Thursday Night Study

"A Brief Survey of Intertestamental Period Literature".

A vast amount of Jewish literature written in the intertestamental period (mainly 2nd and 1st centuries BCE) and from the 1st and 2nd centuries CE was preserved, for the most part, through various Christian churches. A part of this literature is today commonly called the Apocrypha (Hidden; hence, secret books; sg. Apocryphon) ... this was one of the terms for books not regarded by the Church as canonical (scripturally acceptable), but in modern usage, the Apocrypha is the term for those Jewish books that are called in the Roman Catholic Church deuterocanonical works—i.e., those that are canonical for Catholics but are not a part of the Jewish Bible. (These works are also regarded as canonical in the Eastern Orthodox churches.) When the Protestant churches returned to the Jewish canon (the Hebrew Bible) during the Reformation period (16th century), the Catholic deuterocanonical works became for the Protestants “apocryphal”—i.e., non-canonical.

In this Brief Survey, we are going to consider approximately 80 of these works, including the works of Philo, Josephus, and the Mishnah. And, there is, of course, a vast amount of Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha associated with the Apostolic Writings which we will consider too (approximately 30 works).

Our objective over the course of this Brief Survey will be to consider the theological implications of these works and to discern to what extent they influenced Apostolic authors—and if not, where did their common source of theology come from. We will also attempt to recognize the difference between those works that were included in the Canon and those that were not and understand the reason(s) why. And finally, we will talk about the influence of both Hellenistic thought and Gnostic thought on the doctrines of the Christian Church.