Many books other than the books of the Bible were written before and after the New Testament. A number of these writings survive to this day. Quite a few of them are religious, but none of them is inspired of God. There has been a renewal of interest in these ancient documents in our time. Unbelievers try to use these books to discredit the Scriptures. Skeptics say they raise serious questions about the reliability of the Bible. Some Bible readers almost treat them as new revelations from God.
One group of these writings comes from the time between the Old Testament and the New Testament. During this 400 year period certain Jews recorded their history. These books are now commonly known as the apocrypha. Since the Bible does not say much about this period, these books have some value because they help bridge the historical gap between the testaments.
These books are not inspired. The writers themselves do not even claim they are inspired. One of them says there were no prophets in this time (1 Macc. 9:27). Inspiration had ceased. Besides, those books bear none of the marks of the divine inspiration and are not cited in the New Testament as inspired writings.
These books appear in Catholic bibles. In fact, they were in the 1560 Geneva Bible and in the original 1611 King James Version. Why? I cannot answer for Catholics, but the preface of the Geneva Bible says they were not inserted because they were inspired and authoritative like the 66 books of the Bible but because they have historical value. The 1611 King James Version contained them for the same reason.
The Dead Sea Scrolls are hymns, commentaries, manuscripts of Bible books, and other religious writings of a community of Jews who lived near the Dead Sea during and even before the first century. They had no prophets. They wrote no books of the bible. These scrolls are not “lost books of the Bible.” Some of them are copies of Old Testament books, and this is their contribution to our time. They do not change the Bible. They should not be viewed as a discovery that changes the message of the Scriptures. Yet some Bible scholars and their unwary disciples act as if we cannot understand the Bible as we should without the Dead Sea Scrolls.
The list of these ancient books keeps growing as the public becomes more aware of them. The “Gospel of Judas” and other heretical books have been publicized in our generation for the sole reason of creating doubt and confusion in the minds of believers. Bible “experts” with the aid of an all-too-willing media have inflated the value of these ancient documents. Unlearned religious people hope these books will give them special spiritual insight and skeptics hail them as a victory in their cause. The sad thing about the hysteria is that some of these people talk about these writings as if they are extremely important but they don’t even know what they are.
God gave us the Bible—all of it. He preserved the books of the Bible—every one of them. “All scripture is given by inspiration of God” (2 Tim. 3:16).
When Jesus talked about the Scriptures (John 5:39), the Jews knew He was talking about the books of the Old Testament, not the apocrypha or the Dead Sea Scrolls. When Peter spoke of Paul’s epistles and the “other scriptures” (2 Pet. 3:16), his readers knew which books he meant.
The curse of God rests upon anyone who adds to or takes away from the Bible (Rev. 22:18-19). The same condemnation applies to all who try to bring the Bible down to the level of human books.
Kerry Duke
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