Old and New Testaments—and there is evidence that these were widely read as popular literature, especially in Puritan circles. These are books which are included in some versions of the Bible, but which have been excluded at one time or another in others for textual or doctrinal issues. These books are called 'Deuterocanonical', which literally means 'the secondary canon.' In 1644 the English Long Parliament forbade the reading of the Apocrypha in church; in 1666 the first editions of the King James Bible without Apocrypha were printed. Today the Aprocrypha are normally not included in Protestant Bibles but there are some versions currently printed with them.

See here for information on contents and details of apocryphal material.

Or here for online reading.

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