The writings of the New Testament show the authors’ acquaintance with the apocryphal books. They have expressions and ideas derived from them. Stier collected one hundred and two passages which bear some resemblance to others in the Apocrypha;(90) but they needed sifting, and were cut down to a much smaller number by Bleek. They are James i. 19, from Sirach v. 11 and iv. 29; 1 Peter i. 6, 7, from Wisdom iii. 3-7; Hebrews xi. 34, 35, from 2 Maccabees vi. 18-vii. 42; Hebrews i. 3, from Wisdom vii. 26, &c.; Romans i. 20-32, from Wisdom xiii.-xv.; Romans ix. 21, from Wisdom xv. 7; Eph. vi. 13-17, from Wisdom v. 18-20; 1 Cor. ii. 10, &c., from Judith viii. 14. Others are less probable.(91) When Bishop Cosin says, that “in all the New Testament we find not any one passage of the apocryphal books to have been alleged either by Christ or His apostles for the confirmation of their doctrine,”(92) the argument, though based on fact, is scarcely conclusive; else Esther, Canticles, Ecclesiastes, and other works might be equally discredited. Yet it is probable that the New Testament writers, though quoting the Septuagint much more than the original, were disinclined to the additional parts of the Alexandrian canon. They were Palestinian themselves, or had in view Judaisers of a narrow creed. Prudential motives, no less than a predisposition in favor of the old national canon, may have hindered them from expressly citing any apocryphal production. The apostle Paul and probably the other writers of the New Testament, believed in the literal inspiration of the Biblical books, for he uses an argument in the Galatian epistle which turns upon the singular or plural of a noun.(93) And as the inspiration of the Septuagint translation was commonly held by the Christians of the early centuries, it may be that the apostles and evangelists made no distinction between its parts. Jude quotes Enoch, an apocryphal work not in the Alexandrian canon; so that he at least had no rigid notions about the difference of canonical and uncanonical writings. Still we know that the compass of the Old Testament canon was somewhat unsettled to the Christians of the first century, as it was to the Hellenist Jews themselves. It is true that the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms were universally recognized as authoritative; but the extent of the third division was indefinite, so that the non-citation of the three books respecting which there was a difference of opinion among the Jews may not have been accidental. Inasmuch, however, as the Greek-speaking Jews received more books than their Palestinian brethren, the apostles and their immediate successors were not wholly disinclined to the use of the apocryphal productions. The undefined boundary of the canon facilitated also the recognition of all primitive records of the new Revelation.