Guides to the Lost Books & Forbidden Texts

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 complete text, which members can read and listen to free.

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• 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.

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.

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 — read it free instead — what free PDFs actually contain, and the better way to read it.
• 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 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.

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 included.
• 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 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.