1: Informative, Accurate, Admirably Wide-Ranging, Fascinating!
A most informative and highly accurate account of the so-called "lost" books of the Bible, this latest addition to the splendid "Dummies" series, deserves the widest possible readership. By "lost", the authors mean, of course, all the works not included in approved Protestant Bibles, not just early religious books that have in fact either wholly or partly disappeared. Using this yardstick, the authors discuss all the extra books included in current Catholic and Orthodox Bibles, of which the most important are undoubtedly Wisdom and Ben Sirach, as well as compositions regarded as authoritative only by some Orthodox churches, such as Third and Fourth Maccabees and Psalm 151. Also included are celebrated works that "almost" made it into the New Testament (and were in fact actually included in early editions in some instances) like "The Shepherd of Hermas" and "The Didache". Recently rediscovered Gnostic Gospels and other literature are also dealt with at length. In fact, so much information is laid at the reader's fingertips, it is almost overwhelming. The authors have obviously examined much (if not all) of this material at first hand. On a few occasions (perhaps the result of unwarily consulting faulty translations), they miss the point. For example, the whole thrust of the inspired author's argument in the early chapters of the so-called "Wisdom of Solomon" is that the personified Wisdom is the Holy Spirit. Although content to quote Wisdom 6:12-15, the present compilers do not move on to the end of his argument in chapter 7, when the inspired author declares that Wisdom "is a breath of the power of God, a pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty," who "in every generation passes into holy souls and makes them friends of God and prophets" (RSV). However, aside from this one sticking point, I heartily agree with almost everything that is said about other ancient Biblical writings with which I am expertly familiar and which I have recently translated in my book, BIBLE WISDOM FOR MODERN TIMES: Selections from the Orthodox Old Testament
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