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Apocryphal   /əpˈɑkrəfəl/   Listen
Apocryphal

adjective
1.
Being of questionable authenticity.
2.
Of or belonging to the Apocrypha.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Apocryphal" Quotes from Famous Books



... The Apocryphal books of the Old Testament, especially the Jewish part of the Sibylline verses, and the Book of Enoch, together with the Book of Daniel, which is also really an Apocrypha, have a primary importance in the history of the development of the ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan

... or sinistrously interpret others. Degen- erous depravities and narrow-minded vices! not only below St Paul's noble Christian, but Aristotle's true gen- tleman.* Trust not with some that the Epistle of St James is apocryphal, and so read with less fear that stabbing truth that in company with this vice, "thy religion is in vain." Moses broke the tables without breaking the law, but where charity is broke the law itself is shattered, which cannot be whole without love that is "the fulfilling of it." Look humbly upon ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne

... figures in the whole gallery of troubadour portraits is Peire Vidal, whose career extended, roughly speaking, from 1175 to 1215. He was one of those characters who naturally become the nucleus of apocryphal stories, and how much truth there may be in some of the fantastic incidents, in which he figures as the hero, will probably never be discovered. He was undoubtedly an attractive character, for he enjoyed the favour of the most distinguished men and women of his time. He was also a poet of ...
— The Troubadours • H.J. Chaytor

... detail of the circumstances under which these were composed. He sets forth that he undertook to write all that had been done in the world since the beginning. It may be said that the books of Esdras are apocryphal, but in return it may be demanded, Has that conclusion been reached on evidence that will withstand modern criticism? In the early ages of Christianity, when the story of the fall of man was not considered as essential to the Christian system, and ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper

... Johnny's hidden treasure still remained as a superstition in the locality. Prospecting parties were continually made up to discover the unknown claim, but always from evidence and data altogether apocryphal. It was even alleged that a miner had one night seen the little figures of Johnny and Florry walking over the hilltop, hand in hand, but that they had vanished among the stars at the very moment he thought he had discovered their secret. And then it was forgotten; the prosperous Mr. Medliker, ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte

... They thought only of their piety, and with joy the news was carried throughout New Spain, that one of their previous kings had consecrated his imprisonment to embroidering a petticoat for the Virgin Mary; and when this announcement was followed by another, a little more apocryphal, that the most holy image had, by a nod, signified her acceptance of the present, there could no longer be a doubt of his title of Most Catholic King, which might from that time onward be interpreted ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson

... fascinating pictures which are etched for us in the opening chapters of the Gospel there follows a space of about twelve years of which we are told nothing. The fables which fill the pages of the Apocryphal Gospels serve chiefly to emphasise the difference between an inspired and an uninspired narrative. The human imagination trying to develop the situation suggested by the Gospel and to fill in the unwritten chapters of our Lord's life betrays its ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry

... steps of the rabbins is probably equally apocryphal with the quotations from St. Matthew and St. James (ix. p. 376.); for the same reason (Ex. xx. 26.) which forbad the ascending the altar by steps, would apply still more strongly to the supposed "fifteen steps leading from the Atrium Israelis to the court of the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 238, May 20, 1854 • Various

... work by sending a messenger was an insult to their brother, though it may have been meant as honour to the viceroy. The craft which was their father's by nature seems to have been amply transmitted. The story of Jacob's dying wish looks very apocryphal. If he had been afraid of Joseph's behaviour when he was gone, he was much more likely to have spoken to Joseph about it before he went, than to have left the gun loaded and bid them fire it after ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren

... advantage over Newport, the people do not know each other until it is too late. For six weeks the gay little world moves on in blissful ignorance of antecedents and reputations; no questions are asked, no information volunteered save that disclosed by the hotel register,— information frequently of apocryphal value. The gay beau of the night may be the industrious clerk of the morrow; the baron of the summer may be the barber of the winter; but what difference does it make? If the beau beaus and the baron ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy

... a foreign land; hearts, illegitimate children; keys, that you will rise to great trust and power, and never know want; birds, that you will have many children; and geese, that you will marry more than once." [397] Such ridiculous absurdities would be rejected as apocryphal if young ladies were not still in the habit of placing bits of wedding cake under their pillows in the hope that their dreaming eyes may be enchanted with blissful ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley

... exact moment of every coach's transit on his line of road, and the birth, parentage, and education of every cab, hack, and draught-horse in the neighbourhood. He had heard of a mane-comb, but had never seen one; he considered a shilling for a "feed" perfectly apocryphal, as he had never received one. He kept a rough terrier-dog, that would kill anything in the country, and exhibited three rows of putrified rats, nailed at the back of the stable, as evidences of the prowess of his dog. He swore long country ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... at Grendon, near Oxford, on the road from Stratford to London, that the dramatist "happened to take the humour of the constable in Midsummer Night's Dream"—a remark that may refer loosely either to Bottom and his friends, or to Dogberry and Verges. He also ascribes to the poet an apocryphal epigram on a ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson

... subjects, Christian art was directly influenced by the reforms promulgated by the Council of Trent. In a pamphlet published in 1570 by Jean Molanus, De Picturis et Imaginibus sacris, the new rules are strictly set forth. All subjects inspired by the apocryphal books and popular legends are proscribed, and even such details of treatment as the representation of St. Joseph as an old man and the removal of the lily from the hand of the Angel of the Annunciation to a vase are severely criticized. The censors of the period ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts

... distinction between the canonical and apocryphal books of the Scriptures. He asserts his divine right, as Bishop of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various

... forty years of slumbering and neglect, and after the incorporation of the great body of the old Loyalists and their descendants into other churches, the Episcopal clergy came in, and now seek, on the strength of these apocryphal "impressions" (which never could have existed), to claim one-seventh of the lands of the Province as their heritage.[107] In proof of these facts Dr. Ryerson referred to the testimony of fifty-two witnesses, given before a select Committee of the House of Assembly in 1828, and ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson

... instead of devoting themselves to throwing a flood of brilliancy upon the most important features and leaving the others to shine out in the light reflected from these. Even granting that some of the miracles recorded of our Lord are apocryphal, what of that? We do not rest upon them: we have enough and more than enough without them, and can afford to take the line of saying to the unbeliever, "Disbelieve this miracle or that if you find that you cannot accept it, but believe in the Resurrection, of which we will put forward ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler

... remind the assembled priests that 'what had been said by Buddha, that alone was well said;' and that certain works ascribed to Buddha, as, for instance, the instruction given to his son, Rahula, were apocryphal, if not heretical.[5] With every century, Buddhism, when it was accepted by nations, differing as widely as Mongols and Hindus, when its sacred writings were translated into languages as wide apart as Sanskrit and Chinese, assumed widely different aspects, till at last ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller

... minutes the gale moderated, and we bore up for Falmouth, which we reached this morning, having passed the cabin deck of a ship that doubtless had foundered in the storm of yesterday.—Once more I am in England; and, to use the words of a venerable though apocryphal writer, "Here will I make an end. And if I have done well, and as is fitting the story, it is that which I desired; but if slenderly and meanly, it is that which I ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham

... Fame, or "Tower of Famine," where Ugolino and his sons were starved to death, stood "a littel out" of Pisa, as old Chaucer has it, but the very site of this monument of cruel tyranny and vengeance is now lost, or at any rate apocryphal. ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux

... narratives bear brief testimony even to the life of our great Master. His spiritual noumenon and phenomenon, silenced portraiture. Writers, less wise than the Apostles, essayed in the Apocryphal New Testament, a legendary and traditional history of the early life of Jesus. But Saint Paul summarized the character of Jesus as the model of Christianity, in these words: "Consider Him who endured such contradictions of sinners against Himself. Who for the joy that was set before ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... extraordinary progress in advanced and liberal ideas of government, commerce, even religion. He never hesitated to express his respect for the fundamental principles of Christianity; but once, when pressed too closely by his reverend moonshee with what he regarded as the more pretentious and apocryphal portions of the Bible, he checked that gentleman's advance with the remark that has ever been remembered against him, "I hate the ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens

... already abdicated the throne, Charles regarded the comet as signalling his retirement from power—an event which he doubtless considered a great deal too important to be left without some celestial record. But the words attributed to him are in all probability apocryphal. ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor

... case, means anything recorded in Scripture. The Miracle Plays had for their subjects the chief incidents of Old and New Testament history; not merely, however, of this history as accepted by the Reformed Church, but of that contained in the Apocryphal Gospels as well. An entire series of these Miracles consisted of short dramatic representations of many single passages of the sacred story. The whole would occupy about three days. It began with ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald

... see such things as are here embodied, dared not invent such an embodiment for them. To one in doubt about the matter it will be helpful, I think, to compare this story with the best of those for which one or other of the apocryphal gospels is our only authority—say the grand account of the Descent into Hell in the Gospel according ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald

... and their authors!" exclaims the writer of the "Essai sur Lord Byron," published in 1823,—"an evidently apocryphal production, which was at once seen not to be genuine by all persons of taste, notwithstanding the forgery of the title, has contributed as much to make Byron known in France as have his best poems. A certain P—— had impudence enough to attribute indirectly to ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli

... with the oral version, but does not state what they were, beyond that they consisted merely in 'smoothing down.' Would that he had left it 'in the ROUGH!' The last verse has every appearance of being apocryphal; it looks like one of those benedictory verses with which minstrels were, and still are, in the habit of concluding their songs. Lyle says the tune 'is pleasing, and peculiar to the ballad.' A homely version, presenting only trivial variations from ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell

... which the records of the realm place beyond doubt, coupled with others equally indisputable, to which we shall presently refer, demonstrate to the Author's mind that no dependence whatever can be placed on this MS., and that the statement is altogether apocryphal, ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler

... speechless. But the attache laughed. "What he has done to-day I don't know," he said; "but if it's as apocryphal as what you say he did two years ago, you've a thundering bad case, sir; for he was then in India, and I was out there, ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen

... of Lewis—not even whether, as has been surmised, he died before he had been able to turn to lucrative account his calculating powers, after the fashion of his apocryphal brother ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward

... a similar legend, occurs in the apocryphal book entitled, "The First Gospel of the Infancy of Jesus Christ." The following ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho

... forerunning marvels and prodigious omens. With such-like cautious preliminaries do the wary but credulous historiographers of yore usher in a marvellous event of prophecy and enchantment, linked in ancient story with the fortunes of Don Roderick, but which modern doubters would fain hold up as an apocryphal tradition of ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various

... fire worship on the banks of Oil Creek, where the whole surface of the creek, being coated with oil, was set on fire, producing in the night season a wonderful conflagration. But there is room for the suspicion that this account is apocryphal. Such scenes as are there described have been witnessed on Oil Creek since the beginning of the modern oil trade. During the continuance of several accidental conflagrations, the scene has been awfully grand and impressive. It has been strongly suggestive of ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various

... from their defense, the Roman general forced his way into the city, and, regardless of Jewish feeling, entered the Holy of Holies. The intrigues of the Jewish royal house had brought about the subjection of the nation. As it is said in the apocryphal Psalms of Solomon, which were written about this time: "A powerful smiter has God brought from the ends of the earth. He decreed war upon the Jews and the land. The princes of the land went out with joy to meet him, and said to him, 'Blessed ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich

... water—river, sea, lake, or canal—he never learned to swim. Peacock also notices his habit of floating paper boats, and gives an amusing description of the boredom suffered by Hogg on occasions when Shelley would stop by the side of a pond or mere to float a mimic navy. The not altogether apocryphal story of his having once constructed a boat out of a bank-post-bill, and launched it on the lake in Kensington Gardens, deserves to be ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds

... life which is, at the worst, no more startling than a good many with which they have enriched their pages—e.g., those of Patrick, Brigid, and Columba—and after a denunciation of what their authorities call the vana, fictaque vel apocrypha deliramenta, 'the silly, lying, or apocryphal ravings,' simply proceed to give a compilation of isolated notices drawn from a variety of ...
— Brendan's Fabulous Voyage • John Patrick Crichton Stuart Bute

... anyone that in the Decretals on Penance and in the IV. Book of the Sentences[14] this matter is differently treated. For they all are full of human inventions; and no wonder! They have taken everything they say out of a certain apocryphal and unlearned book called De vera et falsa poenitentia,[15] which is widely circulated, and ascribed, by a lying ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther

... multitudinous literature of Christianity was felt. Genuine letters had to be distinguished from spurious letters. Accurate knowledge of the life and teachings of Christ had become a vital necessity. The growth of legend and fable, in the Apocryphal Gospels, threatened to swallow up the memory of the real Jesus. A sifting process went on in the churches, by which the unimportant and objectionable writings were gradually winnowed out and ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton

... before Him' [Endnote 285:1]. The ideas of which this is perhaps the clearest expression are found more vaguely in other parts of the same book, in the Psalms, and in the book of Job, but they are further expanded and developed in the two Apocryphal books of Wisdom. There [Endnote 285:2] Wisdom is represented as the 'breath of the power of God, and a pure influence flowing from the glory of the Almighty,' as 'the brightness [Greek: apaugasma] of the everlasting light, the unspotted mirror of the power of God, ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday

... of Esdras are apocryphal; the books of Ezra and Nehemiah are inspired, and are included in the canonical Scriptures. 2. Under Edward VI., a confession of faith was drawn up by Cranmer and Ridley, 1551, approved by the king and a commission of divines, which was published in forty-two articles, but ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII. No. 358, November 6, 1886. • Various

... is the just remark of Casaubon, that some instances of Caesar's munificence have been thought apocryphal, or to rest upon false readings, simply from ignorance of the heroic scale upon which the Roman splendors of that age proceeded. A forum which Caesar built out of the products of his last campaign, by ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey

... you have slept the night—worse luck), two of its outside passengers were found frozen to death, and a third all but dead. The old lithographs which pictured the "Royal Mail" stuck in a snow-drift, and the unhappy passengers helping to dig it out, are no longer apocryphal in your mind after you have heard this bit of "real history," which happened, too, in one of England's southern counties. The romance of other days was often stern and uncomfortable reality of a ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield

... birth of his son Charles, Dryden immediately cast his horoscope. The following account of Dryden's paternal solicitude for his son, and its result, may be taken as embellished, if not apocryphal. Evil hour, indeed—Jupiter, Venus, and the Sun were all 'under the earth;' Mars and Saturn were in square: eight, or a multiple of it, would be fatal to the child—the square foretold it. In his eighth, his twenty-fourth, or his thirty-second year, he was certain to die, though he might possibly ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton

... fertilized ovum, analogous to an immanent logic. As a type of this creative form there has often been given a letter wherein Mozart explains his mode of conception. Recently (and that is why I do not reprint it here) it has been suspected of being apocryphal. I regret this—it was worthy of being authentic. According to Goethe, Shakespeare's Hamlet could have been created only ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot

... carrying the message one way: "Madame Patti will not put on her slippers until she is paid," returning the other way with a thousand dollars; coming again to the manager with: "Madame has one slipper on, but will not put on the other till she has her fee"—and so on. Doubtless apocryphal and yet only a bit fanciful and exaggerated. Yet it was known in the inner operatic circles in 1885 that Colonel Mapleson had succeeded in getting himself pretty deeply into her debt. How he did it the anecdotes of the reception and Mme. Patti's interview serve to indicate. In sooth, ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... a country more rife in legends of haunted houses than Germany. No province but has its store of them. Many, drawn by tradition from the obscurity of the past, have lost, if they ever possessed, any claim to be regarded except as apocryphal. But others, of a recent date and better attested, cannot be disposed of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various

... like life to work yourself up as a City man,' said Annaple. 'If you were the Squire, with all his opportunities, it would be a different thing, but there's no outlet there, and I have often admired the wisdom of the Apocryphal saying, "Make not thyself an underling to ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge

... remarking that there were a good many stories current about him; some of them were true, but most of them apocryphal. ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al

... to be found in this collection. It is entitled "The Psalms of King David, translated by King James." It has portraits of King David on one side of the title-page and that of King James on the other—one of the portraits being, of course, apocryphal. Of prayer-books there is a copy of the "Booke of Common Prayer," printed by Barker in 1604; and also a copy of the book known as John Knox's "Confession and Declaration of Prayers," which was printed in 1554, and which lately gave rise to considerable ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various

... excellent raconteur with a vivid imagination, and it did not trouble his conscience because the narratives he imparted to this wide-eyed youth were largely apocryphal. ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day

... and cuffed an unlucky page for some neglect of duty. The matter-of-fact and doubtful folks, of whom there were a few among the Maypole customers, as unluckily there always are in every little community, were inclined to look upon this tradition as rather apocryphal; but, whenever the landlord of that ancient hostelry appealed to the mounting block itself as evidence, and triumphantly pointed out that there it stood in the same place to that very day, the doubters never failed to be put down by a large majority, and all true believers ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens

... spells he delivered those imprisoned souls and took them with him to Kailasa. Yama went to Siva and complained, but Siva civilly dismissed the appeal.—Under the title of "The Harrowing of Hell," the apocryphal Christian legend was the theme of a Miracle Play in England during the Middle Ages, and indeed it seems to have been, in different forms, a popular favourite throughout Europe. Thus in a German tale Strong Hans goes to the Devil ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... courses of the vessels were such as indicated on Professor Soley's diagram the Java would herself have been previously exposed to a terrible raking fire, which was not the case. So the alleged manoeuvres have, per se, a decidedly apocryphal look; and besides they are flatly contradicted by the American accounts which state distinctly that the Java remained to windward in every portion of the fight. On this same tack Professor Soley represents the Java as forereaching on the ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt

... book-collectors, well-read archaeologists, and others likely to know if there is any work descriptive of old gravestones in existence, and nothing with the remotest relation thereto can I discover.[1] There are, of course, hundreds of books of epitaphs, more or less apocryphal, but not one book, apocryphal or otherwise, regarding the allegories of the churchyard. Can it be that the subject is bereft of interest? If so, I have made my venture in vain. But I trust that ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent

... for his biography reveal little of his true life. We know, indeed, from a spiteful and obviously exaggerated story of Horace Walpole's, that he once had a very poor supper in doubtful company; and from another anecdote, of slightly apocryphal flavour, that he once gave to 'friendship' the money which ought to have been given to the collector of rates. But really to know the man, we must ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen

... be added that, in the writer's opinion, this account and others like it are somewhat apocryphal, and it has been copied and recopied a score ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow

... very earliest contribution to light literature was an apocryphal article which he is said to have written when about eighteen or nineteen. Just then there came into notice a voracious insect, gifted with peculiar powers against pear-trees. Knowing that his uncle was especially concerned in fruit culture, ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop

... editions of these fables, and was republished as late as 1727 by Archdeacon Croxall as the introduction to his edition of AEsop. This life by Planudes contains, however, so small an amount of truth, and is so full of absurd pictures of the grotesque deformity of AEsop, of wondrous apocryphal stories, of lying legends, and gross anachronisms, that it is now universally condemned as false, puerile, and unauthentic. It is given up in the present day, by general consent, as unworthy of the ...
— Aesop's Fables - A New Revised Version From Original Sources • Aesop

... claims' involved in this identification. Out of five reviews or notices of the work which I have read, only one seems to refer to our Supernatural Religion. The other four are plainly dealing with some apocryphal work, bearing the same name and often using the same language, but in its main characteristics quite different from and much more authentic than the volumes ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot

... these days the ground has shifted, and supernatural teachings make preferably their defence by an appeal to intuition and other obscure phenomena which can be trusted to defy investigation. Against all such apocryphal glosses of evidential truth science protests with equal vehemence, and were Huxley here he would treat Bergson and his allies with the same scorn and contumely that he meted out to the Bishop of Oxford on the notorious occasion to which Dr Bridges made reference. As well ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various

... salts and senna. I never knew anything that pretended to be water that was half as bad. It has no one redeeming quality. It is bitter. It is greasy. Every spring is worse than the last, whichever end you begin at. They told apocryphal stories of people's drinking sixteen glasses before breakfast; and yet it may have been true; for, if one could bring himself to the point of drinking one glass of it, I should suppose it would have taken such a force to enable him to do it that he might go on drinking ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton

... it contains an incentive to the assassination of the Emperor, appears to him apocryphal: that, if it should prove genuine, it would be unexampled in the history of the world: that the libellous style, in which it is written, gives room to suppose, it ought to be classed among the papers fabricated by party-spirit, ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon

... point where they had supposed that they should strike it, made it stony and timbered with iron-bark and box. Now, since leaving the Einasleih they had not seen a single box or iron-bark tree, or a stone. Frank Jardine therefore determined to push out to thenorth-east, and again seek this seemingly apocryphal stream. After travelling for eight miles through sandy ridges, scrubby and timbered with blood-wood, messmate, and melaleuca (upright-leaved) they struck a sandy creek, bearing north; this they followed ...
— The Overland Expedition of The Messrs. Jardine • Frank Jardine and Alexander Jardine

... This is a most excellent characterization of that literary period, which lasted about three centuries, ending between 100 and 150 C. E. Its influence upon Jewish literature can scarcely be said to have been enduring. To it belong all the apocryphal writings which, originally composed in the Greek language, were for that reason not incorporated into the Holy Canon. The centre of intellectual life was no longer in Palestine, but at Alexandria in Egypt, where three hundred thousand Jews ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles

... it to have been published before the Epistle of Jude, and the writings of both the Johns. Vossius, Dupuis, Dr. Cane, Dr. Mill, Dr, S. Clark, Whitson, and Archbishop Wake also esteemed it genuine: Menardus, Archbishop Land, Spanheim, and others deemed it apocryphal.] ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake

... know, I was thinking of him just now,—of our first meeting with him in the African desert. You remember!—a couple of Bedouins were carrying him off,—they had captured him on his way to some apocryphal ruin among the sand-heaps. What a grand moment was that when you caught the Sheik round the throat with your umbrella-handle, and pulled him off his horse! and then we mounted poor Glyphic upon it,—mummied cat and all,—and ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne

... business looked apocryphal, and that a man does not, in real life, walk into a cellar door at four in the morning and come out of it with another man's cheque for close upon a hundred pounds. But he was quite easy and sneering. 'Set your mind at rest,' says he, 'I will stay with ...
— Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde • ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

... ought to be regarded, yet regarded so, as he resolves in that Case of Conscience concerning Rash Vows; that there may appear very good second reasons why we may forbear to perform them. However, for his said reasons, they ought to be read as we do Apocryphal Scripture; to explain, but not oblige us to so firm a belief of what is ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton

... employed in such an infamous work." However, there is reason to believe that the book was not so "impious," expressing only the pious hope that the souls of such infants might not be lost, and also that no great "curse" fell upon the printer, and that his poverty was apocryphal. At any rate, his son Andrew was a very flourishing printer; but he too was persecuted for his religious opinions, and narrowly escaped destruction in the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. He ran in great danger on that eventful night, and states that he would ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield

... Catholicism got this idea, which does not exist in the Old Testament nor in the Gospels. Neither Moses nor Christ made the slightest mention of it, and the single passage which is cited from Maccabees is insufficient. Besides, this book was declared apocryphal by the Council of Laodicea and the holy Catholic Church accepted it only later. Neither have the pagan religions anything like it. The oft-quoted passage in Virgil, Aliae panduntur inanes, [55] which probably gave ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... from the Phoenicians in small quantities in exchange for skins and food, or tin. We must, however, regard the stories told of the ancient British chariots armed with swords or scythes as altogether apocryphal. The existence of iron in sufficient quantity to be used for such a purpose is incompatible with contemporary facts, and unsupported by a single vestige remaining to our time. The country was then mostly forest, and ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles

... master word, by which she could have guided her life. She would have welcomed something imprisoning and safe. It was cruel of him, she thought, to toss her out like this, rudderless and alone. She wondered what he would have given her as a commandment, and remembered suddenly the apocryphal last words which Vincent was fond of attributing to George Washington, "Never trust a nigger with a gun." She found herself smiling over them. Vincent was more likely to have quoted the apparition's advice to Macbeth: "Be bloody, bold, and resolute." ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller

... a hundred and seventeen years ago. Its parent, notwithstanding this perhaps venial indiscretion, was apparently an honest and modest gentleman; and the play itself, which this ingenuous theorist was fain, with all diffidence, to try whether haply he might be permitted to foist on the apocryphal fatherhood of Shakespeare, is not without such minor merits as may excuse us for wasting a few minutes on examination of the theory which seeks to confer on it the factitious and artificial attraction of a spurious and ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... taken liberties with their original. I have not seen either of these Latin versions, of which there were several editions. As far as regards Demosthenes, I think we may fairly conclude that the story is apocryphal. The Greek proverbial verse was no doubt a popular saying, which Aulus Gellius thought might give a lively turn to his story, of which an Italian would say, "Se ...
— Notes & Queries,No. 31., Saturday, June 1, 1850 • Various

... dates, but the whole tendency of modern exploration and research is rather to push back than to advance the dates of Egyptian chronology, and it is by no means impossible that the dynasties of Manetho, after being derided as apocryphal for centuries, may in the end be accepted as substantially correct. Manetho was an Egyptian priest living in the third century B.C., who wrote a history of his country, which he compiled from the archives of the temples. His work itself is lost, but Josephus quotes extracts from it, and Eusebius ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith

... by such fictions of victories where there were defeats, interspersed with fictitious incidents of individual heroism, that American vanity is fed, and American children taught in the schools what is purely apocryphal for history in regard to Great Britain ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson

... not unqualified" undoubtedly included the first critic of the age, Dryden. Lord Buckhurst is also named as an admirer—pleasing anecdotes respecting the practical expression of his admiration, and of Sir John Denham's, seem apocryphal. ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett

... civil, as I always find soldiers to be. He had not anything particularly interesting to show, nor very much to say about it; and what be did say, so far as it referred to the history of the castle, was probably apocryphal. ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... ever martyred. He wrote several books containing details concerning the Passion of Christ; but there have been some books falsely attributed to him, and others, which were really from his pen, ascribed to different writers. Rome has since rejected these books, the greatest part of which were apocryphal, but which nevertheless did contain some few things really from his pen. One of the guards of our Lord's sepulchre, who would not let himself be bribed by the Jews, was his fellow countryman and friend. His name was something like Sulei or Suleii. After ...
— The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ • Anna Catherine Emmerich

... one written by the author whose name it bears; an 'authentic' work is one which relates truthfully the matters of which it treats. For example, the apocryphal Gospel of St. Thomas is neither 'genuine' nor 'authentic.' It is not 'genuine,' for St. Thomas did not write it; it is not 'authentic,' for its contents are ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... this is all very well, and I conceive people may fall into such dreaming habits easily enough, and be very agreeable and talented men in other respects, and may be very amusing companions in the country, but their authority as antiquaries must necessarily be a little apocryphal when the faith of MSS. rests upon their testimony. An old acquaintance of mine, Captain Watson of the navy, told me he knew these gentlemen's father, and had served with him; he was lieutenant, and of or about Captain Watson's ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... o'er the olden world, That our broad land,—our sea-like lakes and mountains Piled to the clouds, our rivers overhung By forests which have known no other change For ages than the budding and the fall Of leaves, our valleys lovelier than those Which the old poets sang of,—should but figure On the apocryphal chart of speculation As pastures, wood-lots, mill-sites, with the privileges, Rights, and appurtenances, which make up A Yankee Paradise, unsung, unknown, To beautiful tradition; even their names, Whose melody yet lingers like the last Vibration of the red man's requiem, Exchanged for syllables ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... A Paris police would not insure your valuables or mine. The facts forbid that your pen-feathered saint should decamp with some of my costly travel-scrapings! 'Pious' indeed! 'Edna,' forsooth! No doubt her origin and morals are quite as apocryphal as her name. Don't talk to me about 'her being providentially thrown into your hands,' unless you desire to hear me say things which you have frequently taken occasion to inform me 'deeply grieved' you. I dare say the little vagrant whines ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans

... him money. "He appears to have been a Bohemian of the lowest order." Between such authorship and the anonymous there does not seem to be much to choose. But the dying confession sounds in my ears as decidedly apocryphal. As for the letter, I had rather characterize it than reproduce it. It is an offence to decency and a disgrace to the national record on which it is found. This letter of "George W. M'Crackin" passed ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... in later days has been in a manner a symbol of controversy. It is prominent in the apocryphal travels of George Ludwig von ——, preserved in the Military Archives at St. Petersburg. That work represents a town of Bolor as existing to the north of Badakhshan, with Wakhan still further to the north. This geography we now know to be entirely erroneous, but it is in ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... work of Thomas Bailey Aldrich. The motion picture scenario, when Griffith had done with it, had no especial Aldrich flavor, though it contained several of the characters and events as Aldrich conceived them. It was principally the old apocryphal story plus the genius of Griffith and that inner circle of players whom he has endowed with much of his point ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay

... disposed by the evidence, of his senses to think my pretences to virginity not entirely apocryphal, smothers me with kisses, begs me, in the-name of love, to have a little patience, and that he wilt be as tender of hurting me as he ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland

... Chron. (imperfect), Proverbs—Ecclus. Then the prologue to Wisdom and a small piece of the text of Wisdom repeated. Matthew, 1 leaf of Mark. Philippians, Col. 1, 2 Thess. Laodiceans (apocryphal) 1, 2 Tim. Tit. ...
— Three Centuries of a City Library • George A. Stephen

... stories in the history of Louisiana. In fact, this colony from the very first owed not a little of its abandon and its fascination to the mysticism that the Negroes themselves brought from Africa. In the midst of much that is apocryphal one or two events or episodes stand out with distinctness. In 1729, Perier, governor at the time, testified with reference to a small company of Negroes who had been sent against the Indians as follows: "Fifteen Negroes in ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley

... cried the King; "the Emperor Charles was the august parent of us both." Then tenderly embracing him, he commanded him to remount his horse, and all returned together to Valladolid, Philip observing with a sentimentality that seems highly apocryphal, that he had never brought home such precious game from ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... of a title-page, but I have often seen title-pages supplied by some ignorant imitator in the last century, with the idea that the book was imperfect without one. The books of the Bible follow in order—but the order not only differs from ours, but differs in different copies. The Apocryphal books are always included. The New Testament usually follows on the Old without any break; and the book concludes with an index of the Hebrew names and their signification in Latin, intended to help preachers to the figurative ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang

... those apocryphal hounds were heard to bay and whimper. A shepherd up late one spring night averred that he had seen two of them fighting. But nobody could say anything about them for certain; also it was equally certain that nobody knew ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White

... Etruscan haruspices were called in, who simply ordered a supplicatio of the new kind, at the pulvinaria. This is the first, or almost the first instance of these experts being consulted; earlier statements of the kind are probably apocryphal, as I pointed out in the last lecture. It is not clear why the authorities had recourse to them at this moment; but I am inclined to think that the old remedies even of the Sibylline books and their keepers were getting stale, and that while it was thought undesirable ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler

... twelve pictures of the series are exclusively devoted to the apocryphal history of the birth and life of the Virgin. This the Protestant spectator will observe, perhaps, with little favour, more especially as only two compartments are given to the ministry of Christ, between his Baptism and Entry into Jerusalem. ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin

... obtained his version; and all efforts to discover that version as a whole, in any writing prior to Wirt's book, have thus far been unsuccessful. These facts have led even so genial a critic as Grigsby to incline to the opinion that "much of the speech published by Wirt is apocryphal."[160] It would, indeed, be an odd thing, and a source of no little disturbance to many minds, if such should turn out to be the case, and if we should have to conclude that an apocryphal speech written by Wirt, and attributed by him to Patrick Henry fifteen years after the great orator's ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler

... by some curious provision of fate, was the second. That the infant Napoleon should have followed rather than led the procession is so foreign to the nature of the man that many worthy persons unfamiliar with the true facts of history have believed that Joseph was a purely apocryphal infant, or, as some have suggested, merely an adopted child; but that Napoleon did upon this occasion content himself with second place is an incontrovertible fact. Nor is it entirely unaccountable. It is hardly to be supposed ...
— Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica • John Kendrick Bangs

... I afterwards saw, informed me that they had, during their abode there, planted sundry garden seeds, such as beans, pumpkin, squash, and onion seeds; but this item of intelligence I look upon to be somewhat apocryphal; at any rate, I would not recommend to any one, who may chance to visit said island, to save his stomach for any pumpkin pies or baked beans he may obtain from it. There is undoubtedly fertile soil enough for a garden—but ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames

... our captain became of a more apocryphal sort. It was known that he reached the West Indies in safety, for he was once seen at Port Royal and twice at Spanish Town, in the island of Jamaica. Thereafter, however, he disappeared; nor was it until several years later that the world ...
— The Ruby of Kishmoor • Howard Pyle

... stands seductive at tobacconists' doors. It was also estimated that the annual receipts of these establishments amounted to more than three hundred thousand pounds. Elegant ladies had their pictures painted, at least one in 1650 did, with pipe and box in hand. Rochefort, a rather apocryphal French traveller in 1672, reported it to be the general custom in English homes to set pipes on the table in the evening for the females as well as males of the family, and to provide children's luncheon-baskets with a well-filled pipe, to be smoked at school, under the directing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various

... Areopagite, or the apocryphal book known under that name? He is the first of the Mystics, and perhaps has gone the furthest in his theological definitions. He lives in the rarefied air of the mountain tops, above the gulfs, on the threshold ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans

... to be found in the apocryphal book of Bel and the Dragon. It played a great part in the discussions of ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein

... that Antonona displayed great prudence on this occasion, and that her language was so dignified and proper that some may think it apocryphal, if there were not the very best authority for all that is related here, and if we did not know, besides, the wonders the natural cleverness of a woman may work when she is spurred on by interest or ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera

... are younger than I have me in derision, whose fathers I would have disdained to set with the dogs of my flock"—is not without a suggestion of contempt, and it is significant that the only biblical allusion to the dog as a recognised companion of man occurs in the apocryphal Book of Tobit (v. 16), "So they went forth both, and the young ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton

... cup which he held in his hand, and hurried out with his people to attack the boar; but being too eager, the boar rushed upon him and killed him, without having tasted of the wine. Such is the story related by some of the Greek writers, and though evidently apocryphal, it certainly is productive of a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 387, August 28, 1829 • Various

... this apocryphal scheme see a report from Salonica, dated 16 May, disseminated by the Anglo-Hellenic League; The Times, 8 and 30 May; the Daily Mail, 9 and 30 ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott



Words linked to "Apocryphal" :   questionable, Apocrypha



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