Did the Catholic Church Add Books to the Bible?
Put a Catholic Bible next to most Protestant Bibles and count the books.
The Catholic Bible has 73.
Most Protestant Bibles have 66.
Seven books are missing.
Or added.
Depending on who you ask.
Wait… Did Catholics Add Books to the Bible?
A lot of Christians have heard:
“The Catholic Church added the Apocrypha to the Bible at the Council of Trent in the 1500s to support doctrines like purgatory.”
And at first that sounds possible.
Trent did define the list of books in 1546.
And one of those books does mention praying for the dead.
But then you look at the history, and you have to stop for a second.
Because these books were in Christian Bibles more than a thousand years before Trent.
Which Books Are We Talking About?
The seven books are:
Tobias (Tobit), Judith, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus (Sirach), Baruch, and 1 and 2 Machabees.
Plus some extra chapters of Esther and Daniel.
Catholics call them the deuterocanonical books, meaning “second canon,” because some people questioned them for a time.
Many Protestants call them the Apocrypha.
The Bible Jesus’ Apostles Used
In the centuries before Christ, Jewish scholars translated the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek.
This translation is called the Septuagint.
It was the Bible of Greek-speaking Jews all over the Roman world.
And it included these seven books.
When the New Testament quotes the Old Testament, it usually quotes the Septuagint.
So the first Christians, many of them Greek-speaking, read a Bible that already had these books in it.
The New Testament Echoes Them
Read this from the Book of Wisdom, about the wicked plotting against the just man:
“For if he be the true son of God, he will defend him, and will deliver him from the hands of his enemies.”
— Wisdom 2:18
Now read what the chief priests said at the foot of the Cross:
“He trusted in God; let him now deliver him if he will have him; for he said: I am the Son of God.”
— Matthew 27:43
Wait.
That sounds very familiar.
And in the great chapter on faith, Hebrews says:
“Women received their dead raised to life again. But others were racked, not accepting deliverance, that they might find a better resurrection.”
— Hebrews 11:35
Where in the Old Testament were people tortured and refused release because they hoped in the resurrection?
In 2 Machabees 7, where a mother and her seven sons die rather than break God’s law.
Jesus even celebrated a feast that comes from the Machabees: the Feast of the Dedication, which Jews call Hanukkah (John 10:22).
The Early Church Read Them
The early Christians quoted these books as Scripture.
St. Clement of Rome, St. Polycarp, St. Irenaeus, St. Cyprian, and many others did.
Christians painted scenes from them in the catacombs.
And when the Church listed the books of the Bible at Rome (A.D. 382), Hippo (A.D. 393), and Carthage (A.D. 397), these books were on the list.
The Council of Florence listed them again in 1442.
So Trent did not add them.
It repeated what the Church had said for over a thousand years, because someone had started taking them out.
So Who Took Them Out?
In 1534, Martin Luther published his German Bible.
He moved these books out of the Old Testament and into an appendix, calling them books that are useful to read but not equal to Scripture.
He also had doubts about Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation, and placed them at the end of his New Testament.
Over the next few centuries, Protestant Bibles dropped the appendix altogether.
Fun fact: the original 1611 King James Bible included these books.
They disappeared from most printings in the 1800s, after the major Bible societies stopped including them in 1826.
“But the Jews Didn’t Accept Them”
Some people say Jews never accepted these books, so Christians should not either.
But there was no single closed Jewish list in Jesus’ day.
Different Jewish groups used different collections.
The Sadducees accepted only the five books of Moses.
The Jewish list used today was settled after the time of Christ, in the generations after the Temple was destroyed.
Christians did not get their Bible from the rabbis who rejected Jesus.
They got it from Jesus’ Church.
And Yes, Purgatory
Here is the verse people usually mean:
“It is therefore a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from sins.”
— 2 Machabees 12:46
Jewish soldiers had died in battle, and Judas Machabeus took up a collection and sent it to Jerusalem for a sacrifice for their sins.
That shows Jews were praying for the dead before Christ.
But Catholics do not need this one verse to believe it. (See Why Catholics Pray for the Dead.)
And remember: these books were in Christian Bibles for 1,500 years before anyone argued about purgatory with Luther.
So What Is the Catholic Claim?
Here it is in simple terms.
The seven deuterocanonical books were part of the Greek Old Testament used by the Apostles.
The New Testament echoes them.
The early Christians quoted them as Scripture.
Church councils listed them from A.D. 382 onward.
They were removed in the 1500s, not added.
The Catholic Church teaches that the Old Testament has 46 books and the New Testament 27 (CCC 120).
So the real question is not:
“Why did Catholics add books to the Bible?”
The better question is:
“Who had the authority to take them out?”
Because the Bible the early Church handed on had 73 books.
And it still does.
Keep reading: Was the Early Church Catholic?, or browse more questions in Catholicism Explained.
If this helped you, consider supporting Christian Catholic Media so we can keep creating content.
Catholic Sources
Scripture (Douay-Rheims): Wisdom 2:12–20; 2 Machabees 7; 2 Machabees 12:43–46; Matthew 27:43; John 10:22; Hebrews 11:35.
Catechism of the Catholic Church: CCC 120 (the canon of Scripture); CCC 138; CCC 1032 (prayer for the dead).
Early Christian writers: St. Clement of Rome, Letter to the Corinthians 55 (c. A.D. 96); St. Augustine, On Christian Doctrine 2.8 (c. A.D. 397).
Church documents: Council of Rome (A.D. 382); Councils of Hippo (A.D. 393) and Carthage (A.D. 397); Council of Florence (1442); Council of Trent, Session 4 (1546).
