What dates were the books in the Apocrypha written?

[Big_Dummy]

Well actually, there is no concensus among scholars as to when Wisdom of Solomon was written; it is tentatively dated to be from around 220 BC up to AD 50 (the date you give is just one theory). Another theory has it that Wisdom was actually penned during the time of Augustus Caesar (27 BC-AD 14), based on what some believe were allusions within the text to the period of the emperor.

If you continue to point to Old Scholarship you are right. But, updated there is a consensus for the 37-41 date, read the sources I listed.

 

[Big_Dummy]

Nicely packaged arugment, I will give her a read, but

Based on The Septuagint by Jennifer Dines and Michael Knibb (2004):

Most scholars opt for a date of early- to mid-3rd century BC (ca. 280-250 BC) for the Torah. The following are the main arguments, with the problems they entail:

this is not true, again read the sources I posted and you will see this. For that she his using way out dated “research”.

1. *] The Letter of Aristeas (which promulgated the well-known legend of the seventy-two translators) has at least some historical plausibility, albeit not without difficulties arising from the work’s literary genre and the author’s agenda.

1. 
   Scholars do not today, consider the Letter of Aristeas to be geniune, thus “Pseudo” and there is even doubt as to when it was written.
   

   *] “Biblical quotations or allusions supposing knowledge of the Septuagint occur in Hellenistic Jewish writers from the end of the third century BCE onwards. If the attributions are reliable, and if the allusions are really based on the LXX, then this evidence, though meagre, is precious. But certainty is difficult to establish.”

   The current “theory” is that those quotations are based on memory lapses, and personal translations. There are in fact many variants that do not agree with the LXX – the attributions are not considered to be very reliable, in fact they have been identified as being part of a fallacy known as Parallelomania.
   

   *] Based on internal evidence, the other books of the Septuagint utilize the vocabulary of the Greek Torah, which “is important for relative dating but does not in itself clinch a date for the original translation.”

   The research I refer to does in fact, refer to the Hellenistic Greek words, and those in the book of Wisdom have meanings from the first centurey AD, not as used in BC.
   

   *] The Greek reflects an identifiable stage in the development of Koine consonant with the early 3rd century BC. This is probably the strongest argument, but it is doubtful how precise, as yet, the results can be.

   The list is interresting, but it overlooks how those words were used in different time period, much like the change in meaning for the word Gay in English.

   As for the other books, there are no stories about the translations of these books to help or hinder understanding, so scholars have to make do with dating them using internal evidence. The book gives the following dates, but one must keep in mind that “[n]early all the attempts at dating” these other books “are very tentative and there is seldom a concensus.”
   
   

   1. *]Most of the historical books from Joshua to 1-2 Paraleipomenōn (Chronicles) tend to be placed in the 2nd century BC, somewhat earlier than 2 Esdras and Deuterocanon. Ruth, meanwhile, is usually dated to the 1st century AD. The colophon to Greek Esther yields a date before which the translation must have been made, as it claims to have been brought to Egypt in “the fourth year of Ptolemy and Cleopatra” (11:1). Depending on which Ptolemy and Cleopatra is meant, it could be either 114, or 78-77, or 48 BC. That being said, there are also doubts among some as to the authenticity of the colophon.
      ]As for the wisdom books, Psalms tend to be dated somewhere in the 2nd century, though some have opted for a late-3rd century BC date, and others to the 1st. Proverbs and Job are usually placed in the latter half of the 2nd century BC. Sirach can be dated fairly precisely from the translator’s prologue to between 132 and 116; scholars are divided between an earlier and a later dating. Wisdom and the Psalms of Solomon are usually assigned to the late-1st century BC, and so, for different reasons, is the Song of Songs. Ecclesiastes may be even later.
      ]The prophetic books are "[f]or the moment…mostly assigned to the mid-second century BCE and later, largely from their supposed reflection of, and in some cases, allusions to, contemporary events (Maccabean, Hasmonean, Roman, etc.). Relative connections are tentatively established by these references, where they are secure, and by attempts to establish dependence of one book on another. Daniel must be later than its Semitic source, so dates from the mid-second century BCE at the earliest."
      

   1. 
      
      I’ll give your book a read, but from what you presented here is does sound to be based on old research and does not take into account what was even current research in the 1990s.
      
      Thanks
      BD

 

[Ignatius]

If you continue to point to Old Scholarship you are right. But, updated there is a consensus for the 37-41 date, read the sources I listed.

I believe the consensus is that the older scholarship is more accurate. The newer is novel, but not necessarily more accurate.

 

[Timothy_James]

I see that you are asking when the Apocrypha was written? Do you mean the Deuterocanonical books of the Septuagint? Because there is such a thing as the New Testament Apocrypha. Basically books that were written after the first century that never made it into the NT. And then there is always the pseudopigripha.

When it comes to the Deuterocanonical books, they were written in Greek after the book Malachi. Sometime between 400 BC and the first century of the common era.