During this time between the Old and New Testaments, the books called the Apocrypha (“hidden”) were written. Generally, there are fourteen of these Jewish books accepted as valuable, uplifting reading but not canonical. They were incorporated as additions to the Bible by early Christians. Eventually, the Roman Catholics, unlike the Protestants, put these books, which they referred to as “deutero-canonical,” on a par with the other sixty-six works in the Old and New Testaments.  The Apocrypha has different kinds of material—apocryphal writing (revelations of secrets), moral tales, stories of heroes, wisdom literature, prayers, poetry, the history of the Maccabees. Neither Jesus nor the disciples ever referred to these works, and the Jewish community that produced them repudiated them.

Jewish teaching of this time depended on the Pentateuch as the basis for living, but several different groups arose with widely different interpretations. The Pharisees wished to reinterpret the Law by adding oral commentaries. In addition, they believed in the sovereignty of God, the existence of angels, the future resurrection and judgment. They became the spiritual ancestors of modern Judaism Another more aristocratic group  called the Sadducees rejected all the above teachings; they followed only the Torah. They were friendly to the Romans and faded from history when the Jews rebelled against Rome shortly after the time of Jesus. A third group, the Essenes, saw religion as corrupted, so they withdrew to wilderness areas where they lived ascetic lives. It was near an Essene commune called Qumran where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in 1947. These are the oldest surviving copies of the Hebrew Bible, in some cases nearly one thousand years nearer to the originals than we had before.

One concept of this time had great impact on writers of the New Testament. The Jews had a term, “Messiah,” which meant “anointed one,” referring to a person commissioned by God through the anointing of oil. God had promised to David an everlasting kingship as recorded in 2 Samuel 7, 23:1-5, and Psalm 89:19-31. People of this time read the prophets who had envisioned a future in which another one like David or from his line would liberate Israel, defeat her enemies, and bring God’s kingdom to earth. This Messiah would be a warrior-king to set the Jews free from political and religious persecution. It was into this world of Jewish thought and literature that Jesus was born.