The Bible’s reliabilityDraft · awaiting advisor review

Why do Catholic and Orthodox Bibles have extra books?

In short

Catholic and Orthodox Bibles include several Jewish books written in the last centuries before Christ, preserved mainly in Greek and widely read in the early church. Protestants follow the shorter Hebrew Bible of Judaism and treat these books as useful but not Scripture. The disagreement covers a defined group of books; most churches agree on the 27 New Testament books.

The Objection

If Christians cannot agree on which books belong in the Bible, how can they call it God’s reliable word? The list was settled by church councils, centuries after the books were written, and different churches still give different answers. That looks like human choice, not divine revelation. A book whose contents depend on which church you ask seems less like a fixed revelation and more like a collection that grew over time.

Put as its strongest advocates would put it.

The Christian Case

Historical evidence
The books are Tobit, Judith, 1 and 2 Maccabees, Wisdom, Sirach (Ecclesiasticus), Baruch, and longer forms of Esther and Daniel. Most were written by Jews in the last two or three centuries before Christ. Some were first written in Hebrew or Aramaic: fragments of Sirach and Tobit have been found among the Dead Sea Scrolls. Orthodox Bibles add a few more, such as 3 Maccabees and the Prayer of Manasseh.
Historical evidence
The Jewish Bible came to contain the books Protestants call the Old Testament. Greek-speaking Christians read a Greek Old Testament, and the great fourth-century codices include some of these extra books, though their lists vary. Augustine and the councils of Hippo (393) and Carthage (397) accepted them. Others, including Athanasius and Jerome, set them apart from the Hebrew books, while still commending them for reading.
Historical evidence
At the Reformation, Luther printed them in a separate section in his 1534 Bible as useful to read but not equal to Scripture. The Council of Trent (1546) affirmed them as fully canonical. The Church of England said they were read “for example of life and instruction of manners” but not to establish doctrine. The King James Bible of 1611 printed them between the Testaments.
Scripture
The New Testament never quotes these books with a formula such as “it is written”, which Protestants stress. But it shows familiarity with them: Jesus attends the feast of Dedication, whose origin 1 Maccabees describes, and Hebrews seems to echo the martyrs of 2 Maccabees 7. Jesus also speaks of “the law of Moses, and… the prophets, and… the psalms”.
Christians differ
Catholics call these books “deuterocanonical” (a second canon, in timing, not authority) and hold that the church recognised them as Scripture. Orthodox churches receive them and read them in worship, with some variation in how their authority is described; the Ethiopian Orthodox canon is wider still, including 1 Enoch and Jubilees. Protestants hold that the Old Testament is the scripture entrusted to Israel, so they accept only the Hebrew books.
Philosophical argument
A disagreement about which books to include is not the same as evidence that texts were corrupted. The disputed books are known, printed and openly discussed. No central Christian belief – God as Creator, Jesus’s death and resurrection – depends on them. Some doctrines are touched, such as prayer for the dead, which draws partly on 2 Maccabees 12, and that partly explains why the question mattered in the Reformation.

Where the Evidence Is Weaker

Evidence about how and when the Jewish canon was settled is thin and debated. Josephus, writing around AD 95, speaks of 22 books but does not name them all. The surviving complete Greek Old Testaments are Christian copies with varying contents, so they do not show a fixed pre-Christian “Greek canon”. Early Christian practice was mixed, so Catholics, Orthodox and Protestants can each point to church fathers on their side.

Arguments to Avoid

Claiming that a “Council of Jamnia” around AD 90 officially closed the Jewish canon; most scholars now doubt any such decision was made.
Saying the Catholic Church invented or added these books at Trent to support purgatory; they had been read and listed by councils for over a thousand years before.
Saying Protestants “ripped books out of the Bible”; Luther and the King James translators printed them, and the dispute was about their authority.
Confusing these books with the Gnostic gospels or so-called “lost books of the Bible”, which are a different set of writings.

Read for Yourself

Luke 24:44

And he said unto them, These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me.

John 10:22–23

²²And it was at Jerusalem the feast of the dedication, and it was winter. ²³And Jesus walked in the temple in Solomon’s porch.

Hebrews 11:35–38

³⁵Women received their dead raised to life again: and others were tortured, not accepting deliverance; that they might obtain a better resurrection: ³⁶And others had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds and imprisonment: ³⁷They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword: they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented; ³⁸(Of whom the world was not worthy:) they wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth.

Romans 3:1–2