I just recently spent a fair amount of time in 1-4 Maccabees for a study of John 10:22-39 and was blown away by the number of allusions John makes to those texts and stories. Maybe they aren’t inspired texts, but they are indispensable if one wants to see and hear what John’s audience would have seen and heard.
A couple years ago I listened to the Bible in a year podcast with Father Mike Schmidt. It included the readings of the apocrypha. Growing up SBC it was insinuated that these were not books we should read. I learned a lot of things through a different perspective. My youngest son is dating a wonderful young lady from a Jewish background. She has spent the last two Christmases with us as her family does not celebrate Christmas. This year Hanukah fell on Christmas Day. Because of my readings of the Maccabees I had a better understanding of their celebration of Hanukah. Thanks for these recommendations to dive a little more into these books and how they can help us better understand how the early church would have understood the message
I just recently spent a fair amount of time in 1-4 Maccabees for a study of John 10:22-39 and was blown away by the number of allusions John makes to those texts and stories. Maybe they aren’t inspired texts, but they are indispensable if one wants to see and hear what John’s audience would have seen and heard.
Amen to that! I found Tobit very insightful for reading John overall as well
A couple years ago I listened to the Bible in a year podcast with Father Mike Schmidt. It included the readings of the apocrypha. Growing up SBC it was insinuated that these were not books we should read. I learned a lot of things through a different perspective. My youngest son is dating a wonderful young lady from a Jewish background. She has spent the last two Christmases with us as her family does not celebrate Christmas. This year Hanukah fell on Christmas Day. Because of my readings of the Maccabees I had a better understanding of their celebration of Hanukah. Thanks for these recommendations to dive a little more into these books and how they can help us better understand how the early church would have understood the message
This is a good resource as well, from an Orthodox perspective:
Apocrypha: An Introduction to Extra-Biblical Literature https://a.co/d/8D6Zu3y