The “Extra” Catholic Books
Open up a bible and count how many books are in the Old Testament. If you found 46 there, then you have a Catholic bible. If you found less, then it’s a Protestant one. If you found more, then you have an Orthodox bible.
How did this happen? The process is a long and complicated one, and there’s still much we don’t know. Below is a short history of how this came about, followed by a summary of the Catholic-Protestant debate over this issue. But first let’s define some terms used in this discussion.
The list of books considered sacred by a religious community is called a “canon” (from the Greek word kanon, meaning “rule” or “measuring stick”). Every major religion has a canon. For Muslims, it’s the Quran. For Hindus, it’s the Vedas and the Upanishads. For Christians, it’s the bible. When a Christian refers to a text as “canonical,” that means they regard it as divinely inspired and part of the bible. When a Catholic speaks of a text as “deutero-canonical,” they’re referring to books found in their bibles but missing in Protestant bibles. Altogether there are seven such books (plus a few chapters in Esther and Daniel): Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach (a.k.a. Ecclesiasticus or the Wisdom of Ben Sira), Baruch, and 1 and 2 Maccabees. All of these seven books are in the Old Testament. The New Testament contains the same 27 books for all Christians.
History
That’s the easy part. The hard part is to explain how this came about. The process of writing down the Word of God and determining which texts should be considered Scripture began before the time of Jesus. As early as 100 BC, Jews began referring to their Scriptures with the threefold division of Torah, Neviim, and Kethuvim – the Law (or Instruction), the Prophets, and the Writings. This tripartite structure eventually led to the Jewish Tanak (the first 3 letters of each division separated by a vowel: TaNaK), which is the term Jews use for their bible today. Unfortunately we don’t know which books went into each division at that time, nor do we know when that was ultimately decided.
We do know it was not settled by the time of Jesus. As a boy Jesus grew up reading texts like Deuteronomy and Isaiah, but the canon had not yet been closed. Even after Jesus’ death Jewish leaders continued to discuss the closure of the canon, and many scholars point to a meeting of rabbis at the city of Jamnia (on the western coast of Israel) around the year AD 90 as an important step in this process. The rabbis assembled there debated certain books that were questionable, like Esther (which doesn’t mention God at all – at least not in the Hebrew version) and Ecclesiastes (whose pessimistic views on life and virtue seem out of place for a sacred text). The Book of Sirach was also highly valued by the rabbis and frequently quoted as if it were Scripture, although not all were certain it belonged there.
Nothing was settled definitively at this meeting, but much progress was made, and at some point prior to the year 600, the Jewish canon was officially set. In between there was much debate among Jews and Christians both externally and internally. Jews debated among themselves and against Christians, and Christians also wrangled over this issue with one other and against Jews. For Christians, the heart of the debate centered around the deutero-canonical books, and one of the key reasons for different canons among Christians had to do with the influence of the Septuagint.
Many Jews around the time of Jesus spoke Greek and used it as their official language in many parts of the empire, especially outside of Israel. (The spread of the Greek language and Greek culture – Hellenism – resulted from the conquests of Alexander the Great in the 4th century BC.) The translation of the Jewish Tanak into Greek became known as the Septuagint, and it seems the number of books contained in the Greek edition was larger than the Hebrew version. Especially noteworthy is the apparent inclusion of the deutero-canonical texts in the Septuagint, which many Christians adopted as their Old Testament.
A number of Jews were opposed to considering these “extra” books as divinely inspired (and some even objected to translating the Hebrew Scriptures into any language). Some Christians like Jerome were sympathetic to the Jewish view and did not think the deutero-canonical books should be part of the bible. Others like Augustine preferred the Greek version and thought they should. Churches were split too, although not intentionally. Many in the eastern part of the empire used the larger canon and simply assumed that’s what the bible should have, unaware these debates were going on. Others, especially in the western part of the empire, used the shorter version.
Fast forward several centuries. Muslim conquests in the eastern part of the Mediterranean region left Rome as the last great city in Christendom, and so the western view of the canon prevailed by default, meaning that Christians regarded the deutero-canonical books as scripture. Then came along a German monk in the 16th century named Martin Luther who objected to their inclusion. He started questioning the Catholic doctrine of purgatory, and when his opponents cited a passage from 2 Maccabees which implied the existence of purgatory, Luther replied that 2 Maccabees was not part of the bible. Many were shocked by this move, but Luther pressed on, noting that Jews did not regard these books as sacred, so Christians shouldn’t include them in their Old Testament either.
The Catholic Church responded to Martin Luther at the Council of Trent (1545-1563), arguing that the deutero-canonical books were indeed sacred scripture. This was the first official declaration by the Church on this matter, and it remains the Catholic position to this day. Lutherans and other Protestant denominations disagreed with the decision and removed these books from their bibles. Their position remains true for all Protestants today, although some Protestants include these books at the back of the Old Testament (or the back of the entire bible) in an appendix called the “Apocrypha.” This was the policy of the translators of the King James Bible in 1611, and many later translations have followed suit, although not all.
Catholic vs. Protestant
So what’s all the fuss about? Are these books really that important? Most Catholics aren’t even aware these books exist, and they’re rarely read at mass. If you get a chance to read these texts, you’ll be surprised to find nothing earth-shattering or specifically Catholic about them. With the exception of purgatory, there are no uniquely Catholic doctrines based on the deutero-canonical books. (And only one verse pertains to purgatory: 2 Macc 12:46.) Catholic teaching on Mary, the papacy, the sacraments, the role of faith and works – all of these rest on tradition and on the interpretation of certain biblical texts, but none come from the deutero-canonical books.
That means Jews and Protestants should have no problem reading these books today, and some do. Martin Luther himself found nothing objectionable about reading these texts (except for 2 Maccabees, which in addition to the problem of purgatory was a bit too gory in its graphic descriptions of war and martyrdom). In his translation of the bible into German in 1534, Luther explained that the deutero-canonical books should “not be esteemed like the Holy Scriptures, yet are useful and good to read.” Luther was quite fond of the Book of Tobit, which tells a heartwarming tale of two families struggling to survive through hardship and persecution. Several mainline Protestant denominations have adopted the same approach, encouraging their congregations to read these books since they contain uplifting stories and wise counsel for Christians, as long as they remember they’re not divinely inspired like the rest of the bible.
The omission of these books from Jewish and Protestant bibles is unfortunate since they cover a key time in biblical history. The other books of the Old Testament tell the story of the Jews up to the time of Ezra and Nehemiah, which was roughly 400 BC. That leaves a four-century gap before the time of Christ. These seven books fill in much of that gap, also known as the “intertestamental period.” We learn about an early Jewish belief in resurrection from the dead, a growing interest in angels and demons, and the history of how Jews overthrew their Greek overlords and enjoyed a century of independence before the arrival of the Romans. Jews in fact base their celebration of Hanukah on stories told in 1 and 2 Maccabees.
Reading the deutero-canonical texts therefore gives us a clearer picture of the whole scope of biblical history. Feel free to read them as you would any other biblical book, but don’t expect to discover how Catholics are different from Protestants. These two groups disagree over the divine inspiration of texts like Judith or Baruch, but the key differences between them lie elsewhere.