The Apocrypha

[DavidGYoung]

What are your favourite, least favourite and other superlative books of the Apocrypha?
For those for whom these writings are canonical, how do you feel about the use of the word 'Apocrypha' to describe them in the secular world?

My own choices are:

Best book: Tobit

Worst piece: Additions to Esther

Funniest single line: "The Babylonians were furious when they heard about this and rose against the king. 'The king has turned Jew!' they said", from Additions to Daniel

Most boring: Sirach

Most interesting: 1 Enoch

Book I have heard about and most want to get round to reading some time: Jubilees - Runner-up: Meqabyan

[RabbiKnife]

Read it once 49 years ago

Not interested in it at all

[Athanasius]

I'd struggle to name a favourite book of the bible, let alone anything intertestamental/deuterocanonical.

[DavidGYoung]

What about the books that didn't even manage to make it into the Apocrypha?

For example:

 Lilac

 The Book of Viaducts

 1 & 2 Brexit

 The Lament of Netscape

[Athanasius]

Now that you mention it, I'm quite fond of The Genealogies of Tom Bombadil.

[ProDeo]

My own Apocrypha

1:1 - Where judgement starts, observation stops.

Saw that a couple of weeks ago on a billboard while driving on the highway.

[DavidGYoung]

I'd certainly recommend 1 Enoch. It provides an interesting backdrop to the various ideas doing the rounds in Second-Temple Judaism.

[Fenris]

Gotta go with the book of Macabees. Words spoken by Jews about the land of Israel that are completely applicable today as well.

1 Macabees 15

We have never taken land away from other nations or confiscated anything that belonged to other people. On the contrary, we have simply taken back property that we inherited from our ancestors, land that had been unjustly taken away from us by our enemies at one time or another