PSEUDOEPIGRAPHA – At the turn from the first century, many false writings about Christ were produced. These were the so-called apocryphal writings (not to be confused with the Deuterocanonical Old Testament books, also called pseudoepigrapha by some). These false writings carried the names of the apostles and introduced into Christian circles many fanciful and legendary stories about the childhood of Christ, the life of the Virgin Mary and the activities of the apostles.
With the pseudoepigrapha, there also appeared the false teachings of gnosticism, the Christian heresy which transformed Christianity into a kind of spiritualistic, dualistic, intellectualistic philosophy. The Christians of the Orthodox faith had to contend with these false teachings.