When I was 11 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 Chisle.

When pressed, nobody seemed to have actually been present during one of these Chisle launching events,

or could explain why on earth Chisle 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. Apocrypha literally means

things that are hidden. On another episode, we've talked about which books were recognized by the

early church as being worthy of inclusion in the canon of

scripture. These are the 66 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 66 books whose authority has been accepted from the beginning of the church. They're called

the proto-canonical books, but there are also 12 additional books in the Old Testament that

were acknowledged later in church history. They're called the Deutero-canonical or

apocryphal books. These are the names of the 12 Old Testament books in question. Tobit, Judith,

additions to the book of Esther, the wisdom of Solomon, ecclesiasticus, not to be confused with

ecclesiastes, Baruch, the letter of Jeremiah,

the prayer of Azariah and the Song of the Three Young Men, Susanna, Bell and the Dragon,

and finally First and Second Maccabees.

The Eastern Orthodox Church goes a step further and recognizes three other books in its Old Testament,

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