According to Wikipedia, Apocrypha are works, usually written, of unknown authorship or of doubtful origin. Biblical apocrypha are a set of texts included in the Latin Vulgate and Septuagint but not in the Hebrew Bible. While Catholic tradition considers some of these texts to be deuterocanonical, Protestants consider them apocryphal. Thus, Protestant bibles do not include the books within the Old Testament but have sometimes included them in a separate section, usually called the Apocrypha. Other non-canonical apocryphal texts are generally called pseudepigrapha, a term that means “false attribution”.

The word’s origin is the Medieval Latin adjective apocryphus, “secret, or non-canonical”, from the Greek adjective ἀπόκρυφος (apokryphos), “obscure”, from the verb ἀποκρύπτειν (apokryptein), “to hide away”..

The term “Apocrypha” commonly appears in Christian religious contexts concerning disagreements about biblical canonicity. Apocryphal writings are a class of documents rejected by some who as being either pseudepigraphical or unworthy to be properly called Scripture, though, as with other writings, which they may sometimes be referenced for support, such as the lost Book of Jasher. While writings that are now accepted by Christians as Scripture were recognized as being such by various believers early on, when the establishment of a largely settled uniform canon was a process of centuries, and what the term “canon” (as well as “apocrypha”) precisely meant also saw development.

The canonical process took place with believers recognizing writings as being inspired by God from known or accepted origins, subsequently being followed by official affirmation of what had become largely established through the study and debate of the writings. The Catholic Church provided its first dogmatic definition of its entire canon in 1546, which put a stop to doubts and disagreements about the status of the Apocrypha.  The leader of the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther, like the Catholic Church father Jerome (and certain others who), favored the Masoretic canon for the Old Testament, excluding apocryphal books in his non-binding canon as unworthy to be properly called Scripture, but included most of them in a separate section, as per Jerome. Luther did not include the deuterocanonical books in his Old Testament, terming them Apocrypha, that are books which are not considered equal to the Holy Scriptures, but are useful and good to read.”

The texts found in the Apocrypha are only a small sampling of Jewish writings from the later Second Temple period, which would include the lengthy works of Philo of Alexandria and Flavius Josephus, several dozen parabiblical writings known as the Pseudepigrapha, and the nonbiblical texts found among the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The Eastern Orthodox Church accepts a few more books which than appear in the Catholic canon.

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