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Shamsuddin_Jim - yes, I was aware of that

Which makes me wonder all the more how people can overlook this. In the early centuries, a number of writings were omitted from what eventualy became the bible. Some for questionable authenticity, others such as the gospels of St. Thomas for reasons that are not completely clear but I have never had the major edit of 1880 satisfactorily answered. Who had the right to throw out 14 complete books after centuries of use?

posted by gomedome on August 21, 2006 at 6:05 AM | link to this | reply

Of course, you know that the Apocrpha course, you know that the Apocrypha

is still included in Roman Catholic Bibles. What about books like the Gosple of Thomas etc that did not make it into any Bible?

posted by Shams-i-Heartsong on August 21, 2006 at 5:00 AM | link to this | reply

gome

I have heard various things...about why certain things were allowed in and other were not.
One of those things is that they didn't feel those works actually "came from God". That they were made up without divine intervention, so to speak.

posted by Afzal_Sunny7 on August 20, 2006 at 8:34 PM | link to this | reply

DarrkeThoughts - I'm agreeing with you but you seem to drifting away from

the timeline.

I agree that there is plenty of contradiction in what is contained within the remaining 66 books. Appreciate that the edit that removed the 14 books was done very recently in history (1880).

posted by gomedome on August 20, 2006 at 6:45 PM | link to this | reply

RifDaws - there is no ambiguity here - I am speaking specifically of 14

books edited out of the bible by Webster (the dictionary guy) around 1880.

Including all subheadings to give a total of 18, they are as follows:

Psalm 151 (Apocrypha)

Wisdom of Solomon (Apocrypha)

Susanna (Apocrypha)

1 Maccabees (Apocrypha)

2 Maccabees (Apocrypha)

3 Maccabees (Apocrypha)

4 Maccabees (Apocrypha)

Sirach (Apocrypha)

Baruch (Apocrypha)

Tobit (Apocrypha)

Bel and the Dragon (Apocrypha)

Azariah (Apocrypha)

Epistle of Jeremiah (Apocrypha)

Prayer of Manasseh (Apocrypha)

4 Ezra OR 2 Esdras (Apocrypha)

Judith (Apocrypha)

Additions to the Book of Esther (Apocrypha)

1 Esdras (Apocrypha)

posted by gomedome on August 20, 2006 at 6:42 PM | link to this | reply

posted by A-and-B on August 20, 2006 at 6:05 PM | link to this | reply

Not...

"A slightly more jaded perspective and probably closer to the truth, is that the books contradicted much of the rest of the bible so had to go."

Sorry, but if you read the official cannon Bible you will find plenty of contradictions. I've read most of the apocrypha as well and didn't find any new heresies that weren't at least mentioned in the main accepted works. (Some are more blatant and harder to ignore or explain away...but that's another story.)

I say it was all about power. The accepted cannon does not interfere with the power of Rome. Remember that the decisions were made about the time the Roman emperor made Christianity the state religion. They needed scriptures that would help placate the populace and make Christianity a good tool for keeping the masses happy and obedient.

I'd say the main heresy that needed to be weeded out was anything that would make people think for themselves, or try to reach God directly rather than through the priests or other authorities.

posted by DarrkeThoughts on August 20, 2006 at 6:01 PM | link to this | reply

It would be helpful to define what you mean by "The Apocrypha"

...as different religions frequently define it differently and have all through the ages. For example, many list any book with unknown or uncertain authorship to be apocrypha (Augustine and much of the Catholic church would be included in this group). Others pronounce anything outside the Hebrew Canon to be apocrypha (including Jerome and many Protestant groups). Much (I did not say all) of the information making its way on the gossip circuit today about "secret traditions" and such come from Gnostic sects. The Gospel of Judas is a Gnostic Gospel. These tend to be less regarded because they rely on a lot of allegory and promote secret traditions.

For the most part today, it is agreed within Christian circles that the New Testament is limited to to age of the Apostles.

posted by RiFDaws on August 20, 2006 at 4:25 PM | link to this | reply

Gomedome, I think they call it politics, i.e., power, money, sex, perversion, lies, murder, deceit, cruelty, jealousy. I don’t know, I probably left a few out. All of the things that humans are prone to do. MoonSpirit

posted by syzygy on August 20, 2006 at 3:45 PM | link to this | reply

SuccessWarrior - it becomes fairly obvious to those who are looking at

the evolution of the bible objectively.

That the book is a "Hollywood equivalency" of ancient historical and religious chronicling. The directors in this case being any church authority in a postion over history to impose their agenda. We can be certain that much of the supposed word of God ended up on the cutting room floor (as they say in Hollywood)

posted by gomedome on August 20, 2006 at 1:32 PM | link to this | reply

blackcat30 - I stopped short of saying that this is a major inconsistency

because I am interested in how people do explain this. I don't understand how it can be reconciled...but that is just me.