Deuterocanonical

What these books are

In the centuries between the Old and New Testaments, Jewish writers produced histories, wisdom books, prayers, and stories that circulated widely among Greek-speaking Jews. They were included in the Septuagint — the Greek Old Testament that many of the earliest Christians read — but they were not part of the Hebrew Bible.

Why they are in some Bibles and not others

Catholic and Orthodox Christians receive these books as scripture and call them deuterocanonical, meaning “second canon” — not second-rate, but recognised at a later stage.

Protestant Christians do not treat them as canonical and generally call them the Apocrypha, meaning “hidden things”. This is not a modern omission: early Protestant Bibles, including the 1611 King James Version, printed them in a separate section between the Testaments. The Anglican Articles of Religion set out the historic Protestant position, that the church reads them for “example of life and instruction of manners” but does not use them to establish doctrine.

That difference is real, it is old, and it is held sincerely on both sides. This site does not take a position on it.

Why they are here

They are included for two reasons. They are scripture to a large part of the Christian world, and this site would be incomplete without them. And they fill the historical gap between Malachi and Matthew — 1 and 2 Maccabees in particular are the main surviving account of the events that shaped the world Jesus was born into.

You will notice they sit in their own block, set apart below the main table. That is deliberate, and it is the one place where the periodic table metaphor does some real work: it is exactly where a chemistry chart puts the lanthanides and actinides — genuinely part of the table, given their own row beneath it.