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When people ask whether there were books left out of
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the Bible, the answer is actually yes. But the more
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useful question, in my opinion, is why those books didn't remain,
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because once you follow that question, the conversation moves from
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curiosity to something deeper, and that's authority and trust and
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how something becomes foundational. There's a version of history most
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people carry without realizing it, a clean version, one where
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the Bible arrived, complete and settled, sixty six books, nothing debated,
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nothing left behind. And that version, frankly, it doesn't hold
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up because across deserts, inside caves, and through handwritten copies
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passed between early believers, there were other texts moving alongside
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what we now call scripture. So were some were read
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in churches, some were quoted by respected leaders, and some
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were preserved very carefully in caves and places. And then
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at some point they weren't included, not a race necessarily,
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not like hunted down and destroyed. I mean maybe they were,
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but just set aside. So here's the tension with that.
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If these books were known and read, even valued, why
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didn't they make it in the Bible? Maybe more importantly,
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what inside them? What's inside them that did Okay, So
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once you start following this thread, the story of the
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Bible stops feeling simple and starts becoming something far more layered.
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Most people think they understand the Bible Genesis to Revelation,
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sixty six books, final answer, right, But that's the end
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of the story, not the beginning. And what we now
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call the Bible came together over hundreds of years, not
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in a single moment, not in a single actual place,
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and certainly not without disagreement. Different communities were reading different texts.
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Some were widely accepted, some were debated, some lived at
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right on the edge. And this is where things start
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to shift, because when you look at early Christian history
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you find evidence of them of like this middle category,
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books that weren't quite scripture, but they weren't rejected either.
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There's an early document called the Meritorian Fragment from the
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late second century. It lists recognized books, but it also
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mentions writings like the Shepherd of Hermas, saying it should
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be read, just not publicly in church with the others. Now,
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that distinction matters. That texts can be useful and even
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encouraged and still not be part of the canon. A
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text can be respected circulated and still not make the
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cut right. So fast forward to three sixty seven AD
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and Athansias of our Alexandria writes his thirty ninth Festal
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Letter and listing the twenty seven books of the New
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Testament exactly as we know them today. But even he
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draws a line. He names other books as valuable for instruction,
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just not part of the canon. So the pattern shows
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up again and again, not banned, not destroyed, but I'd
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say categorized is the best way to describe it, and
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that raises a deeper question. What separates a book that
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becomes scripture from one that doesn't. I mean, is it
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authorship or consistency, maybe usage or something less obvious. Once
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you see the process, you can't unsee it, though, and
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by the by the end of this episode, you'll understand
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how the Bible was formed, what kinds of books were
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left out, and why this matters. Right now, we're moving
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through early church history, ancient manuscripts and discoveries like the
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Dead Sea scrolls and texts found at Naghamati. I've talked
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about this in past episodes, which I'll link to this episode.
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Some of this is straightforward and some of it is
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hotly debated. Some of it doesn't land cleanly. Per Broadcasting Seeds. Way, right,
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we're calling this series Beyond the Bible. It's going to
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go on for about ten weeks because we're finished with
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the Supernatural Bible, so we're gonna go with Beyond the
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Bible because where the cannon ends, the conversation sure does not.
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It just doesn't end. And people are revisiting these edges, right,
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these edges of biblical scripture. Not because the information is new,
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because it sure isn't, but because access is for some
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of these I mean, we have the Internet and most
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of the stuff is there now. And if you're yeah, so,
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it'll be great. If you're getting value from this, though,
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take a moment to like, share and review the podcast.
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That's how this show reaches people asking these questions. And
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if you want to support the podcast, I urge you
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now to check out my books. They keep this show going. Okay,
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I've written a few books and you can find them
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at Bennett tantonbooks dot com or through some links at
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Broadcasting Seeds dot com. If you're researching or working in
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this space, there's a room to connect to always. Now
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let's go a little deeper in the section one. Most
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people approach the idea of books left out of the
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Bible as if it's about secrets, right. They look at
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them as hidden texts and suppressed knowledge. But when you
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step into the history, it actually doesn't look that like that.
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It looks a lot slower. It's more gradual, way, more human.
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Right.
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And the formation of the Bible wasn't a single event.
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It unfolded across centuries, and it started way before Christianity.
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In the first century. The Jewish historian Josephus described a
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defined set of sacred writings, and he spoke of twenty
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two books and made it clear that later writings just
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didn't carry the same authority that tells you something right away.
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Even before the New Testament, people were already asking what
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counted as scripture. Now moved forward, and early Christians didn't
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have a finished New Testament. They had letters, of course,
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they had accounts, firsthand accounts, teachings being copied and shared
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across regions, and those collections weren't identical everywhere. Picture a
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small gathering, someone reads a letter attributed to say Paul okay,
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another time from a gospel, and occasionally something else. A
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text that fit. I guess it feels helpful and worth hearing,
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but not quite the same. So early Christianity didn't begin
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with a fixed book. It began with a flood of writings,
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and by the late second century we start to see
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efforts to bring order to that flood, and that's the
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Meritorian fragment reflects that moment, and we talked about that
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in the intro. Some books are reorganized, some books are
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just flat out rejected. Right, sorry, I'm a little sick.
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Some sit in between. The Shepherd of Hermas is a
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clear example of this. It circulated widely and was concealed
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that are valuable, but it came with a boundary. Read it,
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but don't treat it like scripture. So the question shifts
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not why it existed, but why it didn't cross Why
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it didn't cross that line. A book isn't excluded because
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it exists. It's excluded because it doesn't need a standard.
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Those standards weren't written in a single checklist. But there
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are patterns that emerge connection to the apostles or consistency
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of the teachings that were already accepted across communities and
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frankly widespread usage. This is where certain texts start to
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stand apart now, like the Gospel of Thomas, for example,
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that appears later around the mid second center, and its
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tone and structure are different. It reads less like a
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continuation and more like a paralleled voice entering the conversation.
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It doesn't automatically make it meaningless, of course, but it
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helps explain why it didn't carry the same weight as
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other books. Not everything ancient is equal either, age alone
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doesn't does not determine authority. And then there's the Dead
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Sea Scrolls and discovering discovered between sorry discovered beginning in
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nineteen forty seven. They open another layer of entirely hundreds
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of manuscripts, including biblical texts, commentaries, and works like Knock
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and Jubileese. That matters because it shows that the ancient world
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wasn't working from a single clean list. It was overlap.
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There was tons of overlap, a wider ecosystem of text
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moving through different communities. Some of those ideas became part
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of scripture and some just didn't, so some remained on
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the edges. The Bible didn't emerge in isolation and emerged
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from a crowded field. Folks, I guess it is the
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best way to describe it. So when people ask whether
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there were books left out of the Bible, the answer
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is actually yes. But the more useful question, in my opinion,
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is why those books didn't remain because once you follow
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that question, the conversation moves from curiosity to something deeper,
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and that's authority and trust and how something becomes foundational.
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Send this to a friend who's been asking whether there's
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more to the story than what they were handed Section two.
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Once you understand the process, the next question is about
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context or content, what was actually inside the books that
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didn't make it, Because this is where the differences become
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clear again. We'll take the tops the Gospel of Thomas,
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which was discovered in nineteen forty five near Nagamati, which
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is in Egypt, and it contains one hundred and fourteen
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sayings that were attributed to g Jesus. But there's no narrative,
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no crucifixion, no resurrection, just sayings. And many of those
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things they carry a different emphasis, less about repentance and
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more about hidden knowledge, less about transformation, more about uncovering
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something internal. Right in some of these texts, salvation is
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tied to insight rather than relationship and that shift matters.
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Early communities weren't only asking whether a text was interesting,
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they were asking whether it aligned with what they had,
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what they had already received. If it didn't, that raised concerns.
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Now consider the Book of Enoch, because this one's different.
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Part of it predates Christianity, and fragments were found among
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the Dead Sea scrolls showing a circulated that it circulated
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in Jewish communities. So the question becomes sharper. If Enoch
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was known and preserved, why isn't it in most bibles.
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Enoch expands on themes found in Genesis. It describes the
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watchers angels who descend an influence humanity, and it develops
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a detailed view of the unseen world. For some early
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readers that wasn't a problem because they had already heard
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these stories. In fact, the New Testament's Book of Jude
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quotes a passage attributed to Enoch that complicates the boundary.
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A text can exist outside the canon and still intersect
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with it. But influence doesn't equal inclusion, So inclusion depended
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on broader recognition and consistency and acceptance across communities. Enoch
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did not meet that threshold universally, except for in one tradition,
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the Ethiopian Orthodox Church still includes it in its canon.
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So this isn't just history, it's a living difference. What
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counts as scripture can vary depending on tradition. Then there
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are texts like the Oh my Gosh, the Didtickey and
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I have already talked about the Shepherd of Hermits. They
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were respected and copied and used for teaching, but still
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not considered scripture. That metal category shows up again, useful
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but not foundational. When you step back, a pattern forms.
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Some books were excluded because they just came later, some
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because their teachings diverged straight up, diverged from what was
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already being taught, some because their origins were maybe uncertain,
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and some because they didn't gain wide acceptance, not suppressed
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or filtered. The canon wasn't built by hiding information, I
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guess there's not a lot of It was shaped by
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narrowing it. So interest in these texts is growing again.
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People are reading Enoch, exploring Thomas, revisiting the Dead Sea scrolls,
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and the question that follows is almost always the same,
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why wasn't this included? And the answer isn't that they
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were hidden? Necessarily? Is that they didn't meet the same criteria.
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Ah.
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And once that's clear, the conversation shifts from secrecy to
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discernment Section three. At this point, the conversation stops being
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purely historical, okay, it becomes personal. And because once you
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understand that other texts alongside existed, what became scripture and
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you have to decide what to do with that. Not
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every claim survives and not every surviving text carries authority.
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There are two common reactions though. One assumes anything outside
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the Bible is automatically false. The other assumes anything outside
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it must contained hidden truth, so wild both oversimplifying the
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actual situation and the reality is more layered. Okay, Some
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of these texts were valued, and still are, some were debated,
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some influenced early communities, and still they weren't included. Okay,
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So the real question becomes how to approach them. Context
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absolutely matters, and the Dead Sea Scrolls are a good
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example of this. Discovered near Kumran beginning in nineteen forty seven,
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they revealed a broader textual world, biblical manuscripts, commentaries, and
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additional writings, all circulating together that shows the end ancient
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landscape was not uniform and everybody likes this nice uniform thing,
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right it was. It was active and varied and evolved
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all the time. Scripture emerged within a wider conversation, not
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outside of it. That reframes everything. So instead of asking
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what was hidden, you start asking what endured and why,
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because survival across centuries and cultures and transmission tells you something. Right,
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not everything lests. What remains tends to carry weight within
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the communities that preserved it. Okay, that doesn't automatically prove truth, though,
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but it does signal significance. Endurance points frankly to importance,
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even if it doesn't settle the question of truth. Now,
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it's important to separate fact from speculation. And there are
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some facts, the fact many texts existed, right. Another fact
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is that some were respected but not canonized. Fact different
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traditions still define the canon differently. Now, speculation that there
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was a coordinated effort to suppress a hidden original version
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of Christianity. This is hotly debated. There's no solid evidence
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that for that claim. In the material that we've covered, right,
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what we do see is a process of selection, evaluation,
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and narrowing over time, and those edges, those edge texts
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are still accessible, like the Gospel of Thomas can be
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read today. The Book of Enoch is available in many forms.
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Dead Sea scrolls have been published and studied. Nothing is
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locked away at least of these texts right now. That
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doesn't mean that there isn't. But for these texts that
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we've talked about, access isn't the issue anymore. Interpretation is.
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There could be other hidden stuff, but again I don't know.
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There's only so much that we can cover right right now.
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Interesting interest is absolutely increasing because people are connecting with
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these texts the broader questions about belief and history and meaning.