My review on David DaSilva’s new work, The Apocrypha, has been published in Westminster Theological Journal 76. I’m attaching the PDF here for the full text. This work is part of a new series, Core Biblical Studies, that provides succinct introductions to topics in biblical studies.
There is another volume on the Dead Sea Scrolls that looks good as well.
With Second Temple Judaism all the rage in biblical studies nowadays, these introductions will surely be helpful for professors introducing their students to this world into which Jesus and the apostles were born.
DeSilva has written a much larger work on the Apocrypha and his material is basically drawn from there, so he is definitely qualified to write this work. I thought it was helpful to introduce the various books as well as basic theological and ethical themes that show up in the Apocrypha, although I also found some of his unsupported biases popping up here and there, to which I draw a small amount of attention in the review.
Find it here on Amazon.
