The Rest of the Story: The Bible Unredac

The Rest of the Story: The Bible Unredacted 

As we wrap up our Alpha and Omega series, Pastor Gene Simco takes us on a fascinating journey into the history of the Christian Bible. Have you ever stopped at the table of contents and wondered who put it all together? Why do some Bibles contain more books than others? And what Scriptures were Jesus, the apostles, and the early Church actually reading? 
In this eye-opening message, we explore how God preserved His Word through history, translation, and the Church. We unpack the shift from Hebrew to Greek, the creation of the Septuagint, and why the "400 silent years" weren't actually silent at all. This sermon is not about weakening your confidence in Scripture—it is about strengthening it by showing the incredible, providential history behind the texts that shaped the early Christian world. 

Reader's Version

The Rest of the Story: The Bible Unredacted 

Sermon by Gene Simco  

Reader's Version 

We have just finished our Alpha and Omega series, where we essentially overviewed all of the books in the Bible and saw how the Old Testament points to Jesus, the Alpha and the Omega. Today, we are going to overview the entire Bible as a whole, specifically looking at how the Christian Bible came to be. 

Before we dive into this very important topic, I want to explain a process. I am going to give you an overview today, but if you want further reading, I am going to point you to a book that I recently finished authoring and published. 

In my past life, I was an author who wrote instructional books on martial arts. When I became a pastor, I continued writing, but shifted my focus to this subject. For those of you reading this, you are reading a "reader's version" of the sermon. Typically, these versions get compiled into a book that follows the series we are in. However, this recently published book wasn't part of a series; it is a comprehensive overview of the topic. 

If you want more extensive information, I will point you to where you can purchase that book. It is important to state right now that this is not about me trying to become rich or famous—that was my previous life. This is about getting people information. It is also important that you know all the proceeds for this book, The Rest of the Story: The Bible Unredacted, go entirely to the church (C3 Church). At our current rate, in about a year's time, we will probably make about $3.10 in profit! 

The Illusion of the "Black Belt" 

Let's go back to my previous life so I can tell you a story that relates to this topic and sets the tone. 

I had done martial arts my entire life. I was originally raised as a musician, but it wasn't until I found out that "professional musician" is kind of an oxymoron that I decided to go into the martial arts industry and run a school. I held a black belt in a traditional form of jiu-jitsu. 

In the early 1990s, the Gracie family brought Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ) to the United States. They noticed that, like much else in America, martial arts had become highly commercialized. Real fighting wasn't an actual focus. Schools were giving black belts to children, and people were spending more time breaking boards for self-confidence than learning how to actually defend themselves. 

To showcase their art as the superior martial art, they developed the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). It worked. You had a relatively skinny Gracie family member, Royce Gracie, tapping out bigger and supposedly deadlier opponents. In fact, no one lasted more than about two minutes with him before tapping out. Naturally, this piqued my interest as a martial artist. 

The problem was finding a place to train. Most locations were in California, where I would eventually find myself, but the closest one at the time was about an hour and a half away. When I finally visited, I noticed the room was really just full of white belts and one blue belt. If you know anything about BJJ, blue is just the first belt after white (white, blue, purple, brown, black). I looked around and asked, "Where are the black belts?" It was explained to me that earning a blue belt in BJJ takes a long time, and is equivalent to a black belt in almost everything else. Scoffing at the notion, I kept my traditional jiu-jitsu black belt on. 

Facing the Truth 

During the sparring session, I was paired with a white belt. Surprised, I figured I would just run right through this guy to get to the blue belt. If I am being very honest, I didn't last a full two minutes before I found myself tapping out. Assuming it was a fluke, or that maybe I didn't take him seriously enough, we went for round two. That round didn't last more than a couple of minutes before I tapped out again. 

I was left quite humbled. I didn't even make it to the blue belt. What was I to do? Remember, I was running a martial arts school. Would I go back to my students and pretend this never happened? Would I face reality and change some things? Would I integrate it into my program? Would I take my black belt off and start all over again? These are all questions I had to answer when faced with the truth. 

I tried a mixture of approaches at first, including trying to integrate it while still wearing my black belt. This only confused people who thought I was a black belt in BJJ. Eventually, I had to come to the point where I was just honest with myself and my students. I took my black belt off and started over again. It cost me students and it cost me money, but it was the price of integrity. Ultimately, upholding that integrity resulted in us becoming a very popular martial arts school over time. But I have to say, it took me about ten more years to earn my black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu—and it was a tough road. 

The Cost of Biblical Integrity 

To relate this to the church: if we are being very honest, the church has also become commercialized. There are a lot of commercial churches out there that are kind of like "McChurches," the same way we had "McDojos." They are just scratching the surface; they are hitting boards, per se. There are a lot of paper pastors, just like there are paper black belts. They are teaching a watered-down message, and a lot of times, as we know, it is not really the truth. 

Likewise, there are a lot of Christians wearing black belts of assumed biblical knowledge that probably need to come off. 

Just some encouragement before we get into this topic: you are probably going to hear or read some things today that you may never have heard before—and worse yet, things you were told were not true. I want you to know as we begin this message that everything I am telling you is the result of a decade's worth of research and can be historically verified. 

Again, I point you to the book not for profit, but for the truth. There, you will find many, many endnotes pointing to all of my sources. 

The Rest of The Story Book: 

https://www.amazon.com/Rest-Story-Bible-Unredacted/dp/B0GVYR85RN/?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_w=STnAP&content-id=amzn1.sym.3a079c4e-f938-40c9-a0ed-01ef0e9528e9&pf_rd_p=3a079c4e-f938-40c9-a0ed-01ef0e9528e9&pf_rd_r=139-3777244-4726837&pd_rd_wg=gt1aO&pd_rd_r=d5b55e8d-b3ab-40cc-8c57-5ba5ab14847c 

The Missing Question: What Did the Early Church Read? 

Jesus opened the Scriptures to His disciples, but most modern Christians have never asked a simple question: What Scriptures were Jesus, the apostles, and the early church actually reading? 

The aim here is not to weaken your confidence in the Bible, but to strengthen it by showing that God preserved His Word through history, translation, worship, and the church. This sermon is not about becoming Catholic or Orthodox. It is not saying your Protestant Bible is useless, nor is it about adding strange new doctrines. The sermon is asking a serious historical and biblical question: Why do some Bibles have more books than others, and what did the earliest Christians actually use? 

Just a note before I begin: Usually, my sermons contain a lot of Scriptures. Today, we will talk about the history and the origin of the Scripture—specifically, the Christian Bible. We are overviewing how the Scriptures I normally talk about came to be. 

The Table of Contents and the Journey of Scripture 

Most Christians never ask about the table of contents. They open the Bible and begin reading Genesis, maybe Matthew, Romans, or Revelation, but very few people stop at the table of contents and ask, "Who put this all together?" They do not bother to read the introduction where the translation process is described. We often assume our Bible came down from heaven as a leather-bound book with maps in the back, red letters, study notes, and maybe a ribbon marker if the publisher was feeling generous. 

But that is not how God gave us Scripture. 

The Bible came through history. It came through the prophets, scribes, scrolls, translation, exile, worship, persecution, councils, copying, printing, and eventually publishing. That should not scare us. The Christian faith is not afraid of history because our God entered history. Jesus was born in history. He died under Pontius Pilate in history. He rose from the dead in history. And the Scriptures that testify to Him were preserved through history. 

So today, we are asking: Why do some Bibles have more books than others? The New Testament is usually the same, but the Old Testament of some Bibles will contain other books like Tobit, Judith, Maccabees, and more. 

The Bible Was Not Born in English 

The first thing we have to recognize plainly is that the Bible was not born in English. The Old Testament was written mostly in Hebrew, with some Aramaic. But by the time of Jesus, the world had changed. After the Babylonian exile, Aramaic became the common language for many Jews, not Hebrew. 

Historical Note: The Fading and Resurgence of Hebrew Following the Babylonian exile (586 BC), Aramaic gradually replaced Hebrew as the everyday, spoken language of the Jewish people. Hebrew transitioned primarily into Lashon HaKodesh (the Sacred Tongue), reserved almost exclusively for Temple liturgy, synagogue readings, and scholarly study rather than daily conversation. By the first century, while Jesus and the religious elite likely understood Hebrew, Aramaic was the local vernacular in Judea and Galilee. 

As Jewish populations dispersed across the Mediterranean, Greek became their primary language, leaving Hebrew mostly dormant as a spoken tongue for nearly two millennia. It was not until the late 19th and early 20th centuries that figures like Eliezer Ben-Yehuda and the broader Zionist movement successfully revived Hebrew, painstakingly reconstructing it from a liturgical language back into the modern, thriving, spoken vernacular used today. 

Later, after Alexander the Great, Greek became the most common language of the wider world. So, by the time we arrive in the New Testament, many Jews spoke Aramaic locally, and Greek was the language of the marketplace, government, trade, and the wider Mediterranean world. This is why the New Testament itself was written in Greek. 

That matters. God did not leave His Word locked in one language. When His people scattered, His Word traveled. When the world spoke Greek, the Scriptures were translated into Greek. That Greek Old Testament is called the Septuagint, abbreviated as LXX. 

If you look at the footnotes in the Old Testament of your modern Bible, you will often see those letters. When you see "LXX," it means the modern translators did not use the Hebrew alone for that section; they considered the Greek version's translation to arrive at the text. It has been sitting right in front of us the whole time. This is the Bible of the apostles and the early church. 

How the Septuagint Happened 

How exactly did this new Greek translation happen? This is where it gets really interesting. We have a traditional account from an ancient writing called the Letter of Aristeas. 

According to the account, Ptolemy II Philadelphus, who was ruling Egypt in the third century BC, wanted a copy of the Jewish Law for the famous Library of Alexandria. He sent a request to the high priest in Jerusalem, who sent seventy-two elders—six from each of the twelve tribes. They were brought to the island of Pharos, near Alexandria, where they translated the Torah (the first five books of the Old Testament) into Greek. Tradition says they worked separately but miraculously produced identical translations, a detail meant to show that the work was inspired by the Holy Spirit. 

The Septuagint was not a Christian trick. It wasn't invented by Catholics, nor was it added by medieval bishops. It was a Jewish translation of the Jewish Scriptures made before Jesus was born. When the apostles later preached Christ from the Greek Scriptures, they were not using a Christianized, fake Bible. They were using a Bible already created, preserved, and honored by Greek-speaking Jews. 

This is very important: it was viewed by the Jews at the time, and later by the early Church Fathers, as an inspired translation. 

Historical Note: Ancient Perspectives on the Inspiration of the Septuagint 

Philo of Alexandria (c. 20 BC – c. AD 50): A prominent Hellenistic Jewish philosopher who deeply revered the Septuagint. He wrote that the translators "prophesied like men possessed, not one saying one thing and another, but all of them employing the selfsame nouns and verbs, as if some unseen prompter had dictated all their language to them" (Life of Moses 2.37). 

Flavius Josephus (c. AD 37 – c. 100): The Jewish historian recounted the tradition of the seventy-two translators in his Antiquities of the Jews (Book 12), affirming the monumental importance and providential nature of the translation for the Jewish people. 

Irenaeus of Lyons (c. AD 130 – 202): An early Church Father who championed the Greek translation, stating: "The Scriptures were acknowledged as truly divine... the Holy Spirit having inspired them to translate what God had designed..." (Against Heresies 3.21.2). 

Augustine of Hippo (AD 354 – 430): Defended the Septuagint's divine authority against critics, writing: "...the same Spirit who was in the prophets when they spoke these things was also in the seventy men when they translated them..." (City of God 18.43). 

So, the Septuagint was the Bible long before the church had a New Testament. The apostles lived in a Greek Bible world. When we read the New Testament, we are reading Greek. Matthew wrote in a world of Greek Scripture, Paul wrote in a world of Greek Scripture, and Peter, James, the author of Hebrews, and the early church all operated in a Greek-speaking world. 

The Greek Word Matters 

That does not mean Hebrew was unimportant. Hebrew mattered deeply, but the apostles were preaching to a world where Greek was the common language. So, when the New Testament quotes the Old Testament, it often follows the Greek form. 

If you want to do an experiment, you can look at the footnotes in your New Testament, and it will often tell you when the author is quoting the Greek. It most often aligns with the Greek Old Testament, not the Hebrew version. We will get to why your Old Testament may read a little bit differently than a New Testament quote in a bit, but just consider this: the Book of Hebrews is written in Greek, not Hebrew, and the author is mostly quoting the Greek version of the Old Testament. 

That is remarkable, and it matters, because sometimes a New Testament argument depends entirely on the Greek wording. For example: 

Isaiah 7:14: In the Hebrew, it reads almah, which could mean a virgin or simply a young woman. But the Greek word parthenos always means virgin. So, Isaiah 7:14 is only a definitive prophecy of the virgin birth in the Greek, not the Hebrew. 

Psalm 22: Christians easily see the crucifixion in the "pierced hands and feet" language. In the Hebrew text, the wording translates closer to "like a lion at my hands and feet"—a different phrasing where you don't explicitly get the crucifixion imagery. 

Deuteronomy 32:43: The Book of Hebrews uses language about the angels worshiping Jesus, an argument that relies on the Greek text. 

There are many prophecies that are much clearer—or only exist—in the Greek. You can read more about this in detail in my book, The Rest of the Story: The Bible Unredacted. 

The Split: The Masoretic Text vs. The Septuagint 

As the good news about Jesus spread, and the early church showed how the Scriptures pointed to Him, it caused problems for Jewish leaders who did not accept Jesus. What you have here is a split that occurs. Jews who did not accept Him began to make their own translations and favor textual traditions that, over time, developed into the Masoretic Text (MT). 

Early church fathers, like Justin Martyr, even claimed that Jewish scribes had actively eliminated certain prophecies from the Scriptures, returning to a Hebrew text that removed some of the Greek messianic pointers to avoid validating Jesus. Again, this is a historical claim made by people like Justin Martyr, not something I am making up. 

Jerome, Augustine, and the Latin Vulgate 

Fast forward a little bit to when Rome became more prominent and Latin became the dominant language. The Western Church felt there was a need for a new translation. Around AD 405, a man named Jerome produced the Latin Vulgate. But instead of going to the Greek Scriptures, he went to this newer Hebrew Masoretic Text. 

There was major pushback. Leaders like St. Augustine pushed back against Jerome, arguing that the Greek was the inspired version used by the apostles and that abandoning it would cause problems. But Jerome went ahead with the Hebrew-based version anyway to create the Latin Vulgate. 

This is exactly how the Old Testament in your modern Bible became based on the Hebrew text. Jerome's translation lasted and was held up as the primary translation of the Western Catholic Church. Because most Protestants are essentially reformed Catholics, they held onto this Latin-Hebrew tradition. The Eastern Orthodox Church, however, did not; they retained the Greek. 

Clearing Up Old Testament Problems 

Note on Textual Clarity: Not only does the Greek Old Testament point to Jesus better, but it also clears up a lot of historical and narrative problems. 

When you compare the newer Hebrew Masoretic Text to the Greek LXX, the Hebrew text comes with some confusing issues. One example is in 1 Samuel 17 and 18. If you read the Hebrew account of David and Goliath, you will notice a puzzling detail: King Saul doesn't seem to recognize David after he kills Goliath. This makes no sense because Saul and David already knew each other. Saul had previously asked Jesse, David's father, for permission to have David join his court as his armor-bearer and harpist. David even had a conversation with Saul about his armor being too clunky! How could Saul possibly not recognize him? 

When you look at the Greek version of the Scriptures, that confusing section about Saul not recognizing David isn't there. The narrative flows perfectly. 

Additionally, Goliath's height is recorded as 6 foot 9 inches in the Greek. He isn't the towering 9 feet tall described in the later Hebrew. This 6-foot-9 measurement actually lines up perfectly with the Dead Sea Scrolls, which are much older Hebrew manuscripts. This lets us know that these later Hebrew accounts were sometimes exaggerated. So, the Greek not only points to Jesus more clearly, but its historical accuracy is often much better than the newer Hebrew version. 

The Myth of the "Silent Years" 

Another thing that you may hear if you have studied the Bible is that there was an "intertestamental period." The Greek text helps clear up this myth as well. There were no silent years. 

Many Christians think that from Malachi to Matthew, there were four hundred years of silence, but that simply is not true. That phrase can be highly misleading. God may not have been giving Scripture in the exact same way as He did through Isaiah or Jeremiah, but history was not silent at all. Empires were moving, Greek culture was spreading, Jewish identity was being tested, the Temple was defiled, faithful Jews were persecuted, and martyrs died rather than deny God. The hope of the resurrection became sharper, and the expectation of the Messiah intensified. 

This is why books like 1 and 2 Maccabees, Wisdom, and Sirach matter. They help explain the world Jesus entered, and the New Testament isn't silent on it. For example, in John 10:22, Jesus is at the Feast of Dedication. That feast is Hanukkah. But if you only read Genesis through Malachi, you do not have the historical account of why Hanukkah exists. That account is found in 1 Maccabees. When those books disappear from the average Christian's awareness, part of the New Testament background disappears too. It is not that Jesus becomes unclear; it's that we lose the scenery behind Him. 

Which Bibles Actually Included These Books? 

This is where we need to separate history from popular myth. Which Bibles actually included these books? Let's walk right from the beginning. 

The Septuagint: The Bible of the early church included the Law, Prophets, Writings, and other books later called the Apocrypha (or deuterocanonical books, though those terms were applied later). Books like Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, 1 and 2 Maccabees, and Greek additions—or, I would say, Greek redactions—of Daniel and Esther were all part of the broader Greek biblical world. 

The Early Christian Codices: When we look at the earliest copies of the Christian Bible that we have, they weren't 66-book Protestant Bibles. They were Greek Christian Bibles containing a broader Old Testament. Codex Vaticanus (4th century), Codex Sinaiticus (4th century), and Codex Alexandrinus (5th century)—all of the earliest copies of the Christian Bible we have—contain these books, written in Greek. These codices don't treat the books like modern appendices shoved into the back of a warranty manual that nobody reads. They are woven into the Christian collection. There aren't any chapter numbers or breaks separating accounts like Susanna and Bel and the Dragon from the rest of Daniel. They are simply a part of the Christian Daniel. 

The Councils: This is very important: the Bible canon was not decided at Nicaea. The Council of Nicaea was in AD 325, and the major issue there was the deity of Christ and the Arian controversy. The canon issue is connected much more clearly to later regional councils: the Council of Rome (AD 382), the Council of Hippo (AD 393), and the Council of Carthage (AD 397). These councils affirmed the broader canon that included Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, and Maccabees as Scripture. They were not inventing brand-new Scripture; they were recognizing what had already been functioning in the life and worship of the church. 

The Latin Vulgate: In the late 4th and early 5th centuries, Jerome translated the Bible into Latin. Jerome preferred the Hebrew texts and questioned some of the Greek books, but Augustine strongly opposed him. Augustine argued that the Septuagint had been providentially used by God and received by the church. Even though Jerome had his doubts, the Latin Bible translations still preserved these books. 

The Reformation Bibles: During the Reformation, Martin Luther did not immediately throw these books away. In his 1534 German Bible, he moved them to a separate section and said they were "useful and good to read," though not equal to Scripture. That was a major shift, and it was not something that any of the earlier councils verified. But once something is moved to a separate section, people begin treating it as secondary. 

The 1611 King James Bible: This surprises people, but the original 1611 King James Bible included the Apocrypha between the New and Old Testaments, and it remained there until the 1800s. So the issue is not as simple as "Protestants never had these books." They did for a long time, and many Protestant Bibles printed them. 

The 19th-Century Bible Societies: The major physical removal happened later in the 1800s. Bible societies wanted to print and distribute Bibles cheaply and widely. That is a noble goal, but printing fewer pages meant cheaper Bibles. In 1826, the British and Foreign Bible Society decided not to fund the printing of Bibles containing the Apocrypha. That decision helped make the shorter, 66-book Protestant Bible the common Bible many people know today. The modern Protestant table of contents was shaped not only by theology, but also by printing costs, shipping, and institutional pressure. 

An Eighteen-Century Legacy 

Here is something to think about: for the first 1,800 years of Christianity, all Christian Bibles contained what we now call the Apocrypha. Let that sink in. If you were holding a Bible during the first 1,800 years of Christianity, you were holding the Apocryphal books. Prior to Martin Luther moving them, you would have called these books Scripture. 

Addressing Common Objections with Humility 

At this point, I know that some people—especially Protestants—will have pre-packaged objections. We talked about this during our series on Revelation; we have stances on Revelation (like futurism, idealism, etc.) that are often preconceived notions read into the text. The same is true with the Bible's history. We have been taught something about it, and we just repeat that without actually knowing the history clearly. This is where we have to have some humility. 

It is good to have objections. Christians should not be afraid to ask honest questions. Faith is not strengthened by pretending hard questions do not exist; faith is strengthened when we bring those questions into the light and deal with them honestly. Let me answer some of the most common objections briefly. The book gives more detail, but here is the sermon version. 

"What about the prayer for the dead in 2 Maccabees?" Second Maccabees 12 is often brought up because Judas Maccabeus is praised concerning fallen soldiers who had sinned. Some later traditions developed doctrines from this text that Protestants reject, but the passage itself is rooted in something more basic: the belief in the resurrection and final judgment. The text says that Judas acted because he believed in the resurrection—a hope that the New Testament clearly shares. Hebrews 11 honors the martyrs who suffered with the hope for a better resurrection. We shouldn't flatten 2 Maccabees into later medieval debates and pretend that is what the book is all about. The central issues are resurrection hope, covenant faithfulness, martyrdom, and judgment. Those themes are deeply biblical. However, theological overreaches—whether Catholic or Protestant—miss the mark. For Catholics, this should never have been made a doctrine (i.e., praying for the dead or purgatory). In Luke 16, Jesus gives the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. When the rich man is in Hades and cries out to Abraham for Lazarus to bring him water, he is told that a great chasm has been fixed; no one can cross from one side to the other. When he asks Abraham to warn his brothers, he is told no. The theme Jesus is preaching is that once you have arrived at that eternal destination, it is too late. No one can pray you out of it. Just because someone in the Bible does something does not make it a doctrine we should emulate. David did many wrong things, but we don't excuse or copy them. On the Protestant side, removing these books entirely because someone developed bad theology from them is a clear overreaction. 

"Some of these stories seem strange." Yes, some do, especially books like Tobit. But be careful with that objection. If strange stories disqualify a book, we are going to have a problem with Judges, Ezekiel, Daniel, Revelation, the floating axe head in 2 Kings, the talking donkey in Numbers, and a prophet lying on his side for over a year. The issue is not whether a story feels strange to modern readers; the issue is whether the book belonged to the biblical world received by God's people and used by the church. Some books are historical narratives, some are wisdom, some are theological storytelling, some are liturgical expansions, and some are martyr accounts. We should interpret each according to its genre instead of dismissing everything that does not sound like Romans. Not everything in the Bible sounds like Romans; some of it sounds like Ezekiel, because apparently, God decided prophets should not be boring. 

"The New Testament never quotes the Apocrypha." This is probably the most common objection: "If Jesus and the apostles never quote these books, they must not belong." That argument has two major problems. First, the New Testament does not directly quote every book Protestants accept, either. Esther, Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, Obadiah, Nahum, and Zephaniah are not directly quoted with a clear formula like "it is written." But Protestants do not remove these books from the Old Testament. If we used that standard consistently, the Protestant Old Testament would have to get even smaller. Second, quotation does not automatically determine canon. Paul quotes Greek poets in Acts 17, Titus 1, and 1 Corinthians 15. Jude refers to 1 Enoch. That does not mean Greek poets or 1 Enoch automatically become Scripture. Quotation alone does not prove canon, and a lack of quotation does not disprove canon. The better question is: Which books formed the scriptural world of Jesus, the apostles, and the early church? When we ask that, the Septuagint and these books are right in the middle of the story. Are there New Testament connections? Yes. 

Hebrews 11:35 speaks of people who were tortured, refusing release, so they might obtain a better resurrection. That story is not found in the Protestant Old Testament; the background is found in 2 Maccabees 6–7, where faithful Jews suffer martyrdom rather than deny God's law. 

John 10:22 places Jesus in Jerusalem during the Feast of Dedication (Hanukkah). The origin of Hanukkah comes from 1 Maccabees 4, where the temple is cleansed. Jesus is standing in a feast whose historical background is preserved in a book many modern Christians have never read. 

Romans 1 strongly echoes the logic of the Wisdom of Solomon 13 and 14: creation reveals the Creator, but sinful man worships the creation instead. 

Matthew 27:43 records the mockers at the cross saying, "He trusts in God; let God rescue Him if He wants Him, for He said, 'I am the Son of God.'" That sounds extremely close to Wisdom of Solomon 2, where the wicked mock the righteous sufferer. Early Protestants were not allergic to these books. The original King James included the Apocrypha, and early reference systems connected passages like Luke 6:31 with Tobit, and Hebrews 1:3 with Wisdom. 

"But the Jews rejected these books." Which Jews? That is the question. Greek-speaking Jews produced the Septuagint before Jesus. Greek-speaking Jews read these books. The early church inherited this Greek biblical world. By the time of Jesus and the apostles, the Jewish world was not monolithic. There were Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, Hellenistic diaspora Jews, Aramaic-speaking Jews in Judea, and communities like Qumran preserving multiple textual traditions. The later rabbinic Hebrew canon is important historically, but the Christian church did not receive its Old Testament from post-Christian Rabbinic Judaism. 

"The Catholic Church added those books at Trent." This is a historical myth. The Council of Trent in 1546 responded to the Reformation by formally reaffirming them, but they were not inventing new books. They were in the Septuagint tradition, major early Christian Bibles, affirmed by earlier councils (Rome in AD 382, Hippo in AD 393, and Carthage in AD 397), preserved in the Vulgate, and read in the church. Trent simply affirmed what the wider church had long received. 

"Some passages sound like works-based salvation." This objection usually comes from Tobit 12:9, which speaks about almsgiving saving people from death and purging sin. At first glance, a Protestant hears that and thinks it sounds like salvation by works. But we have to be careful. The Bible itself uses strong language about works, judgment, mercy, giving, and righteousness. Jesus says in John 5 that those who have done good will rise to live. James says faith without works is dead. Proverbs says righteousness delivers from death. None of that means we are saved by works instead of grace. Remember Ephesians 2:8–10: we are saved by grace through faith, not by works, but we are created in Christ Jesus for good works. We do not get to interpret Tobit in the worst possible way while giving Proverbs, James, Matthew, and John a careful theological handling. We must be consistent and read it as wisdom literature through the larger biblical lens. 

"Are we adding to the Bible?" No, that is exactly backwards. The argument is not "let's add brand new books." We are talking about recovering books that were already in the Greek Old Testament tradition, already in Christian Bibles, already read in worship, already affirmed by councils, already preserved in the Vulgate, and already printed in Protestant Bibles for centuries. The issue is not addition; it is redaction. 

"Does this mean my Protestant Bible is bad?" No, your Bible is not bad. You can know Christ, preach the Gospel, disciple believers, and grow in holiness with a 66-book Protestant Bible. But that does not mean the shorter edition tells the whole historical story. The issue is whether our inherited table of contents has caused us to miss the part of the biblical world that shaped Jesus, the apostles, and the early church. 

The point is not panic. The point is humility, hunger, and recovery. The Bible does not become weaker when we learn its history; it becomes more beautiful. Because the more we see how God preserved His Word through Hebrew, Greek, exile, translation, persecution, councils, copying, preaching, and worship, the more we realize God has been faithful through the whole story. 

And that is why we need the rest of the story. 

Why Does This Matter? 

Some people may be thinking, "Pastor, I love Jesus, and I read my Bible. Why does this matter?" 

Well, it matters for several reasons: 

It helps us be well-read and culturally informed. These were highly popular books, quoted even by people who were not Christians. Beautiful artworks, such as Michelangelo's work in the Sistine Chapel and paintings by Rembrandt, are based on these stories. To ignore them is to ignore history and culture. 

It helps us read the New Testament more clearly. The apostles quote and think from a Greek scriptural world. Understanding that world helps us understand them. 

It fills the historical gap between Malachi and Matthew. Jesus did not walk into a blank, silent world. He walked into a world shaped by the Greek language, Jewish persecution, temple conflicts, martyrdom, resurrection hope, and intense messianic expectation. 

It humbles our assumptions. Many Christians inherited a Bible without knowing the story of how that Bible came to them. Knowing the history shouldn't make us panic, but it should make us careful. 

It shows God's providence. God preserved His Word through Hebrew, through Greek, through worship, through copying, and through the church. God preserved His Word through a messy human history. That is good news, because the Bible has a history, but God rules that history. 

Recommended Resources & Further Reading 

Now, a question you may ask is where to find versions of these Bibles today. Here is a list of recommended Bibles and resources to help you explore this further: 

English Standard Version (ESV) with Apocrypha  

Note: It is highly interesting and significant that the ESV—widely considered one of the most conservative, modern Protestant translations available today—now offers editions that include the Apocrypha.  

Cambridge ESV Diadem Reference Edition with Apocrypha (ISBN: 9781108816106)  

SPCK ESV Holy Bible with Apocrypha (ISBN: 9780281085347)  

New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) with Apocrypha 

Zondervan NRSV Personal Size Large Print Bible with Apocrypha (ISBN: 9780310456759)  

NRSV Reference Bible with Apocrypha (Cambridge) (ISBN: 9781108419147)  

The Rest of the Story: The Bible Unredacted 

For those who want to dive deeper into all the historical facts, timelines, and endnotes discussed today, you can pick up my comprehensive book on this subject, The Rest of the Story: The Bible Unredacted. The book officially published in April, and is available for purchase now. As a reminder, I do not take a personal profit from this; all proceeds go directly to support C3 Church. 

Conclusion 

The goal of this sermon is not to make people suspicious of the Bible. The goal is to make people hungry to understand the Bible more deeply. We are not trying to add something foreign to the faith; we are trying to recover the world of Scripture that taught the first Christians how to see Jesus. 

The question is not only how many books are in your Bible. The deeper question is: Do you know the story well enough to recognize Christ when the Scriptures are opened? Because when the Scriptures are truly opened, Jesus is never diminished. Jesus becomes clearer. 

And that is the rest of the story. 

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©️Copyright 2026 Gene Simco Most Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright ©1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved. Scriptures in brackets reflect the original Biblical languages.

The Rest of the Story: The Bible Unredacted

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