Banned Books of the Bible

Although most people might assume that the Bible has always existed in its present state, that answer couldn't be any further from the truth. Tune in to learn more about how the bible has changed over time -- including what got added in, taken out and why.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
From UFOs two Ghosts and government cover ups. History is
writtled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to now, Hello,
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt and
I'm Ben, and that makes this stuff they don't want
you to know. So right off the top, we uh,

(00:24):
we see that you guys have been enjoying our series
on the Bible and apocrypha and things of that nature,
and we got some feedback from some of you. So
right off the top here we're gonna we're going to
address some of the things that you wrote to us. Absolutely.
First things first, we owe a big thank you to
John F and Nate S. Both of these guys separately

(00:47):
wrote into uh give us a correction, and we welcome
those where John says, hey, guys, just saw band Books
of the Bible episode. Looks like you generally did a
great job with your fact checking. There's one piece I
thought would read more or confusion than education. About one
minute and you mentioned that some books only exist in
one version of the Bible. While you're saying this, you're
showing the title page of the Book of Mormon and

(01:08):
captioning first Book of me five Book of Mormon. This
confusion would be that the Book of Mormon never claims
to be a version of the Bible or a missing
book of the Bible. It's an entirely separate book of
scripture that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day
Saints asserts as harmonious with the Bible. So he goes
on to say, the Book of Mormon does mention the

(01:29):
existence of plates of brass, a version of the scriptures
that existed at about six hundred BC, and they evidently
contained the five books of Moses, Azaiah, and some of Jeremiah,
along with some other lost writings, writings of Xenoc, writings
of Zenos. But again, the Book of Mormon itself is

(01:49):
not really a missing Biblical book. And Nate wrote in
to say very much the same thing, that the Book
Mormon is a totally separate book, and we appreciate that
very much. We also want to move on and reassure
our buddy Sandy Rogers out there on Twitter. Sandy, you
wrote to us, you're an Old Testament scholar, and uh,

(02:13):
you wrote to us with something that was an editing
error on my part. There's a part in there where
we talk about uh, the first five books of the Bible,
and the date there is listed as twelve fifty BC
as those books becoming accepted as law. That is incorrect,
and that editing error came from one of the things

(02:35):
that I was doing at the time. Guys. I started
out with a script that would probably be about ten
ten pages long, and because there's so much to talk
about with this, and so as shaving the script down
further and further and further, especially the complex process or evolution, right,

(02:56):
which is weird, but it's the best term for evolution
of the Bible. That I had messed up some of
the dates when I was cutting things down and swishing
them back together. You can find reference to UH this date,
specifically the twelve fifty BC date in a excellent Straight

(03:16):
Dope article on the authorship of the Bible. It's a
it's a five part article. I think is in part
one because logically it's at the beginning with all that
out of the weight and thank you to Sandy, Nate
and John again, Uh, we still had a pretty kick
ass episode, oh I think so. And a lot of
that was doing part two, our working with all time

(03:38):
conspiracies again one of our favorite YouTube channels. Really appreciate it. Guys,
if you're listening, and hopefully if you're listening to this,
maybe you like that channel too. They're tremendously exciting. I
I watched their videos on the edge of my seat. Yeah,
if you like our show, you'll like There's There's as well.
And one other thing I want to just mention here, Ben,
and I want to get your opinion on it. I

(04:00):
noticed that there were a lot of utube YouTube comments
saying that they disliked our use of B C E
as in before common era and ce common era rather
than B C and a d um. And that is
the at least from a handbook standpoint of writing handbook standpoint,
that is the correct way to write that, is it not?

(04:21):
It's a It's a stylistic choice one that I honestly
I couldn't care either way about, because you know, we
we get the language, and these conventions descended from uh
a legacy of other use. The modern environment right admittedly

(04:42):
more secular than when the terms B C and A
D were made. The idea before Christ and then after
the death of Christ, and in many cultures that do
not you know, do not have a large Christian population.
You might see that date used just because it was
a round and it's what people understand it was right.

(05:04):
And it's kind of like how when people say awesome,
at least in the United States, they don't mean awe inspiring.
When people say brilliant in England they mean okay, uh,
this you know, this is an interesting question for you
to bring up here, um, because from what I understood
what I was looking at, a lot of the comments
people thought it was going out of the way to

(05:26):
be politically correct. That's that's what I saw mostly. But
I think, again, what is the name of that style
guide that there's m L A and there's a P A.
A P A is the one that I've always ended
up using, But I know and there its states CE
and b C are the correct way now, ah yeah,

(05:47):
And you'll see B C E UH and C E
in quite a few academic papers as well. For for
our purposes, you know, I don't mean to sound disrespectful
to either secularists or the religious, but uh, for our
purposes there, at least as far as I'm concerned, they're

(06:09):
markings in time. But I know that a lot of
other people care much more deeply about this, and if
there's an overwhelming thing, if you have an overwhelming reason
why I think we should use B C E and
C E or B C and A d uh, then
please right in because that Matt, I think this is
something a little closer to you than it is to me.

(06:30):
To me, it's kind of either way. It's either way
for me, I guess because we were making an episode
specifically about the Bible in Jesus, maybe people saw that
there was some kind of discrepancy there. That's a good point.
But I think we've done B C E and C
E for a very long time on our show in total,
and we probably had a lot of new people watching

(06:52):
that video because of the all time conspiracy thing. But anyway,
I just wanted to get your opinion, because yeah, I'm interesting,
I'm interesting it to us see what people think. The
point of it being bad for the sake of political correctness.
I guess that's a valid perspective, for sure. I could
see it, But that's not why we were doing it.

(07:16):
That's not why I was doing it. I don't know.
I don't know what the motivation is. I hear you,
all right, Well, let's jump into some of the core
of what we talked about in our video series, and
the first thing that we looked at is apocrypha and
what is apocrypha. Apocrypha would be, if you defined it,
the writings or statements that have dubious authenticity. I really

(07:40):
like that phrasing, dubious authenticity. I'm not really sure who
wrote this. That's very polite. Yeah, exactly, very BC oh Man.
But it has another meaning as well, in the proper
sense when you know when it's capitalized. It can refer
specifically to books that were included in the Septigent and

(08:01):
the Vulgate but excluded from the Jewish and Protestant canons
of the Old Testament. Right, that's right, and there are
a lot of early Christian writings that were not included
in the New Testament. Right. And the the origin of it.
The etymology is the is Latin and it means secret,

(08:21):
not canonical. Comes from Greek apocryphos obscure to hide away.
Apocryphos is one of my new favorite words. I know
it sounds like a d C. Villain doesn't know apocryphos. Uh. Yeah,
So we know that apocrypha can have a very specific

(08:41):
definition depending upon one's denomination. One thing that we discovered
as we were working on our series is that it
took a while for Christianity in general to develop a canon,
and in depending upon the type of Christianity that we're

(09:04):
looking at, that cannon or that idea of what is
canonical changes. And we talked about how when people were
deciding what to leave in the Bible, what to make official,
then they would give themselves kind of a rubric and
they would say, well, we'll leave it in the Bible
if it is from the apostles, if it is clearly

(09:27):
inspired by God and true and not written by people. Okay,
let's put it this way, Ben, I'm gonna come to
you with some books. Uh. And these are books that
these are writings, early writings that I want to have
included in the Bible. And here are some reasons that
you say, no, dude, okay, all right, I'm into it.

(09:48):
So I come to you with you this book. And
it's obviously fraudulent. It was created far after the original
works that were that are already included in what you
think should be the Bible, and they are made to
create some kind of political point or stance or maybe
a statement, um, maybe even to sucker somebody into believing

(10:09):
a certain thing. I see, Okay, but they're they're obviously fraudulent,
Like let me write the end down here, okay. Yeah.
Or if I came to you with a book that
you believe is not inspired by God or written instead
by a man or somebody that you know to be
a man, um, just a human being, You're like, Okay,

(10:29):
that's Bob over there. He definitely wrote this. M Yeah,
that's probably not going to go in Okay, So something
like and Mary spake into the masses saying Bob, well, yeah,
it's awesome. And I mean that in the real sense
of the word, especially if it's quoting Jesus perhaps, I mean,
that's you can't put that in the Bible. Here's another

(10:52):
reason I bring a book to you that has glaring errors,
like historical errors in them. So such as the Book
of Judith, where it said Nebuchaennezzar the second was the
king of uh what is it, Niver, rather than Babylon,
which he was the king of Babylon at least historically. Okay,

(11:14):
I see what you're saying. So matters of known secular fact,
for instance, or wrong, or maybe they these books contradict
things that are already set forth and agreed on in
the canon exactly. Perhaps someone was trying to rewrite history,
as we've seen people are wanting to do. Sometimes the
last thing is if it's heretical or it's against the

(11:37):
doctrine that's already in place. So, yeah, you really don't
want to mess with the current canonical belief system because
you do that. And uh, back in the day, there
were probably some serious consequences. Oh yeah, I see what
you're saying. So we also have examples of some of
the books that were banned. So we asked you, if

(11:59):
you watch the YouTube episode two, suggest for us in
our update video some books that we should take a
closer look at, and we just wanted to run through
a few of those. Unfortunately, as we said in the video,
we couldn't choose everything. Uh, but one of the first
ones was the Book of Enoch. Yeah, and in the
Book of Enoch it describes in great detail all of

(12:23):
these different trips that were taken by Enoch to Heaven
in various forms. So the Book of Enoch itself is
separated into these five sections. You've got the Book of Watchers,
the Book of Parables of Enoch, the Astronomical Book, the
Book of dream Visions, and the Epistle of Enoch. And
each one of these different sections of the Book of

(12:44):
Enoch has its own take on Christian history, and it
gives you all kinds of interesting concepts that have been
used throughout time. So it's it's a fascinating book, and
I'd recommend anybody who has the time go out and
find a copy, or you know, find it online somewhere, right, Yeah,
you can find this online. It's not a it's not
some hidden grimoire or something like that. And unfortunately, the

(13:09):
same unique takes are part of the reason that this
book was banned are classified rather as an apocryphal text.
A lot of scholars believe it's because it had these
detailed portrayals of the Fallen Angels, or more ominously, the Watchers.
That's the coolest part to me about the whole book. Yeah,
to me, that's the coolest part too. There's a quote

(13:31):
here from Free Republic that I enjoyed and I wanted
to just read for you guys on the show. Here
this scripture reads like a modern day action film telling
a Fallen Angels bloodthirsty giants, and Earth that had become
home to an increasingly flawed humanity and a divine judgment
to be rendered. So it does sound kind of like

(13:53):
an action movie. And if you get a chance, you know, Matt,
you're right, check it out and read it. But because
of because of the stuff that it dealt with, especially
the weird question of that the fallen Angels, the Watchers, Nephilin,
all that sort of stuff, the Western Bibles don't use it. However,

(14:14):
Ethiopian Christians do. Yeah, that's really cool. And it should
be noted that a lot of this was recovered through
the Dead Sea Scrolls. Um forget the date when those
are found. I know we talked about it, but the
Dead Sea Scrolls are a whole another thing. If you
have not looked that up, take a moment, maybe a
couple of hours, maybe a weekend. Just look out the

(14:36):
Dead Sea Scrolls. Fascinating stuff. Yeah, cancel what you're doing
for the next day. Yeah. Well, if you're interested in
this stuff at all, you probably already know about it.
But even if you're not, Uh, there's some crazy awesome
history there. Yeah, and see how I used awesome. By
the way, I think it's awesome. Yeah. Uh. And next
we have a little something called the Gospel of Mary.

(14:58):
So this is the second of the banned books of
the Bible, and it was carbon dated between eighteen hundred
and one y d. So there's a bit of a
range there when this could have been produced. The Gospel
of Mary looks at the relationship between Jesus Christ and
Mary Magdalene. So, as the writings go, Mary was Jesus's

(15:20):
most trusted companion um and I used the word companion
there to imply what the book implies, and a lot
of the other apostles really didn't like that fact and
they despised her. So in the Gospel of Mary, Jesus
reminds the apostles that the inner self is comprised of

(15:41):
a couple of things, the spirit, the soul, and the
mind and all ultimate salvation. He says in this that
it comes from within each person. So it's not something
that you can go out and get. You have to
find it inside yourself. And it's not something you need
an intermediary exactly like a clergy for if it's inside you,

(16:03):
nobody has to excise it. You just have to find it.
And uh, that was that was kind of a heavy
blow to the Book of Mary Magdalene when people are
looking at whether or not it should go in the Bible. Yeah,
not to mention the way that it contradicts some of
the more patriarchal teachings that became a doctrine for a

(16:25):
long time. And it's sort of a gnostic text to uh,
the idea that Mary Magdalene might have been an apostle,
maybe even one of the top dog apostles. Uh. Some
text in the Bible, you know, controversially seemed to deny
women a voice in in parts of it. And again,
this is all we're talking about a book with multiple

(16:48):
authors over multiple periods of time. Uh. This text is
often thought to be a major flashpoint for the debate
about the role of women in the Ristian Church. And
this idea that Jesus would share secret knowledge with Mary
that he wouldn't share with the rest of the gang

(17:09):
is uh, something that's gonna pop up in another band book.
It's it creates such an interesting picture in my head
of the idea that perhaps Mary was kind of jesus
right hand person, and then all the other apostles are
so jealous and angry about it. They're just throw accusations
she's a prostitute, she's a bad person. I don't I'm so,

(17:31):
I'm not saying that that is true in any way.
I think it just creates a very interesting picture interest. Yeah, definitely.
And then there's there's the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. The
gist of it is sort of a young Jesus, Jesus
as a kid. Uh And again, not to be disrespectful
in any way. It made me think of when uh

(17:56):
TV shows have the young version of something amount like
Young Indiana Jones and those things. Yeah, those prequels and stuff,
and they don't quite take off, uh successfully either. And
and there's an you know, it's not just that Jesus
was a young person in this, you know, before he

(18:18):
turned in his thirties and stuff. Instead, this is because
it depicts the gospel. The Infancy Gospel of Thomas depicts
Jesus in a much different light in terms of behavior
and everything. Well, yeah, okay, let's just go ahead and
say what it is that was in there some of
the things. So the book deals with a strong willed

(18:40):
young Jesus who did a couple of things. One in
particular may not be good for the at least the
story of Jesus. It it says that around age five,
Jesus may or may not have pushed another kid off
of a roof, killing him and then bringing him back
to life Jesus style. And that's you know, that's that's

(19:03):
pretty disturbing, especially to be included in the idea already
of this picture that's been painted of Jesus as it
is non you know, well somewhat non violent guy. And
I think that's a really good point, man. I'm sorry.
And would I mean, is that a sin? Killing somebody?
And then if you bring him back to life, is
it still a sin? Can you imagine the debates that

(19:25):
would have to occur. Wow, that's really that's a deep
question too. And and the the idea that it could
set up such a precedent in the church at large. Wow,
that I see what you're saying. So there's a doctrinal
difference there too. And at this point, I think, before
we move on to the next one, it's very important

(19:46):
for us to say that we are not in any
way criticizing and historical Jesus Christ. What we're doing, more
so is following the uh this sort of wonderful tapestry
of things that sprang up again from you know, oral

(20:08):
traditions and from translations that were not always the best
and sometimes translations of translations. Yeah, definitely, And to me,
there's something there's something beautiful about the idea that this
sort of thing could exist and all these other all

(20:28):
these other variations of it come come out because you know,
what it kind of makes me think of is if
it's if we take a book that is clearly written
by a person who was a fraudster or something, it's
almost like fan fiction, Matt. It's so then of course,
if you're the person in charge of maintaining the actual

(20:52):
book after the cannon has been decided, then you're not
going to include fan fiction. Uh. It's it's a weird,
awkward parison, but it is very important. We have one
more book that you suggested that we wanted to check
into listeners, and that is the Gospel of Judas. Now

(21:12):
we're all familiar with Judas, the guy who betrayed Jesus
and got some silver for it and they hang himself. Okay,
so that's the guy that this story is, at least
the perspective of Judas. That's what this is about so uh.
There are conversations between Jesus Christ and the apostle Judas

(21:34):
is Scariot, and it provides a hard to find example
of how Jesus interacted with his kind of his closest people,
his closest allies and the teachings of Jesus are the
main focus of this book, and it provides again a
really unique and interesting perspective on how Jesus used his
apostles to kind of maximize his efforts in spreading out

(21:58):
the faith that he was spreading. Yeah. So the Book
of Judas itself, the Catholic Church considers it apocryphal because
it portrays Judas Is carry it as a good guy,
as a decent person. In fact, it portrays him as
someone who is doing what Jesus told him to do

(22:25):
from the beginning to the end, including you know, including
the Last Supper and taking the bribe and ultimately playing
such an influential hand in the crucifixion. Okay, this one
in particular, it strikes me pretty hard because I'm fascinated

(22:46):
by the idea that the entire lifespan of Jesus, if
he if he is a you know, he is God,
but not God. But you know it again, that the
whole another story we can get into. That's the huge
doctrinal conversation that they had at the first Council of Nicea,

(23:06):
right exactly, which is not where the Bible was finalized
or books were deemed apocrypha, and and there are all
kinds of arguments you can have with you could argue
for a thousand years about this stuff. But the idea
that if Jesus could see how his life was going
to play out, he would know that there is someone

(23:26):
Judas who was going to betray him so that he
would get crucified so that he would return back into heaven. Right.
So in in this Gospel of Judas is is just
wonderfully fascinating to me because I that idea that in
order for Judas to truly trust Jesus and follow along
with what he wanted, he just had to do that thing. Yeah,

(23:48):
controversial to say the very least about it, because you know,
Judas is one of the very complex characters in in
the narrow of the Bible, and so to flip it
to have this weird, honestly, to have this weird m
Night Shamalan kind of thing with it where he is

(24:11):
not only a good person, but maybe the best of
the disciples because he's following orders even unto killing uh,
the person who he worships. And this goes straight into nasticism, right, Matt,
the concept of dualism. Yes, that's where you get as
above so below you get all kinds of fun things

(24:32):
from narcissism, Sophia, Yalda both all that stuff, and in
Yin Yang as well. Yeah, and so of course this
book ends up being banned because it's supernostic in its
tone and content. It's set Judas above the other disciples.
And you know, if you have the Catholic Church, for instance,

(24:54):
which was founded on the rock with St. Peter, right, well,
then having Judases carry it then be the primary hidden hero,
right or the the main sidekick. I guess you wouldn't
be the hero of the Bible, but the main person.
That's not only controversial, but in a lot of ways

(25:17):
from from the church's perspective, it could be dangerous. Yeah,
oh yeah, Okay, So I just want to put out
here that one of the reasons that this, all of
these apocryphal texts are so interesting is a it's a
matter of perspective and something we talked about a lot.
If you can give yourself enough perspective on anyone's situation,

(25:40):
you're going to realize that once you once you can
see it all from all the angles, it is everything,
and especially the Bible is so much more complicated than
if you just look at it from one perspective. I
think that's really good pointment. Then. Also, uh, this brings
to minds a question that I got. I was asked

(26:04):
years and years ago and I have been thinking about
it ever since. And that question was to whom does
a work belong after it is written? This was for
a secular book, you know, with a single author that
we know of. And I was having this argument with
a couple of professors that I knew, and the the

(26:27):
argument that they were making as well, after a book
is written, write a novel whatever, Uh, the interpretation of
it and what it means, and the people who own
it are the readers or the critics. Now, let's just
go ahead and bracket the huge conflict of interests. Of course,

(26:49):
a professor or critic or someone whose job is it
is to analyze literature would say, well, you know, it's
up to us. We're the ones. Because people like to
be important. Yeah, and uh, it's the same way that
someone who sells tires will tell you that you need
uh tires there, you gotta get those new brake pads man,

(27:10):
right and yeah, and usually that's that's true for all
the mechanics uh and gearheads in our audience. You guys
know as well as I do that people don't take
care of their tires. But that's a different show. That's
a different I. Um which not Kaufman Tires, just this
guy we know named Kaufman. He just collects tires. But uh,

(27:33):
but yes, the point that I make there is that
a lot of the debate about apocrypha, or the debate
about banning uh certain things from a Bible or creating
a canonical version of it goes back to the same
old debate about who who has ownership or authority over

(27:56):
the Bible. And I think that's one of the reasons
there are so many splits in the very space, you know,
as it's as Christianity was growing, because everybody had a
different opinion, at least the people in power, and there
you go, you get all the varying versions. And what
is also exciting is to realize that while history from

(28:18):
our limited perspective, you met me, everybody listening to this
from our limited perspective, it's easy to mistake history for
a static thing, or for these large institutions for unchanging things.
But it couldn't be further from the truth. They just
appear not to move because they have such a longer

(28:41):
lifespan than we do. And the truth of the matter
is that not only have they not only have they changed, evolved, omitted, reversed,
and expanded over time, but those same changes are probably
not done. We're you know, we don't know. Another version

(29:03):
of a Bible may come out, new books may be added,
and then even eventually accepted. It really is um important
to emphasize that the march of history and the growth
of institutions is a continual process. It is not something
that happened once a few hundred years ago. Their new

(29:24):
archaeological discoveries all the time. Yeah, now, commodity, Egypt, some
of these things were found. That's uh, man, we just
gotta keep digging. Yeah, we have to keep digging, and
we hope that you will keep digging with us. So
the verdict the end of the show here is that yes, absolutely,

(29:47):
it was stuff the early Church did not want you
to know. And that doesn't mean it was necessarily bad.
It's just we're trying to get contradictions out of there. Yeah.
It was a group of people, varying groups of people
over time, that wanted to protect what they thought was
saying sacracy. Yeah. Yeah, and that's the perfect word for it.
So we'd like to hear what you think about the apocrypha,

(30:12):
and we'd also like to hear what you think we
should be digging into more deeply in the future. Check
out our website Stuff they Don't Want You to Know
dot com, where you can see all of our videos
and all of our podcasts and Matt. We're all over
the internet right now. We're on Facebook. We're conspiracy Stuff there.
We are at conspiracy Stuff on Twitter just to send

(30:34):
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you can always shoot us an email. We are conspiracy
and how Stuff works dot com. From more on this topic,
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