An Introduction to the Apocrypha

Bruce Metzger's introduction works through the deuterocanonical and apocryphal books one at a time, giving each its own documented textual and historical background rather than treating the Apocrypha as a single undifferentiated collection. That book-by-book method, checkable against the specific manuscript and canonical history it recounts for each text, is the introduction's real evidentiary basis and the reason it remains the standard reference decades after its 1957 publication. This record has not independently traced later scholarly revision of Metzger's specific claims about any one book. Use it for the textual history and canonical status of a named deuterocanonical or apocryphal book; a claim resting on that book's doctrinal content needs the text itself alongside this introduction.