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Are these
lost books of the Bible?
There is much talk these
days about lost books of the Bible. From cults to the New Age, people
make all sorts of claims about how the Bible is missing books, books that help
justify what they hope to believe. Sometimes people claim 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.
The "lost books" were never lost. They
were known by the Jews in Old Testament times and the Christians of the New
Testament times and were never considered scripture. They weren't lost nor
were they removed. 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 concepts such as prayer for the dead in 2 Macc.
12:45-46; or have some serious historical inaccuracies.
Nevertheless, the Roman Catholic church has added certain books to the
canon of scripture. In 1546, largely due in response to the
Reformation, the Roman Catholic church authorized several more books as
scripture known 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. More specifically, it is used of the 7 additional
books accepted by the Catholic church as being inspired. The entire list
of books of the apocrypha are: 1 and 2 Esdras, Tobit, Judith, the Rest of
Esther, the Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, (also titled Ecclesiasticus),
Baruch, The Letter of Jeremiah, Song of the Three Young Men, Susanna, Bel
and the Dragon, The Additions to Daniel, The Prayer of Manasseh, and 1 and
2 Maccabees. The books accepted as inspired and included in the Catholic
Bible are Tobit, Judith, 1 and 2 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.
The deuterocanonical (apocrypha) books are those books that were included in the Greek Septuagint (LXX) but not
included in the Hebrew Bible. The recognized deuterocanonical books are
"Tobit, Judith, Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus (also called Sirach or
Ben Sira), Baruch (including the Letter of Jeremiah), 1 and 2 Maccabees, and
additions to the books of Esther and Daniel. The canon of the Greek Orthodox
community also includes 1 Esdras, the Prayer of Manasseh, Psalm 151, and 3
Maccabees, with 4 Maccabees as an appendix."1
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1. Achtemeier, Paul J., Th.D., Harper’s
Bible Dictionary, (San Francisco: Harper and Row, Publishers, Inc.)
1985.
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