I. 1 Esdras.
II. '2 Esdras. HI. Tobit.
IV. Judith.
V. The rest of the chapters of the Book of Esther, which aro found neither in the Hebrew nor in the Ohaldee.
VI. The Wisdom of Solomon.
VII. The Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach, or Ecclesiasticus.
VIII. Baruch.
IX. The Song of the Three Holy Children.
X. The History of Susanna.
XI. The History of the Destruction of Bel and the Dragon.
XII. The Prayer of Manasseh, Kiug of Judah.
XIII. 1 Maccabees.
XIV. 2 Maccabees.
The separate books of this collection are treated of in distinct articles. Their relation to the canonical books of the Old Testament is discussed under Canon. We propose here to consider only the history and charac- ter of the collection as a whole in its relation to Jew- ish literature.
Whatever questions may be at issue as to the au- thority of these books, they have in any case an inter- est, of which no controversy can deprive them, as con- nected with the literature, and therefore with the his- tory, of the Jews. They represent the period of transi- tion and decay which followed on the return from Babylon, when the prophets, who were then the teach- ers of the people, had passed away, and the age of scribes succeeded. Uncertain as may be the dates of individual books, few, if any. can be thrown farther back than the beginning of the third centurj' B.C. The latest, the 2d Book of Esdras, is probably not later than 30 B.C., 2 Esdr. vii, 28 being a subsequent in- terpolation. The alterations of the Jewish character, the different phases which Judaism presented in Pal- estine and Alexandria, the good and the evil which were called forth by contact with idolatry in Egypt, and by the struggle against it in Syria, all these pre- sent themselves to the reader of the Apocrypha with greater or less distinctness. In the midst of the di- versities which we might naturally expect to find in books written by different authors, in different coun- tries, and at considerable intervals of time, it is possi- ble to discern some characteristics which belong to the entire collection. (We quote from Smith, s. v.)
1. The absence of the prophetic element. From first to last the books bear testimony to the assertion of Josephus (Ap. i, 8), that the cucpifSijg cmcoy/j of prophets had been broken after the close of the O. T. canon. No one speaks because the word of the Lord had come to him. Sometimes there is a direct confes- sion that the gift of prophecy had departed (1 Mace. ix, 27), or the utterance of a hope that it might one day return (ibid, iv, 46 ; xiv, 41). Sometimes a teach- er asserts in words the perpetuity of the gift (Wisd. vii, 27), and shows in the act of asserting it how dif- ferent the illumination which he had received was from that bestowed on the prophets of the canonical books. When a writer simulates the prophetic char- acter, he repeats with slight modifications the lan- guage of the older prophets, as in Baruch, or makes a mere prediction the text of a dissertation, as in the Epistle of Jeremy, or plays arbitrarily with combina- tions of dreams and symbols, as in 2 Esdras. Strange and perplexing as the last-named book is, whatever there is in it of genuine feeling indicates a mind not at ease with itself, distracted with its own sufferings and with the problems of the universe, and it is according- ly very f.ir removed from the utterance of a man who speaks as a messenger from God.
2. Connected with this is the almost total disappear- ance of the power which had shown itself in the poet- ry of the Old Testament. The Song of the Three Children lays claim to the character of a psalm, and is probably a translation from some liturgical hymn ; but, with this exception, the form of poetry is alto- gether absent. So far as the writers have come un- der the influence of Greek cultivation, they catch the taste for rhetorical ornament which characterized the
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literature of Alexandria. Fictitious speeches become almost indispensable additions to the narrative of a historian, and the story of a martyr is not complete unless (as in the later Acta Martyrum of Christian traditions) the sufferer declaims in set terms against the persecutors (Song of the Three Child., 3-22 ; 2 Mace, vi, vii).
3. The appearance, as part of the current literature of the time, of works of fiction, resting or purporting to rest on a historical foundation. It is possible that this development of the national genius may have been, in part, the result of the Captivity. The Jew- ish exiles brought with them the reputation of excel- ling in minstrelsy, and were called on to sing the " songs of Zion" (Psa. exxxvii). The trial of skill between the three young men in 1 Esdr. iii, iv, im- plies a traditional belief that those who were promoted to places of honor under the Persian kings were con- spicuous for gifts of a somewhat similar character. The transition from this to the practice of story-telling was, with the Jews, as afterward with the Arabs, easy and natural enough. The period of the Captivity, with its strange adventures, and the remoteness of the scenes connected with it, offered a wide and at- tractive field to the imagination of such narrators. Sometimes, as in Bel and the Dragon, the motive of such stories would be the love of the marvellous min- gling itself with the feeling of scorn with which the Jew looked on the idolater. In other cases, as in To- bit and Susanna, the story would gain popularity from its ethical tendencies. The singular variations in the text of the former book indicate at once the extent of its circ dation and the liberties taken by successive editors. In the narrative of Judith, again, there is probably something more than the interest attaching to the history of the past. There is indeed too little evidence of the truth of the narrative for us to look on it as history at all, and it takes its place in the region of historical romance, written with a political motive Under the guise of the old Assyrian enemies of Israel the writer is covertly attacking the Syrian invaders, against whom his countrymen were contending, stir- ring them up, by a story of imagined or traditional heroism, to follow the example of Judith, as she had followed that of Jael (Ewald, Gesch. Israels, iv, 541). The development of this form of literature is, of course, compatible with a high degree of excellence, but it is true of it at all times, and was especially true of the literature of the ancient world, that it belongs rather to its later and feebler period. It is a special sign of decay in honesty and discernment when such writings are passed off and accepted as belonging to actual his- tory.