Ask · Scripture & How We Got It
Why do Catholic Bibles have more books?
The short answer
Because the Roman Catholic Church counts an extra group of ancient Jewish writings, the deuterocanonical books, as Scripture, and Protestant churches follow the shorter Hebrew canon that Jesus and the apostles used. The books themselves are old and were widely read. The disagreement is about their authority, and it was fixed formally at the Council of Trent in 1546.
The fuller answer
The books in question, Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, the additions to Esther and Daniel, and the Maccabees among them, are ancient Jewish writings. They were read in Greek-speaking Jewish communities and carried in the Septuagint, the Greek Old Testament, and from there into the Latin Vulgate and the Bibles of the ancient church.
The division is over whether they belong to the canon itself. Jesus and his apostles argue from the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms, the threefold Hebrew canon, and Josephus, counting the Jewish books as twenty two in the first century, treats that collection as closed. Jerome later drew the same line inside the Latin Bible, distinguishing the books of the canon from the books of the church, read for edification rather than for establishing doctrine. That distinction, recorded in the study named in the sources below, held in the West for centuries.
Jesus said to them, “These are the words I spoke to you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about Me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms.”
Luke 24:44 (BSB)
The Council of Trent, in its Fourth Session in 1546, ruled the other way with an anathema, listing the deuterocanonical books as canonical in the Roman Catholic Church. Protestant Bibles therefore follow the Hebrew canon of thirty nine Old Testament books, Catholic Bibles include the deuterocanon, and Orthodox Bibles include more again. The page on this site called Canons that differ lays out the three lists side by side, from the documents.
Sources
- Berean Standard Bible (BSB)
- Council of Trent, Fourth Session (1546)
- Josephus, Against Apion 1.8
- Roger T. Beckwith, The Old Testament Canon of the New Testament Church (1985)
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