The SDMB seems to be the best place to go to get an unbiased answer when it comes to religion. The books of the old testament found in the catholic Bible and not the protestant one are called the “deuterocannonical books” by catholics and the “Apocrypha” by protestants. As I understand it (and correct me if I’m wrong), the term “apocrypha” originally referred to the books that were originally kept out of the Bible. So my questions are:
When did the term “deuterocannonical books” first come into use to describe these books?
When did the term “Apocrypha” first come into use to describe these books? Who started it?
When did the term “Apocrypha” first come into use to describe the books that were originally kept out of the Bible?
The term “deuterocanon(-ical)” is used by Catholic (and related) scholars to describe the books accepted by the Septuagint scholars that were omitted from the Tanakh by the Palestinian Jews who established its canon. (Long excursus about the rabbis’ “Synod of Jamnia” and its historical questionability as regards the Jewish canon omitted.) I’m not sure when it was originally invented.
“Apocrypha” means “hidden” – and derives from an early-Christian-era story that Ezra hid away a bunch of books beyond the Tanakh canon. It came to be applied to the deuterocanonical books because they were deemed to be a part of what Ezra hid away.
When the KJV was originally published, the books that were in the Tanakh were published in the O.T., and the books from the Septuagint that were not included in the Tanakh were put in a separate collection following them, on which the title “Apocrypha” was hung. Anglicans and Methodists officially regard them as a sort of “second-class Scripture,” worthy of being read (including as Scripture readings in church) for edification and moral guidance, but not suitable for hanging docrinal justification on.
The Orthodox Churches (Eastern and Oriental) do not have a defined canon, but de facto regard the Bible as made up of the Septuagint – all the books in it – and the New Testament. The Ethiopian Copts add several books to the list, in both testaments, that are not accepted as canonical by anyone else. The Catholics accept the full Old Testament, including the deuterocanon, except for I and II Esdras and the Prayer of Manasseh (I’ve gotten various readings on why those three are omitted, and the last-named is part of the Catholic Liturgy of the Hours as the canticle Kyrie Pantocrator, so it’s not totally rejected.) The Anglicans and Methodists, as noted above, accept the Jewish/Protestant Old Testament, the “Apocrypha” including the full list of deuterocanonical books, and the New Testament. And most other Protestants accept only the proterocanonical books, following the Tanakh, plus of course the New Testament.
Technically, any book deemed apocryphal is rejected as Scripture. The term “Apocrypha” to reflect the deuterocanonical books is a piece of Anglican compromise from KJV-era times – books that are “sorta but not quite Scripture” published with the rest of the Bible. Catholic usage of “apocrypha” means what everybody else calls “pseudopipigrapha” – books that “look like” Bible books but which were not accepted as a part of the Bible, like the Protevangelium of James or the Epistle of Clement, or the Books of Enoch and Jubilees.
All of which doesn’t quite answer your original questions about origins and dating, but gives hopefully-useful background on the usage of the terms.
http://www.christianforums.com/t1158411-what-liturgy-do-coptic-oriental-orthodox-use.html – Scroll down to post #18 for the list. Note that this is the Ethiopian Orthodox (Coptic) Church – AFAIK, the Egyptian Copts and the other Oriental Orthodox accept the same de facto canon as the Eastern Orthodox – i.e., the Septuagint, plus the New Testament as it’s found in most normal Bibles (Matthew to Revelation).
The Oxford English Dictionary gives its first citation for the term “deuterocanonical” from 1566 (perhaps not coincidentally, this is right around the time of the end of the Council of Trent, which lasted off and on from 1545–63, and which, among other things, formalized the Catholic canon in response to Protestant exclusion of the Deuterocanonical books/Apocrypha). (That first citation is in Latin; the first English citation for “deuterocanonical” is from 1684.)
Going by the OED again, “apocryphal” seems to have been used with the meaning of “of unknown authorship; not authentic, spurious” going back to the late 14th century (“1387 TREVISA Higden V. 105 The writynge is Apocripha whanne the auctor therof is unknowe”); it seems to have been applied specifically to the books rejected by Protestants as being part of the Bible around the early to mid-1500’s (“1539 BIBLE (‘Great’) Apocrypha, Pref., The other [bookes] folowynge, which are called apocripha”), so in that sense I would guess it dates to the Reformation. It seems to have been applied to the stuff everyone rejected as canonical before it was applied to the disputed “deuterocanonical / apocryphal” books (“1460 J. CAPGRAVE Chron. 7 ‘The Penauns of Adam’ be cleped Apocriphum, whech is to sey, whanne the mater is in doute, or ellis whan men knowe not who mad the book.” – The “Penance of Adam” seems to be an example of one of those things of doubtful origin which no major group has ever accepted as “canonical”.)
The Nag Hammadi books include the “Apocryphon of James”, so you’ll have to push the word back by at least 1000 years (if, as I suspect, the word Apocryphon is a transliteration from the Greek - sorry, IANA Greek scholar).
Thanks for the cite, Polycarp, I never knew that there was modern church with such a different canon. Not only Enoch, but Tizaz and Gitsew! Far out!