As I have recently been re examining my religious self to better understand and organize my faith, I noticed something odd.
Much of the basic ideals behind mainline christianity isnt in what most refer to as the bible. The concrete stuff is there, God created hevean and earth, Jesus saves etc, but much of the background stuff isnt.
All the stories surrounding Adam and Eve, Lucifer's fall from heaven (The Life of Adam and Eve), the war in heaven (The books of Adam and Eve), specific definitions of heaven and hell (The Apocalypse of Saint Peter), early church history, and the catholic ideas of purgatory and praying so that a loved one doesnt burn (The Apocalypse of Saint Paul), are all missing! They are however in the collection of books known as the Apocrypha or "The Lost Books". The problem with this is that as a whole the church decided at the council of nicine that the origins of these books were too sketchy, and that they believed that these books may not in fact be the inspired word of God.
So why does mainline christianity and catholicism teach these ideas as fact, when the church as an institution decided that these books werent fact. So much is missing from this puzzle. Does anyone know where I could get a copy of the Apocrypha, either online or hardcopy?
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