The Gray Monk

The “Lost” Books.

More musings on the Bible

From time to time one hears of some “startling” or “newly discovered” text which will change the face of religion or “challenge the Christian story”. Most often these are purported to be “newly translated” or “never before seen” translations of the Dead Sea scrolls. You will have no doubt heard or read of the “Fifth” Gospel, ascribed to St James, and there are others as well. In reality they are seldom that new or that revolutionary.

The truth is that there is a fairly large canon of scriptural writing which does not form part of either the Old or the New Testaments as we have them today. In fact, some of these do not even form part of the Jewish canon of books recognized as the Torah. Some of these extra canonical books are fairly easily accessible – just buy a copy of the Apocrypha if you do not already possess a copy of the Bible which includes them. Why are they “extra-canonical”? They were excluded from the main body of writings deemed to have been “inspired by God” when the scriptures we have today were formalized by a succession of Councils in the first centuries of the Christian Church. The Old Testament collection, as used in the Jewish faith, was in fact formalized about a hundred years after the Christian Canon was closed and there were two versions of that in use for several hundred years. The books in the Apocrypha, with one exception, are books that appear in the Judeo-Greek Septuagint, but not in the later approved canon.

From the Fifth Century until the Reformation they formed a part of the Christian Biblical canon, but the Reformers questioned both their validity and their spiritual inspiration, eventually compromising by removing them from the primary canon and placing them as a group in a separate section. These books are deemed (Article 6 of the 39) to be useful “for example of life and instruction of manners”. Hence The Reformers view that they form an “instructional” canon which illuminates the rest of scripture. The Apocrypha collection is interesting from several points of view. Firstly, the period of their writing is Post the Babylonian exile and covers a period which begins in about 200 BC and overlaps the ministry of Christ, the events of 1 and 2 Maccabees covering the period up to about 100 AD.

Secondly they do provide a slightly different slant on some of the events described elsewhere in the Old Testament, including the period of resettlement and rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem. Personally I find the Wisdom of Solomon and Ecclesiasticus particularly inspirational. But, there are further books in the Jewish extra-canonical collection which turn up in the Dead Sea scrolls to the delight of conspiracy theorists and others. These (and the Wisdom of Solomon in the Apochrypha is one such example) are sometimes referred to as the “Pseudepigraphica” which simply means “false title” in that the books are ascribed to someone other than the author. There is an extensive collection of these including the Testaments of the Patriarchs (twelve of them!), Enoch (four books) a Testament of Job and an Apocryphon of Ezekial to name just a few. Other books, which stand alongside that group, include the Book of Jubilees and the Lives of the Prophets.

In short – a huge collection of works! So why are they not included in the Bible itself? Would they not clear up some of the confusion and create some certainties instead? Sadly, the answer is not really. They are certainly instructional and illuminating - 2 Enoch contains an alternative creation story which is described by some scholars as the first attempt to explain the Creation scientifically – and others show how our faith grew from some very mixed beginnings and has slowly taken shape and form over the centuries. They also help us to understand how world events have caused re-evaluation of our understanding of how God works with and through us in the world. Those scholars and men of faith who fixed the canon of the Christian Bible in about 380 AD certainly recognized, and where probably familiar with, these writings, but did not consider them to add anything to the books we have today. The final shape of the Jewish Talmud did not emerge until almost 200 years later, in the so-called Babylonian Talmud, and again these books were seen as useful, but not part of the main body of historical or prophetic writing.

Despite having been excluded from the principle canon of both Christian and Jewish biblical collections, they seem to have continued in wide use. Certainly, there is evidence to suggest that Mohammed had access to, and possibly studied, some of them, as themes and sometimes almost literal quotations appear in the Koran. St John must also have been familiar with 2 Enoch 24, which begins “Before anything existed at all, from the very beginning, I created from non-being into being, and from the invisible things, into the visible.” Some of our “myths” and non-Biblical stories can also be attributed to these writings, particularly in the naming of angels (Book of Jubilees among others) and some of the legends concerning Jesus’ early life come from the Christian version of the “pseudepigraphica”.

Turning now to the New Testament collection, I expect that you, like me, would have found it valuable to be able to see the letters written to St Paul and perhaps to have a wider view on some of the other events described in the letters. Unfortunately these did not survive, but there is a large collection of complete and incomplete documents which were written in the first 400 years of the church which did. While the various Councils, which worked to provide the form of the final canon, recognized most of these as “heretical”, they do add something to our understanding of how the Bible was finally put together. They also help to explain why the early church got so worked up about some of the ideas they promote!

The extra-canon includes several Gospels, including one attributed by its author to Nicodemus which also goes by the rather strange title of “The Acts of Pilate”! It almost ignores the entire ministry and focuses instead on the Passion and Resurrection, claiming to be a “translation” of an eyewitness account of those events. Even in 380 AD it was regarded as a rather laboured attempt to provide “proof” – which the Council felt detracted from the events rather than enhanced them. Another such “Passion” Gospel is one attributed to Bartholomew. Written by an unknown author using the Apostles name, it is set entirely in the period following the resurrection and is a work which is associated with an early heresy called “Docetism” which claimed that Christ was not a man at all, but a “Heavenly Power” who chose to act in human form.

There are other works in this collection including a number of Acts of various Apostles and several Apolcalyptic books in similar vein to Revelations. As with the Old Testament collection of extra-canonical writings, most add little to our understanding of the God we worship and serve, except in the light they throw upon the struggles of the early Church to get to grips with the enormity of the task of bringing the Gospel of Our Lord to all the nations. They reveal the many false starts and blind alleys that some writers explored and illuminate many of the early heresies. Again, there is some evidence to suggest that they influenced more than just the Christian communities who read them. They also reveal just how influential the Pauline school of theology became by showing us what alternative views were held. In one important area, for me, they made me aware of just how far we, in Western Christianity, have moved in our interpretation, from the original source.

So, are these works lost? The answer is not really. They are available if you are determined enough to trace them. In fact some are still in use by branches of the faith such as the Ethiopian Coptic Church and some of the isolated Churches of the Middle East. For us, in Western Christianity, some of the books can be read in the Apochrypha, some are available if you have access to the reference sections of major theological libraries at some of the older universities – and the ability to read them in the original language. For most of us, it is a case of reading about them in treatises by those who have studied them in depth and there is a wide selection of literature available on this subject. One of the most readable (especially if you have a mind like mine that has difficulty staying awake in some deeply academic tomes!) is a book entitled “The Lost Bible” by J R Porter.

Did exploring these lost books help me understand my faith any better? The answer has to be both yes, and no. It made me look at a number of things in a new light, but it also raised a number of questions – which I must now go away and find answers too. Has it changed my faith? Yes, I think it has, and for the better.

Peace be with you always.