Friday 18 August 2017

Apocrypha

(This issue arose from other reading but is relevant here.)

The Apocrypha are not esoteric documents but books that were included in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Canon, and therefore also in the Catholic Canon but that were later excluded from the Hebrew Canon and therefore also from the Protestant Canon. I think that I have read about a further distinction between passages included in the Septuagint but not in the Catholic Canon but googling did not shed any light on this. Excluded books automatically gain a reputation for  hidden knowledge and/or heresy. In one useage, "apocryphal" means "false."

This concept can be transferred to future history series where there could be at least two kinds of "Apocrypha."

(i) Non-canonical works: a story might share background details with a future history series but in other ways diverge from the fictional history of that series. See Poul Anderson's "Symmetry."

(ii) Some installments are revised for later publication. Thus, the earlier versions could be collected as "Apocrypha." Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization has a few of these.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Not quite, the Council of Trent in 1546 did not accept as canonical parts of the Catholic Bible all the works found in the OT of the LXX. The Psalms of Solomon, 3 and 4 Maccabees, the Book of Odes, The Prayer of Manasseh, and Psalm 151 were excluded from the Canon by the Council. The rest, including the additions to Daniel, were defined as Canonical.

Sean