The Lost Scriptures – books that did not make it into the New Testament.

Many people read the bible on a daily basis – few know how the book came into being – when it first appeared – and who decided it should be as we encounter it today. The New Testament did not emerge as a complete set of books immediately after the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It took almost 400 years and the influence of St. Augustine of Hippo, at the Synod of Hippo for the list of 27 books of the New Testament to be widely accepted.

The Muratorian Fragment

“. . . at which nevertheless he was present, and so he placed [them in his narrative]. (2) The third book of the Gospel is that according to Luke. (3) Luke, the well-known physician, after the ascension of Christ, (4-5) when Paul had taken with him as one zealous for the law,  (6) composed it in his own name, according to [the general] belief.  Yet he himself had not (7) seen the Lord in the flesh; and therefore, as he was able to ascertain events, (8) so indeed he begins to tell the story from the birth of John. (9) The fourth of the Gospels is that of John, [one] of the disciples.”

This fragment is the oldest surviving New Testament canon list that exists (the word canon refers to the bible as a whole; canonical means a particular book that is included in the bible, i.e. the Gospel of Matthew is a canonical book). The document is named after L. A. Muratori, the Italian scholar who discovered it in a library in Milan in the eighteenth century. It begins mid-sentence describing the production of an unnamed Gospel – but continues by calling Luke the third Gospel and John the fourth; so it is assumed that Matthew and Mark were numbers one and two. The Muratorian Fragment contains twenty-two of the twenty-seven books of the New Testament canon. It leaves out Hebrews, James, 1 and 2 Peter, and 3 John. It also includes as canonical the Wisdom of Solomon and the Apocalypse of Peter. His list concludes by condemning forgeries made by various heretics such as Marcion and Montanists.  It is believed this list came into existence sometime in the mid second century. (information for this devotion comes from the book The Lost Scriptures – books that did not make it into the New Testament, by Bart D. Ehrman)

Do you have certain books of the Old or New Testament that are favorites? I do. I have certain books that I often return to again and again because of the message of comfort or insight that they provide the reader. All of the books are important because someone, or a group of someones decided they were important enough to include in the canon. Not all of the books that dealt with Jesus and the apostles were accepted to be read in the churches – or were accepted into the canon. Many of those books have only been passed along through the ages as mentioned by other authors. Over the next few devotions I will be talking about how the bible came into the shape we know of it today. And I will also be addressing some of those other books that did not make the cut. I hope you enjoy.

Pastor Dave