Books Jesus Read

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Books Jesus Read

understanding the New Testament, then a knowledge of these eventful years prior to the birth of Jesus must also be important. And that’s equally true for the writings of the period, which are important as historical sources. As one eminent church historian has lamented, the “neglect [of the Apocrypha] in most Protestant circles is regrettable for the loss in perspective this entails for understanding the background of New Testament times.” 8 The status which Apocryphal writings carried in the early church, moreover, is clarified by a recently published work, Introduction to the Apocrypha: Jewish Books in Christian Bibles , in which the author explains that “the originally Jewish texts of the Apocrypha did not enter the Christian Bibles as part of a separate ‘deuterocanonical’ group but were interspersed in various places among the other texts, considered by most Christian leaders as simply books of the Old Testament.” 9 The writings published during the Second Temple period, also known as the Four Hundred Silent Years, were numerous and diverse. 10 Moreover, the language in which these documents were originally written was an important factor in their acceptance. Hebrew, the language of the Old Testament, was authoritative for 8 Everett Ferguson, Backgrounds of Early Christianity , 3rd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 440 9 Lawrence M. Wills, Introduction to the Apocrypha: Jewish Books in Christian Bibles , (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2021), 9. 10 Four Hundred Silent Years – the period of time between Malachi and Matthew called “silent” by the rabbis for lack of any officially recognized prophets. What Was Published during the Four Hundred Silent Years?