Book Four of The Lessons of Jesus · Free
Understanding the Apocrypha
Jesus explains the books your Bible left out
The books some Bibles keep, some leave out, and no church ever kept, one chapter each, in his own voice: what each one says, who wrote it, which Bibles keep it, where you hear it in your own Bible, and how close it stays to what he taught. Every claim has a source. Every verse is one tap away.
Twenty-five chapters, one for every book. Quotations of the Bible and the Apocrypha are from the World English Bible, in the public domain.
Twenty-five chapters, in four parts.
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How the chapters work, who decided what went into the Bible, and the yardstick I measure these books by.
The Apocrypha of the 1611 King James Bible
The fourteen books printed between the Old and New Testaments in the first King James Bible. Most of them are scripture in Catholic and Orthodox churches today, and most Protestants have never read them.
- 11 Esdras: What Is Strongest
- 22 Esdras: The Man Who Argued With an Angel
- 3Tobit: The Man Who Buried the Dead
- 4Judith: By the Hand of a Woman
- 5The Additions to Esther: Putting God Back In
- 6The Wisdom of Solomon: The Righteous Man They Planned to Kill
- 7Sirach: A Teacher Who Had My Name
- 8Baruch and the Letter of Jeremiah: Gods That Cannot Help the Widow
- 9The Song of the Three: Prayer Inside the Furnace
- 10Susanna: The Woman Two Judges Accused
- 11Bel and the Dragon: The Footprints in the Ashes
- 12The Prayer of Manasseh: The Worst King Asks for Mercy
- 131 Maccabees: The Hammer and the Holiday
- 142 Maccabees: The Mother and Her Seven Sons
The Extra Books of the Orthodox Bibles
Three more books kept by the Greek and other Eastern Orthodox churches, and almost unknown in the West.
The Books Only Ethiopia Kept
Two books my people were reading in my own lifetime, quoted and echoed in your New Testament, and then lost everywhere except the Bible of Ethiopia.
The Lost Gospels
Six books written about me in the century or so after the four gospels in your Bible. No church ever put them in its Bible. Several were found again only in the last hundred and fifty years.
- 20The Gospel of Thomas: Sayings Without a Story
- 21The Gospel of Peter: A Talking Cross and a Clean Pilate
- 22The Gospel of Mary: The Woman Who Taught the Men
- 23The Gospel of Judas: The Betrayer as the Hero
- 24The Protoevangelium of James: My Mother’s Childhood
- 25The Infancy Gospel of Thomas: The Boy Who Killed His Playmates
The back of the book
A last word, then every date on one line and everyone the book names, in one place.
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