Why were 14 books ripped out of the King James Bible in 1885?

Yesterday evening I decided to relax with a quaint documentary film on the once forbidden practice of translating the Bible into common language, with a focus on English, and the development of the King James Bible.
Despite talk of secret societies at work, much bloodshed (with a rather unbalanced focus on only Protestant persecutions in Britain by Catholics), it was nevertheless soothing, with relaxing music and an interesting narrative.



However, at about 52:33 in the clip, I noticed something astounding.
Above the plinky-plunky sentimentalism the narrator clearly said that in 1611 there were 80 books in the King James Bible, including the 14 Apocryphal Books!
What?
I thought it has 66 books, and not to get all Fred Phelps, but whosoever messes with that will burn in hell with a worm that never dies. That's what I was taught on adding or removing things from the Bible.

The Apocrypha was considered essential daily reading matter for 2000 years, until it was removed by the British and Foreign Bible Societies in 1885.
The narrator tells quite smugly and happily that we are the first generation of Christians to be without it (I guess he's not a spring chicken, but the meaning is clear - modern Protestant Christians don't know them at all).

So far I've only located and read one book, where Danial proves that the statue Bel is not a god, but just a statue made of clay and metal, and the priests and their families ate all the sacrificial food when nobody was watching.

I'm not surprised that got removed, because that's pretty much like Christian pastors today, and spiritual warfare mind-control would rather believe that pagan gods like Bel were real demons, and not just statues made of clay.
You can only smash a statue once, but one can capitalize on invisible devils in the air for ages.
So this probably set the scene for the current circus.

It's a real disgrace to rip things out of the Bible that have served Christians for all the generations, and could lead to rationality and completely different insights.
And then they say Christians in history were like some of the characters we get today, when it's not even the same book!

reply to post by halfoldman


I've heard of gnostic books not being added because they didn't fit King James' desires but never heard of them being removed.

Do you have a list of the books missing?

Religions want to be 'different' from other religions.

When the Roman Church first became aware that the central theme of Buddhism was re-incarnation the similar beliefs in the Roman Church were removed.

When Bibles were only written in Latin and only in the hands of the clergy it was easy to make changes of this magnitude. Once the population had access to and could read the ability to change the Bible was lost forever and that portion on the Church's power base lost forever.

P

I've tried to quote from the clip:

"The King James Bible of 1611 was printed with 80 books, including the 14 apocryphal books. In fact, the daily reading guide in the front of the KJV included the Apocrypha as part of one's daily reading as you can read through the Bible in a year. Archbishop Abbot, himself a member of the original translation committee worried that some future publisher might exclude the Apocrypha. In 1615 he warned of a fine and penalty of one year in prison to anyone who printed the KJV without the Apocrypha. The fine was equal to several hundred thousand dollars, an enormous sum of money. It was more than a warning, it was a threat - don't do it.

The 14 Apocryphal Books were part of the Septuagint, which was a second century BC translation Jesus and the Apostles would later quote from.

In fact, at the time of Christ the book of Danial contained 15 chapters, including 3 Apocrypha books: "Song of the three children", "Bel and the Dragon" and "Susanna".
In 382 Jerome was commissioned to translate the Bible from Greek into Latin. He put an asterisk by the Apocryphal books in AD 390. He questioned their inspiration because he could not find them in the original Hebrew text.

History proves that the Apocryphal Books were a part of God's Word for 2000 years, until 1885 AD when the British and Foreign Bible Societies excluded them from the revised version. Thus we are the first generation of Christians that has had the Apocrypha excluded from our Bibles."

Lucky modern Christians, I guess.
Less reading.

The Apocrypha is readily available and even I have one that I bought in a Christian bookstore. Most good study Bibles will have the Apocrypha as well as a number of other books and texts.

Some groups have been, are, and always will be tinkering with the Bible. I myself like the original King James Bible... some find it hard to read and will use and refer to a more contemporary version.

Unfortunately, too many Christians do not study their Bible as they should and are not even aware of the Apocryphal Books or the Book of Enoch or some of the unaccepted Gospels. But they have seen the Ten Commandments and know that Moses looked like Charlton Heston.

From what I have read, the Apocrypha Books were removed because the Divine inspiration was doubted and they added nothing to the overall integrity of the Bible...that's a very condensed version anyway.

reply to post by halfoldman


If you want to read the books ripped from the King James Bible, all you gotta do is find any Catholic version of the Bible. I recommend the Douay Rheims translation although I guess a New American Bible would do.

The books were removed because they reinforced Catholic teachings. It always puzzled me about who gave them the authority to remove books during the protestant revolt.

reply to post by Bleeeeep

Well generally, my apologies if I came on a bit strong in my opening post, and of course not to point fingers at individual people or such, I was just so shocked and outraged myself, because I'd never heard of it.

Wikipedia gives a short history, and a list of the books, and it seems the issue going back to Jerome is not resolved.
en.wikipedia.org...

Ohhh boy, you have just opened up a can of worms.
Christians are not GENERALLY a group who are open to their holy book or religion being challenged with facts
and logic.

So, you have undoubtedly brought up a subject inspired by the devil to test their faith in God.

I am sorry for all of these facts being exposed.
I have known this for some time now and am poilte enough not to bring it up because
I don't want the devil working thru me in order to mislead the God fearing Christians.


Praise Allah.

reply to post by halfoldman


Yeah I hadn't heard of it either. Not trying to condemn them - I just wanted to know exactly which books were there because there are a lot of gnostic books not in the bible.

eta:
Found a site with the books you're referring to:
They're listed as being The Deuterocanonical Books of the Bible



this is a reedit:
Oh Druid beat me to it.
Didn't read his post before I edited mine.

reply to post by halfoldman

The Apocrypha was considered essential daily reading matter for 2000 years

I'm sure you mean 200 years, aye?

Those books that were removed? Well, have you ever read the Apocrypha? There is stuff in there that is quite unbelievable. The Apostle Peter magically flying and having aerial duels with bad guys, for example.

The books of Adam and Eve? Uhm, they were quite suicidal after getting kicked out of the Garden of Eden, and God brought them back to life several times.

The Book of Thomas (yes, doubting Thomas) paints a nice picture of Jesus' philosophy, but we can't have people knowing that Thomas was also his twin brother.

The Book of Enoch? Well, simply too much information about the Nephilim and all their horny friends.

The "edited" version is much less contradictory, and a much more "moderate" version that modern day Christians can understand.

Here is a GOOD LINK if you have hours to read.

reply to post by halfoldman


The Catholic books were removed. They are still availible if you wish to read them. They were never a part of the Old or New Testament anyways, they were like an addition between the two Testaments.

reply to post by FortAnthem

Sure, I read that the Catholic and Orthodox churches keep the books in the Bible.
If I may ask somebody from those faiths, in what form are they kept?
Are they between the Testaments (which is apparently where Luther put them in his translations, but I'm not quite sure), or somehow spread amongst the other chapters?
But then again Luther supposedly also wanted to do away with the book of Revelations at a stage.
It must have been hellish to translate, one can imagine.

Despite some sects, the main church in England kept the books however, and when they were removed in 1885 I'm not sure what specific anti-Catholic sentiment or war existed at the time to make their removal specifically "anti-Catholic"?

I'm not saying it wasn't so, I'm just wondering why at that time?

And why did it then also happen to German Lutherans and so forth?

We're told these societies removed it all of a sudden, but not really why.

reply to post by Druid42

No I mean 2000 years until 1885 in the KJV, and the books you mention were never a part of any official Bible, and count as "Other Apocrypha" in your link.
Interesting link however!

Originally posted by halfoldman
reply to post by FortAnthem

 

Sure, I read that the Catholic and Orthodox churches keep the books in the Bible.
If I may ask somebody from those faiths, in what form are they kept?
Are they between the Testaments (which is apparently where Luther put them in his translations, but I'm not quite sure), or somehow spread amongst the other chapters?

They are spread out among the chapters. If you look in the table of contents, they aren't even marked any differently as any other book in the Bible. To us, they are just some books that have always been there and it baffles us as to why the protestants would remove books from the Bible unless they had some type of agenda.

reply to post by halfoldman

History proves that the Apocryphal Books were a part of God's Word for 2000 years, until 1885 AD when the British and Foreign Bible Societies excluded them from the revised version.

I had to re-read what you were asking in your OP. Now I see. You are asking what happened to the 14 books removed from the "Old Testament", but I mistook the reference to mean all the "Apocryphal" (hidden) books that never made the final cut into the King James Version of the bible. My mistake.

reply to post by halfoldman

You can only smash a statue once, but one can capitalize on invisible devils in the air for ages.

What a stand-out and insightful comment; for the length of recorded human history these 'invisible devils' have had us dancing on strings.

...seems like every culture has created, or been given, something to get twitchy and fearful over. We can't seem to help our imaginations from turning shadows into silhouettes.

reply to post by halfoldman


1885? Great Scot MARTY!!!!!!! enough said

As for why the books are banned the usual- Politics and religion and changes within both. I mean Enoch was removed less than 100 years ago.

In the words of god himself (via Montey Python) "Stop groveling! The one thing I can't stand Is people GROVLING, AND don't apologize every time I try to talk to someone Its "I'm sorry for this" or "forgive me that" and I'm not worthy. Its just like those miserable Psalms, they're SOOOOOOO depressing, now knock it off.
Again politics and religion and the changing of views, whats immoral one decade is ok on another ask any Ketamite/alterboy

reply to post by halfoldman


If you want a free and fantastic resource for all the "missing" books of the Bible, visit this website:

www.bibleufo.com

It's really easy to get lost in the information there, but click around...you'll come across everything the website owner has posted on all ancient texts that were discovered in the Qumran caves along with the current books of the Bible. The Apocrypha, as many have already mentioned, is still available in Catholic Bibles...I own a Bible with it included, myself. It's the other ones that I find amazingly fascinating. The website owner has posted these for free, and in many cases, some of the translations are missing words because the books themselves were damaged, but it's fascinating to get a peak into these!

The Jews obviously hold the Bible in great reverence, and call the different sections by different names, but they inlcude MANY more books than what the Bible contains as their study material. It is quite fascinating!

Because the bible ( This goes for all versions of it) is manipulated and changed according to the times in an attempt to control people.

A 2000 + year old bunch of books written by men, attempting to understand the way the world works and throwing in political propaganda of the time, was twisted and manipulated to control people.

This is why there are so many versions of the bible. Hey, the King James version exists because the church was telling King James he could not remarry. So he kicked the church out and rewrote the bible creating the King James version...

He manipulated these texts to allow himself to get re-married.

Some one else decided to change his version again for their own reasons....It comes down to greed and control.

So there is your answer. Is it a disgrace? I suppose, but it's nothing new. The bible has been changed, altered and had parts left out or even added, for centuries....

Popular or not. That is the truth and that is where I stand.

Bash away!

Just watched the first few minutes of the clip again.

Isn't it fascinating to know that it took an entire flock of sheep to make the pages of a 4th century New Testament?

It sure could have saved some sheep (no pun intended) if they took out the disposable parts from the Bible then.

I guess since 1885 thousands of sheep died for 14 disposable chapters of the Old Testament for centuries.

Maybe somebody into Freakonomics can work out how many sheep that may have been that died for absolutely nothing according to Protestants.