Breaking the credibility of the Bible and mutating it. The politics of selecting books to make up the Bible. Part 1 of 4.
Christians think of the Bible as being a definitive thing and just published whole. Instead it is constructed based on a variety of judgments which Christians then and now don't agree on.
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There is more than one way to bring down Christianity and having it descend into madness is one of them.
Books in and out of the Bible
If you asked most people about the Bible, they would just assumed that it is an unproblemaitic thing. They don’t know much how it came into being.
The primary difference at one point was the difference between the Catholic and Protestant Bibles involving the Old Testament.
The following is an explanation from the Baptist point of view. It lists the books and parts of books not in the Protestant Bible, but in the Catholic Bible. For the Old Testament the Catholics have 46 versus the Protestant having 39.
Catholics and Protestants have the same 27-book New Testament. Thus, the differences between their Bibles concerns the boundaries of the Old Testament canon. In short, Catholics have 46 books, while Protestants have 39. Thus, Catholics have seven more books and also some additions within shared books: Tobit, Judith, Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus / Sirach / Ben Sira, 1–2 Maccabees, Baruch, and the additions to Daniel and Esther.
Protestants call these books collectively, “the Apocrypha,” while Catholics refer to them as “the Deuterocanon.” Here, “Deuterocanon” does not mean second in authority but second only in reception in time.
https://textandcanon.org/why-the-catholic-bible-has-more-books-than-the-protestant-bible/
The story of the origins of the differences of the Catholic Bible versus the Protestant Bible very clearly show that the Bible is the outcome of a political process involving struggles for dominance. Both sides of this dispute today over what is considered the Bible wear suits and ties and are with large credible looking institutions of persons with deep education regarding the Bible and its origin. Most importantly these two seemingly credible authoritative experts don’t agree.
So when they don’t accept other books as part of the Bible we can point out that they can’t agree among themselves what the Bible is and that it is a political process.
Catholic versus Orthodox Bibles
They are slightly different for the Old Testament, though the same in the New Testament.
This is the Roman Catholic explanation.
https://www.catholic.com/qa/do-catholics-and-orthodox-have-the-same-bible
Again, it shows that what is the Bible and what isn’t the Bible varies, even though they are very credible seeming experts.
Ethiopian Bible
Way different from the Catholic Bible. It has 35 books in the New Testament versus the Protestant and Catholic 27. It has 46 books in the Old Testament matching the number in the Catholic Old Testament, but not necessarily the same books.
Even Churches who are in communion with each other disagree over the question of which books belong in the Holy Bible. One Church which occupies a unique position in this regard is the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahdo Church. Currently, it is the only Church whose Bible is comprised of 81 Books in total, 46 in the Old Testament, and 35 in the New Testament.1 It is also the biggest Bible, according to the number of books: Protestant Bibles usually contain 66 books, Roman Catholic Bibles 73, and Eastern Orthodox Bibles have around 76 books, sometimes more, sometimes less, depending on their belonging to the Greek Orthodox, Slavonic Orthodox, or Georgian Orthodox Church.
There are other complications about what makes up the Bible. Though the number of books given for the Catholic Bible and the Ethiopian Old Testament are the same, they are different books.
https://www.euclid.int/papers/Anke%20Wanger%20-%20Canon%20in%20the%20EOTC.pdf
Ethiopia derives it Bible from ancient sources that were ended in the Western Christian world.
This is an Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Source on the Bible, but also considers other writings important.
https://www.ethiopianorthodox.org/english/canonical/books.html
The really interesting difference is the Book of Enoch in the Ethiopian Old Testament. It will be discussed in a seperate posting.
The earliest extant Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible is the Septuagint.
It has additional books not in the Hebrew Bible. From the Wikipedia entry.
Although the Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church include most of the books in the Septuagint in their canons, Protestant churches usually do not. After the Reformation, many Protestant Bibles began to follow the Jewish canon and exclude the additional texts (which came to be called the Apocrypha) as noncanonical.[46][47] The Apocrypha are included under a separate heading in the King James Version of the Bible.[48]
So there are differences even between the Catholic and Orthodox from the Septiguent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Septuagint
Oriental Orthodox Churches
These are branches which seperated in very early times. These are the Christian religions in Syria, Egypt, Ethiopia, Eritrean, and some others.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oriental_Orthodox_Churches
Their Bibles vary.
There are other Christianities, finding information about their Bibles is a task yet to be done.
Gnostic Gospels
Out in the deserts in Egypt the rainfall is very little or non-existent. The humdity is very low. Books left out in the desert last for millenia.
There was the discover of the Nag Hammadi library with books hidden in jars in Egypt. Jars dug up.
The Nag Hammadi Library in English, James Robinson suggests that these codices may have belonged to a nearby Pachomian monastery and were buried after Saint Athanasius condemned the use of non-canonical books in his Festal Letter of 367 A.D. The Pachomian hypothesis has been further expanded by Lundhaug & Jenott (2015, 2018)[2][3] and further strengthened by Linjamaa (2024). In his 2024 book, Linjamaa argues that the Nag Hammadi library was used by a small intellectual monastic elite at a Pachomian monastery, and that they were used as a smaller part of a much wider Christian library.[4]
You learn from this that the modern Bible is result of threats to those who wanted to read the other books and consider them. That is the modern Bible is the product of the sword.
One of these was the complete text of the Gospel of Thomas and there were a lot of other Christian books. There is the Apocalypse of Paul which this Wikipedia entry explains is.
The text is derived from 2 Corinthians 12:2–4 and recounts the apostle Paul's journey and visions from the fourth heaven to the tenth heaven.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nag_Hammadi_library
These books are alled the Gnostic Gospels. They show a different Christianity.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/gnostic-gospels/
Oxyrhynchus is an excavation of a rubbish dump in which all sorts of papyri are found. Some of these are Christian texts. You can see that the authors of this Wikipedia are Catholics and American Protestants which they classify the found Christian papyri in their theological system. With computers fragments can be digitized and they can be matched up.
The Oxyrhynchus Papyri collection contains around twenty manuscripts of New Testament apocrypha, works from the early Christian period that presented themselves as biblical books, but were not eventually received as such by the orthodoxy. These works found at Oxyrhynchus include the gospels of Thomas, Mary, Peter, James, The Shepherd of Hermas, and the Didache. (All of these are known from other sources as well.) Among this collection are also a few manuscripts of unknown gospels. The three manuscripts of Thomas represent the only known Greek manuscripts of this work; the only other surviving manuscript of Thomas is a nearly complete Coptic manuscript from the Nag Hammadi find.[26] P. Oxy. 4706, a manuscript of The Shepherd of Hermas, is notable because two sections believed by scholars to have been often circulated independently, Visions and Commandments, were found on the same roll.[27]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxyrhynchus_Papyri
Fayum towns.
Abondoned, they left behind papyri also. Some relate to Christianity.
The previous places where losts manuscripts are found are just some of the places of note where manuscripts are found. The deserts of the Sahara are vast, there are caves here and there and likely there are manuscripts waiting for their accidental discovery when some excavation is started for some other purpose.
Lost books of the Bible. They are referred to in other works. From this Wikipedia entry.
Somewhere out in the desert somewhere it might be stuck in a jar or in a ruin waiting to be found or in an old library. Church politics decided they weren’t part of the Bible, and so weren’t kept and perhaps are lost forever, unless they are in a jar out in the desert hidden by some Christians like the Nag Hammadi books.
Lost texts referenced in the Old Testament
The book referred to at Exodus 17:14. Write this for a memorial in the book and recount it in the hearing of Joshua ...
The Book of the Covenant referred to at Exodus 24:7
The Book of the Wars of the Lord (Numbers 21:14)[4]
Manner of the Kingdom
Chronicles of the Kings of Israel[4]
Chronicles of the Kings of Judah[4]
Lost works referenced in Deutero-canonical texts
The five volume account of the Maccabean revolt compiled by Jason of Cyrene, abridged by the writer of 2 Maccabees[33]
Lost works referenced in the New Testament
Epistle from Laodicea to the Colossians
Lost works pertaining to Jesus
(These works are generally 2nd century and later; some would be considered reflective of proto-orthodox Christianity, and others would be heterodox.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_literary_work
Non-canonical books referenced in the Bible.
The Bible is supposed to be the revealed word of God, but evidently God made a mistake in mentioning these books. People who want to believe in these books refer to the Bible to justify them. This whole thing reveals how very constructed and political the make up of the Bible is.
Notice that this Wikipedia entry lists the Book of Enoch which the Ethiopean churches regard as canonical.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-canonical_books_referenced_in_the_Bible
What is the use of this information?
We can reduce the credibility of the Bible by showing its arbitrary constructed nature.
Christians will give long winded arguments as to why or why not a specific thing is in the Bible, but the fact that they can’t agree with each other diminishes their authority.
Mutating Christianity
Some of the books are full of really wild stuff, like the Book of Enoch, and if adopted by Christians would reduce the credibility of Christianity as it descended into madness.
Some of the Christian groups would be receptive to the Book of Enoch. They want a wild and estatic religion. Pentacostals speaking in tongues and falling over and spitting, want thrills and chills. The Book of Enoch is made for them.
Though large segments of Christianity are declining, not all. Some are growing and represent the future menace.
Christian Post, Feb1, 2025, “10 reasons why the Pentecostal Church is growing in the US.”
Pentacostals, who speak in tongues and spit, will be impervious to the usual already ineffective tactics of atheists of applying logic to Christianity and showing it as being illogical.
https://www.christianpost.com/voices/10-reasons-the-pentecostal-church-is-growing-in-the-us.html
A lot of the non-denominational churches are made of members whose motivation in joining the church is for religious thrills and drama. The Book of Enoch is made for them.
The other material, like the Gnostic Gospels have widely different Christian views. Some of them are likely full of drama and would be useful.
Series of posts to destablize and mutate Christianities
These posts are based on this post’s information above.
