The Lost Books of the Bible

Home > Magazines > Bible Review > October 1998

Enigmatic references to unknown books are scattered throughout the Bible. We read of the Book of Jashar and the Book of the Wars of Yahweh, but we cannot read the books themselves, for no copies are known to exist. What is surprising, however, is not how many but how few references to such now-lost books we find in the Bible. After all, as the Bible itself says, “Of making many books there is no end” (Ecclesiastes 12:12). This was true even in ancient times. Although there are more than 20 potential candidates for lost books of the Bible, […]

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Footnotes

In 1928 a Syrian farmer accidentally struck an ancient tomb with his plow. Subsequent excavations revealed the remains of the 14th-century B.C. city of Ugarit. Archaeologists discovered thousands of cuneiform tablets. Several found in the library of the chief priest of the temple of Baal record the major Canaanite myths.

Endnotes

Tryggve N.D. Mettinger, Solomonic State Officials, Coniectanea biblica, Old Testament series 5 (Lund: Gleerup, 1971), pp. 36–42.

Alfred Jepsen, Die Quellen des Königsbuches (Halle: M. Niemeyer, 1956), pp. 54–60.

Some scholars have suggested that the Chronicler invented such references to legitimate his portrayal of the history of Judah. See Rosemarie Micheel, Die Seher- und Prophetenueberlieferungen in der Chronik, Bieträge zur evangelischen Theologie 18 (Frankfurt am Main, 1983), pp. 79–80; citation from John W. Wright, “Iddo,” in The Anchor Bible Dictionary (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1992), vol. 3, p. 376.

Robert H. Pfeiffer, “Chronicles, I and II,” in Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1962), vol. 1, p. 578.

Encyclopaedia Judaica, s.v. “Book of Jashar.”

The LXX text in Codex Vaticanus and the Lucianic recension add the words “Is it not written in the Book of the Upright One [Book of Jashar]?”

If the latter is the case, the title may be related to the term Jeshurun, a variant form of the name Israel (cf. Deuteronomy 32:15, 33:5, 26).

Cyrus H. Gordon, “Ugarit as Link between Greek and Hebrew Literatures,” Revista degli Studi Orientali 29 (1954), pp. 161–169.

Gordon and Gary A. Rendsburg, The Bible and the Ancient Near East, 4th ed. (New York: Norton, 1997), pp. 171–172; 4th ed. originally published in 1953 as Introduction to Old Testament Times.

10.

Michael Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985).

11.

See Louis Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1961), a shorter version of a seven-volume work of the same title, published in 1956 by Simon and Schuster as Legends of the Bible.