The following post is a chapter of Short Answers to Big Questions about God, the Bible, and Christianity, co-authored with Dr. clinton e. arnold (dean of talbot divinity school) and his son, jeff arnold. This book was published by Baker Books and can be purchased here. you can see another chapter of this book here.
A few years ago, the National Geographic Society announced the discovery of a lost gospel called the Gospel of Judas. all major media outlets covered this event, with some hailing it as the discovery of the century. The society then broadcast a television special on the Friday before Easter telling the story of this great find and discussing its significance. this discovery raised many questions for people, but especially two of a critical nature for the christian faith: (1) why were some books left out of the bible (like the gospel of judas), and (2) should we consider including other books in the bible?
You are reading: Why were some books left out of the bible
the gospel of judas was a great discovery, but it was not a great surprise. Irenaeus, the famous 2nd century church leader, actually mentions this so-called gospel in his book, against all heresies. The Gospel of Judas was not written in Greek (like every book in the New Testament), but in an Egyptian language known as Coptic. it was also composed after the new testament was written. more importantly, it was part of a collection of documents belonging to another religion called Gnosticism. Gnostics disparaged physical life and taught belief in two gods: the creator god we know of through Genesis 1, but also a secret, hidden, unknown god who exists in the realm of light. it is this unknown god that Gnosticism claims to reveal. At the heart of the Gospel of Judas is a revelation of this unknown god.
the problem of people who want to add to the bible
Irenaeus explicitly said that the Gnostics wrote many different gospels and books, but he, along with all other church leaders from the 2nd to 4th centuries, considered them highly inaccurate and harmful in what they taught. he warned, “add an untold number of apocryphal and spurious writings, which they themselves have falsified, to confuse the minds of foolish men, and those ignorant of the scriptures of truth.” [1] is of this religion. —a religion that is quite different from Christianity— that so many spiritual books were written that they are now sometimes called “the lost books of the bible.” Although it may be quite obvious that the Gospel of Judas should not be part of the Bible, what about other books?
At various times in the history of the church, people have arisen who have questioned which books should be in the bible, either wanting to delete some or add others. the important thing here is that the churches already knew what the books of the bible were; these were the ones they were already using in their teaching and worship. these books just hadn’t been officially recognized.
the problem of people who want to get books out of the bible
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One of the earliest challenges to the commonly recognized collection of books that churches used as scripture came from a man named Marcion. He was a wealthy and prominent church leader who lived in the early 2nd century AD in a coastal city in northern Asia Minor (today in the country of Turkey). he was passionate about the writings of the apostle paul, but he had a very biased idea of what they taught. Ultimately, he advocated that only ten letters from the Apostle Paul should be accepted as scripture, as well as the Gospel of Luke; all others must be rejected (including the old testament). for their wealth and influence, the churches of the Mediterranean world had to answer. this challenge became a major motivation for churches to formally and publicly declare which books they had already been using as scripture.
recognition of the word of god by the early church
then, already in the 2nd century AD. C., the church began to develop the concept of the canon of scriptures to distinguish those books that were considered inspired by God and, therefore, possessed divine authority. The term comes from the Greek where it commonly meant a “rule” or a “standard” and came to be applied to the standard books that made up the Bible. Eminent Princeton scholar Bruce Metzger noted that Marcion’s challenge was to “accelerate the process of fixing the church canon, a process that had already begun in the first half of the second century.”[2]
In the time of Jesus, the thirty-nine books that made up the Hebrew Bible (what we call the Old Testament) were widely recognized within Judaism as the Bible. thus, jesus could quote various old testament books simply by referring to them as a coherent, unified whole called “the scriptures” (see, for example, matt. 21:42; 22:29; 26:54, 56).
As for the twenty-seven books we know as the New Testament, these were formally recognized as the canon of scripture in the second through fourth centuries. The Apostle Peter himself referred to Paul’s letters as “scripture” (2 Pet. 3:15-16). In one of the earliest church documents written after the last book of the New Testament was completed, the Gospel of Mark is cited as “scripture” (2 Clement 2:4). Early church leaders regularly quote passages from various New Testament documents that give them authority as divine revelation in a way that distinguishes them from any other writing.
It is important to realize, however, that from the time the four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) were written, they were copied and circulated throughout the world where churches had been planted: Israel, Syria, asia minor, egypt, greece, italy and other places. they began to be used regularly by churches for teaching, worship and devotion. The same can be said of the collection of the letters of Paul, Peter, James, Jude and John, as well as the Letter to the Hebrews and the Book of Revelation. They were quickly copied, distributed to churches, and used constantly as God-inspired documents essential to the growth and nurturing of believers. Wherever churches had been planted, believers read and used these documents as the revealed word of God.
what this means is that there was no individual who made a private decision about what should be in the bible. or, similarly, there was no group of individuals who made such a decision and then imposed their decree on all the churches. in fact, the process occurred precisely in the opposite way. The meetings of church leaders that produced the official New Testament book lists formally recognized what churches around the world had already recognized and were using as authoritative, inspired scripture. as metzger points out, “the church did not create the canon, but came to recognize, accept, and confirm the self-authenticating quality of certain documents.”[3]
how the church recognized what scripture was
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The influence of the holy spirit on the hearts and minds of the early Christians was the primary factor influencing the particular documents that individual churches began to use as inspired and authoritative scripture. but there were also some objective and rational standards:
(1) apostolic origin (of the apostles). From the beginning, Christians “devoted themselves to the teaching of the apostles” (Acts 2:42). Originally, his teaching was spread orally, but once this teaching was written down, the churches obtained copies of these documents as soon as they could and used them as the very word of God for their beliefs and practices. (2) orthodoxy. the churches flatly rejected any document that did not conform to the collection of essential teachings that all churches accepted. (3) use. in the third and fourth centuries, no book was considered scripture unless it had been widely used by the churches from the beginning. Of course, this latter standard rules out the possibility that any document can or should be added to the bible now.
so when it comes to considering whether a newly discovered document like the gospel of judas should be part of the bible, it fails on all counts. although it claims to be from judas (one of the twelve), there are good historical reasons to conclude that it was not (one of which is that judas hanged himself shortly after betraying jesus, who was then crucified; matt. 27:5) . Furthermore, the teaching of this book is Gnostic and contradicts the most essential Christian doctrines. and finally it was never used by the church and was actually condemned.
there are no other books that should be considered as part of the bible. even if, in theory, an authentic letter from the apostle paul were discovered, incredible as such a discovery is, we would not consider making it part of the bible. it just wasn’t used by all the churches over time.
what we currently possess in our bibles is the entire canon of scripture. It is exactly as God intended and it is the living, active and powerful word of God.
This post is an excerpt from Clinton E. arnold and jeff arnold, short answers to big questions about god, the bible & Christianity (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2015).