In a series of articles that were published between April to August 1940 in the Improvement Era, “The Inspired Revision of the Bible,” Sidney B. Sperry and Merrill Y. Van Wagoner addressed the issue of the Apocrypha:
The Prophet Joseph Smith retained
the same order of books as found in the King James version rather than the order
of the Hebrew Old Testament—I.e., the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings—and
the New Testament remained the same also. The fact that only one book, the Song
of Solomon, was rejected by the Prophet as not being “inspired writing”
indicates all other books of the Bible are canonical. The Apocrypha was left
in the position to which it had been relegated by the Hebrew scholars of the
first century A.D. . . . (Improvement Era 43, no. 4 [April
1940]: 253)
In Moses’ time the Hebrews already
had an unified religious life, which resulted in preservation of the books and
writings considered sacred. Hence, from generation to generation, the
accumulating writings were guarded by scribes who kept the records. In later
times, however, all were not agreed as to which were the inspired books.
Accordingly, sometime around 100 A.D., it seems a group of
Hebrew scholars drew up the list of accepted books, as is found in the Old
Testament today. They excluded those books now found in the Apocrypha as not
being inspired. (Improvement Era 43, no. 6 [June 1940]: 336)
For Van Wagoner and Sperry, it appears, they believed that the “relegation”
of the Apocrypha was a first-century A.D. concept, adding to the fact that at
least some of the Apocrypha should be deemed God-breathed revelation.
Elsewhere, on Jude’s use of 1 Enoch, we read that
The statement in the Epistle of
Jude, “And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these saying,
Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousand of his saints,” finds no counterpart
in the restorations made by the Prophet of the words of Enoch. For this reason,
it is probable that Jude was quoting from a book of Enoch which was widely
known and used in the days of the early Church. (Improvement Era 43, no.
5 [May 1940]: 270)