The MSS. and many of the lists of the Greek Old Testament include certain books which find no place in the Hebrew Canon. The number of these books varies, as we have seen; but the fullest collections contain the following: 1 Esdras, Wisdom of Solomon, Wisdom of Sirach, Judith, Tobit, Baruch and the Epistle of Jeremiah, i.—iv. Maccabees. We may add the Psalms of Solomon, a book which was sometimes included in MSS. of the Salomonic books, or, in complete Bibles, at the end of the Canon; and the Greek version of Enoch, although by some accident it has been excluded from the Greek Bible, on other grounds claims the attention of every Biblical student. There is also a long list of pseudepigrapha and other apocrypha which lie outside both the Hebrew and the Greek Canons, and of which in many cases only the titles have survived. The present chapter will be occupied by a brief examination of these non-canonical writings of the Greek Old Testament.

1. I Esdras. In MSS. of the LXX. the canonical book Ezra-Nehemiah appears under the title ῞Εσδρας β′, ῞Εσδρας α′ being appropriated by another recension of the history of the Captivity and Return. The ‘Greek Esdras’ consists of an independent and somewhat free version of portions of 2 Chronicles and Ezra-Nehemiah, broken by a long context which has no parallel in the Hebrew Bible.