THE BIBLE

PART 3 (The Books)

The Old Testament..
The Old Testament itself consist of three main parts, called
 ‘The Law, the Prophets and the Writings. 

In Jewish terminology, ‘The Law’ is the first three books attributed to Moses.
‘The Prophets’ consist of all the Prophets except Daniel, but includes the book of Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings.

‘The Writing’ is everything else. This is further reduced to ‘The Law and The Prophets’ in the New Testament.

In the Christian Bible, the order of the Historical books is somewhat more chronological.
THE NEW TESTAMENT

The New Testament consists of two main parts: the four Gospels and the Epistles of Paul and other leaders of the Early Churches.
Between the gospel and the letters, it’s Luke’s account of the growth of the early church called, “The Acts Of The Apostles”. The New Testament concludes with the ‘Revelation’, a glimpse into heaven and the future as seen by the Apostle John.
THE APOCRYPHA

The Books of the Apocrypha(A Greek language meaning ‘Hidden’) were written by Jewish religious writers in the period between the old and New Testaments. The Biblical apocrypha (from the Greek ἀπόκρυφος, apókruphos, meaning “hidden”) denotes the collection of ancient books found in some editions of Christian Bibles in a separate section between the Old and New Testaments or as an appendix after the New Testament. Some Christian Churches include some or all of the same texts within the body of their version of the Old Testament.
Some Apocryphal books, such as Tobit, turned up among the ‘Dead Sea Scrolls’ at Qumran, later Jewish and Protestant Christian opinion did not regard the Apocrypha as authoritative or ‘Canonical’.The Catholic and Orthodox Churches accord the Apocrypha ‘Canonical’ status,but there is not complete argument as to which writings should be included. At the Apocryphal book ,only  Maccabees 1 & 2 are valuable historical sources.
THE LOST BOOKS OF THE BIBLE.
The Lost Books of the Bible and the Forgotten Books of Eden (1926) is a collection of 17th-century and 18th-century English translations of some Old Testament Pseudepigrapha and New Testament Apocrypha, some of which were assembled in the 1820s, and then republished with the current title in 1926.

Pseudepigrapha are falsely attributed works, texts whose claimed author is not the true author, or a work whose real author attributed it to a figure of the past. Some of these works may have originated among Jewish Hellenizers, others may have Christian authorship in character and origin.

Contents of The Lost Books of the Bible

{♦ = found in The Apostolic Fathers}
    The Protevangelion

    The Gospel of the Infancy of Jesus Christ

    The Infancy Gospel of Thomas

    The Epistles of Jesus Christ and Abgarus King of Edessa

    The Gospel of Nicodemus (Acts of Pilate)

    The Apostles’ Creed (throughout history)

    The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Laodiceans

    The Epistles of Paul the Apostle to Seneca, with Seneca’s to Paul

    The Acts of Paul and Thecla

    ♦ The Epistles of Clement (The First and Second Epistles of Clement to the Corinthians)

    ♦ The Epistle of Barnabas

    ♦ The Epistle of Ignatius to the Ephesians

    ♦ The Epistle of Ignatius to the Magnesians

    ♦ The Epistle of Ignatius to the Trallians

    ♦ The Epistle of Ignatius to the Romans

    ♦ The Epistle of Ignatius to the Philadelphians

    ♦ The Epistle of Ignatius to the Smyrneans

    ♦ The Epistle of Ignatius to Polycarp

    ♦ The Shepherd of Hermas (Visions, Commands, and Similitudes)

    Letter of Herod To Pilate the Governor

    Letter of Pilate to Herod

    The Lost Gospel of Peter

    ♦ The Epistle of Polycarp to the Philippians
Contents of The Forgotten Books of Eden
    The Conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan (The First and Second Book of Adam and Eve)

    The Secrets of Enoch (also known as the Slavonic Enoch or Second Enoch)

    The Psalms of Solomon

    The Odes of Solomon

    The Letter of Aristeas

    The Fourth Book of Maccabees

    The Story of Ahikar

    Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs

References

Edgar J. Goodspeed, Modern Apocrypha (Boston, Beacon Press, 1956), chapt. 15.

The Bible encyclopedia

The Iion Atlas of Bible History, Paul Lawrence

The new Combined Bible dictionary and concordance..

Strong concordance.

KJV

NOTE: the apocrypha and lost books of the Bible are not part of the canonical bible.

THE BIBLE

Part Two: (The Setting)

The time, place and conditions in which the event of the  Bible took place, is important to understanding of the Bible to a reasonable extent.

Since the entire Bible is about Jesus, it is better to know that the world Jesus entered was intensely religious.

To understand the teachings of Jesus, then we need to know more about His world. Who the religious leaders were, how the different groups arose, what they believed and why they collided with Jesus as they did. (However, interested readers should do more studies on that).

It got to a point that the Jews were ruled by diff sect…

The Seleucid Rule..

The Hasmonean Rule..

The Roman Rule..

For two hundred years before and one hundred years after the birth of Christ,the Jewish people saw very little peace and even loss autonomy, they were forced to live as the people of God under the domination of foreign powers with all their pagan activities & contempt for the Jews, they never gave up the dream or the fight for Jewish independence, even though, they could not possibly have achieved it by their own sword.

Among the Jews themselves, there was a constant struggle for the political and religious power.

However, the Old Testament owes its preservation to d fact that it was perceived by Jewish scribes and Priests to be a sacred book..

Similarly, the New Testament was viewed by the father of the early Christians church as sacred-sacred because, in the pages of the Bible, the living God claims to reveal himself to mankind.

   Most of the Bible is not however written in the form of a theological treaties…. IT IS AN ACCOUNT OF HOW GOD REVEALED HIMSELF TO MANY DIFFERENT PEOPLE OVER MANY CENTURIES, REAL PEOPLE LIVING IN A PARTICULAR PLACE AT A PARTICULAR TIME.

Reference

*The Iion Atlas of Bible History, Paul Lawrence

*The new Combined Bible dictionary and concordance..

*Strong concordance.

* The bible encyclopedia

*KJV