1.1. Concept

In common parlance, the term “Apocrypha” is used for the books or parts of books that appear in the Alexandrian canon of the LXX translation but are not found in the Masoretic canon. On the basis of the former tradition the Roman Catholic Church recognized these books as canonical from the Third Council of Carthage (397) and today ranks them as deuterocanonical. The designation of these books as Apocrypha in the churches of the Reformation goes back to 1520 to Carlstadt (ca. 1480–1541). When M. Luther included th…