"lost" Bible biiks

[didymus]

I found this in a Smithsonian article about books lost to time:

2. Lost Books of the Bible

There are 24 books in the Hebrew Bible, or Tanakh—and depending upon the denomination, between 66 and 84 more books in Christian Bibles, divided between the Old and New Testaments.
Missing from these pages of scripture are what have become known as the “lost books” of the Bible. Sometimes the term is used to describe ancient Jewish and Christian writings that were tossed out of the biblical canon. But other books are lost in the true sense of the word. We only know that they existed because they are referenced by name in other books of the Bible.
The Book of Numbers, for instance, mentions the “Book of the Battles of Yahweh,” for which no copy survives. Similarly, the First and Second Book of Kings and the First and Second Book of Chronicles names a “Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel” and a “Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah.” There are over 20 titles for which the text is missing.
Some of the quotations mentioning the lost books provide clues to their content. The “Book in Seven Parts,” for example, likely told readers about the cities that would be divided among the Israelites.

Anybody know about this?
Just curious – I assume that if they were inspired God would not allow them to be lost, but still sounds interesting.

 

[patrick457]

I found this in a Smithsonian article about books lost to time:

Anybody know about this?
Just curious – I assume that if they were inspired God would not allow them to be lost, but still sounds interesting.

Well as the link says some Biblical books do mention a number of now-lost documents which the authors may have drawn upon as sources. Another example I could give is 2 Maccabees: the author in the preface claimed that his work was an abridgement of a five-volume account (presumably of the Maccabean revolt) by someone named ‘Jason of Cyrene’. Nothing else is known about Jason or his massive work save from this, so it is hard to say how much of 2 Maccabees represents the original contents.

And St. Paul once talks about a letter sent to the Christians in Laodicea (Colossians 4:16), but that letter has apparently not survived: there is an ‘Epistle to the Laodiceans’ found in some manuscripts of the Vulgate, but that is actually a forgery, a patische of phrases taken from genuine Pauline epistles. (For the record, there is a theory which thinks that the canonical Epistle to the Ephesians might actually be this elusive letter but apparently got misattributed along the way.)

 

[The_Scott]

It appears, simply by looking at their names, that some of these books are simply legal tests, that had no theological significance. Don’t quote me on that though - this is just a first glance analysis.

Peace.

 

[Jmd96]

Sometimes the term is used to describe ancient Jewish and Christian writings that were tossed out of the biblical canon.

I’m just going to point out that I found this phrase a little misleading. It almost assumes that there weren’t excellent reasons for them to be “tossed out”, and saying the books were “tossed out” seems to assume that they should have a place in the Bible.

 

[JD27076]

Lol no one pointed out he/she made a typo with “books” I knew that she meant books and probably was a simply typo. But no one mentioned it.

 

[Mintaka]

Re: tossed out –

Even if something is a perfectly nice and useful text, if it’s not being used in liturgy and perpetually copied/reprinted, it’s eventually going to be lost. If it didn’t survive the ages, obviously nobody cared enough (which when it comes to the Bible is a good sign it was just an ordinary book and not inspired).

We may sometime find the lost history of Jason of Cyrene, and I’m sure it would be very interesting and worthy. But it wouldn’t be inspired. (And it won’t have that marvelous preface about the hard work of editing.)

I would love to see more Jewish poetry and literature contemporary with various bits of the Bible; anybody would. But while it would probably be illuminating and enjoyable, and maybe even spiritually helpful, it wouldn’t be inspired.

That said, I would love to have a copy of Papias, even though he apparently quoted some very odd old birds.

 

[itsjustdave1988]

The article’s author draws the hasty conclusion that other writings mentioned in the Bible were therefore part of the Bible at one point. I don’t see why such a conclusion would necessarily be true.

 

[Jmd96]

I think the poster used a nice, vivid verb here to evoke the throwing out process!
(And didn’t imply anything)

I was quoting the article, not the poster’s words. And “throwing out” assumes that it was there in the first place, which is inaccurate.

 

[patrick457]

Re: tossed out –

Even if something is a perfectly nice and useful text, if it’s not being used in liturgy and perpetually copied/reprinted, it’s eventually going to be lost. If it didn’t survive the ages, obviously nobody cared enough (which when it comes to the Bible is a good sign it was just an ordinary book and not inspired).

That’s one of the ways books disappear and become ‘lost’: people no longer thought that they were worth preserving at all and thus stopped reproducing and distributing them.

We may sometime find the lost history of Jason of Cyrene, and I’m sure it would be very interesting and worthy. But it wouldn’t be inspired. (And it won’t have that marvelous preface about the hard work of editing.)

And the letters before the preface. And perhaps even the theological reflections.

 

[rcjones]

This is a classic “feeding the concept in the question” diversion. Look at Chronicles mentioning Kings and Kings mentioning Chronicles. Neither Kings nor Chronicles is missing. They are just known by slightly different names.

The Book with seven parts? The surveyors took notes on the description of the land so that it could be divided, the contents of their notes were transcribed into the text immediately following, which describes who got what and what it’s description was. There is no lost book. It’s right there.

The Battles of Yahweh are contained in Joshua as they conquered the land that God gave them. You read of miraculous battles waged by God.

Not one jot nor tittle has been lost.