J-M's History Corner

This is my monthly reblog of an older post. The canon of Scripture is a settled issue, isn’t it?  You’ve got your 66 books total, 39 in the Old Testament (24 by the Jewish counting) and 27 in the New Testament.  However, when you do the research, things are not so simple.  There are many “other” books claiming to be Scripture, a number of them accepted by various denominations and/or included in various Bibles over the years.  Are they Scripture?  Or just heretical additions? Read the rest at  https://jmshistorycorner.blogspot.com/2018/06/the-canon-of-scripture-part-1-apocrypha.html .

The canon of Scripture is a settled issue, isn't it?  You've got your 66 books total, 39 in the Old Testament (24 by the Jewish counting) and 27 in the New Testament.  However, when you do the research, things are not so simple.  There are many "other" books claiming to be Scripture, a number of them accepted by various denominations and/or included in various Bibles over the years.  Are they Scripture?  Or just heretical additions? The most well-known (and most widely accepted) body of these "extra" works is the Apocrypha (which means "Hidden").  People disagree as to which books constitute the Apocrypha.  For the purpose of this article, the word refers to the following 18 books: Baruch Letter of Jeremiah Tobit Prayer of Manasseh Psalms 151-160 Wisdom of Solomon Wisdom of Ben Sirach (also known as Ecclesiasticus) "Additions" to Esther Judith Prayer of Azariah Susanna Bel and the Dragon 1 Ezra 2 Ezra 1 Maccabees 2 Macca...