Anglo-Saxon biblical apocrypha and pseudepigrapha

THE ANGLO-SAXON CHURCH, Philip Jenkins tells us, was really into their Old Testament Apocrypha and pseudepigrapha and their New Testament apocrypha: THE FIRST ENGLISH BIBLE.

Anglo-Saxon England was converted in the century or so after 597, and in the following centuries became one of the liveliest cultural centers of Western Europe. Scandinavian invasions caused massive damage in the ninth century, but Anglo-Saxon culture and literature continued to flourish until the Norman Conquest of 1066. Within a couple of generations after that cataclysm, the Anglo-Saxon language ceased to matter as a learned tongue. When we find a text associated with the Anglo-Saxon church, then, we can say confidently that it was used somewhere between 600 and 1066 or so, and is very unlikely to be much earlier or later.

A century ago, M. R. James remarked that “the Anglo-Saxon and Irish scholars seem to have been in possession of a good deal of rather rare apocryphal literature,” mainly in Latin but occasionally even in Greek. ...

For early Irish Old Testament pseudepigrapha, see this essay by my colleague Grant Macaskill: The Pseudepigrapha in the Irish Church.

UPDATE: Dead links now fixed! Sorry about that.