When were the apocryphal books written?

Answer 1

The term apocrypha means "things hidden away", and refers to to texts not in the canon of The Bible, but which could have been included. The term is often used to include the 'deuterocanonical', or second-level canons, of the Catholic and Orthodox Bibles.

The two books, 1 Maccabees and 2 Maccabees were written by different authors around 100 BCE. Whereas 1 Maccabees attempts to be a straight-forward history of the Maccabaean period of the second century BCE, 2 Maccabees places events of approximately the same period in a religious context, with fabulous accounts of angels on horseback.

The Book of Tobit (or Tobias), originally written in Aramaic, is generally considered to date from some time in the second century BCE.

A much later work is the Wisdom of Solomon, traditionally attributed to King Solomon, but actually written in in Greek between about 75 BCE and 40 CE.

Various other apocryphal books were written during the intertestamental period or early in the Common Era.

Answer 2

The apocryphal books were written between the 3rd century BC and the 1st century AD. These books were not included in the Hebrew Bible but were part of the Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Old Testament.