The Other Bible by Willis Barnstone Review

"The Other Bible" by Willis Barnstone is a pretty unique gem among religious books. Of course, you can get books that compile the same kinds of writings as Barnstone's book, however, The Other Bible has far more content than most books of its type. Right off the bat, the cover lists some of the content that it has: the Gnostic Gospels, many documents from the Dead Sea Scrolls, visionary wisdom texts, Christian (New Testament) Apocrypha, Jewish Pseudepigraphia, and Kabbalist writings.

The amount of content within this book is huge - not only that, but the range of texts within The Other Bible is very diverse. It's the size of dictionary; most books like it don't have that much content.

Obviously, not all of the documents contained within the book are true, and some of them are outright ridiculous. However, many of the writings can help someone understand some historical backround. With this book, someone can study the ancient Jews and the early Christians. The book contains articles that were written both during the Old Testament covenant, and after the New Testament covenant was established. For example,a reader who might want to understand the early Church could read the Gnostic gospels since those documents were circulated around in addition to the Synoptic Gospels. The Other Bible also has writings from the Manichaean Gnostics; they were a well known group in the Early Church. St. Augustine was a Manichaean Gnostic before he became a Christian.

Barnstone wrote highly informative introductions explaining the history of these writings and how certain books relate to real Bible - the actual Canon of Scripture. Barnstone also explains how some books relate to each other and Judaeo-Christian history as a whole.
 The book has all of its writings sorted into 10 different genres:

Creation Myths (mainly Gnostic and Kabbalist writings), Histories/Narratives (Dead Sea Scrolls, New Testament Christian Apocrypha), Wisdom Literature and Poetry (falsely attributed songs/psalms/odes, Gnostic), Gospels (Gnostic Gospels and New Testament Apocrypha), Infancy Gospels ("Infancy" being literal -primarily focused on the early Life of Mary and Jesus), Acts (books reminiscent of the book of Acts of the Apostles, such as the Acts of John, Acts of Peter, Acts of Paul, etc.), Apocalypses (books like Revelation, also including parts from 1st and 2nd Enoch, 2nd Baruch, and others), Diverse Gnostic Texts (all kinds of Gnostic writings), Manichaean and Mandaean Gnostic Texts (self explanatory), and Mystical Documents (Judaeo-Christian mythology). It also has a Pagan writing by Plotinus in in the first Appendix.

Some of the writings in The Other Bible can't be described as anything other than psychedelic - "Creation of the World and the Alien Man," "The Sibylline Oracles," "On God's Bisexuality," etc. That last one would definitely be bordering on (if not directly crossing into) heresy.

Though the book is useful for study, it also serves a unique purpose for a minority group Christians - those who accept more books in their Bible than most Christians. I'm an Eastern Orthodox believer attending a Greek parish. The Orthodox Study Bible follows the official Eastern Orthodox Canon of Scripture which as 74 books. Some Christians accept more books as Canonical than whatever their particular church or denomination officially accepts, whether it be the 66 books of the Protestant Canon, the 73 books of the Catholic Canon, or the 74 books of the Orthodox Canon. I'm definitely one of those Christians - to my knowledge, the Church doesn't claim that there are no Canonized books outside of our official Canon, it just states that those books are definitely Canonical and no less than those may be considered Scripture.

This minority accepts books such as the books of Enoch and Jubilees (which are already considered Canonical by the Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Churches, two Oriental Orthodox Churches) for specific reasons, even though those books are not accepted in mainstream Christianity. For those of us who like having a hard copy of a book, it's good to have some of those writings in an actual book as opposed to an electronic file.

Though the book is, for the most part, is expansive, informative, and useful, it does have some issues.

Some of the writings are broken up into multiple parts that are placed around the book, and some writings are just missing certain parts. 1st Enoch only has some chapters and is totally missing certain sections. 2nd Enoch (The Book of the Secrets of Enoch) is split into two sections, and still doesn't contain all of the chapters. It only has a few chapters from Book of Jubilees despite the fact that Jubilees has 50 chapters. Random books are just missing chapters. What on earth is up with that? Could Mr. Barnstone not get the rights to use all the chapters from a particular translation or something?

Verse and chapter labels are absent in most of the books except for some of the Gnostic writings. It'd be helpful to know exactly what chapter and verse I'm reading instead of there just being a footnote saying, "this includes chapter x, y, a, b, z, c, o, and p," with the verses completely absent. Yes, I know the original manuscripts did not have verses. However, it's the 21st century, and we've gone way past the printing press. It's not very much to ask for in a modern society where all Bibles have them. The lyrical writings have chapter labels, but not verse labels.

If you want full, comprehensive copies of Enoch and Jubilees, this book doesn't have it. It still does, however, have numerous amounts of historical, musical, mythological, and other various texts that are most definitely handy for study.

Many books like it tend to be more expensive - $30 to $40 - but, you can get The Other Bible for around $8 to $20. You can buy it here for pretty cheap from Amazon.

All things considered, weighing the pros and cons, I'd rate it about a 7/10. It's a very good addition to any theologian, scholar, or religious enthusiast's bookshelf.

With love,
~Isaac <3