[Apocrypha, The], a literature of sixteen books composed by Jews, after the close of the Hebrew canon, which though without the unction of the prophetic books of the canon, are instinct, for most part, with the wisdom which rests on the fear of God and loyalty to His law. The word Apocrypha means hidden writing, and it was given to it by the Jews to distinguish it from the books which they accepted as canonical.
[Apol`da] (20), a town in Saxe-Weimar with extensive hosiery manufactures; has mineral springs.
[Apollina`ris], bishop of Laodicea, denied the proper humanity of Christ, by affirming that the Logos in Him took the place of the human soul, as well as by maintaining that His body was not composed of ordinary flesh and blood; d. 390.
[Apollo], the god par excellence of the Greeks, identified with the sun and all that we owe to it in the shape of inspiration, art, poetry, and medicine; son of Zeus and Leto; twin brother of Artemis; born in the island of [Delos] (q. v.), whither Leto had fled from the jealous Hera; his favourite oracle at Delphi.
[Appllodo`rus] (1), an Athenian painter, the first to paint figures in light and shade, 408 B.C.; (2) a celebrated architect of Damascus, d. A.D. 129; and (3), an Athenian who wrote a well-arranged account of the mythology and heroic age of Greece.
[Apollonius of Rhodes], a grammarian and poet, flourished in the 3rd century B.C., author of the "Argonautica," a rather prosaic account of the adventures of the Argonauts.
[Apollonius of Tyana], a Pythagorean philosopher, who, having become acquainted with some sort of Brahminism, professed to have a divine mission, and, it is said, a power to work miracles; was worshipped after his death, and has been compared to Christ; d. 97.
[Apol`los], a Jew of Alexandria, who became an eloquent preacher of Christ, and on account of his eloquence rated above St. Paul.
[Apollyon], the destroying angel, the Greek name for the Hebrew Abaddon.
[Apologetics], a defence of the historical verity of the Christian religion in opposition to the rationalist and mythical theories.