Why do Catholics have 7 more books in their Bible?
Why does the Catholic Bible have 73 books while the Protestant Bible has 66? Did the Catholic Church add books or did Protestants take them out? This video explores the history of the Biblical canon to find out.
Source
– You Tube
So why does the Catholic Bible have 73 books, while the Protestant Bible has only 66 books?
Some protestants believe that the Catholic Church added 7 books to the Bible at the Council of Trent in response to Luther’s Reformation, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.
In about 367 AD, St. Athanasius came up with a list of 73 books for the Bible that he believed to be divinely inspired. This list was finally approved by Pope Damasus I in 382 AD, and was formally approved by the Church Council of Rome in that same year. Later Councils at Hippo (393 AD) and Carthage (397 AD) ratified this list of 73 books. In 405 AD, Pope Innocent I wrote a letter to the Bishop of Toulouse reaffirming this canon of 73 books. In 419 AD, the Council of Carthage reaffirmed this list, which Pope Boniface agreed to. The Council of Trent, in 1546, in response to the Reformation removing 7 books from the canon (canon is a Greek word meaning “standard”), reaffirmed the original St. Athanasius list of 73 books.
Source
– http://www.catholicbible101.com/thebible73or66books.htm
What are the 7 additional books of the Catholic Bible?
The New Testament canon of the Catholic Bible and the Protestant Bible are the same with 27 Books.
The difference in the Old Testaments actually goes back to the time before and during Christ’s life. At this time, there was no official Jewish canon of scripture.
The Jews in Egypt translated their choices of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek in the second century before Christ. This translation of 46 books, called the Septuagint, had wide use in the Roman world because most Jews lived far from Palestine in Greek cities. Many of these Jews spoke only Greek.
The early Christian Church was born into this world. The Church, with its bilingual Jews and more and more Greek-speaking Gentiles, used the books of the Septuagint as its Bible. Remember the early Christians were just writing the documents what would become the New Testament.
After the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, with increasing persecution from the Romans and competition from the fledgling Christian Church, the Jewish leaders came together and declared its official canon of Scripture, eliminating seven books from the Septuagint.
The books removed were Tobit, Judith, 1 Maccabees, 2 Maccabees, Wisdom (of Solomon), Sirach, and Baruch. Parts of existing books were also removed including Psalm 151 (from Psalms), parts of the Book of Esther, Susanna (from Daniel as chapter 13), and Bel and the Dragon (from Daniel as chapter 14).
The Christian Church filled with the Holy Spirit did not follow suit but kept all the books in the Septuagint. 46 + 27 = 73 Books total. These included the 7 books which do not appear in the Protestant bible, namely,
- Tobit,
- Judith,
- 1 Maccabees,
- 2 Maccabees,
- Wisdom (of Solomon),
- Sirach, and
- Baruch
1500 years later, Protestants decided to keep the Catholic New Testament but change its Old Testament from the Catholic canon to the Jewish canon.
The books that were removed supported such things as
• Prayers for the dead (Tobit 12:12; 2 Maccabees 12:39-45)
• Purgatory (Wisdom 3:1-7)
• Intercession of saints in heaven (2 Maccabees 15:14)
• Intercession of angels (Tobit 12:12-15)
The books they dropped are sometimes called the Apocrypha.
Here is a Catholic Bible website: http://www.nccbuscc.org/nab/bible/
Source
– Yahoo Answers
Books of the Catholic Bible in Canonical Order
| Old Testament | ||
| New Testament | ||
Source
– United States Conference of Catholic Bishops
