The Forgotten Books of Eden

The Forgotten Books of Eden is a book by Rutherford H. Platt, Jr., first published in 1926. This popular compilation collects translations of Old Testament pseudepigrapha and related quasi-biblical writings — material like the First and Second Books of Adam and Eve, the Secrets (or Book) of Enoch, the Psalms of Solomon and various Testaments and parables that circulated alongside canonical scripture but were not accepted into the standard biblical corpus. Platt’s volume presents these texts in an accessible, popularized English form, aimed at curious readers rather than specialist philologists, and helped make a broad swathe of apocryphal literature widely available to the English-speaking public. The book’s influence has been cultural more than doctrinal: by gathering these varied ancient writings into a single, readable collection it fed popular interest in “lost” and “forgotten” scripture and shaped how many modern readers imagine the religious imagination of late-antique Judaism and early Christianity. For students, general readers, and those exploring the margins of the biblical tradition, the collection remains a useful introduction — a starting point for deeper study of the apocrypha, pseudepigrapha, and the historical processes by which texts were included in or excluded from the canon.