From the Greek, “hidden things or writings,” that is, things to be hidden away. A collection of writings, mostly from the end of the biblical period, between ca. 200 b.c.e. and 100 c.e., that were accepted by early Christians as Scripture but that, because they were eventually excluded from the Jewish Bible, came to be regarded by many later Christians as belonging to a special scriptural category. They were included in the Bible of Western Christianity, where they became “deuterocanonical” (that is, the “second” set of canonical books), but under the name “Apocrypha”; later, many Protestant churches excluded them in part or in toto from their canon. These books are, along with the Pseudepigrapha, particularly interesting to biblical scholars, since many of them contain retellings of biblical stories or reflections on particular passages or people in the Bible, and thus can provide us with a snapshot of how parts of the Bible were being interpreted from the third century b.c.e. onward. Among the best known books of the Apocrypha are Sira(ch), Wisdom of Solomon, Judith, Baruch, 1 and 2 Maccabees, and Tobit.