Lost and Found: Sacred Texts

Lost books include apocryphal literature from heretics, grifters, and entrapment-dodging translators, but there's also genuine works that were abridged or edited later, allowing the originals to disappear in the fog of disuse. Some books are lost because their religious traditions and communities have died out or were pushed underground, and other books are the stuff of legend, and may never have really existed....

After our discussion of how the various canons were established, we MUST discuss what was left on the cutting room floor.

In addition to the more popular Deuterocanonical "Apocrypha" of the Alexandrian Greek Judeo-Christian tradition, there's a vast collection of other Jewish apocryphal and pseudepigraphical writings, and more from Christian writers. Some of our favorites are the Book of Jubilees, and the Testament of Job, and the Christian Infancy Gospels.

There is also material that was once listed with--and within--sacred texts that has been lost, including several Hebrew prophetic books mentioned in the Tanakh, and several lost apostolic letters mentioned in the New Testament canon. Even the original Book of Mormon has material that didn't make it into the final publication.

With these books, we also explore some of the lost books of Mani (the founder of Manichaeism), the legendary Purvas of Jainism, the burned books of the pre-colonial Mexicans of the Aztec Triple-Alliance, the Christian Book of Nepos, and the Gospel of Eve.

But all is not lost, we have been fortunate to discover--in the last century--the Nag Hammadi Library and the Dead Sea Scrolls, so we have to examine these, too.

Learn more about the Dead Sea Scrolls project at www.deadseascrolls.org.il

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