Apocrypha AKA Biblical Apocrypha
[related: Book of Revelations]
Within Christian theology, the term apocrypha refers to a set of biblical texts of unknown or unverifiable provenance [1] included within the septuagint considered deuterocanonical by some traditional Greek Catholic sects but illegitimate by Protestants. The bizarre and violent Book of Revelations, the terminal book of the New Testament, was widely considered to be apocryphal until its revision and subsequent inclusion in the King James Version of the Bible (KJV). Much apocrypha deals with metaphysical issues (often via the lens of phenomenology) and stands in accordance with standard Buddhist worldviews. As a means of discrediting apocryphal biblical texts, post-medieval clergymen known as the Church Fathers, in coordination with the British Monarchy, engaged in a shadow campaign to imbue the term apocrypha with a sense of illegitimacy, inaccuracy, and error [2]. Their efforts led to the coalescence of Gnosticism, a religious movement based in part on the continued incorporation of apocryphal texts including, but not limited to, The Book of Enoch, Testament of Solomon, Sophia of the Christ, Apocryphon of John the Apostle. The term apocrypha is now commonly used beyond the bounds of Christian in reference to illegitimate documents of unknown authorship and/or doubtful origin.
- ↑ Though often associated with Augustine of Hippo.
- ↑ In fact, the term was first used in application to writings that contained transformative esoteric knowledge too profound for the untrained and uninitiated.