Lost Books

[Roe]

Now im not trying to convert you to another religon or anything i just need someone to explain these verses to me please cause im confused about these things and i need Christian help on this one :secret: :

The so-called lost books of the Bible are those documents that are mentioned in the Bible in such a way that it is evident they are considered authentic and valuable, but that are not found in the Bible today. Sometimes called missing scripture, they consist of at least the following: book of the Wars of the Lord (Num. 21: 14); book of Jasher (Josh. 10: 13; 2 Sam. 1: 18); book of the acts of Solomon (1 Kgs. 11: 41); book of Samuel the seer (1 Chr. 29: 29); book of Gad the seer (1 Chr. 29: 29); book of Nathan the prophet (1 Chr. 29: 29; 2 Chr. 9: 29); prophecy of Ahijah (2 Chr. 9: 29); visions of Iddo the seer (2 Chr. 9: 29; 2 Chr. 12: 15; 2 Chr. 13: 22); book of Shemaiah (2 Chr. 12: 15); book of Jehu (2 Chr. 20: 34); sayings of the seers (2 Chr. 33: 19); an epistle of Paul to the Corinthians, earlier than our present 1 Corinthians (1 Cor. 5: 9); possibly an earlier epistle to the Ephesians (Eph. 3: 3); an epistle to the Church at Laodicea (Col. 4: 16); and some prophecies of Enoch, known to Jude (Jude 1: 14). To these rather clear references to inspired writings other than our current Bible may be added another list that has allusions to writings that may or may not be contained within our present text, but may perhaps be known by a different title; for example, the book of the covenant (Ex. 24: 7), which may or may not be included in the current book of Exodus; the manner of the kingdom, written by Samuel (1 Sam. 10: 25); the rest of the acts of Uzziah written by Isaiah (2 Chr. 26: 22).
The foregoing items attest to the fact that our present Bible does not contain all of the word of the Lord that he gave to his people in former times, and remind us that the Bible, in its present form, is rather incomplete.
Matthew’s reference to a prophecy that Jesus would be a Nazarene (Matt. 2: 23) is interesting when it is considered that our present O.T. seems to have no statement as such. There is a possibility, however, that Matthew alluded to Isaiah 11: 1, which prophesies of the Messiah as a Branch from the root of Jesse, the father of David. The Hebrew word for branch in this case is netzer, the source word of Nazarene and Nazareth. Additional references to the Branch as the Savior and Messiah are found in Jer. 23: 5; Jer. 33: 15; Zech. 3: 8; Zech. 6: 12; these use a synonymous Hebrew word for branch, tzemakh.



If you look in your books you will find these things especially in the king james version just check this out in your bibles and tell me what you get out of it. remember im not trying to convert nobody im just trying to find answers thanks very much

 

[stephen]

Brother Roe, how are you doing? Could I ask you where you gathered the information contained in your O.P? Just interested.

The bible is complete in its-self....as it stands. To defend or try to protect it would be like trying to defend or protect a lion. Look at this thread.

http://www.talkjesus.com/church-sermons/7413-lamb-god.html

 

[Janette]

Books!

I've been in exactly your shoes.

The first Bible I ever read was Eastern Orthodox. It contains no less than 14 entire books not found in the KJV. The Catholic churches that haven't switched over to the KJV have a similar thing going on.

The Dead Sea Scrolls dug up at Qumran contained not only books we are familiar with, like Isaiah (which by the way was almost exactly the same as the other oldest manuscripts of that work we have, letter for letter)...but also Gospels we'd never heard of before then, like the Gospel of Thomas.

The Ethiopic Bible has some books in it that aren't in any of the above mentioned books.

If you really want to make your head spin, just take a look at the known works that were or were not left out of the Bible on which the KJV was based -- and why they were or were not chosen.

You'll hurt your brain, so let me save you some time.

Trust God.

It's that simple. Trust God.

God knew before any of us did which books would survive the test of time, politicians and priests with their own agendas, and any of a billion other things we don't know about that influenced which books made the cut.

God knew exactly what structure the Bible would take, in every translation that's out there.

So if you never pick up another Bible but the KJV and you trust God and love Jesus and accept Salvation...you'll be fine.

And if you decide you want to learn Hebrew and read the Torah and then move on to the Septuagint or the Eastern Orthodox Bible (developed before the KJV) and you trust God and love Jesus and accept Salvation...you'll be fine.

And if you just want to undertand some of the other books out there and you peek into things like the Book of Jubilee or the Gospel of Thomas and you trust God and love Jesus and accept the Salvation...you'll be fine.

---

But if you approach God warily like there's some secret you haven't been given yet, the devil will, I absolutely assure you, send you looking for secret after secret until you are too busy doing that to talk to God at all.

Once you start to doubt the Word even a little bit, you'll find yourself digging into book after book and scroll after scroll until Everything seems to mean Something but Nothing really means Anything and you'll end up curled in a fetal ball chewing on things because the world won't make sense anymore.

About that time, the devil will point you towards the other "lost" books -- the ones that say Eve and Satan had children together or that Jehovah is really the devil in disguise or that Jesus was an extra-terrestrial... Or married to Mary Magdala...or gay. If you look hard enough you can find all of this heresy just waiting for the doubtful to accidentally embrace it. It's a short fall from there to deciding all the other "religious" documents in the world have something valid to say and by then you'll be bitter and agnostic.

I'm telling you this because I lived it for almost two decades. If you don't trust God enough to belive in Him without any Bible to "affirm" your faith there isn't any book out there including the Bible that will make things better for you.

Good luck and God bless you

 

[stephen]

So many books.......So many interpretations of the books.

The question which I would ask.........Have you met Jesus? Seriously!

When you meet Him, the books lose significance. "Salvation is of the Lord" Books cannot save.

Jesus said John ch 14

"I am the Way, the Truth and the Life".

Without the WAY.....there is no Going.
Without the TRUTH..there is no Knowing.
Without the LIFE.....there is no Living.

I am the Way, the Truth and the Life........thats what Jesus said.

 

[Roe]

I've been in exactly your shoes.

The first Bible I ever read was Eastern Orthodox. It contains no less than 14 entire books not found in the KJV. The Catholic churches that haven't switched over to the KJV have a similar thing going on.

The Dead Sea Scrolls dug up at Qumran contained not only books we are familiar with, like Isaiah (which by the way was almost exactly the same as the other oldest manuscripts of that work we have, letter for letter)...but also Gospels we'd never heard of before then, like the Gospel of Thomas.

The Ethiopic Bible has some books in it that aren't in any of the above mentioned books.

If you really want to make your head spin, just take a look at the known works that were or were not left out of the Bible on which the KJV was based -- and why they were or were not chosen.

You'll hurt your brain, so let me save you some time.

Trust God.

It's that simple. Trust God.

God knew before any of us did which books would survive the test of time, politicians and priests with their own agendas, and any of a billion other things we don't know about that influenced which books made the cut.

God knew exactly what structure the Bible would take, in every translation that's out there.

So if you never pick up another Bible but the KJV and you trust God and love Jesus and accept Salvation...you'll be fine.

And if you decide you want to learn Hebrew and read the Torah and then move on to the Septuagint or the Eastern Orthodox Bible (developed before the KJV) and you trust God and love Jesus and accept Salvation...you'll be fine.

And if you just want to undertand some of the other books out there and you peek into things like the Book of Jubilee or the Gospel of Thomas and you trust God and love Jesus and accept the Salvation...you'll be fine.

---

But if you approach God warily like there's some secret you haven't been given yet, the devil will, I absolutely assure you, send you looking for secret after secret until you are too busy doing that to talk to God at all.

Once you start to doubt the Word even a little bit, you'll find yourself digging into book after book and scroll after scroll until Everything seems to mean Something but Nothing really means Anything and you'll end up curled in a fetal ball chewing on things because the world won't make sense anymore.

About that time, the devil will point you towards the other "lost" books -- the ones that say Eve and Satan had children together or that Jehovah is really the devil in disguise or that Jesus was an extra-terrestrial... Or married to Mary Magdala...or gay. If you look hard enough you can find all of this heresy just waiting for the doubtful to accidentally embrace it. It's a short fall from there to deciding all the other "religious" documents in the world have something valid to say and by then you'll be bitter and agnostic.

I'm telling you this because I lived it for almost two decades. If you don't trust God enough to belive in Him without any Bible to "affirm" your faith there isn't any book out there including the Bible that will make things better for you.

Good luck and God bless you

Okay let me ask you men and women something if there are other books out there in the world why do we assume that are bible is correct...i mean i do have faith trust me im just trying to understand how is this a for sure reason way to get to are Lord whose in heaven im just saying whose 2 say?

 

[ladylovesJesus]

The Bible is God's love letter to us.

Whoever does not believe it is the truth and obeys what Jesus says does not have Jesus in their heart.

The Bible was written by different people with the experiences they had with Jesus.

It is the only book which is true and can be relied on to help us live our lives for Jesus daily.

2 Tim.3

15 how from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

1 Cor.15

3 For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 5and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. 6 After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, 8 and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.

Mark 13.3

As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John and Andrew asked him privately, 4"Tell us, when will these things happen? And what will be the sign that they are all about to be fulfilled?"

5 Jesus said to them: "Watch out that no one deceives you. 6 Many will come in my name, claiming, 'I am he,' and will deceive many. 7 When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. 8 Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be earthquakes in various places, and famines. These are the beginning of birth pains.

9 "You must be on your guard. You will be handed over to the local councils and flogged in the synagogues. On account of me you will stand before governors and kings as witnesses to them. 10 And the gospel must first be preached to all nations. 11 Whenever you are arrested and brought to trial, do not worry beforehand about what to say. Just say whatever is given you at the time, for it is not you speaking, but the Holy Spirit.

12 "Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child. Children will rebel against their parents and have them put to death. 13 All men will hate you because of me, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved.

God bless :rainbow: :rose:

 

[stephen]

Okay let me ask you men and women something if there are other books out there in the world why do we assume that are bible is correct...i mean i do have faith trust me im just trying to understand how is this a for sure reason way to get to are Lord whose in heaven im just saying whose 2 say?

I repeat, perhaps what I have said before in this thread. The important thing is not the books.........it is Jesus. When you meet Him.........books are secondary. I am talking about a risen Jesus, one who will thrill you through and through.

When you and others talk about books..........ok. But have you met the Master? This is not about intellect, understanding, books etc. It has to do with spiritual man. It has to do with meeting the Spirit of God. An encounter with the Almighty

That is what I want to communicate to you

God Bless

 

[Janette]

Inerrancy

I'm going to say the first thing I've ever said on this forum that might get me into trouble, but I think it will answer your question:

God never claimed inerrancy for His Bible.

He calls His Word eternal, binding, sufficient, complete, consistent, relevant and true. But He never calls it inerrant. Not in Hebrew, not in Greek, not in Aramaic, and certainly not in any more recent language.

---

I get a bit weary when I hear people teach that the KJV is "perfect" in the "original English" as if it is without any human error or editing and was absolutely (with both 100% accuracy and 100% precision) translated from the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek to the Latin and then to the English without so much as a misplaced vowel jot.

Any secular scholar can give you hundreds of reasons (and examples) why this simply did not happen. The truth is that in some cases there are words in ancient Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek that do not even have a direct one-to-one correlation with English.

In fact, if you do a direct word-by-word comparison between the oldest available manuscripts and those used to create our modern Bibles, you will find they differ from an average of one word in five. There's no lack of secular Biblical scholars harping all over that fact, so I figured I'd go ahead and put it out there.

But for lack of faith, they are missing the point and so are you.

Leaving aside the impossibility of a complete direct translation, what I am telling you is that human editing or "error" just doesn't matter.

God knew He was giving His Word to imperfect humans to keep and record. He absolutely knew we'd miss a word here or lose a book there as time went on.

It doesn't matter.

God is infinitely more powerful than the limitations of humanity. Give God the credit He deserves.

Let me not so humbly remind you that God created every language on the planet, and God knew these problems would exist as we tried to translate His word from tongue to tongue.

God had a plan in place all along, and He has consistently made the impossible -- possible.

Not only did God see to it that we got the whole message despite losing this or that book down through the years, He also saw to it that even our "errors" ...whether willful (like the scribe who changed "poisoner of wells" into the word "witch" at King James' request (and left a diary record of the change) or accidental (like the scribe who translated "man's items" to "garments" because he didn't know what items the original text referenced), would only serve to support and glorify God's message in the end.

----

How can something be erroneous and true at the same time?

Well I'm not God, but even I can show you an example:

Let's say we go camping and I point to you and say,

"Don't eat those purple mushrooms, because they are poisonous and could kill you."

Then you turn to your friend behind you and you say,

"Eat not of the lavender dirt-fruit, lest you die from their unclean oils."

...Gee did you say exactly what I said? No.
Did the message get across well enough? Yep.

And that was all done in the same language!

---

God however has an absolute command of all languages, 100% accuracy and precision (they aren't the same thing) to know what words people would pick, and absolute control over who is doing the writing.

Trust God to have gotten it right, OK?

 

[xDICEx]

I shall try to make this short, though it desirves an extended answer. Might I say here that the assumption that books mentioned in scripture are inspired books now lost or unidentified is only an assumption. Paul quotes paggan poets in some of his letters; they are not inspired. Enoch exists today as it has for the past thousands of years; It has never been included in the cannon of scripture. Hebrew Rabbis and Christian schoolars have sited their reasions for as long. There are explanations that account for these facts without attributing any losses incured to inspired scripture. These appologetics are valuable for they preserve the integrity of the 66 books of the Bible. The doctrine that is defended in that way is called: "plenary inspiration," and has to do with the compleetness of the 66 Bible books.

Still published today by Baker Book House is Thomas Hartwell Horns classic Introduction to Holy Scripture. It is a couple hundred years old but it is more complete in this regard than any thing published today. In it, all these questions are treated with, and the verdict of the Bible's perfect unblemished compleetness is more than vindicated. For now though: only remove the supposition that these missing books are devinely inspired and intended by God to be included in original scripture, and the other questions posed to assalt the existing scriptures evaporates. Is it not so?

 

[Chad]

If your truly sincere in seeking Jesus Christ as Savior, and not just "asking" for clarification on the assumed lost books read this forums' articles, mainly sticky threads on top. You will be blown away by the power of the Bible, the main authoritative Holy Spirit inspired compilation of 66 books we call Scripture.

http://www.talkjesus.com/evidence-prophecy-facts/

 

[Coconut]

I repeat, perhaps what I have said before in this thread. The important thing is not the books.........it is Jesus. When you meet Him.........books are secondary. I am talking about a risen Jesus, one who will thrill you through and through.

When you and others talk about books..........ok. But have you met the Master? This is not about intellect, understanding, books etc. It has to do with spiritual man. It has to do with meeting the Spirit of God. An encounter with the Almighty

That is what I want to communicate to you

God Bless

Amen, and glory to God!

Its not "by no other Book", but "by no other NAME!"

Act 4:12 Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.

 

[Coconut]

But if you approach God warily like there's some secret you haven't been given yet, the devil will, I absolutely assure you, send you looking for secret after secret until you are too busy doing that to talk to God at all.

Once you start to doubt the Word even a little bit, you'll find yourself digging into book after book and scroll after scroll until Everything seems to mean Something but Nothing really means Anything and you'll end up curled in a fetal ball chewing on things because the world won't make sense anymore.

About that time, the devil will point you towards the other "lost" books -- the ones that say Eve and Satan had children together or that Jehovah is really the devil in disguise or that Jesus was an extra-terrestrial... Or married to Mary Magdala...or gay. If you look hard enough you can find all of this heresy just waiting for the doubtful to accidentally embrace it. It's a short fall from there to deciding all the other "religious" documents in the world have something valid to say and by then you'll be bitter and agnostic.

I'm telling you this because I lived it for almost two decades. If you don't trust God enough to belive in Him without any Bible to "affirm" your faith there isn't any book out there including the Bible that will make things better for you.

AMEN! The Holy Spirit has done some inspiring in this thread!

Mat 16:17 Then Jesus said to him, "How blessed are you, Simon, son of John! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven has.

1Th 2:13 Here is another reason why we constantly give thanks to God: When you received God's word, which you heard from us, you did not accept it as the word of humans but for what it really is-the word of God, which is at work in you who believe.