Dropped books of the Old Testament.

So i was talking with my mom (who is pretty religious, so i trust her on this) about the old testament. I’m not really religious at all, but i was, so i know my way around the bible. She brought up a book that was dropped, and it dealt with angels, and how they conduct themselves. It also dealt with how a soul becomes an angel, and what the purpose of angels are. Since angels arn’t really brought up in Christianity that much (aside from the occasional use as forshadowing), it sounded made-up to me. I though that the only books not included in the bible as we know it today were 4 books that came right after leviticus, and were dropped because they pretty much just spelled out what you could’ve figured out by reading for context. I remember learning in sunday school that these 4 books were dropped from the Greek Translation of the bible, and then, since all other versions come from that one, they were never put back in.

I think it would kind of interesting to read these books, if only for curiosity’s sake. So any information anyone can provide would be greatly appreciated.

And yea, i already checked wikipedia :stuck_out_tongue:

http://www.sacred-texts.com/bib/index.htm

This should help immensely. It has the Apocrypha which are books that are supposedly left out of the Bible.

Souls become angels? Dead people don’t become angels. What is this?

Eva: the bible has been edited and re-edited so many times, its not surprising. Christianity was as political as ever in the past and people used it and the bible to further their ends. The bible has forever been written by men and men with power have agendas.

It’s supposedly divinely inspired. Unfortunately, normal men don’t share that inspiration, and normal men with secular power have abused it over time.

But yeah, it’s not a christian belief that souls can become angels. Well, not catholic anyway.

The two books that come after Leviticus (Numbers and Deuteronomy) are indeed in the Old Testament, by the way. 8p

Oh, I realize that Sin-_-;; I don’t believe in it anyway.

But anyway, there are so many misconceptions about the christian angels, it seems. Grr they’re immortal people, never been human, never will be. And they don’t have wings!

I’m not sure if this is true, but one of my teachers (and I go to a Catholic school) said that according to Catholic belief theire are 4 types of souls. Angels are top tier. They’re disembodied intelligence. They’re God’s messengers. Under them are human souls, then animal souls, then plant souls.

There are people who believe that human souls were not meant to exist without a physical body. They say that (and Jesus does say it somewhere in the new testament) humans will be given a new divine body after they die that isn’t vulnerable to disease or injury, much like Jesus’ body after he died but before he ascended. The ability to appear and disappear and be anywhere, as well.

Dammit, you guys need to stop making me actually think about that shit. I don’t care, and I don’t want to care. I just wanna go to heaven or wherever the hell and be with friends and play videogames.

:stuck_out_tongue: i know, i meant that there were supposed to be books in between those. Sorry.

They were probably dropped because they implied there were other divine beings along with God and this clashed with the theology back then.

You should understand that the Bible is a collection of texts assembled by Church officials centuries after Jesus. Jesus did not say, “Matthew, Mark, Luke, John–write about me”. There are dozens of Gospels–as in, sets of stories about Jesus claiming divine inspiration. Among them, the Church <i>picked which ones were inerrant</i>. The Church selected four Gospels that accorded with their beliefs. The idea that the Bible is a flawless source of truth, but the Church cannot be trusted, is ridiculous. The Church made the Bible. If one can be wrong, then so can the other. Fundamentalism is willful ignorance of this fact.

The idea that Christianity derives from the Bible is a major problem for the religion. It used to be a very philosophical movement (read the Gospel of John!). But over time it lost that, and what was once a compelling form of Neo-Platonism became dogma that noone really understood anymore.

The texts that are related to the Bible, but not accepted into it are called the Apocrypha. I’m sure Wikipedia has a great deal about them.

Something about this line disturbs me Lanyx…

Yes, exactly. The Council of Nicaea made the final choice on that, a council made up of bishops who were rapidly gaining power in their communities at the time and also well on their way to begin acquiring secular power alongside it.

I like the gospel in which Mary Magdalene was the chosen successor of Christ, not Peter. Of course, it does not surprise me that that text never made it.

And Hades, do you know where was your teacher was getting that information? Certainly not the Bible itself, and I do not think that Aquinas asserts that either in the first part of his summa.

I never learned that in my religion classes.

No, I don’t, Perc, and I don’t think I agree with most of it either.

Plants have souls? D: So the vegetarians have no excuse…

Except that plants bear fruit like we bear toenails. We don’t have to kill them to extract it.

My mom has remarked on the fact that liberals seem to know the bible better than so-called “Christian conservatives.”

Do seraphims (Isaiah 6:2 - Above it stood the seraphims: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly.) count as angels?

Something about this line disturbs me Lanyx…[/QUOTE] Glad I’m not the only one who noticed that. :smiley:

Seraphims and Cherubims are the two highest types of angels.