IV. Today there is very little discussion among scholars about what books rightfully belong in the Bible. The 66 books which are counted as Holy Scripture have earned their place in our texts. The Old Testament canon was well-defined by the time of Jesus. The 27 New Testament books are there because their authority and authenticity were apparent to the early church.
V. It is interesting to note that the Catholic and Protestant Bibles contain the same 27 New Testament books, but their Old Testament collections differ. For example, Catholic Old Testaments include the books of Tobit, Judith, Eel and the Dragon, and the First and Second book of Maccabees.
A. How do we know that these books are apocryphal? What marks them as spurious and counterfeit?
1. First, these books were never included in the Hebrew canon of the Old Testament. There is no evidence that any of these books were ever accepted by any of the Jewish community.
2. Jesus and the apostles never refer to any of the events or characters in these books. The New Testament writers quote from practically all of the Old Testament books, but they never·quote from the apocrypha as "Scripture."
3. Early Jewish writers such as Josephus and Philo never accepted these books as Scripture.
4. These books do not have the intrinsic qualities of scripture. They contain obvious historical, chronological, and geographical errors. For example, in the apocryphal book of Judith, Nebuchadnezzar is said to rule over the Assyrian empire from the city of Ninevah when he was actually the King of the Babylonians in Babylon. Additionally, these books contradict one another and canonical scripture.
B. The New Testament apocrypha include various gospels, epistles, and Apocalypses. They are even easier to dismiss than the Old Testament apocrypha because they are such blatant counterfeits.
1. Scholars have established that many of these books were written under the assumed names of the apostles and others during the second century or later.
2. Most are filled with fanciful and fictitious tales. For example, the Apocryphal Gospels often deal with the early life of Jesus and portray him as a temperamental child. Here he causes the death of one of his playmates and there he gives life to a dried fish.
C. Obviously, the Apocrypha are rejected for good reason. They are not "lost books" of the Bible.
VI. To conclude the first part of our study, we would refer back to Mark 13:91, I Pet.1:24-25, 1 Thess.2:13, and II Tim. 3:18-17. The more scholarly evidence we gather and examine, the more we see the hand of God at work in preserving His word.