Apocryphal New Testament

Apocryphal New Testament (Greek apokryphos,”hidden”), title that refers to more than 100 books written by Christian authors between the 2nd and 4th centuries. The books have two characteristics in common: (1) In general form they resemble New Testament writings, many of them falling into the literary categories of gospel, acts, letter, and apocalypse; (2) they belong neither to the New Testament canon nor to the writings of the recognized Fathers of the Church.

Some of the documents were written for initiates in groups such as the Gnostics (see Gnosticism); for those groups, who claimed knowledge derived from a secret tradition, the works were genuinely apocryphal, that is, “books kept hidden.” Others were written for open and general use in the churches of which their authors were members; they simply failed to become accepted as part of the orthodox canon of the Bible. Some of the writings, such as the Gospel According to the Hebrews, may have held a place of importance in the common life of Jewish Christians. Others were read in Gnostic circles, such as the Letter of Eugnostos found in the Naj‘Ḩammādī texts, a collection of Gnostic treatises discovered in 1945-46. Still others, such as the Infancy Story of Thomas and the Acts of Pilate, addressed the curiosity of common people in the church at large by filling in tantalizing gaps in the biblical writing with highly fanciful details about the unknown aspects of Jesus' life.

Roman Catholics and Protestants use the term Apocrypha differently when referring to biblical literature; both, however, refer to the same books when they speak of the Apocryphal New Testament.