After going into the Bible a few years back as a scofflaw atheist and coming out as someone with a healthy respect for the philosophy and stories of the Bible, particularly when rendered in that gorgeous King James prose, I opened the Apocrypha with an open mind. These are the ugly stepchildren of the Biblical corpus; texts that, for one reason or another, are considered non-canonical. Sometimes that is because they were meant to be read in private rather than in public service, sometimes because their authenticity was unclear, and mostly, I suspect, because in the various translations and denominations of Christianity over the millennia, they just got shuffled out of the pack.

After reading the Apocrypha, I do find myself wishing some had been expunged due to being too heretical. Because, even though it is also available in that King James prose, the book could do with some spice to it. From first to last I found the Apocrypha dull and tedious, and while some might have that impression of the canonical Bible, that was certainly not my impression of it when I finally sat down to reading it some years back. The Bible had the masterpiece that is the Book of Job, some neat origin stories in Genesis, the fiery books of Moses, eloquent philosophic rants like Jeremiah, to say nothing of the New Testament's 'Greatest Story Ever Told' and Revelation fever-dream. The Apocrypha had nothing like that, but it also didn't have much else. (And some other non-canonical books which sound interesting, like the Gnostic Gospels – particularly Thomas – and the Gospel of Judas, don't form part of the Apocrypha either.)

The Apocrypha starts off with the two books of Esdras, which are standard Old Testament fare about waging war on powerful enemies and coming through by the power of the Lord. They're interesting enough, but they don't do anything that the Books of the Kings don't do, and the Books of the Kings are far from the best stuff in the Bible. After a banal book called Tobit, there is the Book of Judith, which is the only part of the Apocrypha which threatens to actually be interesting for a moment (Judith seduces a warlord who is an enemy of the Jews, then beheads him in his bed in the night).

After that, there is a long scattergun sequence of books that are nothing very much, but at least are short (though all of the books in the Apocrypha are quite short). This is disappointing, and even a book called the Wisdom of Solomon, which should at least have a few good lines, is mostly just unreflective stuff about praising and trusting in God, lacking the nuance of many similar proverbs in, well, Proverbs.

The book ends with its two longest pieces – the two Books of the Maccabees. Like Esdras, these are banal narratives of fighting other desert tribes and trusting in God to help you smite them. It's sub-standard fare, lacking anything memorable. Ultimately, one can see why the Apocrypha is not part of the canonical Bible; there's just not much there for people to chew on, except for one or two of the more dedicated Biblical scholars. I maintain, not just due to its importance and influence but its objective quality, that the King James Bible should be on the reading list of anyone who is serious about literature. But the Apocrypha can be safely ignored. ( )

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