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Do the lost books of the Bible
prove that the Bible has been altered?
There is much
talk these days about lost books of the
Bible. 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,
anything that disagreed with what the people in power didn't like.
But, none of this is true. The "lost books" were never
lost. These so called lost books were already known by the Jews and
the Christians and were not considered inspired. They weren't lost
nor were they removed from the Bible because they were never in the Bible
to begin with.
These so called lost 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. These books were never
authoritative, inspired, or authentically written by either the Jewish
Prophets or the Christian Apostles.
Nevertheless, in spite of these problems 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. A
list of these would be the Epistle of Barnabas, the First Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians,
the Second Epistle of Clement to the
Corinthians, the The letter of the Smyrnaeans or the Martyrdom
of Polycarp, the The
Shepherd of Hermas, the The Book of Enoch,
the Gospel of Thomas (140-170 AD), the The Psalms of Solomon, the The Odes of Solomon,
the The Testaments of the twelve
Patriarchs, the Second Baruch, the
Third Baruch, the The Books of Adam and
Eve.
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 1
Esdras (150-100 BC), 2 Esdras (100 AD),
Tobit (200 BC), Judith (150 BC), the Additions to Esther (140-130 BC), the Wisdom of Solomon (30 BC), Ecclesiasticus (Sirach) (132 BC), Barach (150-50 BC), the Letter of Jeremiah (300-100 BC), the
Susanna (200-0 BC), Bel and the Dragon (100 BC), the Additions to Daniel (Prayer of Azariah (200-0
BC), the Prayer of Manassesh (100-0
BC), 1 Maccabees (110 BC), and 2 Maccabees (110-170 BC).1
These pseudepigraphal and deuterocanonical books
were never considered scripture by the Christian church because they were
not authoritative, inspired, written by either Prophets or Apostles, nor
do they have the power of the word of the books of the existing Bible.
Therefore, since the books are not lost and were never part of the Bible
to begin with, they have no bearing on the validity of the Bible.
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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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