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Why Do Catholics Have Seven More Books in the Bible?

The Short Answer

The seven books (Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch and 1 and 2 Maccabees) were part of the Old Testament the first Christians received in Greek. They were read in worship, quoted by the early Church, and listed as Scripture by councils from the late fourth century onwards. Catholics did not add them. In the sixteenth century, the Reformers moved them out of the Old Testament, and most Protestant Bibles later dropped them altogether.

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”, because their place in the canon was discussed for longer before it was settled. Protestants usually call them “apocrypha”, meaning “hidden”, and either leave them out of their Bibles or print them in a separate section between the Testaments.

The question is: who is right? Did Catholics add books that do not belong, or did Protestants remove books that do?

What the Church Does and Does Not Claim

The Church does not claim:

The Church does claim that these seven books are inspired Scripture, part of the Old Testament as the Church received it, and that this was solemnly defined at the Council of Trent in 1546, confirming what the Church had long read and taught.

The History

The history is clearer than the controversy suggests.

Before Christ, Jewish communities used Scripture in two main forms. In Palestine, the Scriptures were read primarily in Hebrew. In the wider Greek-speaking world, where many Jews lived, they were read in a Greek translation called the Septuagint, produced in Alexandria from the third century BC. The Greek collection included the deuterocanonical books. The collection that eventually became the standard Hebrew canon did not.

The first Christians, many of them Greek-speaking, overwhelmingly used the Greek Old Testament. When the New Testament writers quote the Old Testament, they very often follow the Septuagint’s wording. The early Church inherited the Greek Scriptures as her Old Testament, and the deuterocanonical books with them.

They were read in Christian worship and quoted as Scripture from early on. St Clement of Rome, around 96, echoes the Book of Wisdom. St Polycarp, in the early second century, wrote: “When you can do good, defer it not, because ‘alms delivers from death’” (Letter to the Philippians 10), words taken from Tobit. Origen, the greatest biblical scholar of the early Church, defended the passages in Daniel against a critic who rejected them.

The councils of Hippo (393) and Carthage (397), the same councils that listed the twenty-seven books of the New Testament, listed among the Old Testament books Tobit, Judith, “two books of the Maccabees” and “five books of Solomon”, which included Wisdom and Sirach. Baruch was then usually counted as part of Jeremiah. In 1442 the Council of Florence listed all the books by name, Baruch included. For over a thousand years the Church as a whole read, prayed and copied these books as Scripture.

What Changed

In the sixteenth century, during his debates with Catholic theologians, Martin Luther found that certain doctrines he opposed had support in the deuterocanonical books. Judas Maccabeus has a sacrifice offered for fallen soldiers: “Therefore he made atonement for the dead, that they might be delivered from their sin” (2 Maccabees 12:45). Sirach says that “almsgiving atones for sin” (Sirach 3:30).

In his German Bible, Luther gathered these books into a separate section after the Old Testament, under the heading “Apocrypha”, describing them as books not held equal to Holy Scripture, though useful and good to read. Other Reformers likewise denied them the status of Scripture. Early Protestant Bibles, including the 1611 King James Version, still printed them in a separate section. Over the following centuries most Protestant Bibles dropped them altogether, and many 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 centuries and already listed at Florence a century earlier. Trent did not add anything. It confirmed what had long been held.

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 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 by the wicked, who mock his claim to be God’s son, in language that the Gospel account of the Crucifixion strikingly echoes (compare Wisdom 2:12–20 with Matthew 27:43).

Sirach is a treasury of practical wisdom on friendship, speech, humility and the fear of the Lord. It was so widely used in the early Church that it earned the name “Ecclesiasticus”, the “church book”.

Tobit is a story of faithfulness, prayer and the providence of God: a family in exile whose trust in God is rewarded through the help of the angel Raphael.

1 and 2 Maccabees recount the revolt of the Jewish people against the Seleucid king Antiochus IV, who tried to destroy Jewish religion. The feast of Hanukkah, the Dedication of the Temple, begins here (1 Maccabees 4:59). Jesus Himself kept that feast in Jerusalem (John 10:22).

Baruch includes a moving prayer of repentance and a hymn to divine wisdom.

The additions to Daniel include the story of Susanna, a tale of innocence vindicated and corrupt judges exposed, and the song of the three young men in the fiery furnace.

Common Objections

”The Jews never accepted these books, so neither should Christians.”

This is the strongest Protestant argument, and it deserves a fair hearing. The Hebrew Bible used by Jews today does not include these books, and many Protestants hold that the Old Testament should be the Scriptures of the Jewish people.

But in Jesus’ day there was no single, closed list of books accepted by all Jews. Different groups used different collections, and the Greek-speaking communities read the wider collection. The boundaries of the Hebrew canon were settled within Judaism over the following centuries, after Christianity had begun. The first Christians did not inherit a closed Hebrew canon. They inherited a body of Scripture that included the deuterocanonical books, and they used it.

The New Testament also shows familiarity with these books. The Letter to the Hebrews recalls those who “were tortured, refusing to accept release, that they might rise again to a better life” (Hebrews 11:35), an unmistakable reference to the martyrs of 2 Maccabees 7.

Ultimately, the question is who has the authority to say which books are Scripture. Christians accept the twenty-seven books of the New Testament because the Church recognised them. Catholics hold that the same Church, with the same authority, recognised the Old Testament too. (See Isn’t the Bible Alone Enough?)

”The New Testament never quotes them.”

It never quotes them with a formula like “as it is written.” But the same is true of several books that Protestants accept, such as Esther, Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs. Being quoted in the New Testament has never been the test of whether a book is Scripture. And, as we have seen, the New Testament does draw on the deuterocanonical books, in Hebrews 11:35 and elsewhere.

”Didn’t St Jerome and St Athanasius reject them?”

They did hold to a shorter list, and this is an honest point in the Protestant case. St Athanasius, in 367, listed the books of the canon and then named others, including “The Wisdom of Solomon, and the Wisdom of Sirach, and Esther, and Judith, and Tobit,” as “not indeed included in the Canon, but appointed by the Fathers to be read” (Festal Letter 39). Notice that he left out Esther, which Protestants accept, and counted Baruch as part of Jeremiah.

St Jerome, who knew Hebrew and worked closely with Jewish scholars, preferred the Hebrew list. Yet he still translated Tobit and Judith for the Church’s Latin Bible, and these books continued to be read in her worship.

The views of individual Fathers carry weight, but they are not the Church’s decision. St Augustine, Jerome’s contemporary, accepted the wider canon, and so did the councils of his day and the Church’s practice in worship. When Christians disagreed, it was the Church that settled the question.

”These books contain historical errors.”

Some of these books, such as Tobit and Judith, are written as edifying stories, and their historical details do not always fit what we know from other sources. But the Church teaches that each part of Scripture must be read according to its literary form (Dei Verbum 12). A story told to teach faithfulness is not in error because it is a story. The same principle applies to parts of the books Protestants accept.

Why It Matters

The question of the 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 Bible does not contain its own table of contents. Someone had to decide. Councils met, bishops discussed, lists were drawn up. The canon of Scripture is itself a fruit of the Church’s authority, guided by the Holy Spirit.

If you trust the Church to have recognised the right twenty-seven books of the New Testament, as nearly all Christians do, then you must explain why the same Church got the Old Testament wrong. The Catholic answer is simpler: she did not. The Bible she recognised in the fourth century is the Bible she still uses today.

The deuterocanonical books are not an embarrassment. They are part of the inheritance of every Christian. Read them.

Go deeper: How Did the Church Decide Which Books Belong in the Bible?

This article follows the method St Robert Bellarmine used in his Controversies*: state the question fairly, clear away misunderstandings, make the case, then answer each objection. Bellarmine’s own treatment of the canon is in his first Controversy,* De Verbo Dei (On the Word of God). See How We Answer Objections.

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