The Apocrypha — why do Catholic Bibles have extra books?

Open a Catholic Bible and you will find books a Protestant Bible does not have: Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach (Ecclesiasticus), Baruch, 1 and 2 Maccabees, and additional material in Daniel and Esther.

Orthodox Bibles include those and several more — 3 Maccabees, 1 Esdras, Psalm 151, and in the Ethiopian tradition, 1 Enoch and Jubilees.

This is a real disagreement, and it can be discussed accurately without anyone being accused of tampering.

First, what is not in dispute

Every tradition agrees on the same 27 New Testament books. Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, Coptic, Armenian, Ethiopian — identical.

The entire dispute concerns the Old Testament.

And the terminology matters. Protestants say Apocrypha, from the Greek for "hidden". Catholics say deuterocanonical — a second canon, meaning recognised later, not lesser. Orthodox usage is anagignoskomena, "things that are read".

Using someone's own term for their own books is a small courtesy that improves the conversation considerably.

The Protestant case

The Hebrew Bible has never contained them. The Jewish canon, then and now, is the same 39 books (counted as 24 in Jewish reckoning) as the Protestant Old Testament. Josephus, writing around AD 90, describes a fixed collection of 22 books and says explicitly that nothing had been added for centuries.

Paul says the Jews were "entrusted with the oracles of God" (Romans 3:2). If they were the custodians, their canon carries weight.

Jesus never quotes them as Scripture. He quotes the Law, the Prophets and the Writings constantly. His summary in Luke 24:44 — "the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms" — is the standard threefold Hebrew division.

The New Testament never cites them as Scripture. There are around 300 Old Testament quotations in the New Testament, introduced with formulas like "it is written". Not one is from a disputed book. (Jude 14-15 quotes 1 Enoch, which is in no one's canon except the Ethiopian — an interesting complication for everyone.)

Jerome objected. This is the strongest historical point. The man who translated the Vulgate — the Bible of the Western church for a thousand years — included these books only under instruction, and wrote prefaces stating that they were useful for edification but not for establishing doctrine. He distinguished libri canonici from libri ecclesiastici.

Trent came late. The formal Catholic definition dates to 1546, at the Council of Trent, in explicit response to the Reformation. Before that, opinion within the Western church was genuinely mixed — Cardinal Cajetan, Luther's own opponent at Augsburg, followed Jerome's distinction.

Some content is difficult. 2 Maccabees 12:43-45 supports prayers and offerings for the dead, which became a proof text for purgatory and indulgences — which is not unrelated to why the question became urgent in the sixteenth century. Tobit contains an angel giving instructions about burning fish organs to drive off demons (Tobit 6:5-8). Judith has historical problems, including calling Nebuchadnezzar king of the Assyrians ruling from Nineveh.

The Catholic case, stated fairly

The Septuagint included them. The early church used the Greek Old Testament, and Septuagint manuscripts contain these books. Most New Testament Old Testament quotations follow Septuagint wording, which suggests the apostles' functional Bible was the Greek one.

Early Christian usage. Church fathers cite these books, sometimes with formulas resembling scriptural citation. They appear in early canon lists and in the great fourth-century codices.

Councils affirmed them. Hippo (393) and Carthage (397) list them, and those are the same councils Protestants cite for the New Testament canon — which is a fair point that deserves acknowledgement rather than deflection.

The Jewish canon was not fixed until later. The claim that a first-century Jewish canon was settled and closed is contested; the Council of Jamnia, once cited for this, is now generally regarded as not having been a canon-fixing council at all.

Trent defined rather than added. On the Catholic account, it formalised what had been the church's usage, in response to a novel restriction.

What is actually in them

Worth knowing, because most people arguing about these books have not read them.

Sirach (Ecclesiasticus) — a wisdom book much like Proverbs, written around 180 BC. Genuinely excellent. "A faithful friend is a sturdy shelter; he that has found one has found a treasure."

Wisdom of Solomon — Hellenistic Jewish wisdom literature. Chapter 2 contains a passage about the righteous man being condemned to a shameful death that early Christians read as strikingly messianic.

1 Maccabees — a sober historical account of the Maccabean revolt against Antiochus IV. Regarded by historians as a genuinely valuable source for the period, whatever one's view of its canonicity. This is the history behind Hanukkah, which Jesus appears to attend in John 10:22.

2 Maccabees — more theological and rhetorical. The source of the disputed passage on prayers for the dead.

Tobit — a charming folktale about a righteous man, his son, an angel and a demon.

Judith — a dramatic story of a widow who saves her city by assassinating an enemy general.

Baruch, additions to Daniel (Susanna, Bel and the Dragon, the Song of the Three Young Men), additions to Esther.

What the Reformers actually did

Not what the objection assumes.

Luther translated them and included them in his German Bible, in a section between the testaments, with the heading: books not held equal to Scripture, but useful and good to read.

The King James Version of 1611 included the Apocrypha, in a separate section. So did most Protestant Bibles for centuries.

They were dropped from most printings in the nineteenth century, largely by decision of the British and Foreign Bible Society in 1827 — and the reasons were as much economic as theological. Printing fewer pages made Bibles cheaper to distribute.

The Anglican Thirty-Nine Articles preserve the historic Protestant position with precision: the church reads them "for example of life and instruction of manners; but yet doth it not apply them to establish any doctrine."

Read them. Do not build doctrine on them.

How to discuss it

Do not accuse anyone of adding or removing books. The history is genuinely complicated, both sides have real arguments, and the accusation ends the conversation.

Get the terminology right. Say "deuterocanonical" to a Catholic.

Notice what is at stake and what is not. No essential Christian doctrine depends on these books. The Trinity, the incarnation, the resurrection and justification are all established from texts every tradition accepts.

And notice what is agreed. All 27 New Testament books. The Law, the Prophets and the Writings. The Psalms, Isaiah, Genesis, Romans, the Gospels.

The overlap is enormous. The disagreement is real, and it is at the edge.