The word apocryphal It is used with the mission of realizing that something or someone turns out to be false, feigned or an assumption without verification or veracity. The letter found with my grandmother's signature there is no doubt that it is apocryphal.
Likewise and with the same sense, the term is used to designate the text or writing that is neither of the time it claims to be, nor of the authorship of who claims to be it. The contract you signed is apocryphal.
And the other of the frequent uses of the term designates the book that has not been included in the canon of the bible, although it is attributed to a sacred author, such is the case of the apocryphal gospels.
The apocryphal or extra-canonical gospels, as they are also known, are those that appeared during the early days of Christianity dealing with the figure of Jesus, but were not included in the Bible and were not accepted by the Catholic Church, when the time came, nor by the rest of Christian churches, that is, they show characteristics and spread names that in effect make them appear as canonical books, although, having no official recognition, they passed to posterity as apocryphal gospels.
It should be noted that these writings proliferate stories where fantasy rules and the sobriety that the canonical gospels do present is absent, for example, Jesus is shown as an unstoppable miracle worker and one of the most extravagant, by the way.
The origin of most of these apocryphal accounts is found in gnostic communities and they even have the particularity of presenting hidden words that are not open and clear to the general understanding, probably to mark their point of difference and inflection with respect to the originals.
Among the most prominent of this type are: Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Philip, Gospel of Judas, Apocryphal Gospel of John, Arabic Gospel of Childhood, among others.
