Deuterocanonicals/apocrypha

[Fencer]

That's great!!! My Bible has some other books that I've never heard of such as:
[i]Letter of Jeremiah [/i](not the book of [i]Jeremiah[/i])
[i]Song of the Three Young Men
Susanna
Bel and the Dragon
1 Esdras
2 Esdras[/i]
and [i]The Prayer of Manasseh[/i]
Are these apocryphal? Where did they come from?

[Laudate_Dominum]

[quote name='Fencer' post='1327498' date='Jul 13 2007, 07:55 PM']That's great!!! My Bible has some other books that I've never heard of such as:
[i]Letter of Jeremiah [/i](not the book of [i]Jeremiah[/i])
[i]Song of the Three Young Men
Susanna
Bel and the Dragon
1 Esdras
2 Esdras[/i]
and [i]The Prayer of Manasseh[/i]
Are these apocryphal? Where did they come from?[/quote]
The first four are deuterocanonical texts and the last three are apocryphal by Catholic reckoning. The "Letter of Jeremiah" formed chapter six of the book of Baruch in the Latin Vulgate. The "Song of the Three Young Men" is included in chapter three of the book of Daniel in the Septuagint and Vulgate. The story of "Susanna" forms chapter thirteen of the book of Daniel in the Vulgate but was actually at the beginning of Daniel in certain ancient Greek manuscripts. St. Jerome opted to place the text toward the end of Daniel due to the lack of any Hebrew version of the text.
The case of "Bel and the Dragon" is similar in that it forms the last chapter of the book of Daniel in the Latin Vulgate and was included in the Septuagint; however, this story differs in that it was originally a part of the Aramaic manuscript tradition.
These texts are generally considered "apocryphal" by Protestants and excluded from their versions of the Bible (with the exception of the original King James Bible I believe) due partly to the fact that post-Christian Judaism rejected the canonicity of these texts because of the lack of Masoretic support.

The final three texts, "1 & 2 Esdras" and "The Prayer of Manasseh" are not considered canonical by the Catholic Church. These texts do have a presence in the Septuagint tradition and are considered canon, as far as I know, by many Eastern Orthodox Churches. Because of their place in Christian tradition (particularly the Eastern Churches) they deserve recognition as venerable and pious writings, but do not enjoy the authority and inspired status of the canonical Scriptures. In the Roman Church specifically we can see the value of these texts affirmed as for example these texts were included at the back of the Vulgate although not recognized as canonical (which suggests they were nonetheless revered); 2 Esdras has supposedly exercised some influence on certain prayers in the traditional Liturgy of the Roman Rite and the Prayer of Manasseh has a presence in Orthodox Liturgical traditions.

I should note that in late versions of the Vulgate the books of Ezra and Nehemiah are called 1 Esdras and 2 Esdras (with 1 & 2 Esdras being called 3 & 4 Esdras) which can lead to some confusion, but considering that "The Prayer of Manasseh" is in the equation in the Bible you are using I don't think this is an issue.