Are Books Missing From the Bible?

Added: 2026-05-22

[00:00:00]My question is, so I have friends who are Christians, but sometimes we get into conversations about missing books of the Bible and things of that sort.

[00:00:10]>> And I know somewhere in the New Testament, I was telling them about how >> I guess there was two apostles or two people had had arguments about what should be in the Bible and what shouldn't be. Hence why they have like the King James version and then the Ethiopian Bible. So, it's kind of a debate about it, which I just tell them, hey, as long as you know that Jesus came, died >> for our sins, and rose, then that's the whole essence of the New Testament and why we're still, you know, saved and Christians. Um, I just wanted to get your thoughts on the, I guess, the missing books of the Bible and different, uh, I guess, testaments in regards to that. Well, let's just look at the three major sort of um groups in Christianity. The Protestants, the Catholics, and the Orthodox. Okay. Um from our perspective, most of the people here in America would either be Catholic or Protestant. So, we'll focus on them.

[00:01:14]The Catholics and the and the Protestants agree on the New Testament exactly the same. The pro the the the Catholics have seven additional books in the Old Testament called the Apocrypha, sometimes called the Duderroan canonical books, which means second cannon. Okay. Now, my friend Paul Cunningham of the Live Free podcast just did a 36 minute session on this. We can put it in the show notes on why the Apocrypha does not belong in the Old Testament. So I won't belabor the point here. Uh I think the version that we have in our Protestants B Pro Protestant Bibles is the correct version of the Old Testament for several reasons. Okay. Um but we agree on the New Testament. So when it comes to the canon, which just means standard, the scholars who really investigate this, in fact, one of them is here in Charlotte, his name is Michael Krueger. He teaches at uh Reformed Theological Seminary. He's predestined to be there. And um he's one of the best guys on the cannon. He has a blog called canon fodder.

[00:02:29]C an o n fodder. So you might want to go there. He and others will say things like this.

[00:02:37]Human beings did not determine the canon. Human beings discovered the cannon. In other words, we discover what books God inspired. You may have heard that there are other gospels. I don't know if your friend is talking about that kind of thing like the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Judas, the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, the go, you know, these kind of gospel of Peter.

[00:03:02]When somebody says something, Josh, it's not your job to refute what they say.

[00:03:05]It's their job to support what they say.

[00:03:06]So, you might want to say to them something like this. Um, what do you mean by that? these additional books and what evidence do you have that those books should be in the Bible? Because it's not your job to say they shouldn't.

[00:03:19]It's his job to say they should. So, what evidence do you have they should be in the Bible? And see what he says.

[00:03:26]Because what he probably doesn't know is those books were not written by Peter, Judas, Mary Magdalene, Thomas.

[00:03:35]Those books were written a hundred years after those people had died. They're forgeries.

[00:03:42]In other words, people in the second century wrote them down and they said, "If I want people to believe this, I got to put a an apostle's name on it." Ah, let me put Thomas on here. Let me put Peter on here. Let me put Judas. Oh, why is anybody going to read Judas? I don't know. LET'S PUT THEM ON THERE. RIGHT?

[00:03:58]SO, they they take names that people would associate with authority and they would put them on those books. So then people would maybe accept them, but they never were considered holy scripture.

[00:04:11]They're far too late. The authors are not the authors that bear their names.

[00:04:17]They're forgeries.