Archaeology 

Titus

Crete

    TITUS 1 Crete,about 170 miles (274 km) south of the Greek mainland, is the largest of the Greek islands, at 156 miles (252 km) long (from east to west) and, at most, 35 miles (56 km) wide (from north to south). It was home to the Minoan civilization, a Mediterranean culture that reached its high point around 1500 B.C. but collapsed at the end of the Bronze Age,, in around 1200 B.c.2 The most spectacular remains of this civilization may be viewed at Knossos. Crete is referred to in the Old Testament as Caphtor (Dt 2:23; Jer 47:4), and the Philistines came to Canaan by way of Crete (Am 9:7). Crete does not figure significantly in history during the classical period,although the island is said to have been a base for pirates. It was brought under Roman rule in 67 B.C. 

    The island had a substantial Jewish population during the New Testament period (cf. Ac 2:11), and Paul was troubled by the negative influence of some of these Jews on the early Christians (Tit 114). The Cretan poet who labeled his fellow Cretans as liars and lazy gluttons (v. 12) is supposed to have been Epimenides, although the original text is no longer available. 

The Apocrypha

    TITUS 2 As the early church developed, Gentile believers needed to be taught "sound doctrine" (Tit 2:1). Although Paul and the apostles exclusively used the Old Testament as their canonical Bible, Gentiles also encountered many other Jewish religious texts among the Greek scrolls of the Scriptures. Many Gentile believers no doubt embraced these books as authoritative, and debate over their place in the churches has raged ever since. 

    The term "Apocrypha" (meaning"hidden away") refers broadly to a grouping of non-- canonical books. However, the collection commonly called the Apocrypha is limited to 14 or 15 documents that were for the most part written during the last two centuries B.C. and the first century A.D.The Apocrypha actually represents only a small portion of the extant non canonical Jewish literature from this period. Second Esdras 14:45-46 explicitly refers to the large amount of such maten-

The Apocrypha al known at that time. In this passage a distinction is made between the canonical books of the Hebrew Old Testament—to be published for everyone—and "the seventy books which were written later"—to be reserved for the wise among the people. 

    The early manuscripts of the Greek Bible (the Septuagint) included the books now known as the Apocrypha. During the early Christian centuries Apocryphal texts were widely read and came to be regarded by some as canonical (cf. Augustine, The City of God, 18:36). Christian scholars, however, were aware of the discrepancies between the Greek and the Hebrew Bible. When Jerome published his Latin translation of the Bible (the Vulgate), he worked directly from the Hebrew Bible and carefully distinguished between what he considered canonical writings and the grouping of writings that he first designated as "the Apocrypha." Martin Luther (sixteenth century A.D.) opposed certain Apocryphal passages, such as 2 Maccabees 12:45-46, which had been used by the Roman Catholic Church to support the doctrine of purgatory and the selling of indulgences. In his 1534 German translation, Luther printed the books of the Apocrypha together in a separate appendix, rather than interspersing them among the canonical books. The Roman Catholic Council of Trent- -- in 1546 rejected Luther's distinction by decreeing that the books of the Apocrypha are "Deuterocanonical" (belonging to the "second canon").The Roman Catholic Deuterocanonical books, which remain a part of the Catholic Old Testament canon, are roughly equivalent to the Protestant Apocrypha. 

    Several books of the Apocrypha are pseudonymous, meaning that they purport to have been authored by a famous character of the Old Testament, such as Jeremiah, but were in fact written much later than the time of the alleged author. 

The Books of the Apocrypha 

    TITUS 2 The books of the Apocrypha are as follows: