Giants, Sons of God, and Daughters of Men

 

Paul Gustave Dore illustration of Paradise Lost, 1882

Let me start off by saying that this is not salvific. There is nothing about the nature of giants that is going to determine your salvation. This is not an important topic– but it was interesting to me and it might be interesting to someone else. I’m also behind on this because the idea for this post started percolating in January when we were studying Genesis in Come Follow Me and I am getting around to writing it out. 

If you have read the first few chapters of Genesis, you probably read the following verses:

Genesis 6:1-2

And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them,

2 That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they werefair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.

3 And the Lord said, My spiritshall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh⁠: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.

4 There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same becamemighty men which were of old, men of renown.

The earth also was corruptbefore God, and the earth was filled with violence⁠.

12 And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.

13 And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violencethrough them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth⁠.

You might have wondered, who were the sons of God and the daughters of men if all of humanity came from Adam and Eve? And who are these giants and why are they important to the subject of the sons of God and daughters of men? Frequently the sons of God having children with the daughters of men is interpreted as male angels having sexual relationships with human women, with the giants being the result of such pairings. The Book of Enoch, a widely read writing from the last few centuries BC, puts forth this narrative and also says that some of these angels taught humans forbidden knowledge like metal working, weapons-making, and cosmetics. The Book of Enoch, far from being written by Enoch himself, was written in the Second Temple period from the 6th century BCE to 70 AD (Marina, 2026). The Book of Giants was part of the discoveries in Qumran (between 1947 and 1956) and it is an incomplete account of the exploits of the giants and Enoch’s interpretations of their dreams and his attempts to intercede with God on their behalf to prevent their destruction. The Book fo Giants was heavily influenced by Near Eastern mythology, which is why one of the giants is named Gilgamesh (Wise et al., 1996). 

But none of this really make things clearer. Many religions believe that angels are spirits without bodies. (Latter Day Saints believe that some types of angels have bodies– see Doctrine and Covenants 129, but there is a general interpretation, which has never been discouraged or clarified, that these types of angels are not procreating. That seems to be for mortal bodies and exalted bodies.) So if angels don’t have bodies, then how would they procreate with human women? 

I would like to propose a different way of looking at the Old Testament, particularly the very early books of Genesis. I understand that many Latter Day Saints (as well as other Christians) believe in the Young Earth Theory that the Earth is 7,000 years old and all of humanity falls within that timeframe as well. However, it is possible that the scientific dating of the Earth is correct and that the first humans emerged somewhere around 300,000 years ago (and quite possibly in Africa). If that were the case, then the story of humans would be much older than 7,000 years and the stories about the first humans would have been passed down for thousands and thousands and potentially hundreds of thousands of years. In this case, some things might get “lost in translation” so to speak because they would be relating events that even people in antiquity would be very far removed from and have no experience with, such as an Ice Age, strange creatures like mammoths or woolly rhinos, and other human species, namely Neanderthals.

Current dating of the Book of Genesis places its writing around 500 BCE, though tradition states that Moses wrote it around the 13th or 14th centuries BCE. While Genesis and the four other books of the Pentateuch were likely written after the Babylonian captivity, they were also likely based on much older oral traditions (Schachterle, 2026). I’d also like to point out that much of the writings of the Bible, both Old and New Testaments, is the result of centuries of scholars copying sacred records and inspired writings so that we could have them today (Vickers, 2021). Even if we were to take the most compressed possible timeline of 7,000 years of Earth’s history and Moses writing Genesis in approximately 1400 BCE, Genesis would still be extremely removed from the first humans and have to rely on oral traditions or maybe (maybe) earlier written records. If we accept the possibility of a 300,000 year timeline, the potential for direct accounts in Genesis decreases dramatically. Latter Day Saints believe that Adam had a written language and kept records (Moses 6:5-6), but these records would have been extremely ancient, likely written in another (possibly extinct) language and discuss events of a paleolithic world that would be very hard to understand for people in antiquity. 

I would like to suggest that such records by Adam may have indeed been revealed to Moses and he may have translated them similar to the way Joseph Smith  described translating the Book of Mormon. Such records by the hand of Adam would run into the same problem as other scriptures that were about things far in the past or far in the future: difficulties with one-to-one translation of words and concepts, abridgement, and completely foreign objects, animals, etc. It would present a problem similar to that of current readers trying to understand the Book of Revelations: a writer from thousands of years ago trying to describe things from the future which he had absolutely no frame of reference for (possibly tanks, jets, 20th or 21st century military body armor, etc.) There was absolutely no word for something like “airplane” or “tank” for John the Revelator, so he used words that he had available to him, which don’t make as much sense to us. Likewise there seems to be no English word for a “curelom” or “cumom” in the Book of Mormon. What kind of word would a 19th century writer be able to use to effectively describe a still extant colony of Ice Age animals like a Giant Ground Sloth or an Ice Age tapir or even less exotic animals like llamas, alpacas or vicunas to a 19th century audience? So what kind of word would someone from the 13th-14th century BCE or even the 5th or 6th century BCE use to describe Neanderthals, who, if we assume accuracy in the scientific record, would have co-existed with humans for about 260,000 years? A writer in antiquity might possibly use words that would describe their physical features or the fact that they were like homo sapiens, but not of the same level of development and intelligence. So let’s now consider how “giants” and “daughters of men” might fit into such a framework.

Neanderthals lived on the Earth from about 430,000 years BCE and 40,000 BCE. They are often thought to be shorter, stockier and stronger than homo sapiens, though some more recent research indicates that they may have been not only muscular and stocky, but also a little taller than homo sapiens (Helmuth, 1998). Either way, they had wider shoulders, thicker bones and a more robust physique than homo sapiens. It also seems like their brains may have been more to vision and body control with less brain capacity left over for social interactions and complex cognition (Stromberg, 2013.) There is also evidence of cannibalism among Neanderthals (Cosnefroy et al., 2025). This could have led to the rise of certain types of deadly diseases among Neanderthals and contributed to their decline (Liberski, 2013). 

I think it’s possible that “in those days there were giants” may have referred to a time when homo sapiens and Neanderthals occupied the same lands, the Neanderthals being the “giants”. They would have been powerful hunters and fighters, which could also explain the phrase “mighty men which were of old”. However, they lacked the cognitive abilities of homo sapiens. Now, Latter Day Saints believe in theosis and that the entire human race are spirit sons and daughters of God the Father and have the potential to become like Him. So while homo sapiens have the ability to understand more complex ethical concepts and make covenants with God and become like Him, it is very possible that Neanderthals did not. Thus the phrase “sons of God” might refer to homo sapien men and “daughters of men” (“men in the King James Bible often meant “human”) might  have referred to Neanderthal women. Offspring from these relationships may have been larger and stronger than homo sapien children, but also lacked the cognitive abilities to be able to participate in worshipping God and creating covenant marriages and families. But why the particular arrangement of homo sapien men and Neanderthal women? Well, genome analysis might have a clue for us about that. 

About 2% of the genome of people descended from those living outside Africa is derived from Neanderthals. Courtship and also violence may have both been ways that humans and Neanderthals ended up interbreeding. The first Neanderthals and humans probably made contact with each other around 250,000 years ago, but it was not these first sporadic encounters that led to the intermingling of DNA that occurred. Between about 50,000 and 40,000 years ago, humans started making a big push out of Africa and into Europe. It was during this time that interbreeding between humans and neanderthals became relatively frequent. While humans have DNA from Neanderthals, none of it is mitochondrial DNA that is inherited from the mother. There aren't any homo sapiens genes in the genetic material from Neanderthals that has been analyzed so far. While this could be due to quirks in the availability of Neanderthal DNA samples, the fact that the passage of genetic material only seems to go one way, from Neanderthal fathers to human mothers, indicates that homo sapiens and Neanderthals were not very compatible species and that the viability or fertility of the offspring may have depended on the pairing of the parents. Female homo sapiens and Neanderthal men may have been more likely to produce viable offspring with female hybrids being more likely to be fertile and males possibly having a greater likelihood of sterility. Homo sapiens men and Neanderthal females though, may have been less likely to produce viable or fertile hybrids, thus reducing the likelihood of finding homo sapiens genes in the Neanderthal genome. The continual interbreeding between homo sapiens and Neanderthals resulted in more sterile offspring and a decline in Neanderthal populations, which may have led to more Neanderthal inbreeding, likewise resulting in more sterile offspring (Ashworth, 2022).

The specific arrangement that Genesis mentions as being a problem, sons of God and daughters of men, is reminiscent of this nonviable arrangement of homo sapiens males and Neanderthal females. I think it is possible that the record in Genesis is alluding to a time in very far distant history when the future of humanity hung in the balance because of homo sapiens pairing up with Neanderthals– and it might . The statement that “all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth”, might hint at the mixing of the human and Neanderthal genomes. That “the earth was filled with violence” might also offer an insight that some of the pairings between homo sapiens and Neanderthals may not have been peaceful. There could have been a great deal of conflict that was also contributing to the potential destruction of homo sapiens. If homo sapiens were following the example of Neanderthals and engaging cannibalism on a relatively widespread scale as well, this could have likewise presented a threat to human existence.

What about the Flood?

Sometime between 100,000 and 50,000 years ago, a warming cycle began in the cycle of glacial and interglacial periods. By about 50,000 years ago, a warming cycle was underway, increasing the Earth’s temperature by about 10 degrees (Eldredge and Biek, 2019). Hypothetically speaking, this could have led to significant flooding in the land and that could point to the flood of Noah. A continual state of violence along with interbreeding between Neanderthals and homo sapiens could have placed humanity at a point where they were heading towards destroying themselves whether a flood came or not. 

Wrapping Up

Again, none of this is salvific. You don’t need any of this. However, I think there are some relevant points to an exploration of a biblical topic in this way. For one thing, the Bible doesn’t have to be a straightjacket that we tie ourselves into. We can look at outside information from history and science to help us understand the Bible better. We can seek truths from multiple sources to help us understand the whole truth better. And it is a reminder of the importance of following the Lord’s commandments. There is evidence from science and the Bible that humanity’s history may have hung in the balance from a failure to follow the Lord’s commandments.

References

Ashworth, J. (2022 October 31). Neanderthal extinction may have been caused by sex, not fighting. Natural History Museum. https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2022/october/neanderthal-extinction-maybe-caused-sex-not-fighting.html 

Cosnefroy, Q., Crevecoeur, I., Semal, P. et al. (2025). Highly selective cannibalism in the Late Pleistocene of Northern Europe reveals Neandertals were targeted prey. Sci Rep 15, 40741 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-24460-3

Eldredge, S. and Biek, B. (2019). Glad you asked: Ice ages– what are they and what causes them? Utah Geological Survey.

https://geology.utah.gov/map-pub/survey-notes/glad-you-asked/ice-ages-what-are-they-and-what-causes-them/

Helmuth H. Body height, body mass and surface area of the Neanderthals. Z Morphol Anthropol. 1998;82(1):1-12. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9850627/

Liberski, P. P. (2013). Kuru: A Journey Back in Time from Papua New Guinea to the Neanderthals’ Extinction. Pathogens, 2(3), 472-505. https://doi.org/10.3390/pathogens2030472

Marina, M. (2026 March 8). Book of Enoch: Summary, who wrote it, when written. Bart Ehrman Blog. https://www.bartehrman.com/book-of-enoch/

Schachterle, J. (2026 March 18). When was Genesis written? (Debates and evidence). Bart Ehrman Blog. https://www.bartehrman.com/when-was-genesis-written/

Stromberg, J. (2013 March 12). Science shows why you’re smarter than a Neanderthal. Smithsonian Magazine.  https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/science-shows-why-youre-smarter-than-a-neanderthal-1885827/  

Vickers, B. (2012 May 31). From the hands of scribes. Tyndale House Cambridge. https://tyndalehouse.com/2021/05/31/from-the-hands-of-scribes/

Wise, M., Abegg, M. and Cook, E. (1996). The Book of Giants: Introduction and commentary. The Gnostic Society Library (http://www.gnosis.org/library/dss/dss_book_of_giants.htm 

A Different Jesus, Part 4 of 4: the Bible and Authority and Aaaaallll the References

Manuscript page of the Codex Siniaticus

While Catholics like to point to the longevity of their beliefs and the purportedly unbroken line of authority as proof that they have the true Christian church from Christ and Protestants like to point to their belief in a closed canon of scripture and that the Bible is the only source of authority as their proof that they are the true Christian faith, the fact is that many of the tenets of other Christian churches come from Christian leaders who lived centuries after Christ and His apostles. The doctrine of original sin is not from the Bible, but instead comes from St. Augustine around 400 AD. The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of Mary was proclaimed in 1854 by Pope Pius. The Doctrine of Transubstantiation comes from the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215. Protestants, especially some Baptists and Evangelicals, often point to their belief in the Bible as the sole source of authority as proof that they have Christ’s true gospel and church. But many Protestant doctrines are likewise not found in the Bible and are the products of theologians centuries after Christ and the Apostles lived. John Calvin developed the idea of predestination. The Protestant doctrine of sola scriptura (that the Bible is the only source of authority for Christianity) and sola fide (faith in Christ is the only thing required for salvation) are not taught in the Bible and are the products of Martin Luther’s interpretation of the Bible. The Winchester Confession of Faith is also not in the Bible. As Millet (2018) said, let’s not kid ourselves about other Christians having a “closed canon”. But that should bring up a very interesting question that really needs to addressed anytime we start discussing the Bible as a source of authority: “What is the Bible?”

Most people would scoff at the question, “What is the Bible?” “The Bible is the book of scripture that starts with Genesis and ends with Revelations. Simple.” Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. The sole authority of the Bible is foundational to Protestants’ beliefs, and that has likewise fueled accusations of us not being Christians. Because Latter Day Saints believe in other scriptures besides the Bible, so the argument goes, and the sole source of authority is the Bible, if a church accepts other writings as scripture, then they don’t have God’s authority, and if they don’t have God’s authority, then the argument goes that they can’t be Christian. Recently, this argument has started extending to Catholics as well as Latter Day Saints in part because Catholics include the apocrypha in their Bible. (Being accepted as a Christian in some circles is getting to look more and more like trying to sit at the lunch table with the Plastics in Mean Girls. If you’re wearing sweatpants on a Tuesday, “You can’t sit with us!”) For one detailed example of this argument, read the October 8, 2021 blog post “Catholicism is Not Biblical Christianity” by a blogger named Julie who writes on The Set Apart Walk.  Another example is in the December 18, 2024 blog post “Are Catholics Christian?” By Stephen Kneale on the blog Building Jerusalem where he states that Christians are those who go to Heaven and because Catholics hold to certain beliefs that are not biblical that they cannot go to heaven. 

The jump from “you don’t have God’s authority” to “you can’t be Christian”, is problematic in and of itself (Latter Day Saints believe that because other faiths lack the Aaronic and Melchizedek priesthoods that they don’t have God’s authority either, but we would still consider them Christians because they believe that Jesus suffered and died for the sins of the world and that salvation comes through Him), but there are other problems with this argument as well. 

As the article on St. John Orthodox Christian Church says, sola scriptura denies the authority of the Christian Church and the consensus of the early Christian Fathers— while still upholding the Creeds they developed. Indeed, the Protestant argument that because Latter Day Saints reject the Nicene Creed and the Trinity they can’t be Christians clings to the principles that were established by a Council that by the standards of sola scriptura would be void. If the Bible is the only source of authority, then the Council at Nicea had no authority and their Creed would hold no power either. This leaves Protestants in a place of contradiction.

The other problem is that what constitutes “The Bible” has meant different things at different times. When Protestants refer to “the Bible”, they are most likely referring to some translation of the King James Version of the Bible, which dates to 1611, though John Calvin and Martin Luther were debating the inclusion of apocryphal books in the Bible in the 1500s (Meade, 2021). A criticism that Protestants often throw at the Catholic Bible is that it doesn’t emphasize or somehow fails to teach certain truths like salvation by faith. Kneale (2021) states: “The means of salvation they [Catholics] propose are explicitly stated in scripture as denials of the gospel itself.”

This is where Protestants do find themselves on shaky Biblical ground, though. The Catholic Church didn’t add books to the Bible. The  Apocrypha (which is Old Testament— not the New Testament) was considered part of the canon of the Bible from the Council of Nicea in 352. Jerome, who translated the Bible from Greek to Latin (the Vulgate) didn’t think the Apocrypha should be canonical and noted it in his translation, nonetheless, he stated that he was translating it because the Council of Nicea had decided the Apocrypha was canonical. The Apocrypha was still in many Protestant bibles for some time as well. The King James Version of 1611 included the Apocrypha (Heschmeyer, 2023). Some interpretations, particularly Protestant ones, seems to imply that the Apocrypha was already considered to be not-inspired and that inspired the Protestant Reformers to pursue doctrines such as sola fide and sola scriptura and a Heaven and Hell. In one of his early debates before his excommunication, Luther said that since the Book of Maccabees was not in the canon, it could not be considered doctrinal support for the Catholic doctrine of Purgatory. Calvin noted that the Apocrypha provided support to some of Catholicism’s doctrines and practices, but like Luther seemed to imply that they weren’t canonical and couldn’t be doctrinal support. (Meade, 2021). 

Meade (2021) states: 

In 1547, one year after Trent’s decree on the canon, John Calvin in his Antidote argued that the leaders at Trent “provide themselves with new supports when they give full authority to the Apocryphal books. Out of the second of the Maccabees they will prove Purgatory and the worship of saints; out of Tobit satisfactions, exorcisms, and what not. From Ecclesiasticus they will borrow not a little. For from whence could they better draw their dregs?” (Para 18)

These explanations definitely place Protestant Reformers in the best possible light of a tricky situation: Protestants are adamant about the sole authority of the Bible, yet their founders excluded books that were, at the time, part of the Bible. Whichever way you choose to interpret it though, the Apocrypha was considered a part of the Bible prior to the Reformation, but the Reformers decided to exclude it and this did help the Reformers support many of their doctrines that were at odds with some of the books in the Catholic (and Orthodox) Bible.

This is significant because if the premise is that Protestantism is biblically based and that the only authority is the Bible and that other religions that do not share the same canon as Protestants are not Christians, then the Protestant canon presents a problem because it is the product of alterations by men. 

Indeed, the concept of a Christian canon has been very fluid and if the basis for being Christian is the correct canon, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Peter and Paul would all fail that test because they didn’t have the Protestant Bible. They didn’t even have the Catholic Bible either. You could say the Apostles had the teachings straight from Jesus, but Paul became a Christian after Jesus’s ascension and Luke was not an apostle. The early Christians didn’t have a Bible, they had a series or letters and some accounts of Jesus’s life. They studied those and their other texts as they saw fit. Between 100 and 400 AD, a number of books came and went from the Christian and Jewish Canon. For example, the Jews came to regard the Book of Maccabees as non canonical while the early Christians decided it was (Ludlow, 2018). Older versions of the Bible included books and epistles that aren’t found in any versions of the Bible now. The oldest Christian Bible, the Codex Sinaictitus, dates to the middle 300s and includes the Apocrypha, but also the Epistle of Barnabas and the Shepherd of Hermas (Codex Sinaictitus Project, n.d). So if one of the criteria for being a Christian is belief in a Bible with 66 books as the only scripture, then 4th century followers of Christianity are also out of the running. (Again, being accepted as a Christian is getting more and more like sitting with the Plastics at lunch.)

The fact that older versions of the Bible had other books and the discovery of records like the Dead Sea Scrolls should prompt us to ask what can be a scary question: Are there other sacred records out there could or should be considered scripture? The consensus seems to be that no other books could be added to the Bible. The Bible is complete.

Arnold (2016) explains the criteria and reasoning as to why even if a genuine document from the early Christians was found that it could not and should not be added to the Bible:

(1) Apostolic origin (from the Apostles). From the very beginning, Christians “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching” (Acts 2:42). Originally, their teaching was spread orally, but once this teaching was written down, churches obtained copies of these documents as soon as they could and used them as the very Word of God for their beliefs and practice. (2) Orthodoxy. The churches rejected out of hand any document that did not conform to the collection of essential teachings that all of the churches accepted. (3) Usage. In the third and fourth centuries, no book was regarded as Scripture unless it had been widely used by the churches from the beginning. Of course, this latter standard rules out the possibility that any document can or should be added to the Bible now.

Again, we get into some very thorny territory here. Even if an actual letter written by Peter himself were discovered, it couldn’t be included as scripture simply because we didn’t have it until now, the assumption being that it must not have been in wide use at the time and therefore shouldn’t be included in the Bible. Paul referenced other letters which he wrote, but which we don’t have and are not in the New Testament. He referenced them frequently (Apologetics Press). We don’t have copies of them, though that doesn’t mean they might not be doctrinally relevant— or challenging to some faith traditions. There were works like the so-called Epistle of Barnabas (that was more like an essay than an epistle and never claims to bewritten by Barnabas) that were included in the early Bible (such as the Codex Sinaictitus) Eusebius and the Early Church (Ehrman, 2025).  some early Christian scholars and leaders considered them canonical and some did not (Adams, 2010). The Epistle of Barnabas and these other epistles are not considered canonical any longer though, despite the fact that they were widely read and used. Complicating the Bible further is that some of the epistles that are currently included might be pseudepigrapha, meaning they carry the name of an apostle, but may not actually have been written by him. Pseudepigrapha is a common feature of literature from ancient Mediterranean peoples and it is a feature of Old Testament texts, such as Proverbs, which is said to be written by Solomon, but probably wasn’t. More controversially, there are some New Testament letters that many scholars say are pseudepigrapha, these include Ephesians, Colossians, 1-2 Timothy, Titus, 1-2 Peter, 1-3 John, and James (Lester, n.d.). An interesting side note with this though, is that rejecting the idea of pseudepigrapha in the New Testament has been regarded as a litmus test for whether one is truly an Evangelical Christian. Quoting Conrad Gempf, Brown (2003) “Formerly it was the case that a person’s views on pseudonymity in the canon could be ascertained merely by finding out whether the person was an ‘evangelical’ or not. Indeed, for many, this was precisely the test: if someone believed that the NT contained pseudonymous works they were, by definition, not an evangelical.”  (Brown, 2003). In other words, to truly be an evangelical, one cannot believe that any part of the New Testament could be pseudepigrapha. This shows an interesting phenomenon in Evagelicalism: the tendency towards defining religious identity for others. “You can’t be a Christian or an Evangelical unless you meet these requirements…” Jennifer Roach Lees has mentioned a few times in FAIR New Testament podcast series that Evangelicalism has historically had a problem with defining itself, having started as a reaction to mainline Protestantism. Some Protestant churches also lack the formal rites of membership that Catholics, Orthodoxy and Latter Day Saints have. If you ask a member of these faiths who is a member of their faith, their answers will have something to do with who has received baptism and perhaps PERSONAL OPINION ALERT: I think this might be why there is a such a strong undercurrent of exclusion in some Evangelical dialogue is because of the difficulty in defining themselves.

The bottom line is that our Bible was compiled by people over a series of council, not written in stone tablets and handed off of a mountain by the Lord Himself. Even the order of the books in the Bible is a decision of men. While it’s convenient to have the Book of Revelations at the end of the Bible with its warning not to add or take away anything from these things, but that’s not what the Book of Revelations was meaning to do when John wrote it. Some of the epistles were quite possibly written after the Book of Revelations. Most scholarly dating of the books of the Bible place the Revelation of John 2 Peter is thought to be the most recently written at around 110 AD, while the Book of Revelations is thought to be written around 81-96 AD in the reign of Domitian. 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus and the epistles of John may have been written after the Book of Revelations (Marina, 2024). And the admonition in Deuteronomy 4:2 to not add or take away anything from the writings in it thus far, would, by that logic, negate everything in the Old Testament that comes after it. And, of course, the Bible didn’t exist as a book until a couple of centuries after any of the Books in the Bible were written. Placing the Book of Revelations at the end certainly gives the Bible a sense of finality and may have served as a warning from its compilers not to make any other changes after centuries of changes. Latter Day Saint theology has a much more comfortable place for this because of the open acceptance of an open canon and the understanding that parts of the Bible have been mistranslated and misinterpreted over the centuries. The sticking point of nothing being added to the Bible seems especially pronounced for Protestants. (There might be Catholic or Orthodox sources that have addressed the issue of new books in the Bible, but the most popular sources tend to be Protestant, particularly of an Evangelical leaning.) And if you are looking to the Bible to be the sole source of authority, trying to “corral” the revelation in might seem necessary to keep Protestantism in a cohesive whole. However, that doesn’t stop different interpretations from coming up, even from congregation to congregation.

Millet (2018) points out that this is a relatively new criticism of Latter Day Saints that seems to have started around the 1960s— not long after the Evangelical Christian movement began. He traces it back to a book called Kingdom of Cults by Walter Martin. Before this, there were many criticisms of Latter Day Saints, but not being Christians was not one of them. (Millet, 2018) Perhaps the accusation of not being Christian was the result of increasing membership and visibility of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and the increasing popularity of the Evangelical movement around the same time. I have encountered different publications from people of other faiths that seem to have an underlying feeling that “Mormons” are out to “steal” away their members. The fact that this criticism has now been extended to one of the oldest Christian faiths in the world might reflect another wave of growing unease within the Evangelical movement.

The Evangelical movement started around the 1950s and by the 2000s, about 30% of the population of the United States identified as born again Christians (Keller, 2022). That number has dropped to 26%. Many of these former Evangelical Christians become part the “nones” (“no religion” or “spiritual but not religious”), but a significant number are joining other denominations, particularly Catholic and Orthodox Christians. Eastern Orthodoxy has seen an increase in conversions with 65% of those new converts coming from a Protestant background and 60% of them citing theological reasons for changing faiths. Many Catholic dioceses are seeing a 30 to 70% increase in conversions as well (Voigt, 2024). The expansion of classifying other Christians as “not Christians” might be a reflection of the underlying anxiety about the pull of other faiths attracting Evangelical Christians away from Protestantism. 

References

Adams, J.P. (2010). Eusebius and the Early Church. California State University at Northridge.https://www.csun.edu/~hcfll004/euseb_ch.html

Arnold, C.E. (2016). Why were some books left out of the Bible? The Good Book Blog, Biola University. https://www.biola.edu/blogs/good-book-blog/2016/why-were-some-books-left-out-of-the-bible

Apologetics Press (2003 December 1). Are there lost books of the Bible? https://apologeticspress.org/are-there-lost-books-of-the-bible-66/

Brown, D. (2003 June 13). Pseudonymity and the New Testament. Faith Baptist Theological Seminary. https://faith.edu/faith-pulpit/posts/pseudonymity-and-the-new-testament/

English Translation of the Cathechism of the Catholic Church for the United States of America United States Catholic Conference, Inc.Catechism of the Catholic Church (1997). Catholic Culture https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/catechism/index.cfm?recnum=610

Codex Sinaictitus Project, (n.d.).  Significance. https://www.codexsinaiticus.org/en/codex/significance.aspx

Ehrman, B. D. (2025 November 11). The Epistle of Barnabas in a Nutshell. Bart Ehrman Blog. https://ehrmanblog.org/the-epistle-of-barnabas-in-a-nutshell/

Ehrman, B.D. ed (2003). The New Testament and Other Early Christian Writings. OUP

Heschmeyer, J. (2023 July 6). Did the Catholics Add 7 books to the Bible? Or Did Protestants Remove Them? Catholic Answers.

https://www.catholic.com/audio/sp/did-catholics-add-7-books-to-the-bible-or-did-protestants-remove-them

International OCD Foundation, 2026) What is OCD and scrupulosity? https://iocdf.org/faith-ocd/what-is-ocd-scrupulosity/

Julie (2021 October 8, 2021). “Catholicism is Not Biblical Christianity”. The Set Apart Walk. https://thesetapartwalk.com/catholicism-is-not-biblical-christianity/

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Lees, J. R. [Come Follow Me With FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions] (2023). "Don’t Latter-day Saints worship a different Jesus?” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSTUCUYUHzw&list=PLw_Vkm1zYbIGG3QXZLu1A9JLOXbLj4lAF&index=16

Lees, J. R. [Come Follow Me With FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions] (2023). What Must I Do To Be Saved? Youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUt_QTgfoV0&list=PLw_Vkm1zYbIGG3QXZLu1A9JLOXbLj4lAF&index=8

Lees, J. R. [Come Follow Me With FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions] (2023). Who is– and who is not– a Christian? Youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCt2cbrfY7Y&list=PLw_Vkm1zYbIGG3QXZLu1A9JLOXbLj4lAF&index=30

Lester, O.S. (n.d.) Pseudepigraphy. Bible Odyssey. https://www.bibleodyssey.org/articles/pseudepigraphy/

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Voigt, A. (2024 August 13). Some Evangelicals are Leaving Protestantism for Other Traditions. Christianity Today. https://www.christianitytoday.com/2024/08/protestant-conversions-roman-catholicism-eastern-orthodoxy/