The "lost books of the Bible" is a popular label for ancient Jewish and Christian writings that are not in the standard Protestant Bible. It covers three different things: books the Bible itself names that no longer survive, such as the original Book of Jasher; books some churches keep and others drop, such as Tobit, the Maccabees, or the Ethiopian church's Enoch and Jubilees; and texts that never entered any major canon. Most were never lost in the sense of vanishing. They were set aside, slowly and unevenly, as communities settled on which books to read as scripture.
The answer depends on whose Bible is on the table. A Protestant Bible has 66 books, a Catholic Bible 73, and the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church recognizes 81. Knowing where each "lost" book actually comes from is the fastest way to separate genuine ancient texts from later imitations sold under the same name.
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What counts as a "lost book" of the Bible
A lost book of the Bible is any work that a reader might expect to find in scripture but will not find in the standard Protestant canon. Scholars sort these into clearer groups. First are the source books the Hebrew Bible cites by name but does not preserve, such as the Book of Jasher and "the book of the wars of the LORD" mentioned in Numbers 21:14. Second are the Apocrypha, or deuterocanonical books, which Catholic and Orthodox Christians include in their Old Testament. Third are the Pseudepigrapha, writings attributed to ancient figures like Enoch that most traditions never treated as scripture. Fourth are the New Testament apocrypha, early Christian texts that did not make the final list. Only the first group is truly lost.
The Book of Jasher: the lost book the Bible quotes
The Book of Jasher is a lost Hebrew work quoted twice in the Old Testament, and the original text no longer exists. Joshua 10:13, after describing the sun standing still over Gibeon, asks "Is not this written in the book of Jasher?" Second Samuel 1:18 says David's lament over Saul and Jonathan is "written in the book of Jasher." The Hebrew title, Sefer haYashar, is usually translated "Book of the Upright."
The Book of Jasher sold today is a different text. It is a Hebrew midrash, a retelling of biblical history from creation to the period of the judges, first printed in Venice in 1625. Its preface claims an earlier edition printed in Naples in 1552, but no trace or other mention of that printing has ever been found. Joseph Dan, a scholar of Jewish mysticism, concluded from its Hebrew and other indicators that it was written in Naples in the early 16th century; other scholars have proposed dates anywhere from the 9th to the 16th century. None place it in the time of Joshua.
An English translation was published in New York in 1840 by Mordecai Manuel Noah and A. S. Gould. The translator, later identified as Moses Samuel of Liverpool, had worked from the 1625 Hebrew edition. That 1840 version is the one most bookstores and websites reproduce. It contains a version of the Joshua passage, unsurprising for a book that retells Joshua, but David's lament from 2 Samuel 1, the second text the Bible attributes to Jasher, is not in it.
A third "Jasher" causes even more confusion. In 1751 the London printer Jacob Ilive issued a Book of Jasher that claimed to be an English translation made by Alcuin, the eighth-century scholar at Charlemagne's court. The Monthly Review dismissed it as a hoax as soon as it appeared, since an eighth-century cleric could not have written in King James English. It is still reprinted as "Pseudo-Jasher."
Jubilees and Enoch: the books Ethiopia kept
Jubilees and 1 Enoch are genuine ancient Jewish books that dropped out of most Bibles but stayed in the Ethiopian one. Both survive complete only in Ge'ez, the classical language of Ethiopia, and both turned up among the Dead Sea Scrolls.
The Book of Jubilees retells Genesis and the first part of Exodus as a revelation given to Moses on Mount Sinai. It organizes all of history into "jubilees" of 49 years, seven weeks of years, and uses that scheme to fix a 364-day calendar for the festivals. Most scholars date it to the mid-2nd century BCE; Britannica gives a later estimate of about 100 BCE. Roughly fifteen Hebrew copies were found in five caves at Qumran between 1947 and 1956, more than for most books that did enter the Hebrew Bible. Jubilees is canonical in the Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo churches and in the scriptural tradition of the Beta Israel, the Jewish community of Ethiopia.
The Book of Enoch, known to scholars as 1 Enoch, is a collection of Jewish apocalyptic writings composed in Aramaic over several centuries before the Christian era. Its best-known section tells how the Watchers, angels who descended to earth, fathered the Nephilim and taught humanity forbidden arts. The New Testament letter of Jude, verses 14 and 15, quotes 1 Enoch 1:9 as a prophecy of "Enoch, the seventh from Adam." Qumran Cave 4 yielded fragmentary Aramaic copies of Enochic writings, published by J. T. Milik in 1976. Its reception is told in our explainer on the Book of Enoch and why it was left out, and the scrolls themselves are covered in the Dead Sea Scrolls explained.
The Apocrypha: books Catholics keep and Protestants dropped
The Apocrypha are Jewish books from the last centuries BCE that were included in the Septuagint, the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures, but not in the Hebrew Bible itself. Catholics call them deuterocanonical, meaning "second canon." The core list is Tobit, Judith, the Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach (also called Ecclesiasticus or Ben Sira), Baruch, 1 and 2 Maccabees, and additional passages in Esther and Daniel. Eastern Orthodox churches accept these and a few more, such as 3 Maccabees and the Prayer of Manasseh.
Because early Christians mostly read the Old Testament in Greek, these books stayed in the Christian Bible until the Reformation. In his 1534 German Bible, Martin Luther moved them into a separate section between the Testaments under a heading describing them as books "not held equal to the Scriptures, but useful and good to read." The Catholic Church answered at the Council of Trent, which in its fourth session in 1546 affirmed the deuterocanonical books as fully canonical.
Protestant Bibles kept printing the Apocrypha in a separate section for centuries afterward; the original 1611 King James Version includes them. They disappeared from most Protestant editions in the 19th century, after the British and Foreign Bible Society resolved in 1826 to fund only the canonical books and the American Bible Society followed in 1827. Cost was one of the reasons given.
Pseudepigrapha and the New Testament apocrypha
The Pseudepigrapha are ancient Jewish and early Christian writings attributed to famous biblical figures who did not write them. Besides Enoch and Jubilees, the group includes the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, the Life of Adam and Eve, 2 Baruch and many others, gathered in modern English in James H. Charlesworth's two-volume edition. Outside Ethiopia, they were copied and quoted but not read as scripture.
The New Testament apocrypha are the Christian counterpart: gospels, acts, letters and apocalypses that claimed apostolic authority but were not adopted into the New Testament. In December 1945 a farmer near Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt dug up thirteen leather-bound codices containing 52 texts in Coptic, including the complete Gospel of Thomas. Our guide to the Gnostic Gospels and Nag Hammadi covers what they say.
How the canon was actually decided
The biblical canon was settled gradually over several centuries, not at a single meeting. The popular claim that the Council of Nicaea in 325 chose the books of the Bible is a myth; the surviving records show that the council dealt with the dispute over Arius and the nature of Christ, producing the Nicene Creed and a set of church rules, and did not rule on scripture. Historian Bart Ehrman credits the novel The Da Vinci Code with spreading the idea.
For the New Testament, the earliest surviving list that matches the 27 books exactly is the Festal Letter of Athanasius of Alexandria, written in 367. Regional church councils at Hippo in 393 and Carthage in 397 affirmed a similar list. Churches weighed recurring questions: was a book linked to an apostle, was it read widely in the churches, and did it agree with accepted teaching?
The Jewish canon also formed gradually; the old idea that a rabbinic "Council of Jamnia" around 90 CE closed the Hebrew Bible is now widely doubted. What is clear is that the Hebrew canon left out the books later called the Apocrypha, so Christians had to choose between the Hebrew list and the broader Greek one.
Why the Ethiopian Bible is the largest
The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo canon, with 81 books in its standard form, is the largest and most varied canon in traditional Christianity. Alongside the full Hebrew Bible and most of the deuterocanon, it includes 1 Enoch, Jubilees, the three books of Meqabyan (Ethiopian books distinct from the Greek Maccabees), and the Paralipomena of Jeremiah, also known as 4 Baruch. A broader form of the canon adds further books but has never been printed as a single volume.
Ethiopia's church developed with its own Ge'ez translations, at a distance from the Greek and Latin councils that shaped European Bibles. That independence is why it preserved books that elsewhere were copied less and less until only fragments remained.
Billy Carson's reading
Billy Carson treats the books outside the mainstream canon as essential evidence rather than curiosities. In The REAL Yeshua Revealed: Egypt, the Ethiopian Bible & the Hidden History of Jesus, released on the 4biddenknowledge Podcast Network, he turns to the Ethiopian canon, the Bible that kept Enoch and Jubilees, to argue that the canon most Western readers know left out key parts of history, including history bearing on the life of Jesus. That argument builds on a theme running through his work on the Watchers: in Billy Carson on the Watchers and forbidden knowledge, he reads Enoch's fallen angels as real beings who handed advanced knowledge to early humans, and he connects them with the Anunnaki of the Sumerian texts. In his case that the Bible was copied from older texts, he argues that Genesis drew on Mesopotamian sources and that its editors reshaped what they inherited.
These are his interpretations. Mainstream scholars accept that Enoch and Jubilees were widely read in ancient Judea and later fell outside most canons, but they explain this through the slow, contested process of canon formation rather than deliberate suppression. The Ethiopian canon shows that the boundaries of scripture were drawn differently in different places; how much hidden history its extra books hold is where Carson's reading and the academic consensus part ways.
Watch, read and go deeper
The Bible Study series on 4BK TV is where Billy Carson reads the canonical books alongside the texts that did not make it in. For a long-form conversation on the most famous excluded book, listen to the podcast episode Book of Enoch: Watchers, fallen angels, forbidden knowledge and human origins. The Anunnaki topic hub gathers related articles on Sumer, the Nephilim and the ancient flood traditions that run through these books.
Frequently asked questions
What are the lost books of the Bible?
The phrase refers to ancient writings missing from the standard Protestant Bible: the Apocrypha (such as Tobit and the Maccabees), Pseudepigrapha such as Enoch and Jubilees, New Testament apocrypha such as the Gospel of Thomas, and source books like the Book of Jasher that the Bible cites but that do not survive.
Is the Book of Jasher sold today the one mentioned in the Bible?
No. The original Book of Jasher cited in Joshua 10:13 and 2 Samuel 1:18 is lost. The popular English version is an 1840 translation of a Hebrew midrash first printed in Venice in 1625, not the ancient book. A separate 1751 "Book of Jasher" attributed to Alcuin is a known forgery.
Why were the Apocrypha removed from Protestant Bibles?
Martin Luther moved them to a separate section in 1534 because they were not in the Hebrew Bible, though he still called them useful to read. Protestant Bibles, including the 1611 King James Version, printed them for centuries. Most Protestant publishers dropped them in the 19th century after the British and Foreign Bible Society stopped funding them in 1826.
Did the Council of Nicaea decide which books are in the Bible?
No. The Council of Nicaea in 325 dealt with the Arian controversy and produced the Nicene Creed; its records contain no ruling on the canon. The first list matching the 27-book New Testament is Athanasius's Festal Letter of 367, and regional councils at Hippo (393) and Carthage (397) affirmed a similar list.
Which Bible has the most books?
The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo canon, with 81 books in its standard form. It and the closely related Eritrean canon are the only ones that include 1 Enoch and Jubilees, which is why both survive complete only in Ge'ez.
Sources and further reading
- Bruce M. Metzger, The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin, Development, and Significance (Oxford University Press, 1987)
- Lee Martin McDonald, The Biblical Canon: Its Origin, Transmission, and Authority (Hendrickson, 2007)
- James H. Charlesworth (ed.), The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, 2 volumes (Doubleday, 1983–1985)
- George W. E. Nickelsburg and James C. VanderKam, 1 Enoch: The Hermeneia Translation (Fortress Press, 2012)
- James C. VanderKam, The Book of Jubilees (Sheffield Academic Press, 2001)
- The Book of Jasher, Referred to in Joshua and Second Samuel (New York: M. M. Noah and A. S. Gould, 1840)
- Athanasius of Alexandria, Festal Letter 39 (367 CE)
