The Puritans were English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries who sought to purify the Church of England of Roman Catholic practices, maintaining that the Church of England had not been fully reformed and should become more Protestant.

Presbyterianism remains alive and well in the U.S. The Congregationalists are also descendants of the Puritans, though in the 19th century, many Congregational Churches merged with other groups to form the United Church of Christ in the U.S. (Some did remain separate and are still influential in New England.)

The Geneva Bible was the Bible that was used by Puritans such as John Bunyan and was carried on the Mayflower to New England. Most Puritans rejected the King James because it taught the “”divine right of Kings” in passages such as Romans 13.

The Holy Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments, King James Version also known as KJV. In 1604 James VI, King of Scotland from his youth, became King James I of England, the first ruler of Brittain and Ireland. It became the “Official Bible of England” and the only Bible of the English church.

The Book of Enoch was considered as scripture in the Epistle of Barnabas (16:4) and by many of the early Church Fathers, such as Athenagoras, Clement of Alexandria, Irenaeus and Tertullian, who wrote c. 200 that the Book of Enoch had been rejected by the Jews because it contained prophecies pertaining to Christ.

Published in 1611, the King James Bible spread quickly throughout Europe. Because of the wealth of resources devoted to the project, it was the most faithful and scholarly translation to date—not to mention the most accessible.

Bible #1. The oldest surviving full text of the New Testament is the beautifully written Codex Sinaiticus, which was “discovered” at the St Catherine monastery at the base of Mt Sinai in Egypt in the 1840s and 1850s. Dating from circa 325-360 CE, it is not known where it was scribed – perhaps Rome or Egypt.

Etymology. The English word Bible is derived from Koinē Greek: τὰ βιβλία, romanized: ta biblia, meaning “the books” (singular βιβλίον, biblion). The word βιβλίον itself had the literal meaning of “paper” or “scroll” and came to be used as the ordinary word for “book”.

This book contains: 1 Esdras, 2 Esdras, The Book of Tobit, The Book of Susanna, Additions to Esther, The Book of Judith, Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, The Epistle of Jeremiah, The Prayer of Azariah, Bel and the Dragon, Prayer of Manasses, 1 Maccabees, 2 Maccabees, Book of Enoch, Book of Jubilees, Gospel of …

There are only two other complete texts of the Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—that are older, added Craig Evans, a biblical scholar at Acadia University in Nova Scotia. They are the Codex Vaticanus, which is held at the Vatican, and the Codex Sinaiticus, most of which is held at the British Library in London.

forty years

Traditionally, 13 of the 27 books of the New Testament were attributed to Paul the Apostle, who famously converted to Christianity after meeting Jesus on the road to Damascus and wrote a series of letters that helped spread the faith throughout the Mediterranean world.

The Christian Bible has two sections, the Old Testament and the New Testament. The Old Testament is the original Hebrew Bible, the sacred scriptures of the Jewish faith, written at different times between about 1200 and 165 BC. The New Testament books were written by Christians in the first century AD.

The texts might only have been known to few people, or they might have been left out because their content does not fit well into that of the other books of the Bible. Some of the apocrypha were written at a later date, and were therefore not included. The Authorized King James Version called these books ‘Apocrypha’.

Why was the Gospel of Judas not included in the Bible? There are other gospels that have been found over the last century that were not included — among them, the Gospels of Thomas and Mary Magdalene.

The New Testament has four canonical gospels, which are accepted as the only authentic ones by the great majority of Christians, but many others exist, or used to exist, and are called either New Testament apocrypha or pseudepigrapha.

They had unearthed several early Christian texts including gospels of Thomas, Philip and Mary that had been buried away for around 1,600 years. These gospels were some of the many alternative books about Jesus that weren’t included in the Christian Bible.

As most ancient Christian texts have been lost, this discovery was exceptional. The discovery includes the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Philip and the Acts of Peter. None of these texts were included in the Bible, because the content didn’t conform to Christian doctrine, and they’re referred to as apocryphal.

The Gospel of Mary is a book considered non-canonical in Christian orthodoxy discovered in 1896 in a 5th-century papyrus codex written in Sahidic Coptic.

In this gnostic gospel, Mary Magdalene appears as a disciple, singled out by Jesus for special teachings. In this excerpt, the other disciples are discouraged and grieving Jesus’ death. Mary stands up and attempts to comfort them, reminding them that Jesus’ presence remains with them.

Mary

Mary Magdalene’s life after the Gospel accounts. According to Eastern tradition, she accompanied St. John the Apostle to Ephesus, where she died and was buried. John the Evangelist to Ephesus (near modern Selçuk, Turkey), where she died and was buried.