The Difference
Open a Catholic Bible and you will find 73 books. Open a Protestant Bible and you will find 66. The seven books that appear in one and not the other are: Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach (also called Ecclesiasticus), Baruch, and 1 and 2 Maccabees. There are also additional passages in the books of Daniel and Esther.
Catholics call these books “deuterocanonical” — a word meaning “second canon,” indicating that their status was discussed before being confirmed. Protestants call them “apocrypha” — a word meaning “hidden” or “of doubtful authorship,” and they exclude them from their Bibles entirely or print them in a separate section between the Old and New Testaments.
The question is: who is right? Did Catholics add books that do not belong, or did Protestants remove books that do?
The History
The answer requires a brief trip through history, and the history is clearer than the controversy suggests.
Before Christ, Jewish communities used Scripture in two forms. In Palestine, the Scriptures were read primarily in Hebrew. In the wider Greek-speaking world — where the majority of Jews actually lived — the Scriptures were read in a Greek translation called the Septuagint, produced in Alexandria around the third century BC. The Septuagint included the seven deuterocanonical books. The Hebrew collection did not — or at least, the collection that eventually became the standard Hebrew canon did not.
When the first Christians — who were Greek-speaking Jews and Gentiles — read the Old Testament, they overwhelmingly used the Septuagint. The New Testament itself reflects this. When the New Testament authors quote the Old Testament, they follow the Septuagint’s Greek text the vast majority of the time. The early Church inherited the Septuagint as her Old Testament.
The deuterocanonical books were part of that inheritance. They were read in Christian worship, quoted by Church Fathers, and treated as Scripture from the beginning. St Clement of Rome cited Wisdom and Sirach in the first century. St Polycarp quoted Tobit. Origen, the greatest biblical scholar of the early Church, defended their inclusion. The councils of Hippo (393 AD) and Carthage (397 AD) — the same councils that defined the New Testament canon — listed all seven deuterocanonical books as part of the Old Testament.
For over a thousand years, no serious challenge was raised. The books were in the Bible. Everyone knew it.
What Changed
Martin Luther changed it. In the sixteenth century, during his debates with Catholic theologians, Luther found that certain Catholic doctrines he opposed — particularly purgatory and the merit of good works — had support in the deuterocanonical books. 2 Maccabees 12:46, for example, explicitly endorses prayer for the dead. Sirach 3:30 speaks of almsgiving atoning for sin.
Luther’s solution was to question the books themselves. He moved them to an appendix in his German translation of the Bible, calling them useful for reading but “not equal to the Holy Scriptures.” Other Reformers went further, removing them entirely. Over the following centuries, Protestant Bibles dropped them altogether, and most Protestants today are unaware they were ever there.
The Catholic Church responded at the Council of Trent in 1546, formally defining the canon of Scripture — including all seven deuterocanonical books — as it had been received and used for fifteen centuries. Trent did not add anything. It confirmed what had always been.
The Protestant Argument
Protestants typically argue that the deuterocanonical books should be excluded because the Jews of Palestine did not accept them as Scripture. The Hebrew canon — finalised, according to most scholars, at some point after the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD — does not include them.
This argument has a certain logic, but it raises more problems than it solves.
First, the Hebrew canon was not finalised until after Christianity had already begun. The early Christians did not inherit a closed Hebrew canon. They inherited a living tradition of Scripture that included the deuterocanonical books — and they used that tradition.
Second, the decision about which books to include in the Hebrew canon was made by Jewish authorities who had already rejected Christianity. To accept their canon over the canon used by Christians from the beginning is to defer to a decision made by people who rejected Christ — which is an odd foundation for a Christian Bible.
Third, Jesus and the Apostles used the Septuagint. If the wider Greek canon was good enough for the authors of the New Testament, it should be good enough for us.
What Is in the Books
The deuterocanonical books are not obscure curiosities. They contain some of the most beautiful and theologically significant passages in the Old Testament.
Wisdom contains a stunning meditation on the immortality of the soul and the fate of the righteous after death — theology that anticipates the New Testament’s teaching on eternal life. Chapter 2 describes the persecution of the just man in language that reads like a prophecy of Christ’s Passion, written centuries before it happened.
Sirach is a treasury of practical wisdom — on friendship, on speech, on humility, on the fear of the Lord. It was so widely used in the early Church that it earned the nickname “Ecclesiasticus” — the “Church book.”
Tobit is a narrative about faithfulness, prayer, and the providence of God — a story of a family in exile whose trust in God is rewarded through the intervention of the angel Raphael. It is one of the most charming books in the Bible.
1 and 2 Maccabees recount the revolt of the Jewish people against the Seleucid king Antiochus IV, who attempted to destroy Jewish religion and culture. They are historically significant — the feast of Hanukkah originates here — and theologically significant. 2 Maccabees 12:46 provides the clearest Old Testament support for prayer for the dead: “It is a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from their sins.”
Baruch includes a moving prayer of repentance and a hymn to divine wisdom that prefigures the prologue of John’s Gospel.
The additions to Daniel include the story of Susanna — a tale of innocence vindicated and corrupt judges exposed — and the Prayer of Azariah, sung by the three young men in the fiery furnace.
These are not minor texts. They are books that nourished Christian faith for fifteen centuries and that still repay careful reading.
Why It Matters
The question of the biblical canon is not merely historical. It goes to the heart of a deeper question: who has the authority to determine which books belong in the Bible?
The Protestant position, ultimately, is that the Bible authenticates itself — that the inspired books carry an internal witness that identifies them as Scripture. But this cannot explain how the canon was determined in practice. Someone had to decide. Councils met. Bishops debated. Lists were drawn up. The canon of Scripture is itself a product of the Church’s authority.
If you trust the Church to have identified the correct twenty-seven books of the New Testament — and all Christians do — then you must explain why the same Church got the Old Testament wrong. The Catholic answer is simpler: she did not get it wrong. The Bible she defined in the fourth century is the Bible she still uses today. Nothing was added. Nothing needs to be removed.
The seven deuterocanonical books are not an embarrassment. They are part of your inheritance. Read them.