Last time, I did a high overview of how we got our 66 books of the Bible. The common theme was that books weren’t necessarily chosen over others, but were instead recognized for their clear authority and inspiration. We concluded that we have confidence in the authority of those 66 books because there’s no doubt that they are from God.
Now, it’s important to look at those other books that Christians spent centuries wondering about. Why don’t we use them today? Are we missing out on more teachings from God, or are they tools of the devil meant to pull people away from Christ?
I believe the answer is “neither.” These extra books aren’t inspired books that we’re missing out on, nor do they teach something so dangerous and anti-Christ that those who read them may not be Christians at all. Instead, these extra books are simply the result of either misunderstanding history, or stubbornly holding to tradition above all else.
Understanding the Catholic Bible
If you open a Catholic Bible, or get your hands on the original King James translation of the Bible (called the 1611 King James Bible), you’ll notice the Old Testament is a bit heavier than what’s used by Jews or other Christians. That’s because there are between 9 and 14 extra books in these Bibles. For the sake of this discussion, I’ll provide a short summary of the 9 that are accepted as “inspired” today:
- Ecclesiasticus – Proverbs from a rabbi who lived shortly before Christ
- Wisdom of Solomon – Writings from King Solomon that combats the Greek love of wisdom and calls us to desire faith above all else
- Tobit – a story about a son who goes on a journey for his father, meets a virgin whose husbands keep getting killed by a demon on their wedding night, kills the demon, and returns home to cure his father’s blindness
- Bel and the Dragon – Additions to the book of Daniel. Bel is about a priest who sneaks into the temple and eats the offerings left for an idol so that people will believe a god did it, but Daniel manages to reveal the deception. The Dragon is about Daniel’s encounter with people worshipping a giant snake and Daniel’s eventual defeat of it. The Dragon is especially assumed to give clarity to the mentions of a “dragon” in prophecy.
- 1st and 2nd Maccabees – Written about 150 years before Christ. Gives historical details about events during this time period. 1st Maccabees is accepted by historians as a true historical account, while the 2nd tells the same story from a religious perspective. 2nd Maccabees contains a good amount of Catholic teaching, especially about purgatory.
- Esther (additional verses) – A major criticism about Esther is that it doesn’t contain much religious value. These additions remedy that by turning Esther into a book of prophecy.
- Judith – A Jewish widow saves her city by seducing the enemy general and cutting off his head
- Baruch – Written by Jeremiah’s scribe (Jeremiah 36:4) and contains teachings against idolatry
It’s important to be fair to these stories. It’s easy to read about some of these, especially Tobit defeating a demon with a fish (I kid you not), and wonder how people can fall for such silly stories. Yet let’s not forget that we believe in talking snakes, a man getting strength from his long hair, and dead people walking around Jerusalem after Christ’s death (Matthew 27:52-53).
Instead, we need to examine the bigger issues with these accepted texts. First, all of these were written during the 400 years between the Old and New Testament, when God appeared to be quiet. Logically, it makes sense that people would want something to indicate that God was still active and speaking to His people. Just as people today want God to speak through prophecy, people then were likely quite desperate to hear anything.
Yet despite that, it’s critical to realize that none of these writings were ever accepted by Jews. Whatever the motivation was for writing them, they were never accepted as genuine writings that were given to them by God. They were certainly interesting, but never recognized as having any truth or authority. If God’s people didn’t recognize these at the time they were written, there’s little reason we should do so today.
It’s also worth noting that these are never referred to by Christ, apostles, or most early church fathers. Ecclesiasticus and Wisdomof Solomon have mentions in the early century, but not as universally as the other 66 books. From this, we can also conclude that their authority wasn’t recognized, ultimately, until the 1500s when the Catholic Church made them an official part of their teaching.
These books, often called “The Apocrypha” aren’t products of evil. It’s much more likely that they were attempts to fill in the gaps God seemed to leave. They may have been well-meaning Jews who mistakenly thought they had received a message from God, like prophets had before. It’s also possible these were just collections of fiction people thought were factual, and thus people wrote them down to preserve them.
Whatever their origin, there’s a very good reason that these books were rejected 2,000 years ago.
What about the other extra books?
I mentioned that some versions of the Apocrypha have 14 books, 5 more than what is accepted today. There are also many more books that were supposedly written during biblical times. Many more were written between the Old and New Testament, while others have been attributed to various apostles. What are we to do with these?
Ultimate, the important process that recognized our 66 books is the same one that removes any question of authority from these other books. Many of them are tempting to add, especially ones that seem to reveal brand-new information that we’ve never seen elsewhere in the Bible.
Yet as we discussed, the law of noncontradiction protects us from different teachings, even though we may want particular things to be true.
About 1 Enoch
A special mention needs to go to the Book of Enoch. Although part of it was likely written about 100 years before Christ, this book has a lot in it. It clarifies the events in Genesis 6:4, where beings called nephilim were born from spiritual beings impregnating human women. It also seems to prophecy much about Christ, and has a prophecy that, if true, means the judgment in Revelation will happen in the year 2300 (and if that last sentence makes the book tempting to research, it proves my point that it’s hard to reject some books when they say things that grab our interest).
This book was thought to be inspired until about 300 AD, and Jews were even accused of rejecting it specifically because it held prophecies about Jesus. Jude 14 even quotes it. So why isn’t this included in our Bibles?
With this book, it’s important to distinguish between its various parts. What we call “The Book of Enoch” has separate writings, called 1/2/3 Enoch. The 2nd and 3rd are held with much higher suspicion and are likely written much later than 1 Enoch. Thus, we reject the last two outright because there’s little evidence that they had anything to do with Enoch.
1 Enoch, however, is an interesting book. There’s enough evidence to make a case for it originally being written by Enoch of Genesis 5:18-24:
When Jared had lived 162 years, he fathered Enoch. Jared lived after he fathered Enoch 800 years and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Jared were 962 years, and he died. When Enoch had lived 65 years, he fathered Methuselah. Enoch walked with God after he fathered Methuselah 300 years and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Enoch were 365 years. Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him.
If 1 Enoch was indeed written by Enoch, it would mean that Noah would have taken his writing with him on the ark and passed it down through the generations, with Israel carrying it with them. All of this is certainly possible, and the contents of 1 Enoch align well with New Testament teachings and revelation. So if this was actually written by Enoch, many may wonder why we don’t include it.
Once again, we fall back on inspiration. Yes, Jude quoted it. But the New Testament writers often quote non-inspired works, even quoting secular writings of the time. It’s no different from a pastor making a Star Wars reference to make a point – referencing something doesn’t make it an authority.
We also need to remember that the early church’s use of a book gives it credit, but not authority. It needs to pass the rest of the tests we discussed in part 1 before we trust that God inspired it. So just as many men in the Old Testament wrote other things that weren’t preserved in the Hebrew Bible, 1 Enoch is similarly valuable and may contain real history, but it’s not authoritative.
Conclusion
In the end, we praise God that He’s preserved His word throughout history. Not only because we get to see the truth He wants us to know, but because He’s made sure His truth isn’t mixed with false teaching. The Bible is under enough attack today without giving its enemies something they can actually criticize.
Part of being a student of the Bible is to be a student of history. When we understand what the Bible really is, and how we received it, it becomes clear why it holds the key to life. We see why we should be willing to give up everything to obey what it says. And most of all, we see why the Bible, alone, is our authority for life and godliness.
