What are the forbidden books of the Bible?

Answer 1

You may be referring to a number of works, such as the Gospel of Thomas, and another bearing the name of Judas. There are a number of these which were not included in the New Testament canon.

Firstly, the information they contain is of dubious worth, such as having mythological or fictional embellishments which were known by the early church to be inaccurate. It must be remembered that the early Christians were most interested in recording factual information about Jesus and His life and teachings, and so they deemed these mythological elements to be not worthy of conclusion. They did not wish to mix truth with error. On this latter point, some of the teachings in these works also do not agree with known Bible truths. The Gospel of Thomas, for example, has elements of pantheism in it.

Secondly, the early church wanted to know what authority was invested in the works they were expected to receive as truth. They firstly wanted to know who authored the work, as one way of vouching for its apostolicity. An example of this would be the Gospel of Mark, which some believe to have been the first, which Mark wrote with the Apostle Peter as his chief source. They also wanted to know then as an important and connected issue, that the work in question contained apostolic truth. That is, did the work in question present the truth regarding Jesus Christ, of which the Apostles were the first custodians. The forbidden books are those which were early and clearly recognized as not meeting these strict criteria.