the holy bible is the complete word of god from genesis to revelation.
it has all the books that God wanted: all 66.
You are reading: Which books were removed from the bible
they are divided into the old testament and the new testament.
but there are additional books that people ask about because they are in catholic bibles but not protestant bibles.
People often ask how many books were removed from the Bible because of this difference.
The truth is that books were never withdrawn.
what happened may be different from what you were thinking.
There’s a fascinating story here, so let’s get into the details!
why were the books left out of the bible?
certain books are not included in the bible for one simple reason: they were never part of the living word of god to begin with!
In fact, the truth is that there are no missing, lost, or neglected books of the Bible.
Each of the 66 books that the bible is made of is there for a reason.
the lord wanted these inspired texts to be part of his true word so that we can have this “user manual for eternal life”, but the bible is so wise that it is much more than we realize!
in his second letter to timothy, the apostle paul made it very clear that all the books of the bible are there for a reason, since god wanted these exact scriptures to be part of it:
“all scripture is inspired by god and useful to teach, to reprove, to correct and to instruct in righteousness, so that the man of god may be perfect, equipped for every good work.”
did you get that? all writing is breathed out by god.
not a part, but all: every verse and phrase of the 66 books of the bible.
This means that there are no forgotten or left out books. any non-canonical book is not in the bible because it does not come from the lord.
if a book is not included in the bible it is because it was rejected for not having been inspired by god.
There are hundreds of different religious writings that were written during the same time period as the books included in the bible.
But only 66 of them were recognized as genuine writing, because all of the approximately 40 human writers of the Bible were inspired by our creator.
Church leaders and councils did not choose which books would be included as part of the scriptures.
god did, when he chose the human authors who would go on to write all the canonical texts.
what is considered the canon of scripture
The biblical canon or canon of scripture is the compilation of only the texts inspired and revealed by the Lord himself.
canon comes from the Greek word “kanon”, which means “measuring stick” or “ruler”. this standard or criterion was used to describe those books that were truly inspired by god.
Only a few books were disputed during the first centuries and the final list of books to be included in the bible was finally established around 303 AD
so what is the standard that was used to determine which books should be considered writing?
jude 3 esv provides information with the following: “the faith that was once delivered to the saints”.
this means that every word of the bible was canonical from the time it was written. writing was given to mankind once.
more specifically, the old testament had to be written by an established prophet. the jewish scribes had very high requirements for this and there is no doubt about the old testament books.
See Also: Why Did The Vatican Remove 14 Books From The Bible In 1684? – Religion – Nigeria
as for the books of the new testament, the authors had to be very close to the apostles, or they had to be real apostles. many were eyewitnesses to the events.
This made the New Testament canonization process much easier. Over the past 2,000 years, studies of the more than 25,000 manuscripts of the New Testament have done nothing more than affirm the original canon.
we can be sure that the bible we have today is the bible that god intended us to have. there are no secret or lost texts for us to search for.
Although individual churches or groups of churches were the ones that generally recognized a particular writing as inspired during the early centuries, the living word of god is and always will ultimately be canon.
the bible is complete and there are no books missing
the bible does not lack any book since it is the complete written word of god. that simple.
the books of the bible that we have today are there because everything is according to his perfect will and plan. neither more nor less.
the bible has a supreme author: god, who supernaturally inspired human beings to write what he wanted them to write so that we can know his grace.
scriptures tell the beautiful story of god’s grace and glory, while also revealing parts of his character, including judgment for sin.
In this sense, do you really think that our creator would allow crucial information to be left out of his written word?
He wants us to know about the reality of heaven and the consequences of sin, which is eternal separation from him in hell.
but god does not want anyone to perish (2 peter 3:9 esv) so he offers us a way out of this mess – placing our faith in jesus christ our lord and savior.
and the bible in its glorious full form not lacking in additional texts or books is how we know all this to be true.
how many books are missing in the bible?
The Bible is complete and there is no lack of books of the written word of God, and very few scholars say otherwise. After 2000 years of intense study, the Bible has resisted the test of time.
Any text and book not found in your bible is considered extra-biblical or non-canonical, meaning it was not inspired by God.
just as the council of nicea (325 a.d.) did not invent the doctrine of the deity of jesus (since it is a historical fact and a universal truth), the church groups did not recognize the 66 books of the bible as canon . out of nowhere.
all parts of scripture were recognized as the true word of god because they met the important criteria mentioned above. And this is all part of God’s majestic plan.
That said, let’s take a look at a number of additional books that are not inspired, but are falsely believed by some people to be missing from the bible:
apocryphal or deuterocanonical books
The Apocrypha is a compilation of 14 books found in the Catholic Bibles. these non-canonical texts were accepted by the catholic church and added to their bibles at the council of trent from 1545 to 1563 a.d.
Now let’s think about this for a minute.
after rejecting these books as non-canonical for over 1500 years, the catholic church comes full circle and suddenly decides these books belong in the bible.
Please note the timing of this event. It is after the Protestant Reformation started by Martin Luther.
There is more to this story that will have to be covered in another post.
The word “apocryphal” means “hidden”, while “deuterocanonical” means “second canon”.
but we already know that no book is left out of the bible and no canonical writings are hidden from us, so it is very clear that the apocryphal books were not inspired by god.
It is also worth mentioning that most of these extrabiblical texts were written by Jewish authors during the intertestamental period (400 silent years).
however, the apocryphal writings were never accepted by the Jewish priesthood.
why?
because they were not written by prophets unlike the old testament books that were available at the time.
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and it was very easy to tell if someone was a prophet or not.
But more importantly, the Apocrypha (deuterocanonical) support non-biblical and non-Christian practices such as worshiping angels and praying for the dead.
The Apocrypha actually exposes many doctrinal errors of Roman Catholicism, in which paganism has been mixed with Christianity.
This is one of the main reasons why Catholicism has so many ideas that do not come from the Bible, which is the living word of God.
pseudepigrapha (books with false authorship)
pseudepigraphic books are an attempt to imitate canonical writings but written by false authors.
The word pseudepigrapha consists of two Greek words: “pseudo” (meaning “false”) and “epigraphein” (meaning “to write falsely”).
Do you see where this is going?
These extra-biblical texts were written sometime between 200 B.C. c. and 300 AD. c. by various unknown authors who falsely attributed the authorship of these books to known people from the bible (eg peter).
some of the more common examples of pseudepigrapha books include:
- books of enoch
- elijah the prophet
- acts of john
- acts of paul
- testament of adam
- testament of abraham
- gospel according to thomas
- story of james
- apocalypse of peter
- epistles of barnabas
And if you’re wondering why these seemingly interesting books aren’t part of the canon of scripture, here are the main reasons:
- were written under false authors (ie the true author was not the intended author)
- contain historical errors.
- include pure heresy.
- they were written hundreds of years after the resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ
When John’s pseudepigraphic acts say that Christ did not really die on the cross, we have a big problem.
or simply, there is a good reason why these books are not part of the inspired writings of the bible.
maccabeans (hanukkah story)
The First and Second Maccabees are history books that focus on the history of the Jews during the first and second centuries BC. (See what bc and ad mean and why they’re so important here -plus the amazing backstory on bc and ad you’ll never find anywhere else)
Both books deal with the history of ancient Israel, more specifically the Maccabean revolt that led to the resumption of Jewish religious practices in the temple.
This is also known as the story of Hanukkah, which is a Jewish festival that observes the cleansing of the Jewish temple.
so far so good… but the Maccabees are just history books.
they are not about doctrine and they were not written by prophets unlike the standard works of the old testament.
This is why the Maccabees are not considered canon by Protestants and Jews: they were not written by prophets, that is, inspired writers.
However, the Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, Coptic, and Roman Catholic churches include the Maccabees in their bibles.
non-canonical books mentioned in the old testament
Although certain books are not included in the scriptures, the Old Testament actually mentions several of them:
- the book of the wars of the lord
- the book of jasher
- the proverbs and songs of solomon
- the acts of solomon
- the annals of the kings of israel
- the annals of samuel, nathan and gad
- the annals of the prophet shemaiah and the iddo seer
- the records of jehu
- the deeds of uzziah
- the laments of jeremiah
final thoughts
In short, the Bible is the complete and true word of God that includes a total of 66 inspired books.
There are no books left, no missing texts, and no secret writings for us to search for.
This is true for both the Old Testament and the New Testament (see my detailed post on the authorship and reliability of New Testament books here).
what we currently have is the living and written word of god for all mankind.
all extra-biblical books such as the Apocrypha are not considered canon since they were not written by inspired human authors.
as simple as that.
and don’t forget that “all scripture is inspired by god“, as the apostle paul writes in his second letter to timothy.
Is your faith founded on facts? Have you committed to following Jesus?
See Also: Joe Rogan&039s Reading List & Recommended Books | JRE Library