March 16, 2021 • 32 mins
Although most people might assume that the Bible has always existed in its present state, that answer couldn't be any further from the truth. Tune in to this classic episode to learn more about how the bible has changed over time -- including what got added in, taken out and why
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
So uh. We we had a nice off air segue
into this that said, uh, speaking of band uh. Today's
episode is something that ruffled a lot of feathers when
it came out. This classic is about banned books of
the Bible, like the Book of van Halen, the Book
of led Zeppelin. No, you know, why not throw those
(00:24):
in there? There's the Book of Banned Books, which was
kind of shooting itself in the foot from the get go.
I think was like Greta. But in this case, we're
talking about I believe Enoch and several other fascinating possible
books of the Bible, and we'll talk about in the
episode which ones may have been in There may have
(00:44):
been just a completely different book, not written with the Bible,
but kind of matched up. Well, we'll talk about it.
It's so fascinating, isn't it. Still Like the there's this
assumption we make sometimes as a species that the book
you know as the Bible, whether that's the King James
version or what have you, that that book was somehow
(01:06):
whole and complete when people started reading it. It could
not be further from the truth. People were fighting about
which book goes where all the time. People still fight
about translations. Uh, it's it's a lot more like a
mixtape or kind of collaborative uh, acrimonious writing exercise. Sure,
(01:28):
when they say history is written by the winners, and
the same can be said of the Bible, that's right,
So let's let's dig into it. It's long the Bible,
the episode is. It's actually pretty moderately sized. So enjoy
from UFOs two Ghosts and government cover ups. History is
writtled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
(01:49):
learn the stuff they don't want you to now. Hello,
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt and
I'm end and that makes this stuff they don't want
you to know. So right off the top, we uh,
we see that you guys have been enjoying our series
on the Bible and apocrypha and things of that nature,
(02:12):
and we got some feedback from some of you. So
right off the top here we're gonna we're going to
address some of the things that you wrote to us. Absolutely.
First things first, we owe a big thank you to
John F. And Nate S. Both of these guys separately
wrote into give us a correction, and we welcome those
(02:33):
where John says, hey, guys, just saw band books of
the Bible. Episode. Looks like you generally did a great
job with your fact checking. There's one piece I thought
would bread more confusion than education. About one minute and
you mentioned that some books only exist in one version
of the Bible. While you're saying this, you're showing the
title page of the Book of Mormon and captioning first
book of me five Book of Mormon. This confusion would
(02:54):
be that the Book of Mormon never claims to be
a version of the Bible or missing book of the Bible.
It's an entirely separate book of scripture that the Church
of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints asserts as harmonious
with the Bible. So he goes on to say, the
Book of Mormon does mention the existence of plates of Brass,
a version of the scriptures that existed at about six
(03:16):
hundred BC, and they evidently contained the five books of Moses, Azaiah,
and some of Jeremiah, along with some other lost writings,
writings of Xenoch, writings of Zenos. But again, the Book
of Mormon itself is not really a missing Biblical book.
And Nate wrote in to say very much the same
(03:38):
thing that the Book Mormon is a totally separate book,
and we appreciate that very much. We also want to
move on and reassure our buddy Sandy Rogers out there
on Twitter. Sandy, you wrote to us. You're an Old
Testament scholar, and uh you wrote to us with something
that was an editing error on my part. There's a
(03:59):
part in or where we talk about uh the first
five books of the Bible, and the date there is
listed as twelve fifty BC as those books becoming accepted
as law. That is incorrect, and that editing error came
from one of the things that I was doing at
the time. Guys. I started out with a script that
(04:21):
would probably be about ten ten pages long, and because
there's so much to talk about with this, and so
I was shaving the script down further and further and further,
especially the complex process or evolution, right, which is weird,
but it's the best term for evolution of the Bible.
(04:42):
That I had messed up some of the dates when
I was cutting things down and swishing them back together.
You can find reference to UH this date, specifically the
twelve fifty BC date, in a excellent Straight Dope article
on the authorship of the Bible. It's a it's a
five part article. I think is in part one because
(05:05):
logically it's at the beginning with all that out of
the way, and thank you to Sandy, Nate and John again. Uh,
we still had a pretty kick ass episode, oh I
think so, and a lot of that was doing part
two our working with all time Conspiracies again, one of
our favorite YouTube channels. Really appreciate it. Guys, if you're listening,
(05:25):
and hopefully if you're listening to this, maybe you like
that Channel two. They're tremendously exciting. I I watched their
videos on the edge of my seat. Yeah, if you
like our show, you'll like There's There's as well. And
one other thing I want to just mention here, Ben
and I want to get your opinion on it. I
noticed that there were a lot of YouTube YouTube comments
saying that they disliked our use of b C E
(05:47):
as in before common era and CE common era rather
than b C and A d um. And that is
the at least from a handbook standpoint of writing. Handbook standpoint,
that is the correct way to write that, is it not?
It's a it's a stylistic choice one that I honestly,
(06:09):
I couldn't care either way about because you know, we
we get the language, and these conventions descended from a
legacy of other use. The modern environment right admittedly more
secular than when the terms BC and A D were made.
The idea before Christ and then after the death of Christ,
(06:30):
and in many cultures that do not, you know, do
not have a large Christian population, you might see that
date used just because it was around and is what
people understand it, right, And it's kind of like how
when people say awesome, at least in the United States,
they don't mean awe inspiring. When people say brilliant in
(06:53):
England they mean okay, uh this you know, this is
an interesting question for you to bring up here because
from what I understood what I was looking at, a
lot of the comments people thought it was going out
of the way to be politically correct. That's that's what
I saw mostly. But I think, again, what is the
(07:14):
name of that style guide that there's M L A
and there's a PI A. The A P A is
the one that I've always ended up using, but I
know and there its states C E and B C
are the correct way now, ah yeah, And you'll see
B C E UH and C E in quite a
few academic papers as well. For for our purposes, you know,
(07:40):
I don't mean to sound disrespectful to either secularists or
the religious, but uh, for our purposes there, at least
as far as I'm concerned, they're markings in time. But
I know that a lot of other people care much
more deeply about this. And if there's an overwhelming thing,
if you have an overwhelming reason why I think we
(08:02):
should use B C E and C E or B
C and A d uh, then please right in because
that Matt, I think this is something a little closer
to you than it is to me. To me, it's
kind of either way. It's either way for me, I
guess because we were making an episode specifically about the
Bible in Jesus, maybe people saw that there was some
(08:23):
kind of discrepancy there. That's a good point. But I
think we've done B C E and C E for
a very long time on our show in total, and
we probably had a lot of new people watching that
video because of the all time conspiracy thing. But anyway,
I just wanted to get your opinion, because yeah, I'm
I'm interesting, I'm interested to us see what people think.
(08:44):
The point of it being bad for the sake of
political correctness. I guess that's a valid perspective, for sure,
I could see it. But that's not why we were
doing it. That's not why I was doing it. I
don't know, I don't know what the motivation is. I
hear you. All right, Well, let's jump into some of
(09:06):
the core of what we talked about in our video series.
And the first thing that we looked at is apocrypha.
And what is apocrypha. Apocrypha would be, if you defined it,
the writings or statements that have dubious authenticity. I really
like that phrasing, dubious authenticity. I'm not really sure who
(09:27):
wrote this. That's very polite, Yeah, exactly, very BC oh Man.
But it has another meaning as well, in the proper sense,
when you know, when it's capitalized. It can refer specifically
to books that were included in the Septigent and the
Vulgate but excluded from the Jewish and Protestant canons of
(09:48):
the Old Testament. Right, that's right, And there are a
lot of early Christian writings that were not included in
the New Testament. Right, and the the origin of it.
The etymology is the is Latin and it means secret,
not canonical. Comes from Greek apocryphos obscure to hide away.
(10:10):
Apocryphos is one of my new favorite words. I know
it sounds like a d. C. Villain, doesn't it? Apocryphos? Uh? Yes,
So we know that apocrypha can have a very specific
definition depending upon one's denomination. One thing that we discovered
as we're working on our series is that it took
(10:35):
a while for Christianity in general to develop a canon,
and in depending upon the type of Christianity that we're
looking at, that canon or that idea of what is
canonical changes. And we talked about how when people were
(10:55):
deciding what to leave in the Bible, what to make
a fish, then they would give themselves kind of a
rubric and they would say, well, we'll leave it in
the Bible if it is from the apostles, if it
is clearly inspired by God and true and not written
by people. Okay, let's put it this way, Ben, I'm
(11:16):
gonna come to you with some books, uh. And these
are books that these are writings, early writings that I
want to have included in the Bible. And here are
some reasons that you say, no, dude, okay, all right,
I'm into it. So I come to you with you
this book, and it's obviously fraudulent. It was created far
(11:36):
after the original works that were that are already included
in what you think should be the Bible, and they're
made to create some kind of political point or stance
or maybe a statement, um, maybe even to sucker somebody
into believing a certain thing I seek. But they're they're
obviously fraudulent, Like let me write the end down here, okay, yeah. See.
(12:00):
Or if I came to you with a book that
you believe is not inspired by God or written instead
by a man or somebody that you know to be
a man, um, just a human being, you're like, okay,
that's Bob over there. He definitely wrote this. Yeah, that's
probably not going to go in Okay. So something like
and Mary spake unto the masses saying Bob, well, yeah,
(12:24):
it's awesome. And I mean that in the real sense
of the word, especially if it's quoting Jesus perhaps, I
mean that's you can't put that in the Bible. Here's
another reason I bring a book to you that has
glaring errors, like historical errors in them, so such as
the Book of Judith where it said Nebuchadnezzar the second
(12:44):
was the king of uh what is it, Niver, rather
than Babylon, which he was the king of Babylon at
least historically. Okay, I see what you're saying. So matters
of known secular fact for instance, or wrong, or maybe
they these books contradict things that are already set forth
(13:07):
and agreed on in the canon exactly. Perhaps someone was
trying to rewrite history, as we have seen people are
wanting to do. Sometimes the last thing is if it's
heretical or it's against the doctrine that's already in place.
So yeah, you really don't want to mess with the
current canonical belief system because you do that, and uh,
(13:29):
back in the day, there were probably some serious consequences.
Oh yeah, I see what you're saying. So we also
have examples of some of the books that were banned.
So we asked you, if you watch the YouTube episode two,
suggest for us in our update video some books that
we should take a closer look at, and we just
(13:50):
wanted to run through a few of those. Unfortunately, as
we said in the video, we couldn't choose everything. Uh,
but one of the first ones was the Book of Enoch. Yeah.
In in the Book of Enoch, it describes in great
detail all of these different trips that were taken by
Enoch to Heaven in various forms. So the Book of
(14:11):
Enoch itself is separated into these five sections. You've got
the Book of Watchers, the Book of Parables of Enoch,
the Astronomical Book, the Book of dream Visions, and the
Epistle of Enoch. And each one of these different sections
of the Book of Enoch has its own take on
Christian history, and it gives you all kinds of interesting
(14:32):
concepts that have been used throughout time. So it's it's
a fascinating book and I'd recommend anybody who has the
time go out and find a copy, or you know,
find it online somewhere, right, Yeah, you can find this online.
It's not a it's not some hidden grimoire or something
like that. And unfortunately, the same unique takes are part
(14:54):
of the reason that this book was banned are classified
rather as an apocryphal text. A lot of scholars believe
it's because it had these detailed portrayals of the fallen
angels or more ominously the Watchers. That's the coolest part
to me about the whole book. Yeah, to me, that's
the coolest part too. There's a quote here from Free
(15:15):
Republic that I enjoyed and I wanted to just read
for you guys on the show. Here, this scripture reads
like a modern day action film telling a fallen angels,
bloodthirsty giants, and Earth that had become home to an
increasingly flawed humanity and a divine judgment to be rendered.
So it does sound kind of like an action movie.
(15:36):
And if you get a chance, you know, Matt, you're right,
check it out and read it. But because of because
of the stuff that it dealt with, especially the weird
question of that the fallen Angels, the Watchers, Nephilin, all
that sort of stuff, the Western Bibles don't use it.
(15:56):
However Ethiopian Christians do. Yeah, that's really cool. And it
should be noted that a lot of this was recovered
through the Dead Sea Scrolls. Um forget the date when
those are found. I know we talked about it, but
the Dead Sea Scrolls are a whole another thing. If
you have not looked that up, take a moment, maybe
a couple of hours, maybe a weekend. Just look out
(16:18):
the Dead Sea scrolls. Fascinating stuff. Yeah, cancel what you're
doing for the next day. Yeah. Well, if you're interested
in this stuff at all, you probably already know about it.
But even if you're not, Uh, there's some crazy, awesome
history there. And see how he used awesome by the way,
I think it's awesome. Yeah. Uh. And next we have
a little something called the Gospel of Mary. So this
(16:41):
is the second of the banned books of the Bible,
and it was carbon dated between eighteen hundred and one
D so there's a bit of a range there when
this could have been produced. The Gospel of Mary looks
at the relationship between Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalen. So,
as the writings go, Mary was Jesus's most trusted companion
(17:05):
um and I use the word companion there to imply
what the book implies, Okay, And a lot of the
other apostles really didn't like that fact, and they despised her.
So in the Gospel of Mary, Jesus reminds the apostles
that the inner self is comprised of a couple of things,
the spirit, the soul, and the mind, and all ultimate salvation.
(17:29):
He says in this that it comes from within each person.
So it's not something that you can go out and get.
You have to find it inside yourself. And it's not
something you need an intermediary exactly like a clergy for
If it's inside you, nobody has to exercise it. You
just have to find it. And that was that was
(17:53):
kind of a heavy blow to the Book of Mary
Magdalen when people are looking at whether or not you
should go in the Bible. Yeah, not to mention the
way that it contradicts some of the more patriarchal teachings
that became a doctrine for a long time. And it's
sort of a gnostic text too. Uh, the idea that
(18:14):
Mary Magdalen might have been an apostle, maybe even one
of the top dog apostles. Uh. Some text in the Bible,
you know, controversially seemed to deny women a voice in
in parts of it. And again, this is all we're
talking about a book with multiple authors over multiple periods
of time. Uh. This text is often thought to be
(18:37):
a major flashpoint for the debate about the role of
women in the Christian Church, and this idea that Jesus
would share secret knowledge with Mary that he wouldn't share
with the rest of the gang. Is uh something that's
gonna pop up in another band book. It's it creates
such an interesting picture in my head of the idea
(18:58):
that perhaps Mary was kind of jesus right hand person.
And then all the other apostles are so jealous and
angry about it. They're just throw accusations she's a prostitute,
she's a bad person. I don't I'm so I'm not
saying that that is true in any way. I think
it just creates a very interesting picture interest. Yeah, definitely.
(19:21):
And then there's there's the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. The
gist of it is sort of a young Jesus, Jesus
as a kid. Uh And again, not to be disrespectful
in any way. It made me think of when UH
TV shows have the young version of something come out,
(19:42):
like young Indiana Jones and those things. Yeah, those prequels
and stuff, and they don't quite take off, uh successfully either.
And and there's an you know, it's not just that
Jesus was a young person in this, you know, before
he turned in his thirties and stuff. Instead, this is
(20:04):
because it depicts the Gospel, The Infancy Gospel of Thomas
depicts Jesus in a much different light in terms of
behavior and everything. Well yeah, okay, well let's just go
ahead and say what it is that was in there
some of the things. So the book deals with a
strong willed young Jesus who did a couple of things.
(20:26):
One in particular may not be good for the at
least the story of Jesus. It it says that around
age five, Jesus may or may not have pushed another
kid off of a roof, killing him and then bringing
him back to life Jesus style. And that's you know,
that's that's pretty disturbing, especially to be included in the
(20:49):
idea already of this picture that's been painted of Jesus
as it is non you know, well somewhat non violent guy.
And I think that's a really good point. Many would
I mean, is that a sin? Killing somebody? And then
if you bring him back to life, is it still
a sin? Can you imagine the debates that would have
to occur. Wow, that's really that's a deep question too.
(21:11):
And and the the idea that it could set up
such a precedent in the church at large. Wow, that
I see what you're saying. So there's a doctrinal difference
there too. And at this point, I think, before we
move on to the next one, it's very important for
us to say that we are not in any way
(21:34):
criticizing and historical Jesus Christ. What we're doing, more so
is following the sort of wonderful tapestry of things that
sprang up again from you know, oral traditions and from
translations that were not always the best and sometimes translations
(21:56):
of translations. Yeah, definitely, And to me, there's something there's
something beautiful about the idea that this sort of thing
could exist and all these other all these other variations
of it come come out because you know, what it
kind of makes me think of is if it's if
(22:17):
we take a book that is clearly written by a
person who is a fraudster or something, it's almost like
fan fiction, Matt, It's so similar. So then of course,
if you're the person in charge of maintaining the actual
book after the cannon has been decided, then you're not
(22:37):
going to include fan fiction. Uh. It's it's a weird,
awkward comparison, but it is very important. We have one
more book that you suggested that we wanted to check
into listeners, and that is the gospel of Judas. Now
we're all familiar with Judas, the guy who aid Jesus
(23:01):
and got some silver for it, and they hanged him
seeing himself. Okay, So that's the guy that this story
is at least the perspective of Judas, that's what this
is about. So uh, there are conversations between Jesus Christ
and the apostle Judas is Scariot, and it provides hard
(23:21):
to find example of how Jesus interacted with his kind
of his closest people, His closest allies and the teachings
of Jesus are the main focus of this book, and
it provides again a really unique and interesting perspective on
how Jesus used his apostles to kind of maximize his
efforts in spreading out the faith that that he was spreading.
(23:47):
So the Book of Judas itself, the Catholic Church considers
it apocryphal because it portrays Judas is carry it as
a good guy, as a decent person. In fact, it
portrays him as someone who is doing what Jesus told
(24:08):
him to do from the beginning to the end, including
you know, including the Last Supper and taking the bribe
and ultimately playing such an influential hand in the crucifixion. Okay,
this one in particular, it strikes me pretty hard because
(24:28):
I I am fascinated by the idea that the entire
lifespan of Jesus, if he if he is a you know,
he is God, but not God. But you know it again,
that's a whole another story we can get into. That's
the huge doctrinal conversation that they had at the first
(24:49):
Council of Nicea right exactly, which is not where the
Bible was finalized or books were deemed apocrypha, and and
there are all kinds of arguments you can have with
you could argue for a thousand years about this stuff.
But the idea that if Jesus could see how his
life was going to play out, he would know that
(25:09):
there is someone Judas who was going to betray him
so that he would get crucified, so that he would
return back into heaven. Right. So in in this Gospel
of Judas is is just wonderfully fascinating to me because
I that idea that in order for Judas to truly
trust Jesus and follow along with what he wanted. He
(25:30):
just had to do that thing. Yeah. Controversial to say
the very least about it, because you know, Judas is
one of the very complex characters in in the narrative
of the Bible, and so to flip it to have
this weird, honestly, to have this weird m Night Shamalan
(25:50):
kind of thing with it where he is not only
a good person, but maybe the best of the disciples
because he's following orders even unto killing uh, the person
who he worships. And this goes straight into nasticism, right, Matt,
the concept of dualism. Yes, that's where you get as above,
(26:13):
so below you get all kinds of fun things from narcissism, Sophia,
Yalda both all that stuff and in Yin Yang as well. Yeah,
and so of course this book ends up being banned
because it's supernostic in its tone and content. It's set
Judas above the other disciples. And you know, if you
(26:36):
have the Catholic Church, for instance, which was founded on
the rock with St. Peter, right, well, then having Judases
carry it then be the primary hidden hero, right or
the the main sidekick. I guess you wouldn't be the
hero of the Bible, but the main person that's not
(26:58):
only controversial, but in a lot of ways from from
the church's perspective, it could be dangerous. Yeah, oh yeah, Okay.
So I just want to put out here that one
of the reasons that this, all of these apocryphal texts
are so interesting is it's a matter of perspective, and
(27:20):
something we talked about a lot. If you can give
yourself enough perspective on anyone's situation, you're going to realize
that once you once you can see it all from
all the angles, it is everything, and especially the Bible
is so much more complicated than if you just look
at it from one perspective. I think that's a really
good pointment. Then. Also, uh, this brings to minds a
(27:44):
question that I got. I was asked years and years
ago and I have been thinking about it ever since.
And that question was to whom does a work belong
after it is written. This was for a secular book,
you know, with a single author that we know of,
And I was having this argument with a couple of
(28:08):
professors that I knew, and the the argument that they
were making as well, after a book is written, write
a novel whatever. Uh, the interpretation of it and what
it means, and the people who own it are the
readers or the critics. Now let's just go ahead and
bracket the huge conflict of interests. Of course, a professor
(28:34):
or critic or someone whose job is it is to
analyze literature would say, well, you know, it's up to us.
We're the ones because people like to be important. And uh.
It's the same way that someone who sells tires will
tell you that you need uh tires. There you right,
and yeah, and usually that's that's true for all the
(28:57):
mechanics uh and gear heads in or audience. You guys
know as well as I do that people don't take
care of their tires. But that's a different show. That's
a different show. I need to head over, um which
not Kaufman Tires, just this guy we know named Kaufman.
He just collects tires. But uh, but yes, the point
(29:18):
that I make there is that a lot of the
debate about apocrypha, or the debate about banning uh certain
things from a Bible or creating a canonical version of it,
goes back to the same old debate about who who
has ownership or authority over the Bible. And I think
(29:41):
that's one of the reasons there are so many splits
in the very space, you know, as it's as Christianity
was growing, because everybody had a different opinion, at least
the people in power, and there you go, you get
all the varying versions. And what is also exciting is
to realize that while history from our limited perspective, you
(30:04):
met me, everybody listening to this from our limited perspective,
it's easy to mistake history for a static thing, or
for these large institutions for unchanging things. But it couldn't
be further from the truth. They just appear not to
move because they have such a longer lifespan than we do.
(30:27):
And the truth of the matter is that not only
have they not only have they changed, evolved, omitted, reverse
and expanded over time, but those same changes are probably
not done. We're you know, we don't know. Another version
of a Bible may come out, new books may be
(30:49):
added and then even eventually accepted. It really is um
important to emphasize that the march of history and the
growth of institutions is a continual process. It is not
something that happened once a few hundred years ago. Their
new archaeological discoveries all the time. Yeah, Nakamati, Egypt, some
(31:15):
of these things were found. That's uh. Man, we just
gotta keep digging. Yeah, we have to keep digging, and
we hope that you will keep digging with us. So
the verdict the end of the show here is that, yes, absolutely,
it was stuff the early Church did not want you
to know. And that doesn't mean it was necessarily bad.
(31:37):
It's just we're trying to get contradictions out of there. Yeah,
it was a group of people, varying groups of people
over time that wanted to protect what they thought was
saying sacres. Yeah. Yeah, and that's the perfect word for it.
So we'd like to hear what you think about the apocrypha,
and we'd also like to hear what you think we
(31:58):
should be digging too more deeply in the future. Check
out our website Stuff they Don't Want You to Know
dot Com where you can see all of our videos
and all of our podcasts, and Matt, we're all over
the internet right now. We're on Facebook, We're conspiracy stuff there,
We're at conspiracy stuff on Twitter. And that's the end
of this classic episode. If you have any thoughts or
(32:22):
questions about this episode. You can get into contact with
us in a number of different ways. One of the
best is to give us a call. Our number is
one eight three three std w y t K. If
you don't want to do that, you can send us
a good old fashioned email. We are conspiracy at i
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(32:43):
know is a production of I heart Radio. For more
podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
So uh. We we had a nice off air segue
into this that said, uh, speaking of band uh. Today's
episode is something that ruffled a lot of feathers when
it came out. This classic is about banned books of
the Bible, like the Book of van Halen, the Book
of led Zeppelin. No, you know, why not throw those
(00:24):
in there? There's the Book of Banned Books, which was
kind of shooting itself in the foot from the get go.
I think was like Greta. But in this case, we're
talking about I believe Enoch and several other fascinating possible
books of the Bible, and we'll talk about in the
episode which ones may have been in There may have
(00:44):
been just a completely different book, not written with the Bible,
but kind of matched up. Well, we'll talk about it.
It's so fascinating, isn't it. Still Like the there's this
assumption we make sometimes as a species that the book
you know as the Bible, whether that's the King James
version or what have you, that that book was somehow
(01:06):
whole and complete when people started reading it. It could
not be further from the truth. People were fighting about
which book goes where all the time. People still fight
about translations. Uh, it's it's a lot more like a
mixtape or kind of collaborative uh, acrimonious writing exercise. Sure,
(01:28):
when they say history is written by the winners, and
the same can be said of the Bible, that's right,
So let's let's dig into it. It's long the Bible,
the episode is. It's actually pretty moderately sized. So enjoy
from UFOs two Ghosts and government cover ups. History is
writtled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
(01:49):
learn the stuff they don't want you to now. Hello,
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt and
I'm end and that makes this stuff they don't want
you to know. So right off the top, we uh,
we see that you guys have been enjoying our series
on the Bible and apocrypha and things of that nature,
(02:12):
and we got some feedback from some of you. So
right off the top here we're gonna we're going to
address some of the things that you wrote to us. Absolutely.
First things first, we owe a big thank you to
John F. And Nate S. Both of these guys separately
wrote into give us a correction, and we welcome those
(02:33):
where John says, hey, guys, just saw band books of
the Bible. Episode. Looks like you generally did a great
job with your fact checking. There's one piece I thought
would bread more confusion than education. About one minute and
you mentioned that some books only exist in one version
of the Bible. While you're saying this, you're showing the
title page of the Book of Mormon and captioning first
book of me five Book of Mormon. This confusion would
(02:54):
be that the Book of Mormon never claims to be
a version of the Bible or missing book of the Bible.
It's an entirely separate book of scripture that the Church
of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints asserts as harmonious
with the Bible. So he goes on to say, the
Book of Mormon does mention the existence of plates of Brass,
a version of the scriptures that existed at about six
(03:16):
hundred BC, and they evidently contained the five books of Moses, Azaiah,
and some of Jeremiah, along with some other lost writings,
writings of Xenoch, writings of Zenos. But again, the Book
of Mormon itself is not really a missing Biblical book.
And Nate wrote in to say very much the same
(03:38):
thing that the Book Mormon is a totally separate book,
and we appreciate that very much. We also want to
move on and reassure our buddy Sandy Rogers out there
on Twitter. Sandy, you wrote to us. You're an Old
Testament scholar, and uh you wrote to us with something
that was an editing error on my part. There's a
(03:59):
part in or where we talk about uh the first
five books of the Bible, and the date there is
listed as twelve fifty BC as those books becoming accepted
as law. That is incorrect, and that editing error came
from one of the things that I was doing at
the time. Guys. I started out with a script that
(04:21):
would probably be about ten ten pages long, and because
there's so much to talk about with this, and so
I was shaving the script down further and further and further,
especially the complex process or evolution, right, which is weird,
but it's the best term for evolution of the Bible.
(04:42):
That I had messed up some of the dates when
I was cutting things down and swishing them back together.
You can find reference to UH this date, specifically the
twelve fifty BC date, in a excellent Straight Dope article
on the authorship of the Bible. It's a it's a
five part article. I think is in part one because
(05:05):
logically it's at the beginning with all that out of
the way, and thank you to Sandy, Nate and John again. Uh,
we still had a pretty kick ass episode, oh I
think so, and a lot of that was doing part
two our working with all time Conspiracies again, one of
our favorite YouTube channels. Really appreciate it. Guys, if you're listening,
(05:25):
and hopefully if you're listening to this, maybe you like
that Channel two. They're tremendously exciting. I I watched their
videos on the edge of my seat. Yeah, if you
like our show, you'll like There's There's as well. And
one other thing I want to just mention here, Ben
and I want to get your opinion on it. I
noticed that there were a lot of YouTube YouTube comments
saying that they disliked our use of b C E
(05:47):
as in before common era and CE common era rather
than b C and A d um. And that is
the at least from a handbook standpoint of writing. Handbook standpoint,
that is the correct way to write that, is it not?
It's a it's a stylistic choice one that I honestly,
(06:09):
I couldn't care either way about because you know, we
we get the language, and these conventions descended from a
legacy of other use. The modern environment right admittedly more
secular than when the terms BC and A D were made.
The idea before Christ and then after the death of Christ,
(06:30):
and in many cultures that do not, you know, do
not have a large Christian population, you might see that
date used just because it was around and is what
people understand it, right, And it's kind of like how
when people say awesome, at least in the United States,
they don't mean awe inspiring. When people say brilliant in
(06:53):
England they mean okay, uh this you know, this is
an interesting question for you to bring up here because
from what I understood what I was looking at, a
lot of the comments people thought it was going out
of the way to be politically correct. That's that's what
I saw mostly. But I think, again, what is the
(07:14):
name of that style guide that there's M L A
and there's a PI A. The A P A is
the one that I've always ended up using, but I
know and there its states C E and B C
are the correct way now, ah yeah, And you'll see
B C E UH and C E in quite a
few academic papers as well. For for our purposes, you know,
(07:40):
I don't mean to sound disrespectful to either secularists or
the religious, but uh, for our purposes there, at least
as far as I'm concerned, they're markings in time. But
I know that a lot of other people care much
more deeply about this. And if there's an overwhelming thing,
if you have an overwhelming reason why I think we
(08:02):
should use B C E and C E or B
C and A d uh, then please right in because
that Matt, I think this is something a little closer
to you than it is to me. To me, it's
kind of either way. It's either way for me, I
guess because we were making an episode specifically about the
Bible in Jesus, maybe people saw that there was some
(08:23):
kind of discrepancy there. That's a good point. But I
think we've done B C E and C E for
a very long time on our show in total, and
we probably had a lot of new people watching that
video because of the all time conspiracy thing. But anyway,
I just wanted to get your opinion, because yeah, I'm
I'm interesting, I'm interested to us see what people think.
(08:44):
The point of it being bad for the sake of
political correctness. I guess that's a valid perspective, for sure,
I could see it. But that's not why we were
doing it. That's not why I was doing it. I
don't know, I don't know what the motivation is. I
hear you. All right, Well, let's jump into some of
(09:06):
the core of what we talked about in our video series.
And the first thing that we looked at is apocrypha.
And what is apocrypha. Apocrypha would be, if you defined it,
the writings or statements that have dubious authenticity. I really
like that phrasing, dubious authenticity. I'm not really sure who
(09:27):
wrote this. That's very polite, Yeah, exactly, very BC oh Man.
But it has another meaning as well, in the proper sense,
when you know, when it's capitalized. It can refer specifically
to books that were included in the Septigent and the
Vulgate but excluded from the Jewish and Protestant canons of
(09:48):
the Old Testament. Right, that's right, And there are a
lot of early Christian writings that were not included in
the New Testament. Right, and the the origin of it.
The etymology is the is Latin and it means secret,
not canonical. Comes from Greek apocryphos obscure to hide away.
(10:10):
Apocryphos is one of my new favorite words. I know
it sounds like a d. C. Villain, doesn't it? Apocryphos? Uh? Yes,
So we know that apocrypha can have a very specific
definition depending upon one's denomination. One thing that we discovered
as we're working on our series is that it took
(10:35):
a while for Christianity in general to develop a canon,
and in depending upon the type of Christianity that we're
looking at, that canon or that idea of what is
canonical changes. And we talked about how when people were
(10:55):
deciding what to leave in the Bible, what to make
a fish, then they would give themselves kind of a
rubric and they would say, well, we'll leave it in
the Bible if it is from the apostles, if it
is clearly inspired by God and true and not written
by people. Okay, let's put it this way, Ben, I'm
(11:16):
gonna come to you with some books, uh. And these
are books that these are writings, early writings that I
want to have included in the Bible. And here are
some reasons that you say, no, dude, okay, all right,
I'm into it. So I come to you with you
this book, and it's obviously fraudulent. It was created far
(11:36):
after the original works that were that are already included
in what you think should be the Bible, and they're
made to create some kind of political point or stance
or maybe a statement, um, maybe even to sucker somebody
into believing a certain thing I seek. But they're they're
obviously fraudulent, Like let me write the end down here, okay, yeah. See.
(12:00):
Or if I came to you with a book that
you believe is not inspired by God or written instead
by a man or somebody that you know to be
a man, um, just a human being, you're like, okay,
that's Bob over there. He definitely wrote this. Yeah, that's
probably not going to go in Okay. So something like
and Mary spake unto the masses saying Bob, well, yeah,
(12:24):
it's awesome. And I mean that in the real sense
of the word, especially if it's quoting Jesus perhaps, I
mean that's you can't put that in the Bible. Here's
another reason I bring a book to you that has
glaring errors, like historical errors in them, so such as
the Book of Judith where it said Nebuchadnezzar the second
(12:44):
was the king of uh what is it, Niver, rather
than Babylon, which he was the king of Babylon at
least historically. Okay, I see what you're saying. So matters
of known secular fact for instance, or wrong, or maybe
they these books contradict things that are already set forth
(13:07):
and agreed on in the canon exactly. Perhaps someone was
trying to rewrite history, as we have seen people are
wanting to do. Sometimes the last thing is if it's
heretical or it's against the doctrine that's already in place.
So yeah, you really don't want to mess with the
current canonical belief system because you do that, and uh,
(13:29):
back in the day, there were probably some serious consequences.
Oh yeah, I see what you're saying. So we also
have examples of some of the books that were banned.
So we asked you, if you watch the YouTube episode two,
suggest for us in our update video some books that
we should take a closer look at, and we just
(13:50):
wanted to run through a few of those. Unfortunately, as
we said in the video, we couldn't choose everything. Uh,
but one of the first ones was the Book of Enoch. Yeah.
In in the Book of Enoch, it describes in great
detail all of these different trips that were taken by
Enoch to Heaven in various forms. So the Book of
(14:11):
Enoch itself is separated into these five sections. You've got
the Book of Watchers, the Book of Parables of Enoch,
the Astronomical Book, the Book of dream Visions, and the
Epistle of Enoch. And each one of these different sections
of the Book of Enoch has its own take on
Christian history, and it gives you all kinds of interesting
(14:32):
concepts that have been used throughout time. So it's it's
a fascinating book and I'd recommend anybody who has the
time go out and find a copy, or you know,
find it online somewhere, right, Yeah, you can find this online.
It's not a it's not some hidden grimoire or something
like that. And unfortunately, the same unique takes are part
(14:54):
of the reason that this book was banned are classified
rather as an apocryphal text. A lot of scholars believe
it's because it had these detailed portrayals of the fallen
angels or more ominously the Watchers. That's the coolest part
to me about the whole book. Yeah, to me, that's
the coolest part too. There's a quote here from Free
(15:15):
Republic that I enjoyed and I wanted to just read
for you guys on the show. Here, this scripture reads
like a modern day action film telling a fallen angels,
bloodthirsty giants, and Earth that had become home to an
increasingly flawed humanity and a divine judgment to be rendered.
So it does sound kind of like an action movie.
(15:36):
And if you get a chance, you know, Matt, you're right,
check it out and read it. But because of because
of the stuff that it dealt with, especially the weird
question of that the fallen Angels, the Watchers, Nephilin, all
that sort of stuff, the Western Bibles don't use it.
(15:56):
However Ethiopian Christians do. Yeah, that's really cool. And it
should be noted that a lot of this was recovered
through the Dead Sea Scrolls. Um forget the date when
those are found. I know we talked about it, but
the Dead Sea Scrolls are a whole another thing. If
you have not looked that up, take a moment, maybe
a couple of hours, maybe a weekend. Just look out
(16:18):
the Dead Sea scrolls. Fascinating stuff. Yeah, cancel what you're
doing for the next day. Yeah. Well, if you're interested
in this stuff at all, you probably already know about it.
But even if you're not, Uh, there's some crazy, awesome
history there. And see how he used awesome by the way,
I think it's awesome. Yeah. Uh. And next we have
a little something called the Gospel of Mary. So this
(16:41):
is the second of the banned books of the Bible,
and it was carbon dated between eighteen hundred and one
D so there's a bit of a range there when
this could have been produced. The Gospel of Mary looks
at the relationship between Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalen. So,
as the writings go, Mary was Jesus's most trusted companion
(17:05):
um and I use the word companion there to imply
what the book implies, Okay, And a lot of the
other apostles really didn't like that fact, and they despised her.
So in the Gospel of Mary, Jesus reminds the apostles
that the inner self is comprised of a couple of things,
the spirit, the soul, and the mind, and all ultimate salvation.
(17:29):
He says in this that it comes from within each person.
So it's not something that you can go out and get.
You have to find it inside yourself. And it's not
something you need an intermediary exactly like a clergy for
If it's inside you, nobody has to exercise it. You
just have to find it. And that was that was
(17:53):
kind of a heavy blow to the Book of Mary
Magdalen when people are looking at whether or not you
should go in the Bible. Yeah, not to mention the
way that it contradicts some of the more patriarchal teachings
that became a doctrine for a long time. And it's
sort of a gnostic text too. Uh, the idea that
(18:14):
Mary Magdalen might have been an apostle, maybe even one
of the top dog apostles. Uh. Some text in the Bible,
you know, controversially seemed to deny women a voice in
in parts of it. And again, this is all we're
talking about a book with multiple authors over multiple periods
of time. Uh. This text is often thought to be
(18:37):
a major flashpoint for the debate about the role of
women in the Christian Church, and this idea that Jesus
would share secret knowledge with Mary that he wouldn't share
with the rest of the gang. Is uh something that's
gonna pop up in another band book. It's it creates
such an interesting picture in my head of the idea
(18:58):
that perhaps Mary was kind of jesus right hand person.
And then all the other apostles are so jealous and
angry about it. They're just throw accusations she's a prostitute,
she's a bad person. I don't I'm so I'm not
saying that that is true in any way. I think
it just creates a very interesting picture interest. Yeah, definitely.
(19:21):
And then there's there's the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. The
gist of it is sort of a young Jesus, Jesus
as a kid. Uh And again, not to be disrespectful
in any way. It made me think of when UH
TV shows have the young version of something come out,
(19:42):
like young Indiana Jones and those things. Yeah, those prequels
and stuff, and they don't quite take off, uh successfully either.
And and there's an you know, it's not just that
Jesus was a young person in this, you know, before
he turned in his thirties and stuff. Instead, this is
(20:04):
because it depicts the Gospel, The Infancy Gospel of Thomas
depicts Jesus in a much different light in terms of
behavior and everything. Well yeah, okay, well let's just go
ahead and say what it is that was in there
some of the things. So the book deals with a
strong willed young Jesus who did a couple of things.
(20:26):
One in particular may not be good for the at
least the story of Jesus. It it says that around
age five, Jesus may or may not have pushed another
kid off of a roof, killing him and then bringing
him back to life Jesus style. And that's you know,
that's that's pretty disturbing, especially to be included in the
(20:49):
idea already of this picture that's been painted of Jesus
as it is non you know, well somewhat non violent guy.
And I think that's a really good point. Many would
I mean, is that a sin? Killing somebody? And then
if you bring him back to life, is it still
a sin? Can you imagine the debates that would have
to occur. Wow, that's really that's a deep question too.
(21:11):
And and the the idea that it could set up
such a precedent in the church at large. Wow, that
I see what you're saying. So there's a doctrinal difference
there too. And at this point, I think, before we
move on to the next one, it's very important for
us to say that we are not in any way
(21:34):
criticizing and historical Jesus Christ. What we're doing, more so
is following the sort of wonderful tapestry of things that
sprang up again from you know, oral traditions and from
translations that were not always the best and sometimes translations
(21:56):
of translations. Yeah, definitely, And to me, there's something there's
something beautiful about the idea that this sort of thing
could exist and all these other all these other variations
of it come come out because you know, what it
kind of makes me think of is if it's if
(22:17):
we take a book that is clearly written by a
person who is a fraudster or something, it's almost like
fan fiction, Matt, It's so similar. So then of course,
if you're the person in charge of maintaining the actual
book after the cannon has been decided, then you're not
(22:37):
going to include fan fiction. Uh. It's it's a weird,
awkward comparison, but it is very important. We have one
more book that you suggested that we wanted to check
into listeners, and that is the gospel of Judas. Now
we're all familiar with Judas, the guy who aid Jesus
(23:01):
and got some silver for it, and they hanged him
seeing himself. Okay, So that's the guy that this story
is at least the perspective of Judas, that's what this
is about. So uh, there are conversations between Jesus Christ
and the apostle Judas is Scariot, and it provides hard
(23:21):
to find example of how Jesus interacted with his kind
of his closest people, His closest allies and the teachings
of Jesus are the main focus of this book, and
it provides again a really unique and interesting perspective on
how Jesus used his apostles to kind of maximize his
efforts in spreading out the faith that that he was spreading.
(23:47):
So the Book of Judas itself, the Catholic Church considers
it apocryphal because it portrays Judas is carry it as
a good guy, as a decent person. In fact, it
portrays him as someone who is doing what Jesus told
(24:08):
him to do from the beginning to the end, including
you know, including the Last Supper and taking the bribe
and ultimately playing such an influential hand in the crucifixion. Okay,
this one in particular, it strikes me pretty hard because
(24:28):
I I am fascinated by the idea that the entire
lifespan of Jesus, if he if he is a you know,
he is God, but not God. But you know it again,
that's a whole another story we can get into. That's
the huge doctrinal conversation that they had at the first
(24:49):
Council of Nicea right exactly, which is not where the
Bible was finalized or books were deemed apocrypha, and and
there are all kinds of arguments you can have with
you could argue for a thousand years about this stuff.
But the idea that if Jesus could see how his
life was going to play out, he would know that
(25:09):
there is someone Judas who was going to betray him
so that he would get crucified, so that he would
return back into heaven. Right. So in in this Gospel
of Judas is is just wonderfully fascinating to me because
I that idea that in order for Judas to truly
trust Jesus and follow along with what he wanted. He
(25:30):
just had to do that thing. Yeah. Controversial to say
the very least about it, because you know, Judas is
one of the very complex characters in in the narrative
of the Bible, and so to flip it to have
this weird, honestly, to have this weird m Night Shamalan
(25:50):
kind of thing with it where he is not only
a good person, but maybe the best of the disciples
because he's following orders even unto killing uh, the person
who he worships. And this goes straight into nasticism, right, Matt,
the concept of dualism. Yes, that's where you get as above,
(26:13):
so below you get all kinds of fun things from narcissism, Sophia,
Yalda both all that stuff and in Yin Yang as well. Yeah,
and so of course this book ends up being banned
because it's supernostic in its tone and content. It's set
Judas above the other disciples. And you know, if you
(26:36):
have the Catholic Church, for instance, which was founded on
the rock with St. Peter, right, well, then having Judases
carry it then be the primary hidden hero, right or
the the main sidekick. I guess you wouldn't be the
hero of the Bible, but the main person that's not
(26:58):
only controversial, but in a lot of ways from from
the church's perspective, it could be dangerous. Yeah, oh yeah, Okay.
So I just want to put out here that one
of the reasons that this, all of these apocryphal texts
are so interesting is it's a matter of perspective, and
(27:20):
something we talked about a lot. If you can give
yourself enough perspective on anyone's situation, you're going to realize
that once you once you can see it all from
all the angles, it is everything, and especially the Bible
is so much more complicated than if you just look
at it from one perspective. I think that's a really
good pointment. Then. Also, uh, this brings to minds a
(27:44):
question that I got. I was asked years and years
ago and I have been thinking about it ever since.
And that question was to whom does a work belong
after it is written. This was for a secular book,
you know, with a single author that we know of,
And I was having this argument with a couple of
(28:08):
professors that I knew, and the the argument that they
were making as well, after a book is written, write
a novel whatever. Uh, the interpretation of it and what
it means, and the people who own it are the
readers or the critics. Now let's just go ahead and
bracket the huge conflict of interests. Of course, a professor
(28:34):
or critic or someone whose job is it is to
analyze literature would say, well, you know, it's up to us.
We're the ones because people like to be important. And uh.
It's the same way that someone who sells tires will
tell you that you need uh tires. There you right,
and yeah, and usually that's that's true for all the
(28:57):
mechanics uh and gear heads in or audience. You guys
know as well as I do that people don't take
care of their tires. But that's a different show. That's
a different show. I need to head over, um which
not Kaufman Tires, just this guy we know named Kaufman.
He just collects tires. But uh, but yes, the point
(29:18):
that I make there is that a lot of the
debate about apocrypha, or the debate about banning uh certain
things from a Bible or creating a canonical version of it,
goes back to the same old debate about who who
has ownership or authority over the Bible. And I think
(29:41):
that's one of the reasons there are so many splits
in the very space, you know, as it's as Christianity
was growing, because everybody had a different opinion, at least
the people in power, and there you go, you get
all the varying versions. And what is also exciting is
to realize that while history from our limited perspective, you
(30:04):
met me, everybody listening to this from our limited perspective,
it's easy to mistake history for a static thing, or
for these large institutions for unchanging things. But it couldn't
be further from the truth. They just appear not to
move because they have such a longer lifespan than we do.
(30:27):
And the truth of the matter is that not only
have they not only have they changed, evolved, omitted, reverse
and expanded over time, but those same changes are probably
not done. We're you know, we don't know. Another version
of a Bible may come out, new books may be
(30:49):
added and then even eventually accepted. It really is um
important to emphasize that the march of history and the
growth of institutions is a continual process. It is not
something that happened once a few hundred years ago. Their
new archaeological discoveries all the time. Yeah, Nakamati, Egypt, some
(31:15):
of these things were found. That's uh. Man, we just
gotta keep digging. Yeah, we have to keep digging, and
we hope that you will keep digging with us. So
the verdict the end of the show here is that, yes, absolutely,
it was stuff the early Church did not want you
to know. And that doesn't mean it was necessarily bad.
(31:37):
It's just we're trying to get contradictions out of there. Yeah,
it was a group of people, varying groups of people
over time that wanted to protect what they thought was
saying sacres. Yeah. Yeah, and that's the perfect word for it.
So we'd like to hear what you think about the apocrypha,
and we'd also like to hear what you think we
(31:58):
should be digging too more deeply in the future. Check
out our website Stuff they Don't Want You to Know
dot Com where you can see all of our videos
and all of our podcasts, and Matt, we're all over
the internet right now. We're on Facebook, We're conspiracy stuff there,
We're at conspiracy stuff on Twitter. And that's the end
of this classic episode. If you have any thoughts or
(32:22):
questions about this episode. You can get into contact with
us in a number of different ways. One of the
best is to give us a call. Our number is
one eight three three std w y t K. If
you don't want to do that, you can send us
a good old fashioned email. We are conspiracy at i
heart radio dot com. Stuff they don't want you to
(32:43):
know is a production of I heart Radio. For more
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If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
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Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.