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Christian Apocrypha
The Christian Apocrypha constitute a loosely defined collection of early Christian texts which are similar in style and content to the books of the New Testament but which were not included in either the New Testament itself or the Apostolic Fathers.
The Christian Apocrypha include a wide range of genres: gospels, apostolic acts, letters, apocalypses, martyrdom's, and saint's lives. The surviving texts date from the second century and later, but some contain much older traditions. They were written in a variety of ancient languages and often survive only in fragments or in translations into other languages. Recent scholarship has been concerned with the reconstruction of the texts and tracing their development over time. Other scholars have attempted to mine these works for information on popular Christianity in the early centuries.
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