Word: apocrypha
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...Christians appreciate potshots by contemporaries who suspected Jesus might have been Joseph's son after all, or questioned Mary's virginity when Scripture talked about his having several "brothers" and "sisters." Among the first attempts to address all those issues were the vivid set of books known as the Apocrypha...
...Each land shall be full of you and each sea; and every one shall be incensed at your customs." So the Apocrypha prophesies, and so Marek Halter's enormous novel echoes with the unfurling of Jewish history from the sacking of Jerusalem to the anguish of the Warsaw ghetto...
...curious reader can also find survivors in several modern editions of New Testament Apocrypha (from the Greek apokruphos, "hidden")--scraps of other Gospels, letters, apocalypses, acts of the apostles and other figures related to Jesus. Some of them offer occasionally striking, even comic, moments. There are numerous stories about the young Jesus, for instance--a sometimes amusing, sometimes dangerous superchild playmate. And there may be actual moments of history in the mostly fictional tales of the acts of John the Beloved, Peter, Paul and others...
...even the widely publicized and still suspect fragment from the Secret Gospel of Mark, may also contain scraps of genuine memory, but lacking complete originals, we have only the shakiest grounds for assessing their reliability. The disappointing fact seems to be that most of the surviving New Testament Apocrypha arose in legitimate attempts to comprehend realities about which the canonical Gospels are mute, and any dogged attempt to read them is apt to leave the reader with one prime reaction--those 2nd and 3rd century Christian editors who decided on the final contents of the New Testament were, above...
...first time, it appeared, there was physical proof that this legendary family, known only from the words of the Apocrypha, actually existed. The discovery, announced last month, set off an international wave of excitement (and protests from ultra-Orthodox Jews, who believe that any tampering with human remains violates Jewish law). Then, two weeks ago, came disappointing word from the Israeli Antiquities Authority: the letters on the crypt had been misinterpreted. There is no reason to believe these were the bones of the Maccabees after...