The Apocrypha - help needed!

This is tough one!

As you probably know there is really no distinct "septuagint" - only a collection of books translated at different times by different people with differing degrees of fidelity to the original texts. There are those who speak of a separate Septuagint "Vorlage" text - but we really have no idea whether or not such a thing even exists due to the heterogeneity of the septuagint itself - the differences from the BHS could be explained by scribal interpretation - and this tends to vary between books with the Pentateuch being the more similar to the BHS and Isaiah and Daniel tending to vary a lot more!

The Septuagint we have now is largely derived from Vaticanus (Brenton's text) with some variant readings from Sinaiticus and Alexandrinus in the Rahlfs text. These date to the 4th or 5th centuries AD. Vaticanus has most of the apocrypha - but not all of it. Whay is it in Vaticanus? Who knows. Certainly the Jews read the "wisdom books" and held them in esteem - although they arguably never held them to be "scriptural". These manuscripts such as Vaticanus are of Alexandrian origin. The hellenistic Jews certainly had copies of these books - so it's not surprising that they are there. As far as the Hebrew canon - well the Essenes at Qumran didn't have the apocrypha in their texts and neither did the Jews at Jamnia. These apocryphal books were written in the Hellenistic period and may have originally been composed in Greek anyway so there may be no Hebrew "vorlage" for them - although we don't know.

Given what we already know about the apocrypha, given some of the questionable doctrines therein, and especially given the evidence from Qumran (nonapocryphal Hebrew bible) it seems best to conclude that this was not initially considered part of the canon - but the water is murky!!

 

I don't know of any group that accepted the OT Pseudepigrapha or the NT Apocrypha as part of the canon. If you read them you will quickly see the differences between them and scripture. However the early church did know about them and even quoted from them. Paul even quoted a saying, "All Cretans are liars." Just because someone quotes something does not mean that it is a part of the canon. For example in 1 Cor. 15 where Paul writes about the resurrection he proves his point by using even non-believers as examples of those who believe in a resurrection.

1 Cor. 15:29, "Otherwise, what will those do who are baptized for the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, why then are they baptized for them? "

Just because Paul uses that example of a pagan practice does not mean he supports that practice.

 

I thought the Church accepted the "apocrypha" until Luther came along and dumped them...

...didn't Luther also dislike James, II Peter, and Revelation?

I like Ecclesiasticus a lot.

Aren't there references in current canon to books that are lost now: like "book of Enoch" for example, mentioned I think in Jude?

Yes, the waters are very murky here.