V. It is interesting to note that the Catholic and Protestant Bibles contain the same 27 New Testament books, but their Old Testament collections differ. For example, Catholic Old Testaments include the books of Tobit, Judith, Eel and the Dragon, and the First and Second book of Maccabees.

    A. How do we know that these books are apocryphal? What marks them as spurious and counterfeit?

        1. First, these books were never included in the Hebrew canon of the Old Testament. There is no evidence that any of these books were ever accepted by any of the Jewish community.

        2. Jesus and the apostles never refer to any of the events or characters in these books. The New Testament writers quote from practically all of the Old Testament books, but they never·quote from the apocrypha as "Scripture."

   3. Early Jewish writers such as Josephus and Philo never accepted these books as Scripture.

    B. The New Testament apocrypha include various gospels, epistles, and Apocalypses. They are even easier to dismiss than the Old Testament apocrypha because they are such blatant counterfeits.

        1. Scholars have established that many of these books were written under the assumed names of the apostles and others during the second century or later.

        2. Most are filled with fanciful and fictitious tales. For example, the Apocryphal Gospels often deal with the early life of Jesus and portray him as a temperamental child. Here he causes the death of one of his playmates and there he gives life to a dried fish.