Why do Catholic Bibles have more books?
The short answer
Catholic Bibles contain 73 books; most Protestant Bibles contain 66. The difference is seven Old Testament books — Tobit, Judith, 1 and 2 Maccabees, Wisdom, Sirach and Baruch — plus parts of Esther and Daniel. Catholics call them deuterocanonical. They were part of the Greek Old Testament used by the apostles and were accepted by the early Church.
The seven books
Tobit, Judith, 1 Maccabees, 2 Maccabees, Wisdom, Sirach (Ecclesiasticus) and Baruch, plus additional passages in Esther and Daniel (including the story of Susanna and the Prayer of Azariah).
Where they came from
By the time of Jesus, many Jews read the Scriptures in Greek, in a collection known as the Septuagint. It included these books. Most Old Testament quotations in the New Testament follow the Septuagint's wording.
Hebrews 11:35 alludes to martyrs who "were tortured, refusing deliverance, in order to obtain a better resurrection" — a reference to 2 Maccabees 7.
The early Church
The councils of Hippo (393) and Carthage (397) included these books, as did the Christian Bibles of the following thousand years. Eastern Orthodox Bibles include them too — and some additional books.
The Reformation
In the sixteenth century, Martin Luther and other Reformers followed the shorter Hebrew canon then used by rabbinic Judaism and placed these books in a separate section called the "Apocrypha." Over time, many Protestant Bibles dropped them entirely. The Council of Trent (1546) reaffirmed the long-standing 73-book canon.
Why the debate mattered
Some passages bear on doctrine — for example, 2 Maccabees 12:43-46 praises praying for the dead "that they might be freed from sin," a passage linked to the doctrine of purgatory.
Continue exploring
- Was Luther's revision of the Bible a return to the "true Bible" of the early Church?Q&A
- Are the Protoevangelium of James and the Gospel of the Birth of Mary authentic documents?Q&A
- Do Bibles survive from A.D. 400–1500, and did they leave out the deuterocanonical books?Q&A
- How should Catholics read the Bible?Q&A
- Is Mark 16:17-18 proof that snake handling tests one's faith?Q&A
- Should Catholics read Kierkegaard?Q&A