Thinking more about the (so-called) apocrypha, perhaps one reason some branches of the Reformation were so eager to do away with these books is that they endorse the idea of an immortal soul.
The concept existed in earlier forms of Judaism but was refined by the Jewish world’s interaction with Greek philosophy and culture in the intertestamental period.
The book of Wisdom:
The souls of the just are in the hands of God, and no torment shall touch them.
They seemed, in the view of the foolish, to be dead, and their passing away was thought an affliction and their going forth from us, utter destruction.
But they are in peace.
Luther, famously, rejected the idea that the soul continues in consciousness after death, and preferred the idea that the soul simply “fell asleep” until the day of resurrection. A good friend of mine, a Presbyterian minister and scholar, prefers that doctrine as well.
Part of what was at stake for Luther and other Reformers was the Catholic doctrine regarding purgatory. Simply put, Catholics believe that the soul of a person who dies in friendship with God, but who is not yet perfect, will go through a time of purgation (purification) before entering heaven. Purgatory loomed large in the late medieval imagination that Luther inherited, and there was a lot of controversy surrounding it, especially in the use of indulgences.
So, naturally, the Reformers went in search of other theories of the afterlife. Scriptures which seemed to support the idea, such as the one above, were suspect at best. So they were relegated to a secondary status, or eliminated altogether.
Casa Nova 