By Matthew Sewell
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What is the Catholic Bible?
The Bible used by the Catholic Church contains 73 books total, which is seven books more than those used by the majority of Protestant denominations today. The books of the New Testament contain the same 27 books that Protestants recognize, but the Catholic Bible contains seven additional Old Testament books that aren’t seen in Protestant Bibles, known commonly as the “deuterocanonical” books.
The seven Old Testament books in question are: Tobit, Judith, 1 and 2 Maccabees, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, as well as additions to Esther and Daniel.
The reason for the seven-book discrepancy between Catholic Bibles and Protestant Bibles dates back to the Protestant Reformation and Martin Luther. Luther, in the process of breaking from the Catholic Church, removed the seven Old Testament books primarily for doctrinal reasons, and for similar reasons actually relegated several New Testament books (Hebrews, Revelation, Jude and James) to the appendix. His followers eventually restored those four New Testament books to the canon while keeping the deuterocanonicals omitted.
In particular, the most common hang-ups for the Old Testament books’ removal come from the second book of Maccabees, where a clear reference to the Catholic doctrine of purgatory— “that prayers and sacrifices for the dead are efficacious” — is mentioned (2 Macc. 12:42-46), in addition to a reference to saints in heaven actively praying for people on earth (2 Macc. 15:14) — both of which were rejected by Luther.
Luther had a “good” explanation for excluding the books other than the problematic portions he disagreed with, according to Jimmy Akin, Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers:
The basic reasons (for the removal of the 7 books) were Purgatory and a few other things, but the reason these particular books were removed from the Protestant canon is because they were also not accepted as canonical by European Jews at the time.
It’s not like there’s a specific thing in each one of the deuterocanonical books that Protestants found objectionable. It’s because those as a group were not accepted by Jews, and so once they made the determination (like in 2 Maccabees) it was easy to say “Hey, that’s part of this group that Jews don’t accept in Europe, so let’s not accept any of them.”
Prior to Martin Luther’s willful adjustment to the Scriptures, Christianity had held this canon in high esteem — literally, as inspired by God — for nearly 16 centuries (America’s entire existence, multiplied six times).
To distinguish between legitimately inspired books of Scripture and other revered books written by Early Church Fathers, the Catholic Church laid out the 73 books of the canon of Scripture we have today at the Council of Hippo (393), which was affirmed by the third and fourth Councils of Carthage (397; 419) and the letter of Pope Innocent I (405).
Prior to that affirmation, numerous Early Church Fathers, early councils, and popes cited from the deuterocanonical books alongside quotations of the “protocanonical” books — the 39 books whose inclusion in Scripture was not put in question.
In sum, the “Catholic Bible” contains the same 73 books, in their full form, which have been revered by the church for nearly 20 centuries.
