Why Does the Catholic Bible have more Books in it?
Answers to Common Pastor Questions
Why does the Protestant Bible have fewer books than the Catholic Bible? Did Martin Luther take out books he to suit his theology?
The short answer:
Martin Luther did not remove any books from the Bible. This claim is inaccurate and misleading by itself as it relies on a incorrect definition of the Bible. Though there are books that the Catholic Church considers inspired that the Protestant churches does not, the Apocrypha, the question of their inspiration is not new or somehow limited to Martin Luther. In fact, they have been the subject of intense debate inside the church since the time of Jesus and there is ample historical and theological reasons for their exclusion. This is why not only did the Jewish people of Jesus’ time not include them with the Bible as Scripture, a much of the early church did not either. As a result, though the commonly accepted “Protestant” Bible did come about following the Reformation, it was built upon a foundation that was laid down by the Jewish people and the early church more that 1500 year earlier.
The Protest against Rome
The Reformation is a good starting point to understand the different views on the Apocrypha and the source of disagreement. Regardless of your view on this world shaking revolution today, if you honestly examine the motivations and methods of the Reformers, it may serve to clear up much of the confusing and unfounded accusations about these additional books. It may also challenge you to examine the things you accept as “normal religion” in your life.
The Reformation originally started in 1517 as an attempt to fix problems with the Roman Catholic Church. These issues were not minor and were not limited to the practices you heard about in History 101. you are likely familiar with the issue of indulgences. These were essentially certificates you could buy from the church to free your deceased loved one from the torment of purgatory. This issue was bad enough, but there was so much more going on, much of which has been swept under the proverbial rug.
The Catholic Church of Martin Luther’s day was nothing like the early church of the Apostles or even the Church of Rome today. It controlled vast areas of land and huge numbers of people directly as a sort of religious absolute monarchy with the Pope as its unquestioned King. It also indirectly controlled a still larger area and population through its alliances with secular kings. In the abstract, this may seem like a great thing for God’ church, but in practice it was far from it.
Instead of imitating Jesus in its ruling over people, the Catholic Church copied the soul crushing feudalism of the other prices of the world and ruled its subjects in the same style. The regular people did not belong to the Church in the modern sense, but more similar to the secular serf to their Lord. Rome alone dictated everything in a person’s life, from how to worship God to how to live every part of their life. It required people to work in what amounted slavery on Papal lands. Rome also constantly demanded people pay for every part of church life and lack of money meant no church for you. It even directed wars against other Christians and non-believers. T Every aspect of life ran through and for the benefit of the “princes” of the church, who were often non-Christians whose family bought their positions. The family of the Pope at the time of Luther bought him the position of a bishop at 7 years old and cardinal at 13, for example. They eventually bribed enough people for him to become the absolute ruler over all of Christiandom, without ever needing him to become a Christian. This Pope went on to name his cousins, nephews, and other relations bishops and cardinals and even to wage war on other Christians to help his brother gain more power.
As you can imagine, once these men who did not know Jesus tasted such immense power and wealth, they often stopped at nothing to protect it. In stark contrast to the leaders of the early church who willingly sacrificed their own lives to save others, these powerful lords were often eager to take the lives of others, Christians and nonbelievers, to protect their own riches and positions. Jan Hus was one of those men killed at the order of a Pope. He was a Reformer before it was cool and was guaranteed safe passage by the Pope to come before a Council, supposedly to discuss Hus’ theological positions. In a show of wickedness that hopefully no one still defends, the Pope ordered Hus seized, tried, and burned at the stake as soon as he arrived. The chillingly evil explanation for ignoring the promise of Hus’ safety was he was promised safe passage there, but they said nothing about ever getting back.
The mercenary church leaders of this time not only grievously harmed people through their treatment of them, but they also greatly abused the doctrines and practices of the church to feed their own interests. The Vatican decided priests could not be married, for example, when they sought to prevent the wealth transfer from the church to the priests family. Papal indulgences were created and doctrines supporting them were created when the church needed money to finance its great building projects, is another example. The list of unbibilical and often immoral practices and doctrines is long. Perhaps the most challenging part of this terrible situation was these aspects of church were not only accepted as normal by most people, but any questioning of them was crushed ruthlessly…often through the penalty of death, in the name of Jesus, of course.
I know this is a long explanation, but stick with me. Hopefully, the whole picture will make sense.
Seeing the rampant abuses in the church and their terrible affect on God’s people, Luther and the other Reformers bravely stood up to the power of Rome and demanded real change. Initially, they pursued a reformation inside the framework of the Catholic Church with the aid of the existing leaders. You can guess how that went over, Luther narrowly escaped the fate of Hus and the fiery stake of the Pope. Since the powerful princes of the church met them with such animosity, the Reformers then set out to reform the church outside of the structure that Rome created. They did this by going back to the actual foundation of the faith – the Bible. They questioned whether the decrees from the palaces of Rome were true and demanded Biblical evidence proving every such claim. This process of examination was what fueled the changes of the Reformation.
The church across the world chose to stop following men and seek God alone. Salvation by grace was brought back to the forefront. The church universal for the first time in many years objected to killing people in the name of God. The Bible was shared freely in every language rather than hoarded and concealed. Questioning in order to get closer to Jesus was encouraged. The idea that one regular person is worthy to go to Jesus that you accept so freely now was revolutionary for the time.
Is Your Gospel Worth Dying for?
The church as a body of believers was reborn! What a wonderful thing!
The reformers weren’t done . They examined everything and asked simple a simple questions that may seem normal today but were revolutionary then:
What does the Bible say? What does history tell us? Why are we doing this act we claim is on behalf of God? Would Jesus ever do this? What about the early church? Is this true?
We all owe a great debt to the men and women of the Reformation.
If you have a Bible in your home in your language and the confidence to read it, this is fruit of the Reformation. This was forbidden before Luther. If you believe Jesus loves you directly, this is a result of the return to the Bible of the Reformation. This idea was unthinkable in the years before Luther. If you think you are worthy to take communion, bread and wine, you owe that directly to Martin Luther and friends as the church of his day deemed you too lowly for such a privilege. Jesus taught none of these unloving practices…which was exactly Luther’s point.
It took brave Christians staring down the most powerful men of their age to bring all this back to the common man. They got back to the roots of the church.
What if I am Having Doubts? A Pastor’s Answer
What are the Apocrypha?
The Reformers applied this same testing of truth to the translation of the Bible that was in common circulation in those days. This honest examination led to surprising results and to where we are today – the issue of the Apocrypha.
The Apocrypha are the 7 additional books of the Catholic Bible – Tobit, Judith, 1st and 2nd Maccabees, Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach (or Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach), and Baruch. Technically, they are Old Testament books since they were written before Jesus’ birth and deal with the time from the last Old Testament book and the Gospels.
It is worth noting that the New Testament canon has been agreed upon almost universally since the 2nd Century so this disagreement has nothing to do with the time from Matthew on.
The Apocrypha are old and most likely authentic copies of the same books that were around in the time of Jesus. They were well known by the Jews during the period and were also known to contain some accurate history about the time between the Testaments. So they are very old books that contain history of the Jewish people read at the time, so that is good. But the writings of Josephus are also old, real, and about the Jews. So are any number of ancient Jewish documents.
That does not make them Scripture and this is the big issue involved – are they the inspired Word of God?
The Protestant church says “No” and has a strong basis for this conclusion. They are generally viewed by the non-Catholic churches as deserving of respect and containing some historical truth but not inspired – which most interestingly was the apparent conclusion of much of the early church, including Jerome, the guy who put together the Latin Vulgate, perhaps the most popular Catholic Bible in all of history.
So what happened with these books and why the confusion?
Why are the Apocrypha Not in the Protestant Bible?
The Reformers studied how we got the Bible to make sure that the original Bible written in Hebrew and Greek, primarily, was the same as the one they were reading. Since they were aware of the corrosive affect of power on the men of the church, they sought to make sure that same rot had not reached the Word. Upon close scrutiny of the original sources and well preserved historical record, they found concerning things about the Apocrypha.
It started with the fact the Jewish people themselves did not consider the Apocrypha to be part of the Old Testament Bible. This is incredibly important from a biblical perspective because they were the designated keepers of the Law under the Old Testament. They compiled the Old Testament as a people, yet, it is undisputed that the Israelites who lived in Israel at the time of Jesus did not keep the Apocrypha in the Temple with the rest of the Bible. They also did not refer to them as Scripture. The Jewish people were aware of the books and read them, but treated them as history. This should be enough alone to give us pause as they are Old Testament books.
Are you beginning to see how far back this question goes?
Perhaps even more telling was the fact that Jesus, the Apostles, and the writers of the New Testament never quote the Apocrypha in the New Testament. Not once among the many references made by Jesus, Peter, Paul, and the like did any of them say “As Scripture says in…” and cite Tobit or Maccabees. These men quote the Bible in every speech they make with Jesus going as far back as Genesis and relying on Deuteronomy to fight off Satan’s temptation. They also quote non-Christian sources and lost books on a number of occasions. Yet, despite clearly having the Apocrypha available, they did not cite to it once. It is a glaring and I believe damning omission.
Historically, the early church also had problems with these books from the start. Many early Christians were against the Apocrypha. The Church council of Laodicea in 363 AD considered the Apocrypha, for example. They not only rejected these books as Scripture but also forbade reading these books by the church. Early church leaders like Origen, Melito, Cyril, and Athanasius joined in and all wrote against the Apocrypha. They made the same arguments as those above. The basic conclusion of these folks was the books were useful for some things but were not Holy Scripture.
If you stop here – about 400 years after Jesus – you again understand why their are significant issues about these books.
Then a simple decision by one guy named Jerome entered the narrative and caused all sorts of confusion that persists to this day.
The Vulgate
Jerome was a church leader in the late 300’s. He was commissioned by the Bishop of Rome to create the Latin Vulgate. This was the “official” translation into Latin of whole Bible. Jerome did not believe the Apocrypha were inspired. He agreed that the Jewish people in Israel never treated them as Scripture. He acknowledged they had not changed that position. Jerome’s position was consistent with the Jews and many others in the early church. Jerome also departed from the norm of that day. He understood Hebrew so he translated from the original Hebrew Old Testament rather than the more common Greek version. This formed the foundation of his position. Yet, when the Vulgate was completed in 405 AD, he included the Apocrypha in the Bible. It appears to have been a concession to the pro-Apocrypha position of part of the church. Jerome wrote introductions to each of them indicating they were helpful but not Scripture. Yet, the timing and inclusion would have long lasting repercussions.
The church change described above took place in the centuries that followed while Latin was the dominant language. People simply got used to the Apocrypha being included among the books of the Bible. Jerome’s introductions were still there saying they were not canon but most people did not even have a Bible during the years that followed. The Catholic Church did not get rid of the issues with the disputed books. It did not add any new scholarship or insight. But the inclusion of the books alongside the inspired ones in the official translation made them hard to tell apart. The “official” church also forbade anyone from disagreeing with them. What did that look like? When William Tyndale had the gall to translate the Bible into English so people could read it, he was executed as a heretic. You can understand why the arguments died down as a result. The Vulgate and all translations based on it therefore included the Apocrypha for many years.
These questions all came back up with Luther and the Reformers. They asked the same questions that the early church did, now without threat of death. The reformers found themselves agreeing with the Jews, many early churchmen, Jerome, and with the early church council:
The books of the Apocrypha are not bad, but they are not part of the Bible.
The new found freedom to ask questions led them to the same conclusion of 1100 years prior. This is why the Protestant Bible has fewer books. As you can see, the issues did not come out of the blue. It is simply a conclusion based on 2,000 years of evidence and discussion, when it was allowed. The difference between the canons does not change the authenticity of the New Testament or most of the Old Testament. It was not a plot by either side. It was simply the result of a difference of opinion that has been going on for a very long time.
Were the Reformers correct? I think the evidence is overwhelming. But here is the great news.
First, these books are not the New Testament. The disagreement about the Apocrypha has no affect on the truth of Jesus, the Gospel, and the clearly documented doctrines of Jesus.
Second, you are free to investigate them yourself. This is the liberty Jesus won for you on the Cross. It is also the right to question and value yourself as a person Martin Luther and the Reformers risked everything to gain for you. Keep that in mind as you explore the issues.
God bless you.
