Why does the Catholic Bible have more books than the Protestant one?

Question

What are the Protestants trying to ignore? I'm a protestant, I just wanna know what I'm missing.

Answer 1

The New Testament canon of the Catholic Bible and the Protestant Bible are the same.

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, 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 Christian Church did not follow suit but kept all the books in the Septuagint.

1500 years later, Protestants decided to change its Old Testament from the Catholic canon to the Jewish canon. The books they dropped are sometimes called the Apocrypha.

With love in Christ.

Answer 2

The Church View:
In the Catholic Church the version used is the Douay-Rheims Bible consisting of 73 books. In the Protestant church only the 66 books approved by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1885, which today is known as the Authorized King James Bible, are used. No other books, neither the Apocrypha, which was included in the original King James Bible, nor the 22 books mentioned or quoted in the King James Bible, are considered inspired.

The Bible View:
There was no specific list or accounting of all the books that made up the Bible until the commission of the first Bible by the Emperor Constantine in the 4th Century AD. The books that make up the Authorized King James Bible were chosen by men, not divine forces. The language of the King James Bible is obscure and limited.


Constantine began what was to become a centuries long effort to eliminate any book in the original Bible that was considered unacceptable to the new doctrine of the church. At that time, it is believed there were up to 600 books, which comprised the work we now know as the Bible. Through a series of decisions made by the early church leadership, all but 80 of those books, known as the King James Translation of 1611, were purged from the work, with a further reduction by the Protestant Reformation bringing the number to 66 in the "Authorized" King James Bible.
What we now have in Bible-based religion, whether labeled as "Catholic", or Protesting Catholic, known as “Protestant", is unrecognizable form either the Hebrew religion, now known as the Jewish religion, or the church established at Jerusalem by the Apostles and disciples of Jesus. The practices of this first church are not practiced by any major religion and they are almost unknown, despite being clearly outlined in the existing New Testament. In its place are doctrines and practices first established in the first "true" Reformation of Christianity begun by Constantine.

Go here for more about this.
http://www.bibleufo.com/anomlostbooks.htm

Answer 3

Dear Goldspan,

The Catholic Bible is from the Latin vulgate. These writings are not the best transcripts and actually have books that are not God breathed.(inspired). These include the Apocryphal books. These book contain many things that are contrary to other Scriptures in the Bible and were never quoted by the Lord Jesus Christ.
The Protestant Bible (let us call it the Authorized Version) is the word of God. It was translated into the English language in 1611 A.D. This is the best version for English-speaking people. The books located in the KJV (Authorized version) were recognized by the Lord Jesus Christ and as you read through the New Testament, you will see that He makes reference to these books. When you read the KJV you are reading the word of God and it is like sitting at the feet of Jesus. For more info see www.familyradio.com.

Answer 4

The books in the protestant bible are there for a reason, they were judged authentic and were the books used by the early church fathers.

The Catholic church added other books. I don't know why.

You're missing nothing.

Answer 5

--Is Catholic--

The Protestants REMOVED books from the canon of scripture. Luther had issues with certain verses in the deutercanonical books (those OT books in Greek) so he decided to use the Hebrew canon which did not include those books. It is important to note that the Hebrew only canon was canonized in ca 90ad as a responce to Christians using the OT. It was done to distinguish Judaism as HEBREW only, exclusive, and not at all about the Greco-Romans (which were starting to be the dominant group in the early Church). The Greek translations of scripture, including the Greek only books, as a whole, because they are not missing centuries of Jewish though and revelation, more clearly point to Jesus being the messiah than does the older Hebrew only texts. In addition the early Christians used the Greek scriptures. The Gospels themselves use the Greek texts. See for yourself here:
http://www.scripturecatholic.com/septuagint.html
http://www.scripturecatholic.com/deuterocanon.html


ANYBODY who says that the early Christians didn't know what books were scripture and which were not, or that they didn't have a very narrow list of which books, has never read anything on the subject. As Protestant church historian J. N. D. Kelly writes, "It should be observed that the Old Testament thus admitted as authoritative in the Church was somewhat bulkier and more comprehensive [than the Protestant Bible]. . . . It always included... the deutercanonical books" (Early Christian Doctrines, 53).

Pope Innocent I wrote "A brief addition shows what books really are received in the canon. These are the things of which you desired to be informed verbally: of Moses, five books, that is, of Genesis, of Exodus, of Leviticus, of Numbers, of Deuteronomy, and Joshua, of Judges, one book, of Kings, four books, and also Ruth, of the prophets, sixteen books, of Solomon, five books, the Psalms. Likewise of the histories, Job, one book, of Tobit, one book, Esther, one, Judith, one, of the Maccabees, two, of Esdras, two, Paralipomenon, two books . . ." (Letters 7 [A.D. 408]).

Let me deal with two more false claims made against the canon of Scripture as held by Catholics.

Claim: Jerome didn't accept the Greek books in his compilation of the Latin Vulgate using instead the Hebrew only canon.
Rebuttal: This is a half-truth. Protestant's do not read further in St. Jerome's works than this statement. While it is true that St. Jerome ORIGIONALY went with only the Hebrew, he was over-ruled by the Church of the East and West to which he gladly accepted and concurred with their judgment that the Greek books belonged to the canon (cf. any good life of Jerome as well as "The Building of Christendom" by Carroll.)

Claim: Trent declared the canon..Trent ...did...it.
Rebuttal: People do not understand what an Ecumenical Council does. It has no power to change or otherwise invent doctrine. All the bibles prior to Trent had the Greek books, and those books were used in the liturgy of the Church. Trent only upholds what has always been in the Bible and rejects those who try to take books out of the Bible and do harm to the inspired world of God.

Answer 6

Those books (called the Apocrypha - a word generally meaning "not authentic") are histories of that time. They are likely very legitimate books and not something that we should just flatly deny, but it is clear that they are not the divinely-inspired word of God, as the other books are. They are inconsistent, containing errors and contradictions.

Yes, I know that some of those outside the faith say that the Bible is full of contradictions, but that is because they do not understand how to read the Bible in context.

The Bible tells us that all scripture is divinely inspired and that God protects it and keeps it.

Answer 7

For many years the catholic church did not allow its memebrs to read the Bible. Many still dont read the Bible. Why they added them maybe to keep the church ignorant and in under control.
When I was a catholic I did not read it because attending church was more important than reading and knowing God. I had heard of Jesus but never had a personal relationship with him until I was born again.

Answer 8

I didn't even know there was a different Bible for Catholics. That is really interesting. I am going to have to scour the Internet to find out some more about that.

Answer 9

apparently the protestants were a little more picky when they were editing the book way back when.

Answer 10

i dont have the answer .I know my thought on it ,is theres more people writeing and adding to.