Andrew’s Reviews > The Apocrypha: King James Version > Status Update

The trouble really starts when a bloke named Jason becomes high priest and sets up a gymnasium near the temple where the gym bunnies wear hats and the priests end up playing discus more than attending to their duties. 2 Maccabees isn't a sequel to 1 Maccabees, but a different, more narratively adroit and dramatically compelling telling of the intrigues and exploits of Judas Maccabeus against the powers of the Greeks.

First book of Maccabees read, the exploits of Judas and his brothers in resisting the Greek Seleucid Empire. Machinations, intrigues, deceptions, thousands of horsemen and foot soldiers moving back and forth, and people getting burnt in strongholds. Violence times for the Jewish Hasmonean dynasty and their campaigns for independence and religious purity. One book to go.

Have just read Baruch. Baruch being Jeremiah's scribe, the book deals with the new context of exile under Nebuchadnezzar. I think of all the books I've read so far from the Septugent Apocrypha, this is the one that sounds most like the canonical books, in terms of content and quality.

Ecclesiasticus (aka Sirach) complete. A huge collection of 2nd Century BC 'common sense'. How to be a respected patriarch (including liberal dose of misogyny and repressive parenting) etc. With the exception of a few beautiful passages that break out of the pattern, it's essentially way too much advice. A proverb of my own: "A man of too much advice loseth his hearers; and a surfeit of proverbs wearies the soul."

Have just read Wisdom of Solomon, aka The Book of Wisdom, written in Alexandria, around the late first century BC to early first century AD, and put into the mouth of Solomon. Containing plenty of damnation for the wicked it also has some lovely turns of phrase when describing wisdom. Has an extended critique of idols, then seems to go off track from its main them with an Exodus apocalypse, before ending abruptly.

On to the extra chapters of Esther, which fill in extra details but which are only found in Greek manuscripts and not Hebrew. Most saliently, where the canonical Book of Esther never once mentions God, these apocryphal chapters - no doubt a work of later 'correction' - mention God all the time.

Read the story of Judith, the Hebrew widow who caused the rout of an invading Assyrian-led army by infiltrating the camp of the general, Holofernes. Much taken by Judith's beauty and wit, Holofernes gets drunk and when his servants leave him and Judith to it, she cuts off his head. Upon discovering his headless corpse in the morning, the army freaks out and runs away, cut down as they go by the triumphant Hebrews.

Just read the great little folk tale, Tobit (a 3rd or 2nd century BC Jewish text). A guy going blind when birds shit in his eyes, a demon falling in love with a young woman and killing her first seven husbands on the wedding night, the angel Raphael disguised as a travelling companion, a dog, a fish, an inheritance... this story has it all. Colourful characters and a moral in favour of those do works of charity.

Just finished reading 2 Esdras, ascribed to Ezra, but probably written between 70 and 218 AD. Lots of general judgement and mayhem... "Fire, and hail, and flying swords" (15:41), including opening sections in which God rejects Israel, theologically contradicted by the rest of the book. Esdras fasts for about six weeks (eating a few flowers and herbs), has apocalyptic visions and ends up writing some secret books.

Have just read 1 Esdras in my lovely little Oxford University Press edition (probably from the late 1950s, early 60s). 1 Esdras is the Greek Septuagint version of the Hebrew Ezra-Nehemiah. It covers, in a bit of a tangle, the same material as Ezra, with the addition of the fascinating and quite charming Tale of the Three Guardsmen, which was the clear highlight.