Esdras, 3 & 4 Maccabees, Psalm 151, etc.). In the early 16th century, however, Martin Luther and other Protestant reformers noticed that their Bibles contained several books that were not in the Hebrew Bibles used by their Jewish neighbors ("the Synagogue down the street," so to speak). Since they knew the OT was originally the Bible of the Jewish people, Luther decided to remove those extra books from his Bible (calling them "Apocrypha"), thus reducing the number of OT books to 39. The Protestant Reformers did not, however, go back to the arrangement of the HB, but retained the same order and categorization of the OT books as found also in the Catholic and Orthodox Bibles, based on the LXX version of the ancient Jewish scriptures (see my Comparative Chart of Jewish and Christian Bibles). Thus, it is totally wrong to say that the Catholic Church (and/or the Eastern Orthodox Churches) added some extra books to the Bible. Exactly the opposite is true: the Protestant reformers were the ones who removed several books that were part of the OT from the very beginnings of Christianity (recall that the LXX was composed around 250 BCE!).
New Testament (NT) - A collection of 27 early Christian writings composed by various authors from the middle of the 1st to very early 2nd centuries CE; it is sometimes called the "Second Testament," especially by Jewish scholars, in contrast to the "First Testament" (the HB).
Book of Revelation (not plural!) - also called "The Apocalypse." A book containing seven short letters addressed to the "Churches of Asia," and a long series of highly symbolic "visions" attributed to a certain man named "John," culminating in the destruction of all evil and the establishment of "a new heaven and a new earth," and "the new Jerusalem."
Non-Canonical Early Christian Literature:
NT Apocrypha & Pseudepigrapha - refers broadly to other early Christian writings of various genres that were not accepted into the New Testament, even though many are attributed (falsely) to an apostolic figure; some (but far from all) of these are "Gnostic" writings (stemming from various Gnostic sects), which were rejected because they were considered theologically inadequate or objectionable by the dominant strands of early Christianity; other writings were judged theologically acceptable, but were not accepted into the NT Canon because they were not judged to be "apostolic" (not stemming from the first generation of apostles, thus not old enough). See the Non-Canonical Literature page for comprehensive lists and full texts.
Nag Hammadi Library - A collection of fifty-two texts (forty-five separate titles, with some duplicates) bound in thirteen papyrus codies from the fourth century; discovered in 1945 in Upper Egypt, near the town of Nag Hammadi. Many but not all of these texts, which are written in Coptic (an Egyptian-Greek hybrid language of the early Christian era), are "gnostic," including several of the apocyphal texts mentioned above and several texts that were previously unknown. See the Nag Hammadi Library page for more details.
Patristic Literature - Writings of the "fathers" (bishops, theologians, and other influential leaders) of the early Church, again comprising a variety of genres: letters & epistles, homilies & sermons, theological and philosophical treatises, biblical commentaries, etc. These writings are often subdivided into two main groups: Ante-Nicene Literature (from before the Council of Nicea, 325 CE) and Nicene & Post-Nicene Literature (from after 325). See the Early Church Fathers page for full texts.
Documents of the Ecumenical Councils - Brief summaries of Christian beliefs (called "Creeds") and other decrees were agreed upon at meetings of the leading bishops of the early Church, esp. during the 4th and 5th Centuries, but continuing throughout the centuries. The first four Ecumenical Councils were held at Nicea (325), Constantinople (381), Ephesus (431), and Chalcedon (451).
Translations and Editions of the Bible:
Itala, or Old Latin - Christians in the Western Roman Empire (Italy & environs) began trans