Apocrypha: A little historical perspective

A friend emailed this to me:

After being in the Bible for sixteen centuries, included in each version of the word of God for all that time, how is it that mankind finally deemed himself so brilliant and so intelligent as to remove those same books - from all of our so-called modern day Bibles? Moreover, most people have been to some degree brainwashed to hold almost the very word "Apocrypha" as in utter contempt.

In the words of one writer on this subject, "The translators of the Septuagint, Thompson in 1808 and Benton in 1844, studiously omitted the apocrypha books they encountered in it, and not all of Charles' associations in his impressive volumes made new translations. Single books here and there have been translated from the Greek by individual scholars, but, while Bissell ably revised the King James Apocrypha in 1880, I cannot find that the Apocrypha as a whole has been translated into English since Coverdale in 1535, and Gregory Martin in 1582 translated from the Latin Vulgate (Martin's version remained unpublished until 1610); or that the Greek Apocrypha as a whole, that is, all the books except II Esdras, have ever been directly translated from Greek into English." Goodspeed, Edgar J., The Apocrypha, an American Translation, Vintage Books, New York, 1989, preface vii and viii.

The Apocrypha is truly an incredible story. It presents a TOTALLY NEW SLANT and not at all like all the religious stuff that's out there today. It's more of a "down to earth," "last days" message THAT MAKES SENSE. Finally!
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