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 585 Scholten (De Apostel Johannes in Klein-Azil, Leyden, 1871) are the most prominent. The Johannean origin of both the Apocalypse and the fourth Gospel was, on the other hand, vin- dicated against the critical schools by Hengsten- berg, Hase, Godet, and in particular by Niermey- er ( Verhandeling over de Echtheid der Johan- neische Schriften, the Hague, 1852). No book of the New Testament has received so many dif- ferent interpretations. Two principal classes of expositors may be distinguished, the historical or continuous and the preterist. According to the opinion of the former, which is shared by nearly the entire ancient church, the Apoca- lypse is a progressive representation of the en- tire history of the church and the world. Sir Isaac Newton, Bengel, E. B. Elliott, Words- worth, Hengstenberg, Ebrard, and Alford are prominent representatives of this class. Writ- ers of this school have found in the Apocalyptic visions prophetic references to nearly every great event of the Christian era, such as the migration of nations, the reformation, the pope, the French revolution, and Napoleon ; and the calculations of the millennium have led to vary- ing results, and in some instances even to the establishment of particular sects. The date of the Apocalypse is given by these writers as A. D. 95-97. The preterist mode of interpreta- tion, according to which the Apocalypse has been almost or quite fulfilled in the time which has passed since it was written, and refers prin- cipally to the triumph of Christianity over Ju- daism and paganism, found able advocates in Grotius, Bossuet, and Calmet, and since Herder and Eichhorn has become the exclusive inter- pretation of all the liberal Protestant schools of theologians. Among the recent champi- ons of this school, Ewald, Lucke, Bleek, Stu- art, Lee, and Maurice are best known. Ac- cording to their view, the seven heads are seven emperors. As Galba was accounted as the sixth of the emperors, the book is sup- posed to have been written during his reign (in. 68). The fifth, who will return as the eighth, is Nero, who at that time was believed not to be dead, but to have retired to Parthia, whence he would return. In the symbolical number 666 these writers commonly find the words "Ne- ron Kaisar," written in Hebrew letters. Some writers, chiefly English, believe that, with the exception of the first three chapters, the book refers wholly or principally to events which are yet to come. Swedenborg regards the Apocalypse as a peculiar revelation of divine truth, the book of all books which is least en- cumbered by literal references to mundane things, and most remarkable for the complete- ness with which it contains the heavenly word. APOCRYPHA (Gr. a^/cpv^of, concealed), hid- den or unpublished books. This term is va- riously applied in the Roman Catholic and Protestant churches. The Roman Catholic church gives the name Apocrypha to those books to which a reception into the canon of the books of the Old Testament was refused. Protestant theology generally designates these books by the name pseudepigrapha, and calls Apocrypha those books the inspired character of which was long a subject of dispute in the church, and which were finally declared by the council of Trent to be a part of the canon. They are not contained in the Hebrew canon of the Old Testament ; but as the Sep- tuagint embraced them, they are frequently quoted by early church writers as sacred books, were expressly received into the Chris- tian canon by a synod of African bishops held at Hippo in 393, and were thereafter gener- ally accepted as canonical -books by the Latin church. By the Catholics these books are called deuterocanonical or antilegomena. The following books are included in tins class: 1 Esdras, 2 Esdras, Tobit, Judith, Esther x. 4- xvi., Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, Song of the Three Holy Children, History of Susanna, Bel and the Dragon, Prayer of Manasses, 1 and 2 Maccabees. The Protestant .churches con- tinued to print the apocryphal or deuteronomi- cal books of the Old Testament in their various editions of the Bible until about 1821, when discussions arose in the British and foreign Bible society which resulted in 1826 in a res- olution that that society should no longer circulate the apocryphal books. German Protestants are divided on the subject; some theologians, as Ebrard and Keerl, declaring against the reception of the Apocrypha into the Protestant Bibles, but others, including Ilengstenberg and Stier, in favor of it. The Greek church, at the synod held in Jerusalem in 1672, recognized the Apocrypha as inspired books. That class of books to which the Ro- man Catholic church exclusively applies the name of apocryphal is very numerous. The most important among those relating to the Old Testament are the third and fourth books of Esdras, and in particular the book of Enoch, which has only been preserved in an Ethiopia translation (published for the first time in 1838 by Laurence). The apocryphal books of the New Testament comprise a number of spurious gospels, acts, epistles, and apocalypses, many of which were written by heretics in the inter- est of their sects. A complete collection of the apocryphal literature of the New Testament was begun by Thilo {Codex Apocryphus Novi Testamenti, vol. i., Leipsic, 1832, containing nine apocryphal gospels). After the death of Thilo the work was continued by Tischendorf, who published in succession the Apocryphal Acts (Acta Apocrypha, Leipsic, 1852), a new collection of Apocryphal Gospels (Evangelia Apocrypha, 1853), and the Apocryphal Apoca- lypses (Apocalypses Apocrypha, 1866). An English translation of part of them by William Hone was published in London in 1820. See " Contributions to the Apocryphal Literature of the New Testament," by W. Wright, and "Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles," edited from Syriac MSS., with an English translation, by the same author (2 vols., London, 1871).