Lost Books of the Bible: All 76 Guides & Explainers

Everything we publish begins with a question — what did this book actually say, and why did it disappear from the Bible most of us grew up with? These guides are our answers: plain-English explainers on the lost scriptures, the great manuscript discoveries, and the books that shaped the Bible's edges. Every guide links to the library's edition of the text it covers.

Start here

The Ethiopian Bible: All 88 Books Explained — the largest canon in Christianity, and why Ethiopia kept what others set aside.
The Book of Enoch, Explained — the most famous book outside the Bible: Watchers, giants, and a quotation in Jude.
Lost Books of the Bible — the map of everything that didn't make it in.
Books Removed from the Bible — what was set aside, when, and by whom.
How Many Books Are in the Bible? Counts by Tradition — the differing biblical counts of Jewish and Christian traditions, from 24 books to 81.

How to read the great books

How to Read the Bible — a beginner's plan, help with difficult passages, and how to choose a translation.
How to Read the Bible in a Year — a simple 12-month plan and a kind way to catch up.
How to Read the Book of Enoch — where to start, how its five parts fit together, and why it sits outside most Bibles.
How to Read the Quran — choosing a translation, a manageable plan, and the structure of its suras.
How to Read Paradise Lost — Milton's language, Satan, free will and the Fall, book by book.
How to Read Shakespeare — which plays to start with and how to follow the verse scene by scene.
How to Read the Odyssey (and the Iliad) — where to start with Homer and what to notice on the way.
How to Read Poetry — read aloud, follow the sentences, notice the images and the turns.
How to Read Philosophy — a sensible starting order and ways through hard arguments.
How to Read Dostoevsky — start with Crime and Punishment, then a reading order for the long novels.

Reading lists for school and college

High School Reading List — the classics US high schools assign most, grade by grade from 9 to 12.
AP Literature Book List — the books the AP exam's open question has named most since 1970.
College Reading List — the classics first-year college students meet most, by theme.

The great discoveries

The Dead Sea Scrolls, Explained — the caves at Qumran and the oldest Bibles ever found.
The Nag Hammadi Library — thirteen buried codices that rewrote the story of early Christianity.

The gnostic gospels

The Gnostic Gospels, Explained — what "gnostic" actually means, and why these texts were controversial.
The Gospel of Thomas — 114 sayings of Jesus, no narrative, found complete in the Egyptian desert.
The Gospel of Judas — the 2nd-century text that made headlines in 2006, and the translation fight that followed.
The Gospel of Mary Magdalene — the fragmentary text where Mary teaches the disciples.
The Gospel of Philip — the Nag Hammadi anthology behind the famous Mary Magdalene passage.
Pistis Sophia, Explained — a Christian Gnostic work in which the risen Jesus teaches salvation and delivers Sophia from distress.
The Apocryphon of John, Explained — a second-century Sethian revelation attributed to John, preserved in four Coptic manuscripts.
Thunder, Perfect Mind, Explained — an ancient poem spoken by a female divine voice, preserved in a Coptic manuscript discovered in 1945.
Allogenes and the Platonizing Sethian Texts, Explained — a Sethian revelation about spiritual ascent, preserved among the Coptic manuscripts discovered at Nag Hammadi.
Manichaeism and the Manichaean Texts, Explained — a religion founded in third-century Mesopotamia, teaching the liberation of Light from its mixture with Darkness.
The Mandaeans and the Ginza Rabba, Explained — a living community rooted in Iraq and Iran, with scriptures gathering creation accounts and teachings about the soul.
Hermes Trismegistus and the Hermetica, Explained — philosophical writings associated with Roman Egypt, attributed to a figure combining Greek Hermes and Egyptian Thoth.

Enoch, giants & the Watchers

The Book of Enoch: Complete Summary — all five books of 1 Enoch, section by section.
Who Were the Nephilim? — the giants of Genesis 6 and the Book of Enoch's fuller story.
The Book of Jubilees — Genesis retold by an angel, canonical in Ethiopia, prized at Qumran.
The Book of Jasher — the book the Bible quotes twice, and the text that survives under its name.
Book of Enoch PDF — what a complete 1 Enoch should contain, and where to start.
The Book of Giants — the giants' dreams, and Gilgamesh named in a Dead Sea Scroll.
2 Enoch & 3 Enoch — the Secrets of Enoch, the ten heavens, and Enoch transformed into Metatron.
The Names of the Fallen Angels in the Book of Enoch — the Watchers led by Semjaza, their oath on Mount Hermon, and Azazel's teachings of weapons and adornment.
The Seven Archangels: Their Names in Enoch, Tobit and Later Tradition — seven holy angels listed in 1 Enoch, and differing names across Jewish and Christian traditions.

The apocrypha & beyond

The Apocrypha, Explained — the books between the Testaments.
Pseudepigrapha, Explained — ancient books written in borrowed names, and why they matter.
The Septuagint, Explained — the Greek Bible of the early church.
The Book of Judith — the widow who saved Israel, and the canon debate around her.
The Wisdom of Solomon — Alexandria's masterpiece of Jewish wisdom literature.
The Book of Tobit — an angel in disguise, a demon, and one of antiquity's most charming tales.
The Didache — the earliest church manual, lost for centuries and found in 1873.
The Books of the Maccabees — the revolt, the martyrs, and Hanukkah's origin story.
Susanna, Bel and the Dragon — the Greek additions to Daniel: history's first detective stories.
2 Esdras — Ezra's argument with God, and the 94 hidden books.
The Prayer of Manasseh — the missing prayer of Judah's worst king.
The Book of Sirach (Ecclesiasticus), Explained — a Jewish wisdom book written in Hebrew in Jerusalem around 180 BC.
The Books of Baruch, Explained — a biblical book and distinct later writings sharing Baruch's name, not successive volumes.
The Kebra Nagast, Explained — a medieval Ethiopian national epic linking Makeda, Solomon, Menelik and the Ark of the Covenant.
Psalm 151: The Extra Psalm, Explained — a short psalm in David's voice, preserved after the numbered collection in the Greek Septuagint.

Lost gospels & early church

The Gospel of Peter — the lost passion gospel that narrates the resurrection itself.
The Gospel of Nicodemus — the trial of Jesus and the Harrowing of Hell.
The Infancy Gospel of Thomas — the boy-Jesus stories, clay sparrows and all.
The Protoevangelium of James — Mary's own birth, childhood, and the cave nativity.
The Apocalypse of Peter — the first Christian tour of heaven and hell, centuries before Dante.
The Shepherd of Hermas — the visionary book that nearly entered the New Testament.
The Epistle of Barnabas — early Christianity's boldest allegorical reading of scripture.
1 Clement — Rome's letter to Corinth, c. 96 AD, nearly in the New Testament.
The Acts of Paul and Thecla — the young woman who defied the arena.
The Gospel of the Hebrews, Explained — a lost second-century gospel associated with Jewish Christianity, surviving through quotations and references.
The Acts of Thomas, Explained — an early Christian account of Thomas's mission to India and martyrdom, probably composed in Syriac.
The Acts of John, Explained — a Greek narrative of John's Ephesian miracles, Jesus' circle dance and a luminous cross.
The Apocalypse of Paul, Explained — a late-fourth-century Christian vision attributed to Paul that helped shape medieval accounts of heaven and hell.
The Letter to the Laodiceans, Explained — a short letter attributed to Paul, preserved in Latin manuscripts and numerous medieval Bibles.
The Gospel of Barnabas, Explained — a late medieval or early modern narrative of Jesus's ministry, studied for later Christian-Muslim controversy.
Marcion and His Gospel, Explained — a second-century teacher's collection of one gospel and ten Pauline letters, known through reports by opponents.
Ignatius of Antioch and His Seven Letters, Explained — seven Greek letters from an early Syrian bishop, witnessing church leadership, Eucharistic practice and understandings of martyrdom.
The Harrowing of Hell, Explained — the Christian tradition of Christ delivering captives from the realm of the dead between death and resurrection.

The Solomon library & visionary texts

The Testament of Solomon — the ring, the demons, and the building of the Temple.
The Psalms of Solomon — eighteen psalms from the shadow of Rome's conquest.
The Odes of Solomon — the earliest Christian hymnbook, found on a shelf in 1909.
The Ascension of Isaiah — the prophet's martyrdom and the vision of the seven heavens.
The Sibylline Oracles — biblical prophecy in the voice of the pagan Sibyl.
The Apocalypse of Abraham, Explained — an ancient Jewish account of Abraham's heavenly revelations, surviving complete only in Old Church Slavonic.
The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, Explained — twelve farewell discourses attributed to Jacob's sons, combining moral counsel with predictions about their descendants.
The Book of Adam and Eve, Explained — a shared title for distinct nonbiblical works about Adam and Eve after Eden.
The Cave of Treasures, Explained — a Syriac Christian retelling of sacred history, from creation to Jesus' death and resurrection.
The Solomonic Grimoires: Ars Notoria, the Key of Solomon and the Lesser Key — books of learned magic attributed to a biblical king, surviving from the thirteenth century onward.
The Seven Heavens in Ancient Texts — successive celestial realms in ancient traditions, with differing accounts describing seven, ten or five levels.
The Voyage of Saint Brendan, Explained — a medieval Latin adventure about an Irish abbot and his monks seeking the Promised Land of the Saints.

The Library of Alexandria

The Library of Alexandria — a royal library founded in Ptolemaic Egypt, whose decline cannot be explained by a single fire.
Who Burned the Library of Alexandria? — a centuries-long decline involving political upheaval, departing scholars, reduced royal support and warfare, rather than one identifiable destroyer.
Hypatia of Alexandria — an Alexandrian philosopher and mathematician killed by a mob in 415 amid political and religious conflict.