When I was eleven and starting at a new school, the older kids wasted no time in telling

us various legends about the teachers.

One story was about the metalwork teacher who, according to some of the older boys, would

throw a chisel at pupils' heads if he became sufficiently irritated, thus explaining

the teacher's unofficial nickname which, of course, was chisel.

When pressed, nobody seemed to have actually been present during one of these chisel-launching

events, or could explain why on earth chisel was still actively teaching at a church of

England grammar school, so to me the story seemed pretty unlikely.

The tale of chisel is an example of what we might call an apocryphal story, a story

of dubious authenticity, without the historical evidence to back up its claim to be genuine.

In a similar way, there are what we call apocryphal books that are included in some versions

of the Bible, apocryphal literally means things that are hidden.

On another episode, we've talked about which books were recognised by the early church

as being worthy of inclusion in the canon of Scripture.

These are the sixty-six books that appear in most modern translations of the Bible.

But there are some additional books, so-called apocryphal books, on which Protestants and

Roman Catholics have disagreed.

From the Roman Catholic perspective, there are the sixty-six books whose authority has

been accepted from the beginning of the church.

They're called the proto-canonical books, but there are also twelve additional books in

the Old Testament that were acknowledged later in church history.

They're called the dutero-canonical or apocryphal books.

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