stones, jade pieces, bronze vessels and weapons, but came to include talismans and magic diagrams. From their roots in Zhou era China (1066 to 256 BC), these items came to be surpassed in value by texts by the Han dynasty (206 BC to AD 220). Most of these texts have been destroyed as Emperors, particularly during the Han dynasty, collected these legitimizing objects and proscribed, forbade and burnt nearly all of them to prevent them from falling into the hands of political rivals. Writings of questionable value Apocrypha was also applied to writings that were hidden not because of their divinity but because of their questionable value to the church. The early Christian theologian Origen, in his Commentaries on Matthew, distinguishes between writings which were read by the churches and apocryphal writings: (writing not found in the common and published books on one hand [and] actually found in the secret ones on the other). The meaning of is here practically equivalent to "excluded from the public use of the church" and prepares the way for an even less favourable use of the word. Spurious writings In general use, the word apocrypha came to mean "of doubtful authenticity". This meaning also appears in Origen's prologue to his commentary on the Song of Songs, of which only the Latin translation survives: Other The Gelasian Decree (generally held now as being the work of an anonymous scholar between 519 and 553) refers to religious works by church fathers Eusebius, Tertullian and Clement of Alexandria as apocrypha. Augustine defined the word as meaning simply "obscurity of origin", implying that any book of unknown authorship or questionable authenticity would be considered apocryphal. Jerome in Prologus Galeatus declared that all books outside the Hebrew canon were apocryphal. In practice, Jerome treated some books outside the Hebrew canon as if they were canonical, and the Western Church did not accept Jerome's definition of apocrypha, instead retaining the word's prior meaning. As a result, various church authorities labeled different books as apocrypha, treating them with varying levels of regard. Origen stated that "the canonical books, as the Hebrews have handed them down, are twenty-two". Clement and others cited some apocryphal books as "scripture," "divine scripture," "inspired," and the like. Teachers connected with Palestine and familiar with the Hebrew canon (the protocanon) excluded from the canon all of the Old Testament not found there. This view is reflected in