The Apocrypha #7

The word apocrypha means things put away or things hidden and comes from the Greek through the Latin. The general term is usually applied to the books that were considered by the church as useful but not divinely inspired. As such to refer to Gnostic writings as apocryphal is misleading since they would not be classified in the same category by orthodox believers. Often used by the Greek Fathers was the term antilegomena or spoken against although some canonical books were also spoken against such as the Apocalypse of John in the East. Often used by scholars is the term pseudepigrapha or falsely inscribed or falsely attributed in the sense that the writings were written by an anonymous author who appended the name of an apostle to his work such as in the Gospel of Peter or The Ethiopic Apocalypse of Enoch: almost all books in both Old and New Testaments called apocrypha in the Protestant tradition are pseudepigrapha.