What Does “Apocryphon” Mean — and Why Is the Word Often Misleading?

The first distinction already appears between two familiar uses. In a biblical context, Apocrypha and “deuterocanonical books” refer to Old Testament books whose content and status are defined differently by different Christian traditions. Tobit, for example, belongs to the official Catholic Old Testament, while the Westminster Confession excludes from the canon the books it calls Apocrypha. The dispute here concerns the boundaries of the Old Testament within a particular confessional tradition, not newly discovered Gospels.

“Early Christian apocrypha” or “New Testament apocrypha” form another shelf. Modern scholars use this broad designation for gospels, acts, letters, apocalypses and related texts. It is a working field with disputed boundaries, not one ancient collection. These works arose at different times, belonged to different genres and circulated in different settings. They never formed one hidden volume — an “alternative New Testament”.

There are neighbouring but non-identical categories. “Early Christian non-canonical literature” is broader: not every text outside the canon is necessarily called apocryphal in a narrow academic sense. “Pseudepigraphon” primarily answers the question of whose name a work speaks in; such attribution by itself determines neither canonical status nor theological evaluation. Patristic literature is organised around ancient church authors and their legacy. A treatise by a Church Father and an apocryphal Gospel may both stand outside the biblical canon while remaining entirely different kinds of text.

These terms are better imagined not as a ladder from “correct” to “incorrect”, but as intersecting coordinates. One text may be both pseudepigraphical and apocryphal; another patristic and non-canonical; a third useful for instruction but not recognised as Scripture. Each word answers its own question — attributed author, genre, use, theological evaluation or place in the canon. Confusion begins when one label silently replaces all the others.

A popular scheme offers two positions: a book was either accepted as canonical or declared forbidden. Ancient evidence is more complex. In his Thirty-Ninth Festal Letter of 367, Athanasius of Alexandria first lists the books of the canon, then speaks separately of books that are not canonised but are appointed for introductory reading and instruction, and only after that argues against works called apocryphal. This is the position of a particular bishop at a particular time, but it demonstrates clearly that “outside the canon” and “not to be read” are not the same statement.

Eusebius of Caesarea likewise describes more than one basket of excluded books. He distinguishes recognised, disputed, rejected or spurious works, and writings that he associates with heretical authors and false apostolic names. His categories cannot be turned mechanically into a universal administrative system for all communities. Yet the range of statuses matters: a text could be known and discussed without being recognised; it could remain outside the canon without an accusation of heresy; it could be rejected for particular theological or attributional reasons.

Ancient readers, in other words, asked more than one question. Should this text be copied? Is it useful for instruction? May it be read publicly? Is it cited as Scripture? Is the name attached to it trusted? Does its teaching accord with what is accepted? The answers did not always resolve into one simple yes or no.

The Shepherd of Hermas, an early Christian instructional work of visions, commandments and parables, illustrates this layered status particularly well. In the fourth century, part of the Shepherd was copied in Codex Sinaiticus after the New Testament books and beside the Epistle of Barnabas. This is strong material evidence of its value to the makers and users of that particular codex. The contents of one manuscript, however, are not a universal canonical list.

In the same century, Athanasius leaves the Shepherd outside his canon while recommending it to beginners. The Muratorian Fragment — a document of disputed date and origin — also distinguishes useful reading from public reading among prophets and apostles. These witnesses do not establish one status for every place and period. They show that a work could be valued, read and carefully copied without being regarded as Scripture. Non-canonical did not necessarily mean secret, heretical or forbidden.

This does not mean that boundaries did not exist. The distinction between reading for instruction and reading as Scripture was real and consequential. Correcting the myth does not make all books equal; it restores several forms of authority in place of one switch.

The word “discovery” creates another confusion. The complete Coptic text of the Gospel of Thomas survives in one of the Nag Hammadi codices. It is a collection of 114 sayings attributed to Jesus, without a passion or resurrection narrative. Its literary form already warns us that the word “Gospel” does not guarantee a biographical narrative structured like Mark or Luke.

Thomas is not known only from the fourth-century Coptic manuscript. Earlier Greek fragments survive from Oxyrhynchus: P.Oxy. 1, 654 and 655. “Earlier” here describes the material manuscripts; it does not automatically determine when the whole work arose or how its sayings relate to the Synoptic Gospels. The date of Thomas, its literary history and the degree of its dependence on or independence from the Synoptics remain disputed.

The Greek fragments were already in scholarly circulation before the complete Coptic text allowed their relationship to Thomas to be recognised. The phrase “a Gospel was discovered” may therefore conceal different events: finding a material carrier, publishing a previously unknown fragment, identifying an already published text or obtaining a more complete witness. None of these events by itself proves that the work was unknown to ancient readers or intentionally excluded from memory.

Three events must be kept apart: the composition of the work, the production of the surviving manuscript and its modern discovery or identification. A find returns a material witness to scholarly circulation, but does not itself explain why it survived in that form. It proves neither an ancient ban nor deliberate concealment. Those conclusions require separate positive evidence.

Nag Hammadi is, moreover, a modern name for a manuscript collection containing diverse works. It is not one “secret Christian Bible”. We can identify a particular codex and a text within it with confidence; reconstructing the intentions of its owners and the circumstances in which the manuscripts reached their place of discovery is much harder. Here an honest “we do not know” is more accurate than a dramatic story of persecution.

The Protoevangelium of James shows another possible history. Scholars generally date its present form to the second half of the second century. The work develops and joins motifs from Matthew’s and Luke’s infancy narratives, with special attention to Mary’s origins and childhood. It later exerted considerable influence on Christian art and ideas about Mary’s early life.

This influence does not make the text a canonical Gospel or prove that it was once a serious candidate for the New Testament. Yet being non-canonical does not make it historically unimportant. Canon, cultural memory and artistic reception are different trajectories. A work may shape the imagination for centuries without acquiring the status of Scripture.

After abandoning the myth of a universal ban, it is easy to fall into the opposite simplification: to imagine that ancient boundaries were merely conventional and nobody seriously rejected texts. The history of the Gospel of Peter prevents that conclusion. Eusebius preserves the testimony of Serapion of Antioch. Serapion initially permitted the text to be read in a particular community before he had it in front of him. Later he obtained a copy, examined it and judged some additions to be connected with docetic teaching, although he considered most of it consistent with accepted teaching.

This was a real controversy and a real rejection. Its scale is also specific: the decision of one bishop in one dispute, not a decree by all Christian communities against all apocrypha. The principal surviving fragment associated by scholars with the Gospel of Peter has no ancient title of its own; we cannot state without qualification that it is identical in every detail to the copy Serapion read. Accuracy requires preserving both the fact of rejection and the limit of what it proves.

The date of the work and the date of its carrier again diverge. The manuscript of the principal surviving fragment belongs to the sixth or seventh century, while Serapion’s testimony about a text bearing Peter’s name is much earlier. A late manuscript may preserve an earlier work, but does not guarantee that it transmits it unchanged. Comparing the witnesses allows us to describe an extended textual history without treating the fragment either as the original or as an exact copy of Serapion’s exemplar.

Popular retellings sometimes compress the whole complex history into one scene: at the Council of Nicaea in 325, it is said, participants voted for the books of the Bible and banned the rest. Yet the twenty surviving canons of the council contain no list of New Testament books. This does not prove that participants never discussed books informally. It does allow us to reject the story of a surviving Nicene decree that created the New Testament all at once.

The sources show a longer process. Books were read, copied, quoted, debated, distinguished and included in normative lists. Boundaries did arise and had consequences. They cannot, however, be reduced either to one vote or to one operation to destroy everything left outside.

When a headline promises a “lost forbidden Gospel”, it is worth pausing. What exactly was found: an unknown work, a new manuscript of an already known text or a small fragment? When was the work probably composed, and when was the physical witness produced? Where and by whom was it read? Is there direct evidence of prohibition or suppression? What does “apocryphal” mean in this case: a confessional term, a modern academic category, an ancient polemical label or simply a word in a headline?

Such questions do not make history less compelling. In place of a repetitive legend about a secret library, they reveal a world in which texts possessed different forms of authority, moved between languages and manuscripts, served different purposes, influenced culture and became the subjects of real conflict. That world is more complex than a binary scheme — and more interesting precisely for that reason.

The central mistake lies not in the word itself, but in the habit of treating it as an explanation. History begins when the broad label is unfolded again into particular witnesses, places, dates, reading practices and decisions.

“Apocryphon” is the beginning of a question, not the answer.