The Lost Books Of The Bible

[Solitary]

No question, the kid portrayed in the "lost books" isn't exactly the Prince of Peace. After recounting three murders in two pages, one passage concludes, "Then said Joseph to St. Mary, henceforth we will not allow him to go out of the house; for everyone who displeases him is killed."

The "lost books" are part of the apocrypha, quasibiblical works not included in the official Bible. There are several dozen of these, dating from both Old and New Testament eras and exhibiting considerable variety in length, completeness, and credibility. A few of these were considered inspired in some corners of the early church but were ultimately excluded from the formal canon for one reason or another; the remainder, which account for the bulk of the material, have always been regarded as spurious by the mainstream church and include works condemned as heretical or fraudulent.

In 1820 a number of the apocryphal books were compiled into a sort of alternative Bible called the Apocryphal New Testament. This was republished in 1926 as The Lost Books of the Bible and reprinted in 1979; the last version is what you saw. The 1820 book in turn was an aggregation of two English translations published in 1736 and 1737. The original works were a serious attempt to advance bible study, but the subsequent publications, arguably in 1820 and certainly from 1926 onward, were an attempt to sell books by creating scandal.

The homicidal-Jesus stories come from something known as the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. (This is to be distinguished from the better-known but equally apocryphal Gospel According to Thomas, about which more below.) Several versions of the Infancy Gospel have come to light, dating back to about the sixth century AD; all are copies of earlier texts.

As near as scholars can make out, the Thomas story originated in the mid-second century AD, subsequent to the four canonical gospels (that is, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John). Some say it was based in part on Luke; the two books share the story of Jesus scourging the money lenders at the Temple. It is one of the few portrayals, spurious or not, of Jesus's early life, which no doubt accounts for its continued circulation after eighteen hundred years.

The Infancy Gospel has never been proposed for inclusion in the official Bible. Many of the early Christian writers who were influential in deciding what books belonged in the canon regarded it as heretical. In it the young Jesus is fully aware that he is a god and performs miracles for sport, which is at odds with the usual Christian emphasis on Jesus's humanity.

The book is not a literal account of Jesus's early life. All of the gospels, including the canonical ones, were based on oral traditions collected after Jesus's death and to a greater or lesser extent were intended to support a doctrinal point of view. The Infancy Gospel in antiquity was linked to sects that held that Jesus was God disguised as a man, rather than God become a man. Many of the stories have parallels in tales of the Buddha and other religious figures.

I mentioned there is another Gospel According to Thomas, a collection of 114 sayings attributed to Jesus discovered in Egypt in 1945. It is taken more seriously than the Infancy Gospel and while not as outrageous is equally troubling in its way. It ends, "Simon Peter said to them, 'Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of life.' Jesus said, 'I myself shall lead her in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven.'" The best one can say is that it may represent the view of the compiler rather than the maker of heaven and earth.
— Cecil Adams

I wonder why they aren't included in the "official Bibles?"   :-$     What else was conveniently left out?  Solitary

[aileron]

I wonder why they aren't included in the "official Bibles?"   :-$     What else was conveniently left out?  Solitary

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bart-d-eh ... 05076.html

This is not to mention what was conveniently added to the original manuscripts.

[stromboli]

In the Old Testament you also have mentioned the Book of Jasher and the Book of Enoch. Jasher, the "book of the just man" is mentioned in passing a couple of times, and Enoch was the father of Noah. The Book of Enoch is not only apocryphal it is also one of the supposed "hidden" texts that the Illuminati references, being the secret organization that once lived in the Masonic Order in Bavaria. There are in fact at least 2 versions of the Book of Enoch that I am aware of. The 2nd book speaks of the angels that were corrupted and mated with human women to create the Nephilim, which are mentioned, again, only in passing in the Old Testament.

And there is also the Kabbalistic texts, which are the secret bible within the bible.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabbalah#M ... _the_Torah

According to adherents of Kabbalah, its origin begins with secrets that God revealed to Adam. When read by later generations of Kabbalists, the Torah's description of the creation in the Book of Genesis reveals mysteries about the godhead itself, the true nature of Adam and Eve, the Garden of Eden, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and the Tree of Life, as well as the interaction of these supernatural entities with the Serpent which leads to disaster when they eat the forbidden fruit, as recorded in Genesis 3.[22]
The Bible provides ample additional material for mythic and mystical speculation. The prophet Ezekiel's visions in particular attracted much mystical speculation, as did Isaiah's Temple vision—Isaiah, Ch.6. Jacob's vision of the ladder to heaven provided another example of esoteric experience. Moses' encounters with the Burning bush and God on Mount Sinai are evidence of mystical events in the Torah that form the origin of Jewish mystical beliefs.
The 72 letter name of God which is used in Jewish mysticism for meditation purposes is derived from the Hebrew verbal utterance Moses spoke in the presence of an angel, while the Sea of Reeds parted, allowing the Hebrews to escape their approaching attackers. The miracle of the Exodus, which led to Moses receiving the Ten Commandments and the Jewish Orthodox view of the acceptance of the Torah at Mount Sinai, preceded the creation of the first Jewish nation approximately three hundred years before King Saul.

In Kabbalic tradition, supposedly the Bible and Torah not included in the Bible can be read in such a way to derive secret, hidden meaning from it. And as indicated in the quote, knowledge of Kabbalah imparts the secret mystical words that can do stuff like bring clay statues (Golem) to life. By writing secret words and putting them on parchment, then inserting into the statue, not only brought it to life but gave the Rabbi in charge the ability to command the creature.

This is the shit I studied when I first left the LDS church.

[Eve]

I wonder why they aren't included in the "official Bibles?"   :-$  

Because Bibles were not put together by the Prophets of God.  

What else was conveniently left out?  Solitary

Oh! many, many books were left out.
Even Bible mention books that we don't have today.
For example, first epistle of Paul to Corinthians. It is NOT 1st epistle that he wrote to them. See 1 Cor 5:9 Paul says that he already wrote to them before this epistle.

[stromboli]

To quote a Mormon Apostle about errant information concerning Joseph Smith, "some things that are true aren't useful".  :-k

In other words, ignore what is contrary to the picture we are trying to present to you.

The people that decided what went into the Bible were people who had a political and religious picture they wanted to present, not what the facts were. Factually, to arrive at a valid conclusion, you need to examine ALL the evidence, not just what is presented.

People have been convicted because evidence that cleared them or created doubt in their guilt was withheld from trial. This is the same thing. In order to verify the divinity of Jesus and the existence of God, we need to have all the evidence and need to be able to verify its authenticity, source of origin and so forth. This is why the bible is a fraud, because the entire canon has not been included and the writing, editing and tone of the book has been altered several times over its history, rendering the entire book fallacious.

[stromboli]

To continue..... in the case of Jesus, any writings that present a different picture or tell a different story of events leads to the possibility that either Jesus was a composite made up of more than one human being or that he is an entire fabrication. My belief is that Jesus was a real person or a composite, just one of many that claimed to be the messiah during that period in Israel. Knowledge of that one person could be widespread, and quite possibly written documents were created by people secondhand who had no real witness to the events or the person. Miracles "witnessed" secondhand are commonplace today, so certainly it is possible back then.