why are catholic bibles bigger?

Question

I hear its bigger and has more books can someone please explain thanks

Answer 1

It's a long story, but basically, it's because the Protestant "reformers" removed certain sections of the Bible because they contained teachings that didn't jive with their new theology.

For instance, 2 Maccabees contains a very clear reference to purgatory -- so for that reason, the Protestant "reformers" couldn't allow that book to remain in the Bible. So, out it went.

There's even evidence that Luther wanted to remove more epistles from the New Testament, including a few written by Paul himself. But even the other "reformers" knew he was going off the deep end.
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Answer 2

The Catholic canon was assembled before the Jewish people assembled their canon. When the Protestants came around, I guess they looked at the Jewish canon and the Catholic canon and decided they'd rather follow the Jewish canon.

Shaking rusty memory: there are seven books in the Catholic canon which are not in the Jewish canon, plus there are additional chapters to Esther and Daniel. The seven whole deuterocanonical ("second canon") books are Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach (Ecclesiasticus), Baruch, 1 Maccabees and 2 Maccabees.

There are also books called pseudepigraphical books, which are recognized by Eastern Orthodox, but not by Catholics, Protestants, or Jews. The cited Wikipedia article lists 1 Esdras, 2 Esdras, and the Prayer of Manasses. I recall from the wide-canon Bible which I own that there is also a 3 Maccabees and a Psalm 151 ("I was small among my brethren, and youngest in my father's house"). The wide-canon Bible also includes a 4 Maccabees, which is not in anyone's canon.

Deuterocanonical books tend to be written later than canonical books; and when the Jewish people assembled their canon, some were excluded on the basis that there was not an known Hebrew version of the text. I believe Hebrew versions of some of these books turned up when the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered at Qumran.

Answer 3

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 4

Yes, there are more books in the Catholic Bible. The cannon of the Bible was established in the late 4th century. This included the Old Testament. Even in the time of the early Church, it was observable that the Hebrew OT had fewer books and less chapters in Daniel (although they actually hadn't numbered verses and made chapters yet), than the Greek OT. The Greek version was more in common use in that time era. About 70% of the quotes in the New Testament are from the Greek version. Thus it is clear that the Greek was accepted by the Church. It wasn't until after the Reformation that Reformers starting accepting only the books in the Hebrew OT. The very first edition of the KJV actually had all of the books, but the ones unique to the Greek version were set after the Hebrew books. All later editions excluded those books.

Answer 5

The Hebrew Bible got translated into Greek around 250 BCE. The first Christians used that Bible as their own, the Greek one, not the Hebrew. Then in 90 CE, Jewish rabbis met to decide which books were Biblical and which weren't. They discovered there were more Greek books than Hebrew. They dropped the Greek.

Christians weren't invited to the meeting, so they kept all the books. Then when the Bible was translated into Latin, the translator (Jerome) discovered the discrepancy and put the extra books in a section by themselves in case anyone cared.

A thousand years passed and Protestantism formed. They decided the Bible was a better guide than the pope, but there were some ideas in the extra books that were inconvenient, so the Protestants dropped them, using the Jews and Jerome as their explanation. The Catholics hung onto them. That's why they have more books.

And the Orthodox church has even more.

Answer 6

It is important to understand Catholics did not add books - they simply continued using the books all bibles had always had.

No - Catholics did not add them. Protestants removed them.

During the reformation, Martin Luther made the case that since Jews did not include the seven deuterocanonical books in their bibles, and since the Latin translator St. Jerome had expressed some reservations about these books, that they should be omitted from Protestant bibles.

This, for the most part, did not happen right away. For instance, the Authorized Version (King James bible), included the deuterocanonicals. It took about a century, but they eventually disappeared from Protestant bibles.

Catholics have never removed these books from the Bible for the simple reason that they had always been there. St. Jerome, even for his reservations, had included them in his Vulgate translation. Since bibles had always included them, there was no compelling reason (1500 years after Christians first began circulating the Greek bible that included them) to take them out.

Answer 7

Because the Protestants TOOK BOOKS OUT OF THE BIBLE!

Why?
Because there were things they didn't want you to see---things that were "too Catholic."

Protestants use the books of the Old Testament that 2nd century Jews used...why? Because after Christ, the Jewish leaders realized just how much about Him was prophesised in some of their religious writing AND TOOK THEM OUT BECAUSE THEY WERE TOO CHRISTIAN. At the time, the ONLY ZChristianity was Catholicism.

When the Catholic Church put the canon of scripture together, she used the scriptures that were used by Jews at the time of Christ.

It is an important distinction!

Answer 8

In addition to the canon being closed, it is also a theological issue. The Old Testament is the Old Covenant. You will notice that through parts of the OT that there are new covenants created over and over. Also, the OT is basically the revelation of God to his people regarding the New Covenant that was yet to come (Christ). Those revelations came slowly over time, especially through the major prophets like Isaiah. The New Testament is the New and Everlasting Covenant. It CAN'T be added to becaues Christ gave the final word. It is until the end of time (well, at least until Christ's second coming).

Answer 9

Because the Catholic bible includes the apocrypha the protestant does not, and also the Catholic bible separates the books differently in some places making some longer and some shorter.

Answer 10

At the time of the Reformation, the Bible was not decided.
The Catholics held the Council of Trent (1546) to decide.
They chose 46 Old Testament & 27 New Testament books.
Protestants led by Martin Luther rejected 7 old & 4 new books.