The Real Apocrypha
One of the best kept theological secrets is… that the Bible used by the modern Church is not even the original King James Bible read by earlier Christians. Only half of the original Books of the Apocrypha are even in the Catholic Bible. The Apocrypha fills a 400-year gap missing from the King James Bible. In the original 1611 King James Version, the translators cross-referenced verses from “Apocrypha” books, in the margin notes. Which begs the question, “Why reference it if it’s not ‘holy enough’ to put in?”
In 1615 Archbishop Gorge Abbott, an original translator, “forbade anyone to issue a Bible without the Apocrypha on pain of one year’s imprisonment”. Until the late 19th Century, most early Bibles contained the Apocrypha. The Apocrypha was not officially removed from the King James Bible until 1885 by the Archbishop of Canterbury. With the removal of the Apocrypha, over 15%, or more than 155,000 of the original 930,000 words are missing from the Bible.
World history has allowed few ancient religious writings to survive the onslaught of the more aggressive and powerful religious powers, which seek only to gain territory and wealth. Genocide and cultural eradication always go hand in hand with missionary zealots. In many cases every trace of the conquered society’s religious writings, practices, icons, and even buildings were destroyed, in the name of conversion from the worship of gods considered evil and religious customs labeled as heresies. What generally results from past crusades is the conqueror’s religion replacing or predominantly blending with the conquered culture’s former religious practice, making its religion almost unrecognizable. Christianity falls into the latter category, having been 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.
The First Reformation
After solidifying his position to gain complete control of the western portion of the empire in 312 AD, 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 then 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. He tolerated pagan practices, keeping pagan gods on coins, keeping the seasonal festival practices, replacing pagan doctrine for Christian belief, and retaining his pagan high priest title “Pontifex Maximus”, which is today’s “Pope”, in order to maintain popularity with his former subjects. In 330 AD, 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 rest, 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 mere association, every doctrinal biblical principle was changed or eliminated.
After 337 AD, 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, which changed the face of Christianity. An effective practice instituted through all churches 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 personal concept of Christianity should be. The doctrines and practices that remained in the surviving books were effectively eradicated by simply changing their meaning / definitions or by replacing clear scripture with Church-sanctioned doctrine.
Forbidden, But Not Lost
Constantine began what was to become a century’s 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, and a further reduction with the elimination of the “Books of the Apocrypha” 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 from either the Hebrew religion, now known as the Judaism, 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 corrupting. 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 cite works not present in the existing collection. From the Apocryphal books included in the King James translation until 1885, and writings connecting other 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.
Authenticity of the Lost Books
The author claims no expertise concerning the authenticity of the lost books and leaves this judgment to the reader. The author does, 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. 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.
Miracles, Anomalies, and More
If it is strange, and it happens in the modern world, it is high-tech, magic, or paranormal. If it is strange, and it happened in the recent past, it is supernatural. If it is strange, and it happened in any ancient writings, it is mythical. If it is strange, and it happened in scripture, it is a miracle.
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” — Arthur C. Clark
But the view most Christians are falsely given is: If it is strange, and it happens in any religion, other than Christianity, or in any other writing, and it is not found in the Authorized King James Bible, it is satanic. And with this Luciferian-esque wisdom given to the Church of Christ, we ignore the enemy and what actions it takes against us. In truth, we must study the art of the enemy’s deception, thus further cementing our knowledge in Christ, where ‘here’ is, and what salvation truly holds for us individually.
“If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.” — Sun Zu’s Art of War
In short, some miracles are merely advanced techniques or art forms forgotten, while others break every paradigm one can logically hold. We can easily fly from place to place today, but powered flight was seemingly unknown thousands of years ago. Controlled and obviously powered flight in that age qualifies as anomalous. CPR and other techniques can seem to bring a person back to life in our modern age, but raising the dead a millennium ago was unbelievable. Bright lights and loud sounds broadcasted by objects descending from the sky are reminiscent of nighttime police helicopter actions, not occurrences thousands of years in the past. Altering the rotation of the stars and sun is nothing short of paranormal, in any age. Yet all these things, and many more, are described in the Bible and throughout the books associated with the Bible. Do not mistake what glorifies the Pre-Existent Father with what the angel of light attempts to deceive with, almost exclusively through highly advanced technologies cemented in the multidimensional Euclidean planes we experience as ‘reality’.
In short, read all these books to better understand the mindset of these early believers. Some were heretics, some were corrupted, some were holy additions, and others were wholly divine. But to not read and study these materials will result in a deeper ignorance than was first held prior to knowledge of their existence, and it is through ignorance that deception may most easily occur.
NOTE: Be aware that typographical errors may occur, as this entire site is one individual’s undertaking.