The “Extra” Books of the Bible, Revisited
Part 1 of 2: Reintroducing the "Bad" Books of the Bible on Ancient Faith Radio (PDF Download Included)
Jamey reintroduces listeners to the often-overlooked “extra” books and explains their unique place in the Orthodox canon. This episode sets the stage for a deeper dive, arguing that these stories are not just relics—they’re vital for today’s believer. This episode aired December 6, 2025 on Ancient Faith.
“Bad” Books of the Bible: Where the Table of Contents Gets Interesting
When you grow up in a religion with extra scriptures, you get used to living on the edges of the canon.
I was born into a Latter‑day Saint home. Along with the Old and New Testaments, we had the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and Pearl of Great Price—all packaged as “Another Testament” along with some friends. When my mother left Mormonism for evangelical Protestantism (when I was a mere toddler), she had to face a simple but terrifying question:
What is Scripture? Which books belong in that small, sacred circle we call “the Bible,” and which ones don’t?
As she was navigating the world of Scripture without the guidance of the Mormon tradition, she stumbled across a collection of books that is sometimes wedged in Bibles between Malachi and Matthew, labeled “The Apocrypha.” The names were different—Tobit and Judith instead of Nephi and Alma—but the tension was the same. Here were books frequently printed with or alongside the Bible, yet also somehow not quite the Bible.
My podcast, “Bad” Books of the Bible, is basically me refusing to leave that tension alone.
Listen to a recording of the episode here, or on the platform of your choice:
From “Another Testament” to the Old Testament’s “‘Bad’ Books”
We didn’t stay Mormon. Our family left for the broad world of evangelical Protestantism—non‑denominational Christianity with praise bands, youth group lock‑ins, and end‑times charts. These churches love the Bible, but their primary roots only run back a century or two, five at most. As I got older, that started to bother me. If Jesus founded a Church in the first century, surely it didn’t disappear until 1820 or reappear in a strip mall with a fog machine.
So I went looking for something older.
While I had plenty of exploration of charismatic Christianity and Lutheranism, I never joined any of those religious groups. For me, as an adult, first came Presbyterianism, then Anglicanism—traditions that at least knew the Nicene Creed wasn’t a recent invention. I wrestled through all the usual questions: infant baptism, church governance, whether a secret rapture was really lurking somewhere in 1 Thessalonians. (Spoiler: I no longer think it is.) Anglicanism in particular was both liturgical and beautiful. It gave me the Psalms chanted, the church year, the sense that Christians had actually been doing this for a long time.
It also gave me regular readings from the Apocrypha.
There they were again: those “extra” Old Testament books my mom had discovered on the far side of Mormonism. Now they showed up in lectionaries and prayer books, still living in the appendix of my Bible, but edging closer to the center of the table. I had a Master of Arts in Biblical Studies, but those courses never required me to take Tobit or Sirach seriously. Suddenly they were being read aloud as if they mattered.
And then, slowly and not without resistance, I became Orthodox.
That process took six years. Anglicanism was, for me, the last beautiful distraction before facing the Orthodox Church’s claims head‑on: apostolic succession, the ecumenical councils, the liturgy that had formed Christians for centuries. Among other things, Orthodoxy forced me to answer my mother’s old question again: What is Scripture? Only now the “extra books” at issue weren’t uniquely Mormon. They were the books Catholics and Orthodox had quietly been reading for two thousand years and Protestants had just as quietly been ignoring for five hundred.
When I finally crossed the Bosphorus‑without‑quite‑crossing‑the‑Bosphorus, and was received into the Orthodox Church, something small but symbolically huge happened to my Bible: the Apocrypha moved out of the appendix. Tobit, Judith, Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, the Maccabees—they were no longer printed in a quarantine section between Testaments but woven into the Old Testament itself.
Those “bad books” had come home.
Why Start with the Canon at All?
If you’re going to launch a podcast called Bad Books of the Bible, you can’t just dive into the archangel Raphael and a demon who strangles grooms on their wedding night. (We will get into more of that, God willing.) You have to ask a more basic question first:
What is the Bible?
In the first episode, I give a working definition: the Bible is God’s recorded witness of His self‑revelation, the inspired word of God, and the foundation of the Christian faith. But each part of that definition hides a story.
God reveals Himself over time—what the Fathers call theophany.
He speaks to Abraham (Genesis 12:1–3), appears to Moses in the bush (Exodus 3:1–6), puts His words in Jeremiah’s mouth (Jeremiah 1:4–10). Finally, “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14).
That revelation is inscribed.
Sometimes the prophet writes; sometimes a disciple does. Jeremiah’s words are written down by his scribe Baruch (Jeremiah 36:4). Isaiah’s followers likely preserved and arranged his oracles.
Over time, those writings are edited and compiled—what scholars call redaction.
The five books of Moses are traditionally “of Moses,” yet Deuteronomy narrates his own death and burial (Deuteronomy 34:5–7). Somebody after Moses wrote that. When Hilkiah “finds the book of the law” in the Temple in Josiah’s day (2 Kings 22), something more than simple misplacement is going on. The people of God are recognizing, recovering, and perhaps reshaping their foundational texts.
In other words, by the time you and I pick up a printed Bible, we’re holding the product of centuries of revelation, inscription, and Spirit‑guided redaction.
But that still leaves another question: Why these books and not others?
The Word of the Church Establishes the Table of Contents of the Word of the Lord
We often speak as if the Bible just is, but the Church had to learn to recognize it. Before we hear “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1) in the first line of Scripture, we encounter a more mundane but crucial reality: the table of contents.
That list of books is what we call the canon of Scripture—this is the Church’s “word” about which writings are the Word of God.
The word canon is essentially a rule or a guideline. In the Orthodox world, the word itself does double duty. On one hand, the Church has canons: rules and decisions from councils about everything from how to receive heretics to how long a fast lasts. On the other hand, the Church speaks of the canon of Scripture: the list of books that belong in the Bible. That list was not handed down as a leather‑bound volume from heaven. It emerged organically as the Church heard, copied, and prayed specific writings over centuries.
A rough equation I use in the episode is this:
Theophany (God’s Revelation) + Liturgical Use of Writings ≈ Scripture.
God shows Himself. His people write that revelation down. Those texts get read aloud in the assembly—in synagogues, then churches. Over time, they are recognized as Scripture precisely because they have fed the Church’s worship and doctrine.
Not every canonical book is used equally in the services, and not every canonical text is liturgical. But liturgical use is a huge part of the story. It’s no accident that the books we now take for granted—Genesis, the Psalms, Isaiah, the Gospels, Paul’s letters—were the ones ringing constantly in the ears of the faithful.
Some books took longer to make the rounds. The book of Revelation is the clearest example. Written in the first century, copied and loved in some regions, doubted in others, it was centuries before it was universally received. To this day, the Eastern Orthodox Church accepts Revelation as Scripture yet does not appoint it to be read aloud in the regular lectionary. It is canon, but not a reading for the Liturgy.
Something similar happened, in a more complicated way, with the “bad books” of this podcast. Several early Fathers, like St. Jerome, wrestled with what to do with them. On one hand, he wanted to limit the Old Testament to those books found in Hebrew and recognized by his Jewish contemporaries. On the other, he still translated Tobit and Judith into Latin and included them in his Vulgate. His ambivalence helped create centuries of mixed signals in the West about these books: Scripture? Edifying reading? Neither?
As an Orthodox Christian, I stand with the Church that read these books in her services, copied them in her codices, and canonized them in her councils. They are not Mormon‑style add‑ons. They are part of the family album.
This presentation has a slideshow! Download the PDF here:
We Haven’t Always Had a Bible on the Nightstand
If you have three study Bibles on your desk and seven translations on your phone, it’s easy to assume that Scripture has always been as accessible as your coffee mug. It hasn’t.
In the episode, I sketch a quick timeline of access just to reset our expectations.
Around 1000 BC, in the days of King David, Scripture lived in the Temple. There were no synagogues yet. Ordinary Israelites heard the Law and the stories read aloud at feasts and gatherings, and retold them at home. No one had a scroll of Deuteronomy in their backpack.
By about 300 BC, in the Hellenistic period, Jews scattered across the Mediterranean were gathering in synagogues. Scrolls of the Law and Prophets—often in Greek—were read aloud. Access improved, but you certainly wouldn’t find a complete “Old Testament” in a typical household.
By 70 AD, when Jerusalem fell, much of the Old Testament existed in Greek translation (what we call the Septuagint), and most or all of the New Testament writings had been composed. But Paul’s letters and the Gospels had to be copied by hand. A church that received Romans read it, treasured it, and eventually copied it for others, but there was no central publishing house shipping boxed sets.
By roughly 400 AD, under the influence of saints like Athanasius, most local churches shared a common New Testament core. The Old Testament canon was broadly similar, but there were still regional differences, especially around the “extra” Greek books.
In 1454, Gutenberg printed the first major edition of the Bible. Within a century, the printing press helped fuel the Protestant Reformation. Bibles leapt from scriptoriums to people’s homes.
Today, in the age of apps and PDFs, it’s now possible to drown in Bible. That is a gift—but it’s a technological gift. The Church’s understanding that these books are God’s Word did not begin with the printing press; it just became much easier to act on.
For Orthodox Christians, the takeaway is simple: Scripture is never meant to be a purely private project. It is the Church’s book, read in the Church’s worship, interpreted within the Church’s life.
Scripture is never meant to be a purely private project. It is the Church’s book, read in the Church’s worship, interpreted within the Church’s life.
A Walk Through the Covenants
To show how Scripture itself tells its story, I lay out in the episode a brief timeline of covenants—those moments when God binds Himself to His people with promises.
With Adam and Eve, God creates the world and humanity in His image (Genesis 1–2). After the fall, He promises that the woman’s seed will crush the serpent’s head (Genesis 3:15). The Fathers see here the protoevangelium, the first whisper of Christ.
With Noah, after the flood, God covenants never again to destroy the earth by water, setting the rainbow as the sign of His promise (Genesis 9:8–17).
With Abraham, God promises land, descendants, and blessing: “in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Genesis 12:3; see also Genesis 15 and 17). Israel’s whole story grows from this soil.
Through Moses, God delivers Israel from Egypt and gives the Law at Sinai (Exodus 19–24). The covenant of the Law shapes Israel’s worship and ethics.
With David, God promises that his throne will endure forever (2 Samuel 7:12–16). The prophets pick this up and point toward a coming Son of David whose reign will have no end (cf. Isaiah 9:6–7). In Luke’s Gospel, the angel Gabriel tells Mary that this promise lands squarely on Jesus (Luke 1:32–33).
In Jesus Christ, God establishes the New Covenant. At the Last Supper, Christ takes the cup and says, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood” (Luke 22:20; 1 Corinthians 11:25). The Epistle to the Hebrews unpacks this as the fulfillment, and even the surpassing, of the Old Testament (Hebrews 8:6–13).
Each covenant builds on the last. Each reveals more of God’s plan. Each also gives us a hint about why Scripture looks the way it does: a layered record of God’s increasingly clear self‑disclosure.
Law, History, Wisdom, Prophets—and the “Bad” Books among Them
When we talk about the Old Testament, we’re talking about a library with different sections.
The Pentateuch or Torah—Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy—is the foundation: creation, patriarchs, Exodus, Law.
The historical books tell the story from Joshua’s conquest through the judges, kings, exile, and partial return: Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1–2 Samuel, 1–2 Kings, 1–2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther.
There are a few variations in how the books are called. For example, the traditional Orthodox naming of 1–2 Samuel is 1–2 Kingdoms, while 1–2 Kings become 3–4 Kingdoms. Other variations exist.
The wisdom and poetic books include Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs—and, in Orthodox and Catholic Bibles, also the Wisdom of Solomon and Sirach (Ecclesiasticus), among others.
The prophets, major and minor, run from Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel through the twelve shorter books from Hosea to Malachi. “Major” and “minor” describe length, not importance.
These categories aren’t there to keep scholars employed, they’re cues for reading. To read Scripture “literally” is to read it as literature—to let law be law, poetry be poetry, parable be parable, apocalypse be apocalypse. Christ Himself teaches with stories that never literally happened but are truer than many things that did happen literally (Matthew 13)—and with hyperbole that no one is meant to apply with a hacksaw (Matthew 5:29–30; 23:24).
The “bad books” I’m interested in live mostly in the historical and wisdom neighborhoods. Tobit reads like a novella laced with angelic intervention. Judith gives us a widow who beheads an enemy general. Wisdom and Sirach sound at times like a cousin of Proverbs and at times like preachers from another age. The Maccabees tell of martyrdoms and revolts that shaped the world into which Christ was born.
For many Protestants, these books exist—if at all—in a shadowy appendix labeled Apocrypha. For Catholics and Orthodox, they sit naturally among Joshua and Proverbs, Isaiah and the Psalms. This podcast—and this article—are my attempt to bring them out of the shadows and back into the conversation.
Did you know that “Bad” Books of the Bible has a musical soundtrack? You can stream our tunes on Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube, and anywhere you stream music. Click here to check out more.
New Testament: From Gospels to Apocalypse
The New Testament’s structure is more familiar, but it’s worth tracing quickly.
The Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—are our fourfold witness to Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. They are, in a sense, the New Testament’s “Torah”: foundational, central, read constantly in the Church’s worship.
The Acts of the Apostles picks up where Luke’s Gospel leaves off. The Holy Spirit descends at Pentecost (Acts 2). The apostles preach, suffer, and plant churches. St. Paul appears as persecutor turned missionary. If the Gospels are our new Torah, Acts is our Joshua: not conquest of Canaan, but the spread of the Gospel into the nations.
The Pauline epistles—Romans through Philemon—are letters to churches and co‑workers, thick with doctrine and pastoral concern. Icons often show Paul holding a bundle of scrolls to signify these thirteen letters.
The general or Catholic epistles—Hebrews, James, 1–2 Peter, 1–3 John, Jude—are written to the wider Church. Hebrews alone is anonymous. Early Christians debated who wrote it and where to place it, but in Orthodox tradition it’s generally linked to Paul’s circle and read as part of his corpus.
The book of Revelation stands at the end, a densely symbolic apocalypse that has comforted martyrs and confused commentators for two millennia. The Church reads it as Scripture, but historically she has also treated it with caution. When the East hesitates to read a book aloud in the liturgy, that’s the Church’s way of saying: “Yes, this is God’s Word. And no, we are not turning this into a prophecy chart for next Tuesday.”
Many Voices, One Story
By any human measure, the Bible is a wild project. At least forty authors, writing in different languages across some fifteen hundred plus years, in every conceivable station of life—prophets and priests, a shepherd‑king and a tent‑making apostle, a tax collector and a physician, fishermen and exiles.
And yet when you read them together, you don’t get a cacophony. You get a choir. Yes, the styles differ. Isaiah doesn’t sound like John; James doesn’t sound like Moses. But they conspire to tell one story: the story of the God who creates, calls, judges, forgives, covenants, becomes flesh, dies, rises, and will come again. They speak with one voice about God’s holiness and His mercy, His law and His love.
That’s why I say in the episode—and will keep saying—that anyone who tries to pit the Old Testament against the New is doing a grave disservice to the Scriptures. The New Testament rests on the Old the way a house rests on its foundation. Pull out Genesis and Exodus, the Psalms and the Prophets, and the Gospels simply collapse. Jesus and Paul quote the Old Testament constantly because they assume it as their Bible.
The “bad” books of this podcast live inside that same story. They aren’t rivals to Scripture; they’re part of how the historic Church has heard God speak.
Where We’re Going Next
So this episode—and this first article—doesn’t yet give you a close reading of Tobit or a chart comparing Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant canons. It does something more basic: it tries to clear the ground.
We’ve walked through my own odd journey from Mormon “extra scriptures” to the Old Testament’s “bad books.” We’ve sketched how revelation becomes inscription, inscription becomes canon, and canon comes to your bedside table by way of scribes, councils, saints, and printing presses. We’ve remembered that Scripture is a library, not a tract; that it’s read in the Church, not in a vacuum; and that the Old and New Testaments are friends, not enemies.
In the episodes to come on “Bad” Books of the Bible, I’ll take up these contested books one by one. We’ll ask what they are, how they were received, and—most importantly—what they have to say to us today as Orthodox Christians trying to live faithfully in the Church’s story.
For now, you at least know why I think these “bad books” deserve a seat at the table of contents.
A note from Jamey:
I promised everyone a four part series on the Divine Liturgy. It’s a nice teaching series, with recorded videos and everything. But unfortunately I had some tech difficulties with one of the episodes, and life occasionally has a way of slowing things down in certain areas. Bottom line, due to work and family obligations I was unable to get any articles out last week.
So I declare this week “Bad” Books Week around here at Simply Orthodox, and we will share three articles this week covering the final three episodes of 2025! I will start the Liturgy series the following week.
Prefer to listen on YouTube? Look no further:
Reading this as a current Protestant and had to stop just to say It’s so true what you said — “non‑denominational Christianity with praise bands, youth group lock‑ins, and end‑times charts” I’m almost embarassed 😂 now I’ll go continue I’m excited to read this and part 2!