Did Catholics Add Books To the Bible?

The History Of The Biblical Canon

Introduction

Protestants often say that Scripture alone is the foundation of faith. Sola Scriptura—the Bible as the highest and final authority—was the rallying cry of the Reformation. And in many conversations between Catholics and Protestants, that phrase becomes the line in the sand. But before we can even debate what Scripture teaches, we have to agree on what Scripture is.

That conversation is harder than it sounds. The events surrounding the Reformation are often retold through half-truths and selective memory. Protestants are taught that Catholics added to the Bible. Catholics are taught that Protestants removed books to fit their theology. And both sides, without meaning to, tend to see the other as the villain. I don’t want to do that here. My goal is to lay out the historical record as clearly as I can—and if anything I say feels unfamiliar or uncertain, I encourage you to look it up for yourself.

I never questioned any of this growing up. The Bible I held—the 66 books between Genesis and Revelation—was the Bible. I assumed all Christians used the same text, and that disagreements came down to interpretation. I certainly never wondered whether Jesus and the Apostles used a different version of the Old Testament than I did.

But if you compare a Catholic Bible to a Protestant one, you’ll notice something strange: the Old Testaments aren’t the same. The Catholic version includes 7 additional books—Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, Tobit, Judith, and 1–2 Maccabees—as well as longer versions of Daniel and Esther. These writings are called the "Deuterocanon", not because they’re second-rate, but because they were formally affirmed later than others. In Protestant Bibles, they’re often excluded entirely or placed in a separate section called the Apocrypha.

For years, I assumed those books were added by the Catholic Church—either to support later doctrines or to pad tradition. But once I began studying the canon —what books are inspired—I discovered a far older story, one that challenged the assumptions I didn’t even know I was making.

Why Our Bibles Are Different

If you ask most Protestants why their Old Testament has fewer books than the Catholic version, the answer is usually simple: “Because those other books were added by the Catholic Church.” It sounds reasonable, but the reality is much more complicated.

It all started with St. Jerome. In the late 4th century, he was commissioned by Pope Damasus I to translate the Bible into Latin. Up to that point, Christians had relied on the Greek Old Testament—the Septuagint—which included the Deuterocanonical books. But Jerome, aiming for precision, chose instead to translate from Hebrew manuscripts, believing they were closer to the original texts. To do this, he consulted Jewish rabbis who had preserved the Hebrew tradition. That’s when he noticed something strange: These rabbis didn’t include the 7 Deuterocanonical books in their Scriptures, and no Hebrew versions of the texts could be found. Based on this, Jerome assumed they were later additions, originally written in Greek. However, because these books had always been included in Church readings, he translated them from the Greek and included them in the Latin Vulgate.

During the Reformation, Martin Luther found himself in a similar position. Having adopted Sola Scriptura as his singular rule of faith, Luther was familiar with Jerome's concerns, making him hesitant to affirm doctrines that could only be found in those 7 books. Rather than take them out of the Bible entirely, Luther moved them to a separate section in his German Bible—labeling it Apocrypha and noting that while these books were good to read, he wasn’t sure they were inspired.

So why don’t Protestant Bibles include these books today? Once moved, skepticism grew. Doctrines tied to the Deuterocanon—purgatory, intercession, prayers for the dead—became less accepted. In 1826, the Scottish Bible Society made the historic decision to cut them out entirely. After all, thinner Bibles were cheaper to print, and Protestants didn't consider them inspired.

Jerome and Luther were bound by the time they lived in—very few manuscripts from the 1st Century Church had still been accessible. Today, however, we have over 30,000 manuscripts spanning the entirety of the Bible. This naturally begs the question, "Was Jerome correct in his skepticism?" To fully answer that question, we must first look at the reality of the Old Testament Canon.

The Old Testament Canon

Most Christians today—especially Protestants—tend to agree with the judgment of Jerome and Luther when it comes to the Old Testament. And on the surface, that makes sense. Part of the confusion comes from how we view history. Today, Christians separate the Bible into "Old" and "New" testaments. Because of this, by the time of Jesus' ministry, we assume that the Old Covenant was on its way out, and the Old Testament with it. However, even in Jesus' day, the Jews could not universally agree on what was inspired Scripture

For the Jews of Jesus' day, many assumed God was still operating in the same covenantal model—there was no reason to think their Bible (the OT) was finalized. Because of this, it was quite common for various sects within Judaism to recognize different canons.

The Sadducees only accepted the five books of Moses. The Essenes preserved a broader range of texts—including books like Tobit and Sirach. And the Pharisees, from whom modern Judaism descends, even they debated which books were truly the "Word of God." Out of all of them, the only books universally recognized were the books of Moses—the Torah.

By the time Jerome consulted the Jews of his day, he was dealing with a tradition that, like Christianity, had evolved over generations. Rabbinic Judaism had officially closed the canon, and it mirrors the Protestant OT today. But does that mean the Jews of Jerome's day were correct? Should we trust their judgment of what is the inspired Word of God?

How We Got the Bible

The reality is, by the time the Jews had an official canon, Christ had already established a New Covenant. In other words: If the Jews rejected Christ and the New Testament, why should we accept their Old Testament canon? This is where the Church comes in.

The Church didn’t "invent" the Bible; it recognized it. The Bible, with a perfect table of contents, didn't fall out of the sky. Because of this, it took centuries for Christians to discern which writings were truly inspired by God. There was no single moment of divine dictation. Just the lived continuity of faith, recognizing what had always been received.

That recognition took shape at the end of the fourth century. In 382, Pope Damasus I commissioned a formal list of biblical books for the Church in Rome. This same canon was reaffirmed at the regional Councils of Hippo (393), Carthage (397), and again at Carthage in 419. After centuries of reflection and use, the canon was taking shape—and what did those councils affirm? A 73-book Bible, including the Deuterocanonical books.

Furthermore, these councils upheld what Origen, Augustine, and Irenaeus—three of the most foundational voices in the early Church—consistently affirmed. They quoted from the Deuterocanonical books as Scripture and cited them in theological debates.

And here’s the part many find surprising: not one list from the early Church—not from Rome in 382, not from Hippo, not from Carthage, not from any Church Father—matches the 66-book Protestant Bible used today. Not one. That version of the canon simply doesn’t appear anywhere in the first 1,500 years of Christianity. It is a historical anomaly—not a restoration.

Despite all of this, many Protestants might find room to protest—"we shouldn't trust councils and declarations 300 plus years after the Apostles." To finish this historical journey, we will examine what Jesus considered to be inspired.

Jesus and The Septuagint

We’ve already seen that the Jews of Jesus’ day didn’t agree on which books were inspired. But despite this diversity, one version of the Old Testament stood out—especially among Greek-speaking Jews across the Mediterranean: the Septuagint. This was a Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, produced between the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC, and it included the books we now call the Deuterocanon.

The early Church inherited the Septuagint as its Old Testament. The first Christians were Jews living in the diaspora, and the Scriptures they read in the synagogues—Psalms, Isaiah, Wisdom, Tobit—came from this Greek collection.

The New Testament confirms this. Again and again, the Apostles quote Old Testament passages that match the Septuagint, not the Hebrew text. Matthew 1:23 shows exactly why that distinction matters:

• Septuagint (Isaiah 7:14): "Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign: Behold, a virgin [parthenos] shall conceive in the womb, and shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Emmanuel."

• Hebrew (Isaiah 7:14): "Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, the young woman [almah] shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel."

• Matthew 1:23: "Behold, the virgin [parthenos] shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel."

This comparison is striking. For Christians, Christ’s birth fulfills an Old Testament prophecy—but Jews today reject that claim, because it doesn’t align with the Hebrew. And this isn’t a one-off. Time and time again, the Apostles quote the Greek, not the Hebrew. Even Hebrews 11 directly references 2 Maccabees.

The case for accepting the Septuagint is even stronger when we see that Christ Himself used it. When He reads from Isaiah in the synagogue (Luke 4) or debates the Sadducees (Matthew 22), the wording matches the Septuagint. If Jesus treated this version of Scripture as authoritative, why should we dismiss books contained within it?

Conclusion

We began with a simple question: Why do Catholics and Protestants have different Bibles?

It’s not because Catholics added books. And it’s not because Luther maliciously removed them. The difference lies in the long and often forgotten history of the canon.

The early Church inherited the Old Testament as it was read in the Greek-speaking world: the Septuagint. This was the version used by Jesus and the Apostles. And when Christians finally put the canon into writing, it included the same books they had already been reading—Tobit, Wisdom, Sirach, Maccabees, and more.

St. Jerome, working centuries later, didn’t reject those books. He simply raised concerns based on what the Jewish communities of his day had preserved. Since he couldn’t find Hebrew originals, he assumed they were later additions. But even then, he still included them in his translation—and trusted the Church.

Luther followed Jerome’s skepticism, but with greater caution. He moved the books to a separate section and called them the Apochrypha. But over time, that uncertainty became rejection. By the 1800s, the books were gone entirely.

But today, the very concern that led Jerome to doubt has been answered. With the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, we now have Hebrew manuscripts of the Deuterocanonical books. They weren’t late Greek inventions. They were part of Jewish life before and during the time of Christ.

So I offer this reflection to my Protestant friends—not as a challenge, but as a question:

If you trust the early Church to have rightly recognized the New Testament, then why reject that same Church’s discernment of the Old—the same Old Testament Christ Himself affirmed?

Because at the end of the day, our Bibles are different. And if we can’t agree on what belongs in the Bible… how can we ever agree on what the Bible teaches?