[LITERATURE.—Kautzsch, _Die Apokryphen und Pseudepigraphen des alten Testamentes_, vol. I, pp. xi.-xxiii. (1900); Moore, in the _Jewish Encyclopædia_, II, 1-6 (1902); Hölscher, _Op. cit._, pp. 42-65. See also the literature referred to in the footnotes.] I. THE MEANING OF THE TERM _Gānaz_. For reasons which will appear sufficiently obvious as we proceed, it is necessary, in speaking about uncanonical books, to say something about the meaning of the Hebrew word _gānaz_, “to hide,” and the Greek word _apokryphos_, “hidden,” and the relationship of these terms to one another. The word _Apocrypha_ means “hidden things”; but in what sense and for what purpose is, or was, this term applied to those books which we call the books of the Apocrypha? That is one of the main points to be dealt with in the following discussion. First as to the Hebrew word _gānaz_; this means originally “to store up,” but it also has the meaning “to store up in secret,” and thus “to hide.”[236] In the technical sense in which it is used in the present connection, i.e. in reference to books, it means “to withdraw from use.” But, it may be pointed out in passing, the word was not used in this sense prior to the fixing of the Hebrew Canon; it referred to the withholding of secret wisdom from all excepting the initiated. The question as to how the word is used in the Talmud is of the first importance, but a difficult one; it is said, on the one hand, that as applied to books, “it is used only of books which are, after all, included in the Jewish Canon, never of the kind of literature to which the Church Fathers give the name ‘Apocrypha’... the only exception is a reference to Sirach.”[237] The latter part of this statement is undoubtedly true; but Hölscher has shown conclusively that to say that _gānaz_ is only used in reference to books which are included in the Jewish Canon is not in accordance with the facts. “This view,” he says, “directly contradicts the sources, which in a number of cases use _gānaz_ in reference to uncanonical books.” He shows further that when the Rabbis use _gānaz_ in reference to the canonical books it is a question of something of which they themselves disapprove; for example, they speak of canonical books which in time past certain people had desired to “hide,” i.e. to declare uncanonical; but they mention this in order to record their disapproval; not the Rabbis but certain unnamed individuals apply the term _gānaz_ to canonical books. The Talmudic view is that canonical books may _not_ be “hidden,” for this is only done in the case of books which are really offensive.[238] In the only other instances in which the word is used in reference to canonical books, it is not to the books as such, but only to particular copies of them, and this for certain specific reasons; for example, if a roll had become moth-eaten or damaged in other ways, or if part of the text had been rubbed out through use; in such