The Other Early Books
What the church read, weighed, treasured, and did not canonize
The page on the Book of Enoch raises a question worth answering more broadly: what about all the other early writings? Besides the sixty-six books, and the deuterocanon received by Catholics and Orthodox, the early church knew and read a whole shelf of other texts. Some it loved and learned from without ever calling them Scripture. Some it weighed and quietly set aside. A few it flatly rejected. The line was not drawn by a committee inventing a Bible; it was the church recognizing which books carried the apostolic voice, and being honest that the others, however useful, did not.
The apostolic fathers: treasured, but not Scripture
The most valuable of these are the writings of the apostolic fathers, the generation that knew the apostles or their hearers. The Didache (the church's oldest manual), Clement of Rome's letter to the Corinthians, the Shepherd of Hermas, the Epistle of Barnabas, and the letters of Ignatius and Polycarp were read aloud in many churches, and a few early Bibles even bound some of them in (Codex Sinaiticus includes Barnabas and Hermas). This site quotes them constantly, because they are priceless windows into what the first Christians actually believed (see The Witnesses). But the church, and they themselves, knew the difference between an edifying letter and the word of God. Treasured as history and devotion; not Scripture.
The later writings: weighed and set aside
Other books came later and carried less weight. The Gospel of Peter (second century) was read in a few places until Bishop Serapion of Antioch examined it around AD 190 and pulled it, because it leaned toward the error that Christ only seemed to suffer. The Acts of Pilate, later called the Gospel of Nicodemus, is a vivid but legendary expansion of the trial and the descent into hell. The Apocalypse of Peter, a tour of heaven and hell, appears on one early list (the Muratorian Fragment, c. 170) with the candid note that some would not have it read in church. These range from devotional curiosities to clear embellishments, and they are a separate matter entirely from the later Gnostic forgeries (the "gospels" of Thomas or Judas), which taught a different religion under borrowed names.
The tests were never arbitrary. A book had to be apostolic (from an apostle or a close companion), orthodox (agreeing with the rule of faith the whole church already held; see the creeds), and catholic (received and used across the whole church, not just one corner). By these the church recognized, rather than invented, the canon: the Muratorian Fragment already lists most of the New Testament around AD 170, and Athanasius names the exact twenty-seven books in AD 367. The Spirit who inspired the Scriptures also guided the church to know His own voice, the way sheep "know his voice" (John 10:4-5).
Where this lands
So read the apostolic fathers freely, the way you would read a letter from a grandparent who knew the family founders; this site does, and is the richer for it. Read the later apocrypha, if you like, with the same care a historian brings, knowing what they are. And honor the wisdom that distinguished them from Scripture. The point of Enoch was never that every old book is secretly canon; it was that the New Testament itself quotes Enoch, so we should know it. The point here is the companion truth: the church read widely, weighed honestly, and handed us a canon we can trust precisely because it did not just keep everything.
Related: The Book of Enoch, What the Early Church Confessed, The Witnesses, and the Study Bible (which includes the deuterocanon and Jubilees, clearly labeled). Historical summary offered plainly; where a writing is legendary or rejected, it is said so. Scripture from the King James Version, linked to BibleHub.