See the Word Differently, See the World Differently

            Annette Yoshiko Reed's The Afterlives of the New Testament Apocrypha ends with the claim that rather than "diluting the value of biblical studies...NT apocrypha may aid in illuminating neglected elements of the 'Bible as It Was'...[such as the] recovery of some of the dynamics, trajectories, and connections that shaped the worlds of late antiquity and the Middle Ages and also continue to shape our own" (425).  Because of this concluding statement, I began to wonder if analyzing NT apocrypha as if they were just more in depth accounts of specific parts of traditional stories rather than completely different than said stories, would make the popular culture and religious scholars appreciate the parabiblical genre of text more. 
            In other words, I believe the critics of parabiblical literature would reconsider their stances if they approached NT apocrypha as an extension of small details that may have helped shape the worlds of late antiquity that religious scholars may bypass as irrelevant now. For example, Reed notoriously analyzes manga and anime illustrations that refer to Fallen Angels, remarkably similar to those of the Book of Enoch, which could make these illustrations seen as a false, new, irrelevant piece of parabiblical literature...or they could be analyzed as a more in depth narrative reaching to explain the Fallen Angels that are in Enoch to the wider, modern day society or appeal to a different demographic. 
            Ultimately, would changing the way religious scholars and modern-day popular culture critics think about texts, specifically change their analysis' to consider apocrypha as continuations or more in depth explanations of canonical texts, sufficiently alter the hostility that is so often shown toward non-canonical texts in modern cultural discourse? If yes, there could potentially be dozens of NT apocrypha used as resources for hundreds of religious scholars to further the knowledge and research of sacred and profane history in antiquity without the fear of being rendered irrelevant because of the current belief that "apocryphal counterparts [are] inauthentic, inferior, and 'late' (405)."