Keystone Christian Reading Room

People have made all types of claims about how the Bible is missing books, books that help justify what they hope or want to believe. Some have claimed that the Bible was edited to take out reincarnation, or the teaching of higher planes of existence, or different gods, or ancestor worship, or "at-one-ment" with nature or whatever.

First of all, the "lost books" were never lost. They were well known by the Jews in Old Testament times and the Christians of the New Testament times and were never considered scripture. They were not lost nor were they removed since they were never in the Bible in the first place. The additional books were not included in the Bible for several reasons. They lacked apostolic or prophetic authorship, they did not claim to be the Word of God; they contain unbiblical material; or have some serious historical inaccuracies.

The Roman Catholic church added certain books to the canon of scripture in 1546. Responding to the Reformation, the Roman Catholic church declared several (7 to be exact) to be scripture, we know these as the apocrypha. The word apocrypha means hidden. It is used in a general sense to describe a list of books written by Jews between 300 and 100 B.C. Specifically, it is used to refer to the 7 additional books accepted by the Catholic church as being inspired. They are Tobit, Judith, First and Second Maccabees, Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach (also known as Ecclesiasticus), and Baruch.

The Pseudepigraphal books are "false writings." They are a collection of early Jewish and "Christian" writings composed between 200 BC and AD 200. However, they too were known and were never considered scripture.

So as you read these texts be aware they are Not! considered the inspired word of God.

The Apocryphal or Deuterocanonical Books

The Pseudepigraphal Books