Why Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant Bibles Differ

Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant Bibles share the same 27 New Testament books and differ only in the Old Testament. Protestant Bibles follow the Hebrew collection and have 39 Old Testament books, 66 in all. Catholic Bibles add seven books from the ancient Greek version, for 73. Orthodox Bibles include those and a few more.

Nobody added or removed books on a whim. Each list has a long history and a reasoned defence, and the three traditions agree on far more than they dispute. This article sets out which books differ, how the difference arose, and how each tradition explains its own Bible in its own words.

How many books are in each Bible?

The canon is the list of books a church receives as Holy Scripture. The word comes from a Greek term for a measuring rod.

The Catholic figure comes straight from the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which lists 46 books for the Old Testament, or 45 if Jeremiah and Lamentations are counted as one, and 27 for the New (CCC 120). The Protestant figure is stated in confessions such as the Westminster Confession of 1647. The Ethiopian figure is the church's own.

The Orthodox total is harder to state as one number, because books are grouped differently from edition to edition and no council binding on all Orthodox churches has fixed the list. A count of 49 Old Testament books is often given.

Which books are different?

Seven complete books stand in Catholic and Orthodox Old Testaments and not in Protestant ones:

• Tobit, a story of a faithful family in exile
• Judith, the account of a widow who saves her city
• Wisdom (Wisdom of Solomon), a meditation on justice, death and God's wisdom
• Sirach (Ecclesiasticus), a large collection of practical teaching
• Baruch, attributed to Jeremiah's scribe, with the Letter of Jeremiah as its sixth chapter in Catholic Bibles
• 1 Maccabees and 2 Maccabees, histories of the Jewish revolt in the second century before Christ

Two books are longer. Greek Esther has passages, including prayers of Mordecai and Esther, that the Hebrew book lacks. Greek Daniel contains the Prayer of Azariah and the Song of the Three Young Men, the story of Susanna, and Bel and the Dragon.

Orthodox Bibles go a little further. Greek editions include 1 Esdras, 3 Maccabees, the Prayer of Manasseh and Psalm 151, and usually print 4 Maccabees in an appendix. Bibles in the Slavonic tradition also carry the book English readers call 2 Esdras.

Psalm 151 is short, and it gives a sense of what these texts are like. It is a psalm in David's voice about being chosen from among his brothers.

¹I was small among my brothers,
and youngest in my father’s house.
I tended my father’s sheep. ²My hands formed a musical instrument,
and my fingers tuned a lyre. ³Who shall tell my Lord?
The Lord himself, he himself hears. ⁴He sent forth his angel and took me from my father’s sheep,
and he anointed me with his anointing oil. ⁵My brothers were handsome and tall;
but the Lord didn’t take pleasure in them. ⁶I went out to meet the Philistine,
and he cursed me by his idols. ⁷But I drew his own sword and beheaded him,
and removed reproach from the children of Israel.

Where did the extra books come from?

They came from the Septuagint, which is the ancient Greek translation of the Jewish Scriptures. The five books of Moses were probably translated in or near Alexandria in the third century before Christ, and the other books followed over the next century or so. The name means seventy, after a tradition about the number of translators.

The Septuagint grew into a wider collection than the Hebrew Scriptures. It included books written or preserved in Greek, such as Wisdom and 2 Maccabees, and books first written in Hebrew, such as Sirach and 1 Maccabees. The New Testament writers, who wrote in Greek, used it freely when they cited Scripture.

The Hebrew Bible as Judaism received it contains 24 books. They are the same writings as the 39 books of the Protestant Old Testament, counted differently: Samuel, Kings and Chronicles are one book each, the twelve minor prophets are one book, and Ezra and Nehemiah are one. Its three parts are the Law, the Prophets and the Writings, a shape the risen Jesus refers to on the evening of the Emmaus walk.

⁴⁴He said to them, “This is what I told you while I was still with you, that all things which are written in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms concerning me must be fulfilled.”

⁴⁵Then he opened their minds, that they might understand the Scriptures.

So from the start there were two forms of the Old Testament in circulation: a Hebrew collection and a wider Greek one. Most of the difference between Bibles today follows from which of the two a church took as its measure.

How did the early Church handle the question?

The early Church read the Septuagint, and for several centuries Christian writers gave different lists.

In 367 Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, wrote a festal letter that names the 27 books of the New Testament exactly as Christians have them today. For the Old Testament he counted 22 books, included Baruch with Jeremiah, and set Wisdom, Sirach, Esther, Judith and Tobit in a second group, which he described as not in the canon but appointed by the Fathers to be read.

Jerome, who translated the Bible into Latin from about 390, worked from the Hebrew and reached a similar judgment. In the preface to Samuel and Kings he wrote that Wisdom, Sirach, Judith and Tobit are not in the canon. He translated Tobit and Judith all the same, and the Latin Vulgate that grew from his work carried the longer list.

In North Africa the churches decided the other way. A council at Hippo in 393 and councils at Carthage in 397 and 419 listed the canonical books, and the list preserved in the African code includes Tobit, Judith, the two books of Maccabees and five books of Solomon, a title that covered Wisdom and Sirach. In the West this longer list became the common Bible of the Middle Ages, and the Council of Florence repeated it in 1442.

What changed at the Reformation?

The Reformers returned to Jerome's question. If the Church's Old Testament is the Scripture of Israel, they argued, its limits are those of the Hebrew Bible.

Martin Luther did not cut the other books out. In his complete German Bible of 1534 he gathered them into a section between the Testaments, under a heading that Lutheran scholars translate this way:

These books are not held to be equal to Holy Scripture, but they are useful and good to read.

The Church of England took the same line. Article VI of its Articles of Religion says that the Church reads the other books for example of life and instruction of manners but does not use them to establish any doctrine, and it names them one by one. The King James Version of 1611 printed them. Only from the nineteenth century did most English Protestant Bibles appear without them.

The Reformed tradition spoke more firmly. The Westminster Confession of 1647 states that the books commonly called Apocrypha are not divinely inspired, are no part of the canon, and have no more authority in the Church than other human writings.

The Catholic Church answered at the Council of Trent. On 8 April 1546, in its fourth session, the council listed the books by name, including Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch and two books of Maccabees, and required that they be received entire, with all their parts, as they are contained in the old Latin Vulgate. Catholics call these books deuterocanonical, a word that points to their later recognition and not to a lesser authority.

The Orthodox East faced the same debate in the following century. The Synod of Jerusalem in 1672, in the Confession of Dositheus, named Wisdom, Judith, Tobit, the History of the Dragon, Susanna, the Maccabees and Sirach and judged them genuine parts of Scripture. Orthodox Christians often call these books anagignoskomena, meaning things that are read, and they have never ceased to read them in worship.

How does each tradition explain its Bible today?

Catholics teach that the Church, guided by the Holy Spirit, recognized which books are inspired, and that the list received in the West from the fourth century and defined at Trent is that recognition. The deuterocanonical books are read at Mass and cited in teaching. The Catechism, for instance, cites 2 Maccabees in what it says about prayer for the dead (CCC 1032).

⁴⁴For if he wasn’t expecting that those who had fallen would rise again, it would be superfluous and idle to pray for the dead. ⁴⁵But if he was looking forward to an honorable memorial of gratitude laid up for those who die in godliness, then the thought was holy and godly. Therefore he made the atoning sacrifice for those who had died, that they might be released from their sin.

Orthodox Christians receive the Old Testament in its Septuagint form, because that is the Bible the apostles quoted and the Church has prayed. The precise edges of the list have not been settled by a council of the whole Church, and Orthodox teachers do not treat that as a problem to be solved. The Prayer of Manasseh, for example, has its place in the service of Great Compline.

Protestants hold that the Old Testament canon is the one entrusted to Israel, and they point to Jerome and Athanasius as witnesses that this view is ancient. Lutherans and Anglicans have traditionally kept the Apocrypha as edifying reading; Reformed and most evangelical churches set them aside. All Protestants agree that doctrine is to be established from the 66 books.

Each position is held by serious, prayerful people, and each can name its sources. If you are finding your way into Bible reading, it helps to know which Bible is in your hands and why. Our guide on how to start reading the Bible suggests where to begin in any of them.

Are the shared books identical?

Nearly, but not in every detail. The books are arranged in a different order: most Christian Bibles today close the Old Testament with the prophets, while Jewish Bibles end with Chronicles. Catholic and Orthodox Bibles place the deuterocanonical books among the others, whereas Protestant editions that include them print them as a separate section.

The Psalms are numbered differently too. Orthodox and older Catholic Bibles follow the Greek numbering, which runs one behind the Hebrew numbering for most of the book, so the shepherd psalm is Psalm 23 in one Bible and Psalm 22 in another. We explain the numbering in our piece on psalms for night prayer.

Translation adds a further layer. The same verse can read quite differently in two English Bibles that share one canon, a subject we take up in which Bible translation to read.

Which Bible can you read from here?

You can begin with the Bible of your own church, and you can read the disputed books without settling the dispute. Sirach on friendship, Wisdom on the souls of the just, Tobit's prayers and the courage of the Maccabees have fed Christian prayer for two thousand years. Many Protestants who read them for the first time are surprised by how much of the New Testament's world they explain.

¹⁴A faithful friend is a strong defense.
He who has found him has found a treasure. ¹⁵There is nothing that can be taken in exchange for a faithful friend.
His excellency is beyond price.

In Emmaus you choose your tradition once, and the app selects a translation to match. The World English Bible and the King James Version in the app include the deuterocanonical books, and the World English Bible also carries 1 Esdras, 3 and 4 Maccabees, the Prayer of Manasseh and Psalm 151, so Catholic and Orthodox readers have their full Old Testament offline.

One point holds across every list. The four Gospels, the letters of Paul, the Psalms, Isaiah and Genesis are in every Christian Bible ever printed. The road the two disciples walked to Emmaus, with the Scriptures opened to them along the way, belongs to all three traditions alike.