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Who wrote The Bible   Is the Bible really the inspired word of God?  Was it accurately preserved for thousands of years as a unique revelation from the Creator of the universe? Or is it just a collection of humanly devised myths and fables?  Do we even have the right books in the Bible, or are important sources missing that would change our view of God, Jesus Christ and Christianity? If you are among the approximately 32 percent of the world population that considers themselves Christian, you were probably raised to believe that the Bible was written in some sort of historical vacuum-the various authors being inspired by God alone and having no outside influences whatsoever. However, the many books that make up the Bible were, in fact, written by a number of different authors, some of whom are unknown. I believe in the bible. I believe it was written as facts and stories told by many people. I say "many people" as contrasting to the authors found in the Bible. Who are we to decide which authors get used to make the bible? The bible is made up of select authors who wrote down at their time what they knew or what might have come to be known to them. Moses Joshua Samuel Gad Nathan Ezra Nehemiah Mordecai David Solomon Isaiah Jeremiah Baruch Ezekiel Daniel  Matthew/Levi the disciple John Mark Luke the physician John the disciple Luke the physician Paul Barnabas Apollos James, brother of Jesus Peter the disciple John the disciple Judas, brother of Jesus Again, who is to declare whose material makes up the bible? The bible is and never was A BOOK as a book would be declared - somebody wrote about something and then published it; and then has the indication "written by John Doe". The bible is made up of documents recovered from all around the world from ancient times. Of "all" these documents found, an organization (religions) have placed only certain information by certain authors into making The Bible. Who's to say that these are the only authors to use?  Who's to say which religion is right? In the Catholic Church the bible version used is the Douay-Rheims Bible consisting of 73 books. In the Protestant church only the 66 books approved by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1885, which today is known as the Authorized King James Bible, are used.  No other books, neither the Apocrypha, which was included in the original King James Bible, nor the 22 books mentioned or quoted in the King James Bible, are considered inspired. There was no specific list or accounting of all the books that made up the Bible until the commission of the first Bible by the Emperor Constantine in the 4th Century AD. The books that make up the Authorized King James Bible were chosen by men, not divine forces.  The language of the King James Bible is obscure and limited. Christianity is the victim of the Roman Empire, under the Emperor Constantine, who blended the Christian Church with the institutionalized "pagan" practices of Rome and eliminated any semblance of either the Jewish religious influence or the first church Jesus established during his ministry. After solidifying his position to gain complete control of the western portion of the empire in 312, the Emperor Constantine instituted the Edict of Milan, a "Magna Carta of religious liberty," which eventually changed the Empire’s religion and put Christianity on an equal footing with paganism. Almost overnight the position of the Christian Church was reversed from persecuted to legal and accepted. Constantine began to rely on the church for support, and it on him for protection. The Church and the Empire formed an alliance, which remains to this day. Very rapidly, the laws and policies of the Empire and the doctrine of the Church became one with Constantine as the interpreter of both law and policy. This was accomplished by eliminating hundreds of books thought to be against "Church" doctrine and watering down what remained by blending Christian beliefs and practice with long established Roman sanctioned pagan worship.      Constantine believed that the Church and the State should be as close as possible. Constantine tolerated pagan practices, keeping pagan gods on coins and retaining his pagan high priest title "Pontifex Maximus" in order to maintain popularity with his former subjects. In 330 he began an assault on paganism but used a clever method of persuasion to force people to follow the laws by combining pagan worship with Christianity. He made December 25th, the birthday of the pagan Unconquered Sun god, the official holiday now celebrated as the birthday of Jesus. He also replaced the weekly day of worship by making rest on Saturday unlawful and forcing the new religion to honor the first, not the seventh day, as a day of rest. As a way of defining his concept of the new universal religion he simply classified everything "Jewish" to be an abomination. Considering almost every aspect of the Bible is "Jewish" by association, every doctrinal biblical principle was changed or eliminated. After 337 Constantine increased his purging of the more obvious aspects of paganism.      Through a series of Universal Councils, he and his successors completely altered doctrine without regard to biblical edict, set up a church hierarchy of his own design, and established a set of beliefs and practices, which are the basis for all mainstream Bible-based churches. The separation of the Protestants and the Roman Church caused a physical split but the beliefs and practices established by Constantine remained almost identical. Very little has changed since the 4th century Councils changed the face of Christianity. An effective practice instituted was the purging of any book in the formerly accepted biblical works, over 80% of the total, that church leaders felt did not fit within their new concept of Christianity. The doctrines and practices remaining in the surviving books were effectively eradicated by simply changing them by replacing clear scripture with Church-sanctioned doctrine. Constantine began what was to become a centuries long effort to eliminate any book in the original Bible that was considered unacceptable to the new doctrine of the church. At that time, it is believed there were up to 600 books, which comprised the work we now know as the Bible. Through a series of decisions made by the early church leadership, all but 80 of those books, known as the King James Translation of 1611, were purged from the work, with a further reduction by the Protestant Reformation bringing the number to 66 in the "Authorized" King James Bible.      What we now have in Bible-based religion, whether labeled as "Catholic", or Protesting Catholic, known as “Protestant", is unrecognizable form either the Hebrew religion, now known as the Jewish religion, or the church established at Jerusalem by the Apostles and disciples of Jesus. The practices of this first church are not practiced by any major religion and they are almost unknown, despite being clearly outlined in the existing New Testament. In its place are doctrines and practices first established in the first "true" Reformation of Christianity begun by Constantine.      There is much controversy over how many books the Bible should actually contain but considering the depth and scope of those few works remaining in the "accepted" Bible, we see but a fragment of incredible wisdom and history. A study of the Lost Books of the Bible is incomplete without a clear understanding that this is not a matter of simple loss, but a campaign by the Roman Catholic Church to purge books variously classified as heretical, dangerous, and corruptive. To the public they are “lost”; to the Church they are “forbidden”. Although the exact number of books purged is known only to the Church, and not shared knowledge, some can be determined by the discovery of their presence in the church prior to the reformation resulting in what became known as the Roman "Universal" Church.      One of the more obvious forms of discovery comes from the surviving books themselves, which sight works not present in the existing collection. Also many do not know that the Apocryphal books were actually included in the King James translation until they were officially purged by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1885.  Other writings also connect many books to the first church. Whatever the number before the purge by the formation of Catholicism by Constantine; even one lost book is a great loss indeed.      I claim no expertise concerning the authenticity of any the lost books and leave this judgment to you, the reader.  I do, however, strongly reject the self-proclaimed authority of any dogmatically motivated and church-controlled mortals who think themselves qualified to make such decisions.  One of the most logical and realistic concepts in the Bible is the caution that one should prove all things.  I believe that proving the veracity of a given thing is an individual responsibility, which must not, and should not be the duty of those who think themselves better judges. Who's to say that one or more of those authors could have wrong or misinterpreted information? There are MANY contradictions throughout the Bible. The Bible as we know it was written primarily in Hebrew and Greek.  With biblical texts, there are a variety of things to sort out, especially with the older documents. Who wrote them, when, and where? Some actual surviving ancient manuscripts are fragmentary or otherwise damaged and difficult to read. But apart from these sorts of questions and problems, the ultimate goal is to determine what it all means. What are the words trying to tell us? The process of analyzing and deriving meaning from the text of the Bible is called exegesis. Competent members of the clergy, for example, will study a text in great detail before developing an interpretation and sharing their views with their congregations, eager for enlightenment. Such studies include a word-by-word and grammatical analysis, hopefully in the original language, along with a consideration of the historical, cultural, and even geographical context of the verses. What comes before and after the verses of interest is important as well, along with an interest in where other related material might be found elsewhere in the Bible. The huge range of interpretations possible, however, clearly demonstrates that exegesis is not an exact science, but a scholarly process.   People! People, People!  There are considerable amounts of documents discovered regarding God, Jesus, Genesis, etc. Documents that are not permissible by RELIGIONS, however, they are recorded; written down facts at the time. It's been my experience that two people can examine the same event (or even the same historical character) and disagree about what they have seen. Many years ago President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, and the entire event was captured on video tape. There were hundreds of eyewitnesses. The tapes were watched over and over again. Yet, in the midst of such a robust eyewitness record, people still argue to this day about what they saw and what actually happened. Was it a lone shooter or an elaborate conspiracy? Something very similar occurred when the World Trade Center was attacked by terrorists. Most of us either saw the attack live on television or watched the video for months afterward. But the event is still interpreted in a variety of ways. Was this the act of international terrorists or an elaborate governmental conspiracy? Two well documented historical events with a rich set of evidences. In spite of this, both events have been interpreted in a variety of ways. What would The Bible be like today if ALL the authors and documents recovered were used in the bible? Or Click Here to Go Back  Where You Just Came From Part of a Series on About The Bible This site is maintained for research purposes only. 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