Lost Bible texts reveal diverse early beliefs about Jesus and the divine

New scholarship on the so-called 'lost' books of the Bible shows a broader spectrum of belief in early Jewish and Christian communities than is reflected in the 66-book canon. These writings circulated from the late Second Temple period into roughly the third century AD and offered radically different portraits of angels, giants, Jesus, and humanity's origins. Although most of these texts were later rejected by Jewish and Christian leaders and faded from use, they survive today in scattered manuscripts and fragments, including some associated with Ethiopian Christian traditions and the broader Dead Sea Scrolls corpus. They reveal a world of competing ideas about faith, morality, and divine intervention that early church leaders ultimately deem heretical or incompatible with evolving doctrine.

Among the best known is the Book of Enock, which expands on the Nephilim and describes 200 fallen angels who took human wives and produced violent giants who devoured humanity's resources. God commands the archangel Michael to bind the angels, and the Nephilim perish in the Flood. The Book of Enoch was not accepted into the standard canons, in part for its apocalyptic visions, detailed angelology, and mystical themes, and its theological propositions were seen as not aligning with emerging orthodox doctrine. Still, it remains canonical for the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.

The Apocalypse of Peter, written in the second or third century, offers a different portrayal of Jesus by depicting him laughing during the crucifixion and by raising questions about the nature of salvation. Some scholars see it as reflecting Gnostic influences that the early church rejected, particularly its hints at universal salvation and its treatment of Christ's crucifixion as having less emphasis on the divine crucified figure. The text was excluded from the Bible because its theology conflicted with the developing orthodox understanding of who Jesus was and what his crucifixion accomplished.

The Infancy Gospel of Thomas offers another radical departure, portraying a five-year-old Jesus performing supernatural acts. It recounts scenes in which Jesus forges life from clay birds, curses a boy who bumps him, and later reverses these acts, even resurrecting someone who falls from a roof. It also shows Jesus as a volatile child in conflict with adults, which contrasted with the more restrained portrait found in the canonical gospels. The text's late composition date and its association with Gnostic literature prompted early church leaders to deem it inauthentic and not part of scripture. The earliest known manuscript fragment of this text was only discovered in 2024, underscoring ongoing scholarly interest.

The Gospel of Judas, rediscovered in the 1970s in a limestone box near the Nile, presents Judas Iscariot not as a villain but as Jesus' trusted disciple, entrusted with a divinely appointed betrayal. Unlike the conventional account, Jesus tells Judas that he will 'become the thirteenth' and that he will be cursed by other generations who 'will come to rule over them.' The text portrays Judas as someone who understands Jesus' mission more fully than the other apostles, challenging centuries of interpretation.

Taken together, these lost books show the fragility and complexity of early scriptural formation. They were influential in some communities and periods, but they were excluded from Jewish and Christian canons as leaders canonicalized a framework of belief. Today, most survive only in fragments or references, with the Dead Sea Scrolls and Ethiopian manuscripts among the notable sources. The current Bible — 66 books across the Old and New Testaments — remains the standard for most churches, while scholars continue to study these texts to understand early debates about angels, origins, and the nature of Jesus.

Scholars caution against romanticizing these texts as 'alternate Bibles.' They reflect fringe or heterodox voices that circulated in certain communities and didn't converge into doctrinal consensus. The surviving manuscripts and modern reconstructions help historians trace how early Christians wrestled with questions of morality, salvation, and the relationship between Jesus' humanity and divinity.

From a culture and entertainment perspective, the story of the lost books highlights how ancient beliefs—some sensational or provocative—captured public imagination long before the modern era. The ongoing discovery and study of fragments, including the 2024 finding of the Infancy Gospel fragment, illustrate how archaeological and textual scholarship keeps reshaping what we know about early faith communities and their cultural imagination about angels, giants, and Jesus. A Daily Mail Science & Tech feature summarizes these developments, emphasizing that these texts illuminate the diversity of early Jewish and Christian thought.