Wed. Mar. 9, 2022
So What’s the Apocrypha Again?
Kathryn Mulhearn
As it happened, on the day of Russia’s invasion into Ukraine, I called a fellow parishioner to confirm a lunch date. When we got around to how you doin’ and what you doin’, she said she had just listened to an online lecture on the Book of Judith --or that’s what I thought she said. Note that we were both talking on cellphones with a poor connection.
First question that popped into my mind was, why would anyone learn about the Book of Judith in February? Christians rarely read Judith, which is more likely to be read by Jews, if at all, in anticipation of Hanukkah in November or December. Trigger warning for anyone reading Judith: if you are not familiar with the particulars, know that it is a book involving war — an Assyrian attack on Israel — and has a violent climax.
So, between the cellular cracking and delays, I began asking my friend about the lecture: was it focused on warmongering? No, she said. Really? She said no, that wasn’t what the Gospel of Judas was about. This is when I realized that we were talking about two different textual figures – Judith and Judas sound so much alike. It was a time to laugh but also ponder the nature of our scriptures.
Judith was composed circa 170 BCE, and is among the historically disputed books of the Apocrypha that the Anglican Church, from 1549 onward, designated as Holy Scripture. Following Anglican tradition, in 1801, the Episcopal Church, in our Articles of Religion, designated the Apocrypha as “the other Books…the Church doth read for example of life and instruction of manners but doth it not apply them to establish any doctrine” (see Book of Common Prayer, p. 868). This means that Judith is outside the accepted canon of the Protestant Episcopal Church, but is accepted in another category worthy of study. The fancy word for that is deuterocanonical, second canon. Note that today the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox churches fully accept and integrate Judith among the books of the Old Testament. In Protestant Bibles, it is counted among the Apocrypha found in between the Old and New Testaments in fuller editions. Ironically, although Judith recounts important events in Jewish history, the book was excluded from the canon of Jewish scripture in ancient times, in part because it was composed in Greek instead of Hebrew. Judith is not included in Jewish bibles today.
So what about the Gospel of Judas, which was discovered about 50 years ago in fragments of Coptic text on papyrus, and possibly was originally composed in Greek? My friend had been learning about a book that was excluded from the New Testament, which purported to recount conversations between Jesus and Judas, and included ideas rejected by the Early Church. My friend said she wasn’t sure she agreed with what it said. Judas’ Gospel is counted among the Gnostic Gospels, which were considered heretical in antiquity. It was composed no earlier than 180 CE, which is when it was condemned by St. Irenaeus of Lyon.
It’s funny that my friend and I had been contemplating texts from different cultures in the ancient world, written in different eras and languages, and which had both been rejected as widely accepted scripture in two testaments.
I told my friend that I had recently been studying the apocryphal text Susanna, a short, fascinating and enigmatic biblical-legal story in the apocryphal additions to the book of Daniel. It brings to mind Wallace Stevens’ treatment of the Susanna story in a poem I read and loved in high school, Peter Quince at the Clavier. This poem is a beautiful mishmash of Shakespeare, scripture and musical meanderings. Look it up. If you are not familiar with the Apocrypha, and want to read a really good story, I recommend starting with Tobit.
I am so grateful for the many friends that I have made at St. John’s over the last 40 years. My friend and I first met in choir, were among the founders of the Young Organist Collaborative and, when we both lost our loved ones, joined a longstanding grief group. It felt like we saw each other all the time for years, yet we have seen so little of each other since the pandemic. The friendships and connections we share at church are so important. I am having lunch with my friend very soon. Can’t wait to see what we will talk about, and I bet we will be talking about Ukraine.