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Additional books to Bible?

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Touma

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This thought crosses my mind from time to time. What would we as the Christian community do, if there was a letter from the apostles that had been found, and it was authentic? Would we add it to the Bible? How would that work? What about all those that say the Bible is complete? Its always fascinated me how this works.
 

Touma

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I should make mention that I don't mean any of the 'lost' books that are talked about in pop. culture, like the gnostic gospels or whatever. I am talking about a very authentic letter, or writing from early Christians, ie a Third Corinthians, or something to that effect.
 
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St_Worm2

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Hi Zilam, interestingly, I believe there are two more letters to the Corinthians, written by St. Paul, but not considered to be Holy Scripture.

Yours and His,
David
 
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Touma

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DaLeKo said:
Hi Zilam, interestingly, I believe there are two more letters to the Corinthians, written by St. Paul, but not considered to be Holy Scripture.

Yours and His,
David
Click to expand...
Oh, I was just making that up as an example. But why would we not consider those as Scripture? I understand why the councils choose what we have now, but why not some other things written by the same people?
 
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calluna

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Zilam said:
This thought crosses my mind from time to time. What would we as the Christian community do, if there was a letter from the apostles that had been found, and it was authentic? Would we add it to the Bible?
Click to expand...
That would depend on whether the letter was divinely inspired, or not; and whether we were born again of the Spirit, or not. If the letter was not of mundane character, and inspired, we would instantly love it, or hate it, according to the spirit within us.

How would that work? What about all those that say the Bible is complete?
Click to expand...
If such an inspired letter was discovered, and contained essential new information, it would be difficult to explain how God permitted his word to go unnoticed for 2000 years or more. There is a fundamental reason for saying that the Bible is complete.
 
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wildboar

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There are some differing canons depending upon what branch of the church you are talking about but canonicty was generally determined by widespread usage so it wouldn't seem wise to try to add a book in 2000 years later. Everything that Paul said or did as an apostle was not infallible.
 
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MrPolo

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We have an example I believe called the Epistle of Barnabas, for example, that is believed to be written by the apostle Barnabas, but not considered divinely inspired. The first couple centuries criteria for a book to be in Scripture includes its use in the Liturgy. So, hypothetically, this "new found" book would have to assimilate its way into that category.
 
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I trust that God was intimately involved in crafting the Bible for the ages, such that he left out parts that may have been unnecessary, redundant, or not considered worthy for maximum edification purposes.

The apostles themselves were not perfect at times, although we'd like to consider them infallible. So it is possible that an epistle or two may have contained messages that were good, but didn't meet the criteria God established for his printed Word.

Having said this, I wouldn't be too concerned about other epistles. I supposed I'd read them, but would have to discern them heavily with the Bible.

Other books like the 'Book of Enoch' is something I wouldn't even consider God's Word.
 
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wildboar

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I think MrPolo does have a point. People simply didn't have Bibles in their homes until the 16th century. The Scriptures were preserved within the body of the church in the liturgy, especially in the lectionary readings. If a church never read a Scripture passage for all practical purposes it was not part of the canon for that congregation and over time there was a general consensus about what should be read as well as books which some churches read and others didn't.
 
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wildboar

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I don't think the canon should be looked upon as something that was determined in the 16th century. The Bible was primarily written to be heard by a number of people while one person read. The Epistles for instance were read in the churches. People weren't sitting around talking about chapter and verse divisions and flipping around in their Bibles. The 16th century printing of the Bible merely reflected canons that had already been established. The idea that people can just sit in their homes by themselves and study their Bibles is a very modern one.
 
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