New York: Thomas Dunne, 2014. ISBN: 978-1-250-04796-0
Anyone who has read through the whole Bible knows that books are mentioned that are not available today. Anyone who has looked at various versions of the Bible has encountered books such as the Maccabees that appear in Catholic Bibles, but not Protestant Bibles. If you have read about the extended process of creating the Bible, you would know that not all books that some believed to be scripture made it into the Biblical canon.Readers may find the subtitle (The Holy Scriptures Missing From Your Bible) to be misleading as this book does not provide a listing of scriptures missing from the Bible. Rather, Joel Hoffman provides, in the first chapter, background on the social/political and cultural milieu during the writing of Scripture. He next provides a chapters on locating the Dead Sea Scrolls and the impact on Biblical understanding. This is followed by a chapter on the Septuagint and its influence on the Bible we have. He does a similar examination on how Josephus' writings interact with Scripture. Joel Hoffman then has three chapters that critique The Life of Adam and Eve, The Apocalypse of Abraham, and The Book of Enoch in relation to what these titles reveal that is not found in the rest of Scripture. He finishes with a look at the big picture of missing Scripture. He also includes an appendix of recommended sources for further investigation
Overall, the book is worth reading more for the broad picture Joe Hoffman paints regarding the multiple sources that inter-played in the creation of the scriptural canon than the look at individual books.
