The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, edited by R.H. Charles (1913 edition), is a collection of Jewish religious writings, mainly from the centuries leading up to the New Testament events. The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament are arguably the most important non-biblical documents for the historical and cultural background studies of popular religion in New Testament times. The early church writers made use of these documents, and the New Testament even quotes or alludes to a few of them. The Epistle of Jude, for example, contains allusions to the Assumption of Moses (Jude 9) and the 1st Book of Enoch (Jude 14-16).
Exegetes have long stressed the importance of genre study, the study of documents that share similar literary characteristics to the work being analyzed, in the work of the interpreter of scripture. The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha are key documents for genre study; interpreters and commentators of Revelation and Daniel, for example, make much use of the apocalypses in this collection: 1 and 2 Enoch, The Testament of the 12 Patriarchs, 2 and 3 Baruch, 4 Ezra, The Sibylline Oracles, etc.
A simple search for references to the Books of Enoch, for example, returns over 1,100 hits in the Word Biblical Commentary, and over 440 hits in Anchor Bible Dictionary. That's over 1,500 references in just two sets of books—just for Enoch! In the Logos Bible Software format, the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha has a standard reference scheme encoded, much like a Bible reference. This allows us to start turning references to these important, oft-cited books, into live hyperlinks to the translations themselves.
R.H. Charles' edition of the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament is divided into two print volumes. The first volume contains those books which are still considered part of scripture by the Roman Catholic Church or the Greek Orthodox Church. The second volume contains works like the apocalypses mentioned above that were in popular use, but never canonized as scripture by any mainstream Christian church. In addition to apocalypses, there are histories, books of wisdom literature (in the same genre as Proverbs), psalms, and additions to canonical works.
Each apocryphal and pseudepigraphal text has an extensive introduction covering dates, manuscript variants, and helpful topics such as "Influence on New Testament Doctrine." In fact, these thorough introductions (some running 48 pages and more) are one of the reasons Charles' work is so widely used today.
Each text is presented in English translation, and is accompanied by copious notes and (in many cases) a critical apparatus listing alternate readings in the various ancient language manuscripts that have survived till today—citing Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac, Ethiopic, Latin, Armenian, and more.
Some of Charles' editions have been made available online or in other software packages, but none that we know of contain the complete set of notes, introductions and critical apparatuses that make this set the indispensable study tool that it is.
Robert Henry Charles was born in 1855 in England. A biblical scholar and theologian, he is best known for his translations of the Apocrophya and the Psuedepigrapha. Charles died in 1931.