Product Description

The most esteemed body of books left out of the Bible, the Old Testament Apocrypha is of interest to historians, religious scholars, and ordinary laypeople alike. For more than 70 years this version, edited by R.H. Charles, has been the definitive critical edition. Out of print for years, Apocryphile Press is proud to make it available once more to scholars and the curious.

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Apocryphile press Apocrypha vol.1 big red book        Rating:

this is a big book 11"x8"x1 1/4". all of apocryphile press books are top notch. this book has the apocrypha plus commentary on each book.684 pages long. here are the books in this collection
1 esdras
1 maccabees
2 maccabees
3 macabees
tobit
judith
sirach
wisdom of solomon
1 baruch
epislte of jeremy
prayer of manasses
addtions to daniel
a. prayer of asariah and the song of the 3 children
b. susanna
c. bel and the dragon
additions to eshter
if you are into the apocrypha and pseudepigrapha get these volumes.

A maverick encounter.        Rating:

Mr. Charles was able to chronicle through the research of bibical manuscripts that are housed in various libraries and museums about the world to bring this information to the light of day. Although, the publication went to print in the early part of the twenty century, it is informative and relevant today.

Classic Work -- Essential to any collection on the subject        Rating:

The terms "apocrypha" and "pseudepigrapha" refer to two somewhat vaguely-defined groups of ancient writings. Ordinarily the "Apocrypha" are fourteen books or parts of books found in a section by themselves in Protestant Bibles. All of the Apocrypha are found in Orthodox Bibles, and most of it in Roman Catholic Bibles. This volume mainly contains the Apocrypha--although it omits IV Ezra and and includes III Maccabees, the former included and the latter excluded from the standard Protestant collection.

This volume suffers more from the passage of time (it was originally published in 1913) than the second volume of the work. In several cases the editors fell back on older translations rather than doing their own, which dates the work still further. Still, none of these works (except III Maccabees) appear in Charlesworth's Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, and all were edited by some of the greatest scholars of the time. What they had to say is still worth reading today. If money or shelf space keeps you from buying both volumes of this work, this is the one to bypass. But that's what I had to do years ago (thanks to shortage of money), and I have often regretted that.

A great critical edition        Rating:

This is one of the best and most time-honored editions of the Apocrypha out there. Unfortunately, there seems to be some confusion regarding exactly what "the Apocrypha" refers to. Anglicans, Lutherans, and all other Protestants have always referred to the following books as "the Apocrypha": 1 Esdras, 1, 2, & 3 Maccabees, Tobit, Judith, Sirach, Wisdom of Solomon, 1 Baruch, Epistle of Jeremiah, Prayer of Manasses, Song of the Three Holy Children, Susanna, Bel & the Dragon, Additions to Esther. This book, deriving as it does from an Anglican source, uses the Anglican term for this collection of books, and those are indeed the books included in this volume. The Roman Catholic church refers to these same books as Deutero-Canonical, but they are the same books in any case. Even though it is old, I do not know of a better critical edition of the Apocrypha out there.

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