Why Is the Catholic Bible Bigger Than the Protestant Version?

The Catholic Bible contains the deuterocanonical books because they were part of the biblical tradition that Jesus and the apostles were familiar with and made reference to. Called the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament that contained these books was widely used in the early Church because Greek (like English today) was a universal language of commerce. 

Some Protestants say we should not include the deuterocanonical books in the canon because Jesus and the apostles never quoted from them elsewhere in Scripture. But those aren’t the only books that aren’t quoted elsewhere. As Protestant scholar Bruce Metzger observes, “nowhere in the New Testament is there a direct quotation from the canonical books of Joshua, Judges, Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Ecclesiastes, the Song of Solomon, Obadiah, Zephaniah, and Nahum; and the New Testament allusions to them are few in number.”

In fact, the New Testament authors never even allude to Esther, Ecclesiastes, or the Song of Solomon despite the fact that the content of these books was relevant to their own writings. They did, however, allude to the deuterocanonical books, such as in Mark 12:18–22, where the Sadducees question Jesus about a woman who was married to seven brothers who all died consecutively. That story is from the deuterocanonical book of Tobit, yet Jesus doesn’t dismiss it as apocryphal.  

Another example is Hebrews 11:35, where the author mentions how some women “received their dead by resurrection. Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, that they might rise again to a better life.” This refers to persecutions found in 2 Maccabees 7, where a group of brothers suffer martyrdom instead of violating God’s law. Their mother said, “Do not fear this butcher, but prove worthy of your brothers. Accept death, so that in God’s mercy I may get you back again with your brothers” (2 Macc. 7:29). 

Again, when the crowd and the Jewish leaders taunt Jesus because he declared himself to be the Son of God yet God didn’t save him from being crucified (Matt. 27:39–43), it is a clear allusion to the deuterocanonical book of Wisdom, which says, “If the righteous man is God’s son, he will help him, and will deliver him from the hand of his adversaries” (2:18). The crowd’s gloating that God had failed to do this for Jesus makes sense only if they believed the book of Wisdom was inspired in what it said about the Son of God.  

Some Protestants say that at the end of the first century A.D. a Jewish gathering called the Council of Jamnia definitively established the Hebrew canon, and Christians should abide by that decision. But, aside from evidence that there actually was no Council of Jamnia, this argument would justify rejecting the canonical Gospels, too, because they were also allegedly rejected at this council! If certain books of the Christian scriptures were suspect with Jewish authorities, it may well be precisely because these books had become popular with Christians, who in their eyes were just apostate Jews.

So the real question is not, “Why is the Catholic Bible bigger?” Rather, it’s “Why is the Protestant version smaller?” By the time of the Reformation in the sixteenth century, Christians had been using the same seventy-three books in their translations of the Bible (forty-six in the Old Testament, twenty-seven in the New Testament) for more than 1,100 years. This practice changed with Martin Luther, who jettisoned them because they taught doctrines that conflicted with his novel theology. (The most famous example would be 2 Maccabees 12:46, which teaches the efficacy of praying for the dead in order to atone for their sins.i) Protestantism as a whole eventually following his lead, which led the Council of Trent (1545–1563) to infallibly affirm the full canon of Scripture. 

Today, many Protestants do not realize that their versions of the Bible are lacking so much text that was originally included. However, anyone who studies the authentic history of the canon must admit that this is the case. As Anglican church historian J.N.D. Kelly acknowledges, for the great majority of the early Church Fathers “the deuterocanonical writings ranked as Scripture in the fullest sense.”

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