Has Anyone Ever Written The Entire Bible Including The Books That Were Excluded In The Edited Version? (churches, prophets)

[MontanaGuy]

A number of people have mentioned bits of information from some of the ancient texts that never made it into the Bible and were apparently edited out. I've read that the Catholic Bible has more books than the Protestant Bible. I just think it would be interesting if someone published everything that was left out of the Bible we're all familiar with along with the Bible we know just to get a larger perspective of all of the historical sources that went into it. I wasn't even aware that some of these books even existed until people had mentioned them on the forum. I also wonder why this editing was necessary in the first place.

[esselcue]

Not that I know of, Montana. but you can find infromation about them if you search on-line. The books were edited from the Bible because they showed Jesus in a different light (as a mystic, not as a god) and put a spin on the whole story that the early Christian church did not like. It was threatening to them and they did not want that information out there.

[TravisW]

To say "Edited from the Bible" implies that they were there in some capacity, and then winnowed out. There are a few that were considered, but weren't included in the New Testament because they were considered not to be Apostolic in origin--it had nothing to do with whether it was orthodox. An example of this is the Apocalypse of St. Peter. There were other books that were never considered to be part of canon--what are today known as the Gnostic Gospels. These weren't considered because: *drumroll* Gnosticism is a completely different religion from what the Early Church practiced. Both the theology and cosmology are extremely dissimilar to other branches of Christianity of the era, as well as to Judaism. For a chance to read what fragments remain of these books, I recommend "Lost Scriptures" by Bart Ehrman.

[TravisW]

Oh, and just a note, I have read all of the "lost gospels" as well as the deuterocanonicals, books of Enoch, books of Adam and Eve, and a couple of more that I can't remember. They aren't really as astonishing as people would lead you to think.

[uglyblackjohn]

In addition to those mentioned by TravisW - try earlier Jewish writings and the Torah itself. There is a lot more imformation than most modern Churches seem to use in their teachings. Your perspective probably won't be changed but it will be enhanced by the more complete understanding.

[brikag]

MontanaGuy,

A lot of the writings and books written by prophets, saints, the Virgin Mary, and Yeshua(Jesus) were not placed in the Bible. Reasons are unknown, but the speculation is that it unite the many churches. It was during the Council of Nicea (300-ish AD).

Time went on and Constantiople was becoming a Christian state than an Islam nation. The Council of Nicea II (700-ish AD) meet in Constaniople, again. They discussed shortning the Bible, but leaving the items to make God as fearful and Jesus as the all Divine. So, the books were taken out and taken back to the Vatican for safe keeping. The Bible was then revised and passed out throughout the world. The books excluded this time... The Book of Yeshua. This was also the same time they wanted their own holiday around the same time Passover...Easter. Why? Representation of renewal, Spring! Even though scholars and theologians say Yeshua may have died in February. They read it from the excluded books!

Not bad, went to Catholic school k-12 and I remember reading that in 9th grade. I'm a self-proclaimed atheist!

[TravisW]

Originally Posted by brikag

MontanaGuy,

A lot of the writings and books written by prophets, saints, the Virgin Mary, and Yeshua(Jesus) were not placed in the Bible. Reasons are unknown, but the speculation is that it unite the many churches. It was during the Council of Nicea (300-ish AD).

Time went on and Constantiople was becoming a Christian state than an Islam nation. The Council of Nicea II (700-ish AD) meet in Constaniople, again. They discussed shortning the Bible, but leaving the items to make God as fearful and Jesus as the all Divine. So, the books were taken out and taken back to the Vatican for safe keeping. The Bible was then revised and passed out throughout the world. The books excluded this time... The Book of Yeshua. This was also the same time they wanted their own holiday around the same time Passover...Easter. Why? Representation of renewal, Spring! Even though scholars and theologians say Yeshua may have died in February. They read it from the excluded books!

Not bad, went to Catholic school k-12 and I remember reading that in 9th grade. I'm a self-proclaimed atheist!

I hate to be rude, but this is generally incorrect. The first Council of Nicaea dealt with the nature of the Trinity (and wound up being a refutation of Arianism). The second Council of Nicaea was the reestablishment of the veneration of icons. Neither of these dealt directly with the contents of the Bible. That was directly addressed at the Synod of Hippo in 393 and the Council of Carthage in 397, although the books that they compiled were pretty similar to New Testament canons assembled in response to Marcion's canon in the second century. Easter has existed in practice since the second century.

[esselcue]

"Edited" was the wrong word to use...I am sorry. But the matter still involves church leaders at the time (I am being vague on purpose) who chose what to include and what not to include, based on how they percieved the writings. Nothing more, nothing less...and I have read what is available of the "lost books". To say you have read all of them suggests we have found all of them and that's not a proven. We have what has been found and made available, and while not shocking, I think the books are interesting. Then again, I do not percieve the Bible as being a Holy document, so what is included or not is more "interesting and informative" to me than earth-shaking.

[esselcue]

by the way....Easter and Christmas were originally Pagan holidays.

[TravisW]

Originally Posted by esselcue

"Edited" was the wrong word to use...I am sorry. But the matter still involves church leaders at the time (I am being vague on purpose) who chose what to include and what not to include, based on how they percieved the writings. Nothing more, nothing less...and I have read what is available of the "lost books". To say you have read all of them suggests we have found all of them and that's not a proven. We have what has been found and made available, and while not shocking, I think the books are interesting. Then again, I do not percieve the Bible as being a Holy document, so what is included or not is more "interesting and informative" to me than earth-shaking.

Yeah, "all" was more of an artifact of my trying to get that post out quickly than any assertion that I've read books that haven't been rediscovered. It was pretty evident when reading the lost gospels which ones were gnostic and which were not--there isn't that much crossover between the two, theologically. I'd imagine that this was much of what the Church Fathers saw when they encountered Gnostic literature as well. It's interesting to read the Apocalypse of St. Peter, and read the parallels between it and Dante's Inferno. All of this stuff is interesting to read.

Re: the OP

There is a lot of stuff floating around about how the Bible was compiled, and unfortunately a lot of it would make any historian wince. We do know that the churches compiling this material were the precursers to the modern Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches. We do know that what became the New Testament was considered the most valuable part of Sacred Tradition (this is over 1000 years before sola scriptura). We know that there was other literature being used amongst these 'orthodox' congregations that wasn't deemed worthy to "make the cut", but were still considered valuable. We know that there was Gnostic literature which is very different in tone and theology from 'orthodox' literature, and that was omitted for that same reason.

I encourage anybody with the curiosity to read the books in question. It's interesting to compare and contrast the similar and the dissimilar. If you're looking for an earth-shattering silver bullet to the heart of the Roman Catholic Church, you're probably going to be disappointed. But, if you're interested in Mediterranean religious movements of the first 3 centuries A.D., this would be right up your alley. Also, if you research Gnosticism and compare it to Jewish and Christian theology, you will see how vastly unrelated they really are.