did catholics add seven books or did christians remove seven books from the bible?

Answer 1

Protestants removed seven books.

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

The short answer is that Protestants removed the books from the Canon of Scripture.

Kait says that the additional books in the Catholic Bible are called “apocryphal”. They are not by any definition apocryphal in nature but are appropriately called “deuterocanonical” books. To call them what they are not tends to confuse the true nature of these books from the Greek Septuagint with those books that were rejected as Canon at the African Synods which was more than a thousand years before the Council of Trent which only confirmed the Canon that was decided in the late fourth and early fifth century. Since the Canon was decided in the African Synods it is false to say that the Council of Trent confirmed the Canon to support the doctrine of purgatory since this doctrine had always been believed according to history and had always been contained in the original Canon of Scriptures as is evidenced in Maccabees and elsewhere. Furthermore, to say that the NT writers do not quote from these books is misleading since St. Paul quoted from the Septuagint which contained these books. There is further evidence that the early Church used the Greek Canon exclusively to the other OT Canons that were in use in Jerusalem and elsewhere. There was the Greek/diaspora/Essene Canon used by the early Church, the Ethiopian Canon, the Pharisaical Canon and the Canon of the Sadducees. Protestants after the Reformation adopted the Canon declared at the Jewish Council of Jamnia which was called to deal with the growth of Christianity and adopted the shorter version of Canon as a result. Christians continued to use the longer version they had always used. BTW, most books of the Bible do not claim divine inspiration some would argue that none do but that it is the Church that has the authority to decide what is inspired and what is not inspired rather than those protesting Christ’s Church.

In Christ
Fr. Joseph

Answer 3

They were removed by Protestants after the Reformation.

In fact....the original King James Version of 1611 had all the same 73 books found in the Catholic Douay version. The KJV writers even borrowed from the Douay, as it is a little older. In wasn't until a few years later the seven Old Testament books in question were purged from the King James Bible.

Catholics did not add to the Bible or make anything up or change things. Change came from the Reformation and Protestants.

Answer 4

What did Martin Luther, the Protestant Reformer, state about the Bible? In his "Commentary On St. John," he stated the following: "We are compelled to concede to the Papists that they have the Word of God, that we have received It from them, and that without them we should have no knowledge of It at all." Regardless of what non-Catholic Christians may think or say, according to secular, objective historians, the Catholic Church alone preserved Sacred Scripture throughout the persecution of the Roman Empire and during the Dark Ages. All non-Catholic Christian denominations owe the existence of the Bible to the Catholic Church alone. Why did God choose the Catholic Church to preserve Scripture if It is not His Church?

Which books of the Old Testament did the Apostles accept as Scripture? Did they accept the 46 books as in the Catholic Douay-Rheims Bible or the 39 books as in the King James version? The Septuagint was accepted among the Hellenistic sect of Judaism (of which St. Paul was a member) and this canon did indeed include the same Old Testament books as the present-day Catholic Bible. In addition, the entire New Testament was written in Greek (Hellenist) with the exception of the Gospel of St. Matthew, which was written in Aramaic (the language spoken by Christ). Over 85% of the quotes from the Old Testament that are used in the New Testament are from the Septuagint.

During the Reformation, did the Protestants "re-evaluate" all the deutero-canonical and apocryphal Christian writings such as the Gospel of St. James, the Acts of St. Paul, the Apocalypse of St. Peter, the Gospel of St. Mary Magdalene, the Gospel of St. Thomas and the myriad of other writings from the first and second centuries of the Christianity? No. The Protestants accepted the New Testament as defined by the Catholic Church in the late 4th century. Why accept the Canon as defined and preserved by the Catholic Church yet not accept the other teachings of this same Church?

Answer 5

There is no "bible"

There are versions of bibles that have changed throughout the last 2,000 years. The first bible, by Marion, had only about a dozen books.

Everyone liked his idea of a bible, even if they didn't like his, and started compiling their own.

But to answer your question, it is a little bit of both. Since they were "disputed" to have belonged in what was then (around 1500) known to be the "bible", the catholics specifically added them about the same time the non-catholics specifically stated they didn't belong.

That being said, the 27 books in the NT are the same amongst all Christian religions (if not translations and parts of texts), but those seven books are considered part of the OT, if accepted.

Answer 6

they did no longer upload books. The Protestants took multiple the books out of the Bible in the time of the Reformation. Daniel and Esther are additionally longer interior the Catholic Bible because of the fact the Reformers bumped off aspects of those 2 books to boot.

Answer 7

Catholics are Christians and Protestants are also Christians. But it was the Protestant Christians who removed the other books during the reformation.

Answer 8

The seven books in the Catholic bible are not cannonized, but not all Catholic Bibles include them. The correct number is 66.

Answer 9

Catholics are Christians. Protestants omitted seven books from the Bible.

Answer 10

#1, most catholics are considered christian...

#2, neither... The Apocrypha was never considered part of the canon (official) Bible. It was used to show what happened between the 2 testaments. Many protestants still use the Apocryphal writings (many Lutherans, Presbyterians, and the Anglican Church).

#3. After the Reformation, the Apocrypha was canonized by the catholic church.

#4. Some of the old Hebrew Bibles from the 2nd and 3rd century have some of the Apocrypha in them (the argument used by the catholic church to include them in the first place).