We come now to deal with the books of the Apocrypha. As far as possible we shall take these in chronological order, though it will be recognized that certitude in this matter is not to be expected. There are different opinions regarding the dates of most of the books, and in some cases thedatafor coming to a conclusion are too scanty to allow of anything approaching confidence in the correctness of the date assigned. Moreover, as to some of the books, different parts belong to different periods; this can be proved even though one cannot be sure of the exact date of each part. Then there is the further difficulty regarding the question as to whether a particular book, as we now have it, approximates to its original form, and if there is reason to believe that this is not the case, as to the date of the original as well as that of its present form.
The plan here followed is to take the books in the order of the dates of their original form (as far as this can be ascertained), even though parts of a book belong to a later date, which will, of course, be notified. It will also be wiser to assign a period rather than a fixed date, excepting in the one case, that of Ecclesiasticus, where the date of the original can be fixed to within a decade or so with reasonable certainty. The books belonging to a particular period are put in chronological order within that period. The following table will show this:
In quotations from these books the translation of Dr. Charles and his editors[343]has as a rule, but not always, been used. The original texts used are:
Ecclesiasticus: for the Hebrew, Smend’s text (Die Weisheit des Jesus Sirach, Hebräisch und Deutsch, 1906); for the Greek, Swete’s text (The Old Testament in Greek, 1896), and Hart’s text of Cod. 248 (Ecclesiasticus, pp. 1-71, 1909).
2 (4) Esdras: for the Latin, Bensly and James’ text (The Fourth Book of Ezra, pp. 1-82, 1895).
For the rest of the books, Swete’s text mentioned above.
The Literature given at the head of each chapter does not profess to be more than a selection. Editions of original texts, and text-critical discussions, are not given, as references to these will be found in the Literature cited.