but as it
were in secret and apart." Still more probable is the opinion that they
were so called from their close relation to the _secret_ books
containing the mysteries--secret doctrines--of certain heretical sects.

2. The date of several of the apocryphal books is very uncertain; but
none of them can well be placed as early as the beginning of the third
century before Christ. Though some of them were originally written in
Hebrew or Aramean, they have been preserved to us only in Greek or other
versions. None of them were ever admitted into the Hebrew canon. The
ground of their rejection is well stated by Josephus (Against Apion 1,
8), namely, that from the time of Artaxerxes, Xerxes' son (Artaxerxes
Longimanus, under whom Ezra led forth his colony, Ezra 7:1, 8), "the
exact succession of the prophets" was wanting. The Alexandrine Jews,
however, who were very loose in their ideas of the canon, incorporated
them into their version of the Hebrew Scriptures. How far the mass of
the people distinguished between their authority and that of the books
belonging to the Hebrew canon is a question not easily determined. But
Josephus, as we have seen, clearly recognized their true character.
Philo also, as those who have examined the matter inform us, though
acquainted with these books, never cites any one of them as of divine
authority. The judgment of these two men doubtless represents that of
all the better informed among the Alexandrine Jews, as it does that of
the Saviour and his apostles, who never quote them as a part of the
inspired word.

3. During the first three centuries of the Christian era very few of the
church fathers had any knowledge of Hebrew. The churches received the
Scriptures of the Old Testament through the medium of the Alexandrine
Greek version, which contained the apocryphal books. It is not
surprising, therefore, that the distinction between these and the
canonical books was not clearly maintained, and that we find in the
writings of the church fathers quotations from them even under the name
of "divine scripture." But Jerome, who translated the Old Testament from
the Hebrew, understood perfectly the distinction between the canonical
and the apocryphal books. The canon which he has given agrees with that
of the Palestine Jews. He says (Prologus Galeatus) of the apocryphal
books Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Judith, Tobit, and Maccabees, that the
church reads these "for the edification of the people, not for