cases the copy in question was “hidden,” i.e. withdrawn from public use, because there was something objectionable about it. So that in the Talmud _gānaz_ implies, as Hölscher says, “drastic action,” the total withdrawal from public use, and therefore it cannot have been used in reference to the canonical books, for in that case it would have implied their excision from the Canon, a “naturally impossible thought for the Rabbis.” The books which the Rabbis “hide” (_gānaz_) and forbid are always such the contents of which were regarded as thoroughly objectionable, viz., heretical.[239] It follows also that _gānaz_ would never have been applied to the books of our Apocrypha, or at all events to the more important of them, for not only were they regarded as containing edifying and orthodox teaching, but it is well known that the reading of them was permitted.[240] So that when the word _gānaz_ is used in the Talmud in reference to books it means that the books in question are such as must be withdrawn from use because they contain heretical teaching[241]; for this reason the word would be inapplicable if applied to the books of the Hebrew Canon or to the books of our Apocrypha.[242] II. THE MEANING OF THE TERM _Apokryphos_ We turn next to the Greek word _apokryphos_ (“hidden”), from which our word Apocrypha comes. The term, in its technical sense, is neither specifically Jewish nor Christian originally, but “is derived from the practice common among sects, religious or philosophic, of embodying their special tenets or _formulæ_ in books withheld from public use, and communicated to an inner circle of believers.”[243] Examples of such books can be given; a magical _papyrus_ preserved in Leyden has the title “The holy and secret (_apokryphos_) Book of Moses, called the eighth or the holy.”[244] According to Suidas, Therecydes of Syros learned his wisdom from “the secret books of the Phœnicians.”[245] Clement of Alexandria (Strom., i. 15, 69) speaks of an Agnostic sect, the followers of Prodicus, who gloried in the possession of secret books of Zoroaster.[246] Irenaeus (I, xx. 1) mentions an early Christian sect called the Markosians who had their secret books, and Hippolytus (Refut., vii. 20) says the same of the Basilidians.[247] Moreover, we have references to the same kind of thing in books which have come down to us; it is said in Daniel xii. 4, “But thou, O Daniel, shut up (lit. ‘hide’) the words, and seal the book, ...” and in xii. 9, “Go thy way, Daniel, for the words are shut (lit. ‘hidden’) and sealed till the time of the end.” In the Ethiopic Book of Enoch (cviii. 1)[248] reference is made to a book which was written for the elect: “Another book which Enoch wrote for his son Methuselah and for those who will come after him and will keep the Law in the last days”; the same seems to be implied in the Slavonic Book of Enoch (lxviii. 2),[249] where it is said: “He wrote down the descriptions of all the creation which the Lord had made,