Two Modern Essays We Should Add to the Bible

Because their spiritual depth rivals most scripture

Photo by Unseen Histories on Unsplash

The idea of adding to the Bible may seem blasphemous. Its words were divinely inspired, and how dare we add to them?

But — and I’m very sorry if this is news — the Bible did not fall from heaven. It did not appear ex nihilo in a burning bush. The Bible has human fingerprints all over its pages.

Bishops at the Council of Rome in 382 A.D. selected the Bible’s contents from a much larger set of writings that circulated among Christians. Why did they choose some writings and not the writings now known as the Apocrypha?

They chose the writings — the established Hebrew Bible; the Gospel accounts; the letters of Paul, Peter, and others — that had proven to be most powerful for early Christians. The stuff that Christians shared and passed down, to which they returned over and over, became canonized.

So, why shouldn’t modern Christians consider adding more recent writings that have inspired, encouraged, challenged, and uplifted Christians throughout time?

I’ll go even further — divine inspiration didn’t end with the Book of Revelation. Most Christians implicitly assume that modern writing cannot be divinely inspired, as though God stopped speaking.