Are the people who removed Enoch, Jubilees, etc. from the Bible in trouble?

Q. In the book of Revelation 22:18 it mentions the adding or replacing of things written in the Bible as big trouble. The books that where taken out of the Old Testament; like the Jubilees, Enoch, Gospel of Mary, etc., are these people who removed these books in big trouble?

Actually, the books you list were never “in” the Bible, in the way I would understand that, so they were never taken “out” either.

The canon of Scripture—that is, what books the Bible contains, as far as Christians are concerned—was determined over the course of several centuries. Eventually a consensus emerged about the 66 books that all Christians accept as divinely inspired and fully authoritative. Some specific groups of Christians accept further books as useful and edifying, and in some cases they include them within their Bibles, but in every case they make some distinction between them and the other 66 books. (See this post: Do different Christian communities really consider different books Scriptural?)

As for the books you list, Jubilees and Enoch are accepted as Scriptural by one small part of the Christian church. The Gospel of Mary (which would relate to the New Testament rather than the Old Testament) is not accepted as Scriptural by any part of the Christian church. So as I said, these books, and others like them, were never really “in,” so no one is in trouble for taking them “out.”

For more about the issue you are asking about, see these posts:

Can more books be added to the Bible?

Why were some books removed from the Bible and is it a sin to read them?

Are these books missing from the Bible?

Author: Christopher R Smith

The Rev. Dr. Christopher R. Smith is an an ordained minister, a writer, and a biblical scholar. He was active in parish and student ministry for twenty-five years. He was a consulting editor to the International Bible Society (now Biblica) for The Books of the Bible, an edition of the New International Version (NIV) that presents the biblical books according to their natural literary outlines, without chapters and verses. His Understanding the Books of the Bible study guide series is keyed to this format. He was also a consultant to Tyndale House for the Immerse Bible, an edition of the New Living Translation (NLT) that similarly presents the Scriptures in their natural literary forms, without chapters and verses or section headings. He has a B.A. from Harvard in English and American Literature and Language, a Master of Arts in Theological Studies from Gordon-Conwell, and a Ph.D. in the History of Christian Life and Thought, with a minor concentration in Bible, from Boston College, in the joint program with Andover Newton Theological School. View all posts by Christopher R Smith