We live in a time when people will believe anything. While there is merit to investigating the origins of things, especially in regard to doctrine, like the Bereans did when Paul told them the gospel, there is yet danger in ‘throwing the baby out with the bathwater’.
We have, our generation, inherited lies; but, the lies we inherited were woven into the truth, to make the lie look more appealing, just like what happened in the Garden of Eden. But, the truth has to be ‘unwoven’ from the lies carefully, or we destroy the whole fabric of faith.
Our faith has to be rooted in truth. That truth has to come from Scripture. Yeshua said it: “Father, sanctify them in Your Truth: Your WORD is Truth”. John 17:17
Just like the adversary told Eve, “Did God really say…”, people today are trying to add to their belief system other sources from antiquity that are not Biblical. And since there are lies we have uncovered, they conduce we must have been lied to about ‘canon’ [what is divinely inspired writing] as well.
This is dangerous. And it is dividing the Body of Messiah further, and it is leading people down the path of deceit, so that Ben HaAbadon [Apollyon] will be successful when he finally appears.
The serpent was right to ask “Did God really say?” So were the Bereans. But, the serpent tweaked the Words of God and added to them. Twisting God’s Word makes ‘mixture religion’. Mixing His Word with ‘half-truths’ and human tradition is mixture religion. The Serpent became known as “The Adversary”, and the “Bright Son of the Dawn”, and “An Angel of Light”, seeming to bring truth, but dragging willing, possibly gullible people to their destruction.
Today, books from antiquity are surfacing. They are a historical curiosity. Some of them have been around for a while, but some are rather new to western minds. And it is causing people to think that everything they know about Yeshua is suspect. Or, that there are things we did not formerly know, that we now need to know.
Yokhanan [The Apostle John] said it at the end of His gospel: “There are also a great many other things which Yeshua did, which, if they were written one by one, not even this world, I trust, could contain the books that would be written.” John was the last living apostle, and did not write his gospel until late in the game, when gnostics and others were trying to distort the nature of Yeshua and the truth of His ministry. Had there been any need for more information beyond the other gospels and his, he would have informed us. Yeshua visited John to have him write seven more ‘epistles’, one to each of the significant ‘gentile’ congregations that were already going into error in the late first century. He did this to warn US about the errors that already plagued the congregations. And, here they are again.
Is our Bible complete?
Maybe something was left out of our Bible?
Does that appeal to you like the forbidden fruit of the garden? Be careful!
God said that He would ‘watch over’ His own Word. Yeshua said that He would establish His Congregation, and the gates of Hades would not prevail against it. That is likely one place Yeshua was referencing mythology specifically. He said that in Caesarea Philippi, where there was an actual place of infant sacrifice at ‘the Gates of Hades”.
The ‘canon’ of Scripture was not arbitrarlity invented, and did not ‘accidentally’ or deliberately leave out other books. The books that were recognized as divinely inspired met qualifications that others do not:
They were written with prophetic authority by a known prophet.
They were written with ‘apostolic’ authority, by people appointed to the Gospel by Yeshua Himself, or the apostles.
Their writings match the overarching message of the already revealed Word of God. They were not written and then ‘voted’ in: they were received from the hand of authority.
Scripture itself does not give us a table of contents—but it does give us the standard by which Scripture is recognized.
The canon was not created by councils or later institutions. It was recognized by the people of God through clear and consistent marks. They saw Prophetic or Apostolic Authority because the writing came from a prophet recognized by Israel, or an apostle appointed directly by Yeshua, or the close companion of an apostle.
God’s Word is tied to God’s appointed messengers, not later admirers.
There was doctrinal consistency in the earliest accepted canon: God does not contradict Himself. Any writing that introduces ideas foreign to the Torah, the Prophets, or the teachings of Messiah is not from God. God’s Truth is unified from Genesis to Revelation. There was immediate and widespread recognition of the true writings from God. They were not hidden or discovered centuries later. They were circulated among congregations immediately, read publicly, and recognized across regions.
Peter’s recognition of Paul’s letters as “Scripture” (2 Peter 3:15–16) shows this process happening in real time, not centuries later.
The people of God, walking in truth, recognized the voice of God in these writings—just as Yeshua said: “My sheep hear My voice…” This is not subjective feeling, but a collective recognition grounded in truth that had been already revealed.
Because of these things, the canon is not open. It is not lacking. And it is not awaiting discovery.
It is complete, because the age of the Apostles—the foundation—has ended (Ephesians 2:20).
The Authority of the “Old Testament”:
Many people are not aware, but Yeshua appears to certify the Jewish Canon of scripture that is still in circulation today, which matches the “Old Testament” of the protestant believers.
“…all the blood of the Righteous Ones shed on the ground may come on you, from the blood of the Righteous Abel [Avel HaTzadik] down to the blood of Zechariah son of Berechaiah [Zakhar-Yah Ben Berekh-Yah], whom you killed between the Temple and the altar”.
This is possibly as much a statement on canon, as well as any other purpose. Abel is in the book of Genesis, and Zechariah’s death is in the book of 2nd Chronicles. To the protestant, that is not so meaningful. But to Jews, that is a citation of the first book of the “Old Testament” and the last book of the “Old Testament”, what our Jewish people call “Tanakh”. Yeshua, the Beginning and the End, was citing the beginning of time, and the end of the Age of the Prophets, but citing the first and last books of the Jewish Bible. And, He was doing so in the context of the disobedience of people and their disregard for God’s Prophets. This was the already recognized Canon of Scripture in His day, and it still is today, regarding the covenant writings of Abraham’s people.
The Torah and the Prophets and the Writings [where Tanakh is a mnemonic to remember that] were already well established. Josephus confirms this, noting it was a ‘fixed body of sacred books’ when he taught Rome about Israel. This ‘fixed body’ was confirmed by Yeshua by His words, and by His participation in the Jewish religious life.
The “Renewed Covenant” Scriptures were recognized in the same fashion: they were written with “Apostolic Authority”, they had doctrinal consistency with Judaic Faith of the first century, they were proliferated immediately and widely known as authoritative by oustide sources, and their authority was recognized. Peter expressed it this way:
“And consider that the longsuffering of Our Master [Adoneinu] is for Salvation; even as our beloved brother Paul also, according to the wisdom given to him, has written to you, as also in all his letters he speaks concerning these matters, in which there are certain things so hard to be understood that those who are ignorant and unstable twist their meaning, as they do also the other scriptures, to their own destruction. You therefore, my beloved, seeing that you know these things beforehand, beware, lest you follow the error of those without Torah, and fall from your own steadfastness. [2 Peter 3:15-17]
Peter recognized that Paul’s letters were on the level of divinely inspired Scriptures, the Scriptures that Paul taught for years at Ephesus [Acts 19:9], and logically in all the other places where he founded Messianic congregations.
Today, people are citing that Jude quotes Enoch, and so they must have recognized Enoch as divinely inspired writing. Just because Enoch is referenced does not mean it was divinely inspired. Again, the canon of the Jewish Bible was already well established, Enoch was not in it, and Yeshua verified the truth of the Jewish canon Himself, without it. Enoch did not write and could not have written the book of Enoch; it wasn’t written until the intertestamental period, and was a compilation of tradition. It was not given to Enoch by God. Enoch left the earth years before the flood. There is no credible evidence that a ‘book’ from Enoch traversed the flood with Noah. There is no evidence that any text from Enoch himself was preserved, transmitted, or recognized as Scripture by Israel.
Enoch is a collection of books by intertestamental authors who, just like today, were people caught up in apocalyptic thought. Enoch’s name was ‘used’ to lend weight to their ideas. The Biblical Enoch simply did not write the book. It was a book of likely oral traditions that were written down and embellished. The tradition that the advesary looked for Moshe’s body is the only thing that Jude cites; he’s not giving authoritative weight to all the writings of Enoch in citing that one thought. The Bible also cites pagan poets [Acts 17:28], astrology, and astral projection [Ecclesiastes]. That does not make those ideas/sources divinely inspired any more than Jude’s citation of a culturally relevant, non-inspired book does.
Today, the newest sensation is the “Ethiopian Bible”, specifically the Bible of the Orthodox Tewahedo Church. It contains a broader collection of writings, which do include Enoch, Jubilees, and other traditional but apocryphal texts. They have value to show us early culture and history, but none of them were written by a well-known person, much less someone whom we know to have been chosen by Yeshua to guide His Congregation. Today, those books are being used to promote mythological ideas, as if our ancient Jewish people had never gone into error. Be reminded, Yeshua scourged the Jewish community of His day by pointing to the accepted canon of His day!
“More” scripture does not automatically mean ‘more truth’. This is the claim of Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses, and many others in our day. The Ethiopian congregations were geographically isolated from the Messianic Jewish leadership of the 1st Century who accepted the known canon. They originally accepted the actual canon, but later, they added apocryphal works because they were distanced from the guidance of the Messianic leaders. Similarly, the Catholic church added back other books to the canon at a much later date [Counsel of Trent]. These are writings that the Apostles never recognized, some of which they would not even have seen. But, both Ethiopians and Catholics did still cling to the original works of received canon, our OT and NT. If one studies the extra books, one finds that they do not meet the things looked for for acceptance as divinely inspired. They may have been added to ‘tickle their itching ears’ with doctrines like purgatory or Mary-worship, or other such doctrines, which is why the Catholic church likely added them back.
The question is ‘divine inspiration’ and ‘Messianic Authority’. Peter certified Paul’s works as equal to divinely inspired Scriptures, the accepted canon of his day, but none of the Apostles, including John, who lived the longest, ever gave acceptance to these works as “Scripture”.
Scripture must be ‘God-breathed’ according to Paul [2 Tim 3:16-17]. Paul was referring to the accepted canon, which he also taught to gentiles, our “OT”. NT writings are anchored on OT Scripture. “Scriptures say… [1 Tim 5:18, where Deuteronomy is twice cited, as Luke 10:7 does]. Scriptures are the ‘building blocks’ of the Congregation, and Paul limits those to the Torah, the Prophets, and the Apostles in Ephesians 2:19 – “Thus from henceforth you [gentiles] are neither strangers nor foreigners, but fellow-citizens with the holy ones, and children of the House of God; and you are built upon the foundation of the Apostles [NT], and the Prophets [OT], Yeshua the Messiah Himself being the cornerstone of the building.” There would be no ‘progressive revelation’ as is taught in churches that accept other canonicity, and Jude is the one who asserts that! “My beloved, I write to you with all diligence concerning our common Salvation, and it is needful that I should write and exhort you also to stand and fight for the trust which was once and for all delivered to the Holy Ones.” [v. 3] And Paul, seeming to anticipate this issue, warns us “do not go beyond what is [already] written…” [1 Cor 4:6] This would mean interpretation as well as accepted canon. And last, Yokhanan, John, Yeshua’s beloved friend, warns us all, as did God warn Israel, not to ADD TO HIS WORD: “If anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues…” Anything written or compiled, or canonized, after the Apostle John died is exactly that, and it is a dangerous game.
Brothers and sisters, accepting written texts as ‘divinely inspired’ and ‘profitable for doctrine’ that are not in fact divinely inspired is just like the sin in the Garden. It is ‘putting words in God’s mouth’ that HE NEVER SAID.
The books added to the Ethiopian Bible were not accepted by the Apostles. Not one apostle expresses agreement with them or adds them to our guideposts. Jude did not at all lend divine authority to them. In fact, his language is a bit like saying “Even the book of Enoch” said this… showing that even lesser authorities know better than to contend with the adversary without proper authority. That is the lesson of Jude, and it is being ignored today.