Is there a book that has all the books contained in the Bible with all the additional non-canonical scripture writings?

by reddit-user-6913
talondearg

Your question is confusing but let me try and answer what I think you’re asking. The canon, or canonical scriptures, is a term that refers to a body of writings considered authoritative by a particular religious group. Since we’re talking about the Bible, safe to assume that you mean a canon of books accepted by some branch of Christianity. Wikipedia has a really helpful table of how various Christian traditions differ on the Old Testament, see here.

Anyway, I presume you also mean a printed volume containing not only the canonical books but extra-canonical books. Of course, if you mean every book that is not canonical, that’s every other book ever written, so that’s clearly ridiculous. Probably, I deduce, you mean a printed volume that has some collection of:

• Old Testament Apocrypha/Deuterocanonical books (the books normally included in the Roman Catholic Bible; in which case you should get a Catholic Bible)

• Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (books that aren’t included in any Christian groups' Old Testament, but are similar in style/genre or purport to be religious. These are works produced before the New Testament Canon, but also not accepted generally by Jews or Christians. As far as I know there is no ‘Bible’ that includes these. For a printed version of many in translation, there is a two volume set by James H. Charlesworth

• New Testament Apocrypha (books by early Christians or similar groups that were generally not included in the canon. If you want a stand alone version of the NT Apocrypha, there are translations by Bart Ehrman, an academic 2 volume edition by Schneemelcher, a version by J.K. Elliot, and probably several others. If you want a New Testament that eclectically chooses to incorporate some apocryphal texts based on the editor’s own preferences, there’s “The Restored New Testament”, a translation of the NT including the Gnostic gospels of Thomas, Mary, and Judas. Or R.J. Miller’s “The Compete Gospels”, which includes several non-canonical gospels.

So, no, not really. It’s difficult to find a single print volume that includes a wide array of non-canonical texts, since you first would have to decide what to include, and then find a target market. I suppose a better question is, what texts do you want to read, and why do you want them printed in a single volume?