1 Esdras
1Esd1 Esdras is a Greek retelling of material covering roughly 2 Chronicles 35 through Nehemiah 8, with one substantial original composition added: the Tale of the Three Guardsmen (1 Esd 3:1-5:…
9 chapters · 448 verses
Start reading →Beyond the 66
The Apocrypha
Fourteen books that the 1611 King James Bible printed between the Old and New Testaments. They tell the story of the four hundred years between Malachi and Matthew — the wars, the wisdom, and the world Jesus was born into. Read them for that. Not for doctrine.
- 14Books
- 173Chapters
- 5,720Verses
- KJVText1611 Apocrypha
The wars and kingdoms of the four hundred silent years — the world Jesus was born into.
The Histories
1 Maccabees
1Macc1 Maccabees is a sober, chronicle-style history of the Jewish revolt against the Seleucid empire from roughly 175 to 134 BCE.
16 chapters · 924 verses
Start reading →2 Maccabees
2Macc2 Maccabees is not a sequel to 1 Maccabees but a rival treatment of roughly the same period — specifically the years 180-161 BCE, ending before Judas Maccabeus dies.
15 chapters · 555 verses
Start reading →Stories told to teach — courage, prayer, and wit under foreign kings.
Tales of Faith
Tobit
TobTobit is a richly textured short novel telling parallel stories of two righteous Israelites in distress: Tobit, an exiled Naphtalite living in Nineveh who has been blinded, and Sarah, a you…
14 chapters · 244 verses
Start reading →Judith
JdtJudith is a fictional-historical novella featuring a pious Jewish widow who saves her city of Bethulia — and by extension all Judea — by seducing and beheading the Assyrian general Holofern…
16 chapters · 339 verses
Start reading →Susanna
SusThe Additions to Daniel are three distinct pieces preserved in the Greek versions (Theodotion and Septuagint) of Daniel that do not appear in the Masoretic Hebrew/Aramaic text.
1 chapter · 64 verses
Start reading →The Additions to Daniel are three distinct pieces preserved in the Greek versions (Theodotion and Septuagint) of Daniel that do not appear in the Masoretic Hebrew/Aramaic text.
1 chapter · 42 verses
Start reading →Additions to Esther
AddEsthThe Greek version of Esther contains six substantial additions to the Hebrew book, designated A-F in modern editions (or scattered through Esther 10-16 in the Vulgate).
7 chapters · 105 verses
Start reading →Proverbs' younger cousins — the wisdom tradition carried into Greek.
The Wisdom Books
Wisdom of Solomon is a sophisticated philosophical-theological meditation pseudonymously attributed to Solomon, composed in Greek in Hellenistic Alexandria by an educated Jewish author stee…
19 chapters · 436 verses
Start reading →Sirach
SirSirach is the longest and most ambitious wisdom book of the Second Temple period — a 51-chapter collection of practical proverbs, theological reflections, hymns, and a closing 'Praise of th…
51 chapters · 1,393 verses
Start reading →Exile prayers, a furnace hymn, and a penitent king.
Prophets & Prayers
Baruch
BarBaruch is a composite book pseudonymously attributed to Jeremiah's secretary Baruch son of Neriah.
6 chapters · 213 verses
Start reading →The Additions to Daniel are three distinct pieces preserved in the Greek versions (Theodotion and Septuagint) of Daniel that do not appear in the Masoretic Hebrew/Aramaic text.
1 chapter · 68 verses
Start reading →Prayer of Manasseh
PrManThe Prayer of Manasseh is one of the shortest works in the deuterocanonical corpus — only 15 verses — but among the most moving.
1 chapter · 15 verses
Start reading →Visions after the ruin of Jerusalem — questions Job would recognize.
The Apocalypse
2 Esdras
2Esd2 Esdras is a composite apocalyptic work in three layers.
16 chapters · 874 verses
Start reading →Older than the Apocrypha, further from the canon
The pseudepigrapha shelf
1 Enoch
1En1 Enoch is not a single book but a composite library of five major works attributed to the antediluvian patriarch Enoch (Genesis 5:21-24).
108 chapters · 1,063 verses
Start reading →1 Enoch stands even further from the canon than the fourteen above: no church outside the Ethiopian tradition has ever received it as Scripture. It is here because the New Testament touches it — Jude 14–15 quotes it directly — and because it carries the fullest ancient telling of the Watchers of Genesis 6. Read it as background, in R. H. Charles’s 1917 translation. Not Scripture, and never the ground of a doctrine.
Plain answers
What these books are, and what they are not
Why were they in the King James Bible?
The 1611 translators printed them in a section of their own, between the testaments — useful reading, plainly marked as a different kind of book. Printers dropped the section over the following centuries, which is why most King James Bibles today do not have it.
Do all churches agree?
No, and the disagreement is old. Catholic and Orthodox churches receive most of these books as Scripture. Protestant churches do not. Each book’s page lists where the major traditions actually stand, in their own words.
Why read them at all?
Because they explain things the New Testament assumes you know. Hanukkah in John 10:22 is a Maccabean festival. The martyrs of Hebrews 11:35 are from 2 Maccabees. The world of the Gospels was shaped in these four hundred years.
Where does MannaFest stand?
With the 66. These fourteen are study resources — valuable history, real devotion, and worth reading, but not the Word of God and never the ground of a doctrine. That line is drawn on every page of this shelf.