Just how many books belong in the Bible?

The Nugget:

Rev 22:18  For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: 

Rev 22:19  And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.

My Comment:

How many books belong in the Bible?

Answer:  66

Any objections?

I have a separate volume of the Apocrypha in the King James Version. It contains 14 extra books. If my math is right, 66 + 14 = 80.

Do those 14 extra books belong in the Bible? No.

Says who?

Me.

How do I know for sure I am right?

I have studied this subject at length and in depth since about 1954. I have the print library to prove it. I could easily write a scholarly book on the subject.

Where did the extra books come from?

The extra books were introduced by the translators of the Greek Septuagint. These extra books were never accepted into the canon in Israel, and are not found in the Hebrew Bible. Even St. Jerome [not me] agreed when he produced his Latin version of the Bible that these books were not at the same level as the regular books normally found in our Protestant Bibles.

My Muslim friends on Facebook seem to love to argue endlessly about this subject.

One of these friends just argued today that “Your opinion about other bibles is YOUR opinion, those who follow those bibles have their own opinion different then yours. So again, who told you it was 66 books?”

My Response:

Your argument is silly, Sherif Abdel Bary. Who gives you any authority to dispute the number of books in the Bible?
 
The genuinely divinely inspired books of the Bible, numbering 66 in the normal printed English Bibles, are known to be divinely inspired because:
 
(1) They contain specific and detailed prophecy and the record of fulfilled prophecy unlike any other books in the world.
 
(2) They are accurate and without provable historical errors.
 
(3) They meet the tests of historicity.
 
(4) They contain the words of God that when believed and obeyed lead to eternal life and a morally transformed character, what is spoken of in Scripture as becoming a new creature or new creation in Christ.
 
(5) They are internally consistent to a meticulous degree such that they can be studied by cross reference Bible study whereby these genuine books are mutually self-explanatory to a degree unimagined by those who have not experienced this kind of Bible study.

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