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Secrets from the Lost Bible

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Readers who want to know about the Jewish and Christian writings left out of the Bible--what they say, who probably wrote them and why they were probably excluded--will find entertaining answers in Secrets from the Lost Bible. Kenneth Hanson even provides useful time lines summarizing such details as the language in which each text was originally written, what language it exists in today, the probable time of its composition, and more. He also opens up these often strange and cryptic texts, pulling forward for the reader a message that the author of each likely intended to convey. If you are at all curious about what was banned from the Bible and why, you'll be something of an expert once you read Kenneth Hanson's book. (Speaking of "banned from the Bible," Dr. Hanson was one of the experts interviewed for the History Channel documentary of that name.)

I first saw this guy on a History Channel special, so I checked out his book. This is when I realized that their "experts" weren't always experts and began to wonder where they find these people. Goes to show you that you shouldn't get your education from a television. Hanson fancies himself a Bible scholar, but really he isn't (at least according to the lack of depth and quality of this book). There's some interesting things, but mainly he's pushing his shallow, touchy-feely interpretations on Bible verses.

If you're looking for lost knowledge, or earth-shattering revelations about the Bible in the so-called "lost" texts, you'll be disappointed in Hanson's book. These "suppressed" books have been around for some time, some even in the Apocrypha section of some Christian Bibles (as Hanson reveals), so there are no big secrets here.

In fact, there is nothing here "lost," "suppressed," "secret," or "banned." Those are just all code words meant to attract readers and viewers.

Hanson tries to draw modern-day life lessons from these ancient books. Are they more life-altering than biblical passages? No, and in fact, sometimes you have to look hard for some sort of valuable lessons. In fact, this is one reason they never made it into the Bible. The other is the obvious mythological quality of some or simple irrelevance of others to the Biblical story. In spite of all the use of "lost" and "suppressed," Hanson at times admits these things. He never gets too deep into why these books were "suppressed" and often puts forth only his conjectures. Hanson is trying hard to show these as important books but sometimes is inconsistent in his attempts.

Instead of letting us read the actual texts, he provides his "own" translations. He is trying hard to be a scholar, yet there is virtually no references to other scholars in this book. This is unusual for a book like this. He claims that "some researchers" believe the Gospel of Thomas to be older than the Gospels. Who are they? He doesn't say. I ask because the fact is most scholars have dated it after the Gospels. He makes a number of undocumented statements.

He concludes that Jude's mention of Enoch is "positive proof" that early Christians considered it part of the Bible, or else why would it be referenced in the Bible? Sorry, but the Bible references dozens and dozens of extrabiblical books, not all are religious books, so Hanson's argument is not logical.

Don't get me wrong these "lost" books are interesting and at times provide some background history or potential additional clues to where the Bible is silent (like Jesus' childhood, though Anne Rice puts it together better in her novel Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt: A Novel). The stories surrounding Adam & Eve & Lilith are interesting. The connection to the Solomon story in Luke is a bit of a stretch, though possible.

Hanson makes a good attempt, but in his zeal his scholarship is sometimes weak and he has couched his book too much in the "conspiracy-suppression" language, making readers expect more than there really is. If you read this book, check out some more scholarly books along with it such as The Case for the Real Jesus: A Journalist Investigates Current Attacks on the Identity of Christ, The Old Testament Documents: Are They Reliable & Relevant? and The Historical Jesus: Ancient Evidence for the Life of Christ, Judas and the Gospel of Jesus: Have We Missed the Truth about Christianity?, and The Many Gospels of Jesus: Sorting Out the Story of the Life of Jesus.

There are two ways to read this book; as a novel. as a text book. I read it as a text of the ancient's methods for selecting and rejecting various early writings to become books of the bible. Dr. Hanson's writings are easily read and fairly easy to understand for a reader who has almost no background in early (600 BCE to about 300 CE) Jewish and Christian history.

Using this text as resource material for a text I am authoring, I found it to be astounding in it's depth and its wide range of material and experts. I highly recommend this text to anyone desiring a more rounded knowledge of the Bible and the history surrounding it. This will answer some questions and pose many more. A great collection to my growing library.

This book is a must read for anyone interested in suppressed ancient scriptures. The way the book is formatted is fantastic, making it both easy to read cover-to-cover and easy to use as a reference.

Just a warning, it is wise to be open minded when reading the translations of some of these ancient texts. Especially the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. Some of the material may be a bit shocking at first. But please continue on, as much wisdom and direction can be gleened from these pages.

I thought this book was going to substantiate and explore the validity of these "lost books of the Bible" however there is no actual scriptures in here and what is in the book is paraphrased which in my opinion is inexact at best and misleading all together at worst. This guy seems to lean towards universalism in that all religions lead to the same GOD which is completely unbiblical and utterly false.This book is all about the authors interpretation of the so called lost books and his experiences with them.this book is absolutely useless to anyone trying to get any real knowledge or meaning from the extrabiblical texts.Don't waste your money on this book, but if you still want to buy it let me know and I will sell you my copy!

A good book overall, but I feel authors should never paraphrase ancient texts; it takes from credibility. It's difficult to believe a Ph.D. wrote this. I expected a lot more.

This book is golden. Great insight and fills in a lot of holes found in the traditional canonized Bible. Theres always more than one side to a story, and the apocryphal books not to be ignored, but incorporated into your ancient studies of scripture. The author is very enthusiastic about the material and it helped get me into it as well. I'll be purchasing some of his other books.

I'm a History major with a Religious minor and this book was instrumental in helping me understand the banned scriptures from the Bible. I do not adhere to any religious beliefs but Hanson's ideas are sensible, honest, and easy to follow. I recommend "Secrets from the Lost Bible" to anyone for either an informative and/or a good read. It is not a scholarly book in the sense that it will bore you with nothing but facts, citation, and fillers. It is meant to get your juices flowing on an adventure ride into comprehending imperative biblical information.


I found the "Secrets from the Lost Bible" to be insightful, well balanced, and exciting to read. Many books that deal with scriptures are based on theology and text alone and this usually amounts to a shallow impression of the big picture. That is NOT the case with Hanson's book. Hanson clearly has a passion for history, the scriptures, theology, the Hebrew language, and a profound outlook on how these texts can be grasped. His form of explaining the texts and putting them into perspective using all these fields of studies made his points well balanced and above all, extremely entertaining to read. This book is unlike any other books I've read in religious studies for this fact and allowed me to learn more than I could have ever learned if trying to read the lost text on my own.