Why are there more books in the Catholic Bible than in the Protestant Bible?

Question

Why didn't Protestants include those books in the Bible that are included in the Catholic Bible????

Someone told me it was because they support the idea of purgatory. Why would Protestants not support that idea all of a sudden when splitting away from the Catholic church??

Answer 1

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 did not follow suit but kept all the books in the Septuagint. 46 + 27 = 73 Books total.

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 they dropped are sometimes called the Apocrypha.

Here is a Catholic Bible website: http://www.nccbuscc.org/nab/bible/

With love in Christ.

Answer 2

Someone mentioned that it started with Martin Luther. This is correct, but they gave the wrong time. 1500's. Not 1200's. Someone else mentioned that the scrolls were compiled at the Council of Nicea. This is incorrect. They were compiled at the Council of Hippo. This was in 398. However there is a list of accepted canon which I belive is dated in the 70's some time. Just 30 or so years after the death of Christ.

But the whole thing goes back even further. There are TWO versions of the Old Testament.

One in Hebrew and Aramaic.

One in Greek, which was translated 200 years before Christ Alexander the Great. - yes he's mentioned in the bibl - wanted to make a Greek nation. He called to Alexandria - 6 Jewish translators from the 12 tribes of Isreal - making 72 translators in all. They created the Septuagint.

Very devout Jews rejected the Septuagint. They believed, as the Muslims do, that their Holy Scripture should be read in it's original language.

Now comes the important part. Both the Septuagint and the Torah and Tanak in the original language had all the same books up until the Council of Jamnia in 90 A.D. when the "Jewish Canon" was established.

The Council of Jamnia was reportedly called together to "counter" the Christian movement. Remember - at that time we were still executed just for BEING Christian.

Go figure.

Martin Luther told a lie. He told the people he was going back to the "original source" which was what caused him to pull several books of the OT. He also wanted to pull books from the NT, Revelation among them but some of the letters as well. But the people of his day revolted at the very idea. So they were left in.

Baruch, Judith, Sirach, Maccabees 1 and 2, Tobit, and Wisdom. Also removed were parts of Daniel and Esther.

Most of these books support Catholic dogma. Yes, Maccabbees talks of Purgatory as well as prayers and sacrifices so the dead may attain heaven. Wisdom is one of the most beautiful books of the bible.

Now. The funny thing is - Luther's whole point was that the people should have a bible in their own language. Which was why the Septuagint was written in the first place. But Luther rejected it so he could make an Anti-Catholic movement.

Luther also took it upon himself to edit Holy Writ such as penciling in "alone" after faith. You will be saved by faith alone.

I do not know if he was the one who changed "babble" to "repeat" - do not "repeat" like the pagans do - where the original scripture says "do not babble." I have yet to find the source of that. I only know that it was changed in Protestant bibles.

To make matters even worse, Luther went on to become a major persecuter of the Jews (and Catholics). It has been said that Hitler got all his ideas from Luther.

Answer 3

The Hebrew bible contains the same books as the protestant old testament. A translation of this was done into Greek in the 3rd-1st centuries BCE (called the Septuagint as it was traditionally made by 72 scholars), and somehow it came to have extra books included in it. The catholic church has always taken most of these extra books as part of its bible, while the orthodox and coptic churches use all of them (so their bible is even bigger than the catholic one). It was Martin Luther who took the decision to exclude all the books that weren't in the original Hebrew bible and is thus responsible for the protestant bible being shorter.

Answer 4

Some of the Old Testament books were not part of the canon. Catholics have included some of the books in their Bible, while many Protestants view them as historically reliable, they are not seen as part of Scripture.

"Deuterocanonical books is a term used since the sixteenth century in the Roman Catholic Church and Eastern Christianity to describe certain books and passages of the Christian Bible, in contrast to the "protocanonical books" which are contained in the Hebrew Bible. The scriptural texts described as deuterocanonical only exist in the Greek translation known as the Septuagint. This distinction had previously contributed to debate in the early church about whether they should be read in the churches and thus be classified as canonical texts.

The word deuterocanonical comes from the Greek meaning 'belonging to the second canon' and indicates the delayed acceptance of these books as scriptural texts until the resolution of this dispute in the early church. This origin of the term is potentially misleading: it does not imply that there were only two canons in use by the early church. Note that the term does not mean non-canonical, thus its frequent use as a euphemism for this sense of the term apocrypha is not technically correct. It is sometimes applied by way of analogy to the canons of non-Catholic Christians, if the process of defining accepted scriptures involved two distinct groups of texts.

Protestant Christians usually do not classify any texts as "deuterocanonical"; they either omit them from the Bible, or include them in a section designated Apocrypha. The similarity between these different terms contributes to the confusion between the Roman Catholic and Orthodox deuterocanon and the texts considered non-canonical by one or both groups of Christians."

Answer 5

meggie - there were a lot of things going on back then and some of which was corrupted my men. yes the books removed ascribed to prayer fo rthe dead and purgatory. some scholars back in the time of matrin luther were using that to "sell indulgences" to try and pave the way to heaven - they were wrong. while i am Catholic i know that there were people prior who were fully human and did not listen to God & His teachings. i believe matrin took out the books he found the most challenging or possibly those being used to indulge a few shameful men. IMHO if matrin had been born a few hundred years earlier he very possibly would have been happy with things and the spilit never would have happened. i believe he was trying to do what he knew at the time. I also believe he was trying to "make life easier" by changing some of the "rules". being a Catholic isn't easy for the road to God, while worthwhile can be filled with challenges and suffereings - all the while knowing the reward is God's love.
i'm thankful that the Rcc has withstood the test of time and the boks remain from the beginning the the bible as we know it - they are wonderful and very inspiring.
God bless.

Answer 6

Because Catholics and Protestants have different standards for what they deem 'divinely inspired'. Each book had to meet certain criteria to be added to the Bible. The Catholic Faith has always had more books and has never changed, when the "protesters" or Protestants broke away from the Catholic faith they eliminated they books that did not suit them by enforcing stricter criteria like it needed to be found written in two languages. The Protestant Bible was also changed by King James to suit him as well, hence the King James Version. Also almost very Book that the Protestants eliminated have since been found written in both languages.

Answer 7

The Protestants REMOVED books from the Bible because they were too Catholic.

The Catholic Church was the one that brought the canon of scripture together. A council decided which books were inspired and which were not. They decided to include some books of Hebrew Scripture which the Jews left behind in the early years of Christianity becuase they included prophecy referring to Christ...and fulfilled by Him.

Answer 8

Oh let me answer! LET ME!

The Catholic Old Testament consists of 46 books, while the Protestant Old Testament consists of 39. To understand the difference, you must understand the bearings of the Old Testament for each sect. Catholics rely on the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, called the Septuagint, it was translated by 70 Jewish scholars between third and first century BC. This compilation of scrolls includes the seven apocryphal books not found in the Protestant Bible.

Protestants rely upon the Jewish Masoretic Text, a translation of the Old Testament based on the Septuagint, translated between the 7th and 10th century AD. Obviously, Because the Catholic Church had already been an independent entity, they would not rely upon this new translation which omitted, in the eyes of the Church, valuable inspired Scripture.

As to why Martin Luther relied upon the Masoretic text for the Old Testament is debatable. Maccabees 2 is heavily used to support the doctrine of Purgatory (Found in the Septuagint and not the Masoretic translation).

"God has placed two ways before us in His Word: salvation by faith, damnation by unbelief (Mark 16:16). He does not mention purgatory at all. Nor is purgatory to be admitted, for it obscures the benefits and grace of Christ." (Martin Luther)

This appears to be a contradiction of 2 Maccabees 12: 42- 46, which implies Purgatory, stating:

"Turning to supplication, they prayed that the sinful deed might be fully blotted out. The noble Judas warned the soldiers to keep themselves free from sin, for they had seen with their own eyes what had happened because of the sin of those who had fallen.
He then took up a collection among all his soldiers, amounting to two thousand silver drachmas, which he sent to Jerusalem to provide for an expiatory sacrifice. In doing this he acted in a very excellent and noble way, inasmuch as he had the resurrection of the dead in view; for if he were not expecting the fallen to rise again, it would have been useless and foolish to pray for them in death.
But if he did this with a view to the splendid reward that awaits those who had gone to rest in godliness, it was a holy and pious thought.
Thus he made atonement for the dead that they might be freed from this sin." (2 Maccabees 12: 42-46)

If those who died with sin are in Heaven they are in no need for prayers, likewise those in Hell are also in no need of prayers, for it would be futile. Therefore, there must be a middle state, for those who still need prayers to be purified of their sins.

-Kerplunk!

Answer 9

The Catholics were the FIRST to put the Bible together at Nicea. Martin Luther decided he knew better than all of the scholars that worked on it, and his simplistic formula ended up removing about 6 books from the bible, leaving 66.
Think about that. What was the number of man? 666?

Answer 10

The Early Church established the Canon of the Bible based on the Greek texts, while 1200 years later Martin Luther based his bible on the Hebrew texts, which did not include those included in the Greek.