Why does the Catholic Bible have more books than the Protestant Bible?
The Catholic Bible has 73 books, while the Protestant Bible has 66 book. Why?
The book known as the Bible was originally a various collections of Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic, and Chaldean (Daniel, Esther, and others were in Chaldean and not part of the Torah or Haftorah [The Law and the Prophets]) documents read by the early Christians in their worship. Some churches had some writings and others had other writings, but the Bible was not a whole book until the Council of Carthage in 397 A.D.
After the Emperor Constantine forbade the persecution of Christians, they were able to emerge from the catacombs and freely associate. There followed a great deal of discussion of what was considered scripture. There were some books that they promoted as scripture that are not in the Bible today, such as the Gospel of Thomas or the Epistle of Barnabas.
To resolve this dilemma, the Church assembled the leading scholars and experts of that time in Carthage to decide what was really scripture. The document they produced was called The Canon of Scripture, and here is the text of this document:
"[It has been decided] that nothing except Canonical Scriptures should be read in the church under the name of Divine Scriptures. But the Canonical Scriptures are: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Josue [Joshua], Judges, Ruth, four books of Kings [1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings], Paralipomenon two books [1 and 2 Chronicles], Job, the Psalter of David [Psalms], five books of Solomon [Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Wisdom, Ecclestiasticus or Sirach], twelve books of the [minor] prophets [Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi], Isaias, Jeremias [includes Lamentations of Jeremiah and the words copied by his scribe Baruch], Daniel, Ezechiel, Tobias, Judith, Esther, two books of Esdras [Ezra, Nehemiah], two books of the Machabees. Moreover, of the New Testament: Four books of the Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles one book, thirteen epistles of Paul the apostle [Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon], one of the same to the Hebrews, two of Peter, three of John, one of James, one of Jude, the Apocalypse of John. Thus [it has been decided] that the Church beyond the sea [Rome] may be consulted regarding the confirmation of that canon; also that it be permitted to read the sufferings of the martyrs, when their anniversary days are celebrated."
These writings were delivered to St. Jerome, the leading scholar in the Old Testament and ancient languages. St. Jerome together with the brothers of of his monastery painstakingly translated the writings into Latin, which was the universal language of the day. This first Bible was called the Biblia Vulgata of the Vulgate or Common Bible.
During the rise of Protestantism, for various unsubstantiated reasons the following parts were removed from the Bible.
The Book of Tobit
The Book of Judith
The Wisdom of Solomon
The Book of Sirach [Ecclesiasticus]
The Writings of Baruch
The First and Second Books of the Macabees
Two Chapters of Daniel and the Song of the Hebrew Children in the fiery furnace (Daniel 3:25-90)
Consequently, the Catholic Bible has 72 books and the Protestant Bible has 66. One interesting note is that the original King James version of the Bible had all the books and writings found in the Catholic Bible.
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