Why Are Protestant Bibles Smaller?

[Denise]

By Clement Harrold

How many books are in the Bible? Well, it depends on who you ask! While Protestants and Catholics agree on the 27 books of the New Testament, there is disagreement over the canon of the Old Testament (“Canon” comes from a Greek word meaning “rule” or “measuring stick,” and here it refers to the officially recognized set of books).

During the Reformation, the Protestant reformers removed seven books from the Old Testament—Wisdom, Sirach (or Ecclesiasticus), Tobit, Judith, Baruch, 1 and 2 Maccabees—as well as some chapters in Esther and Daniel. These books and chapters are still recognized by the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches. As a result, the Catholic Old Testament has 46 books, while the Protestant has just 39. (Orthodox Bibles tend to be the same as Catholic Bibles with the addition of a handful of other texts.)

Protestants often refer to the seven excised books as the Apocrypha, which is Greek for “hidden.” Catholics tend to refer to the books as deuterocanonical (i.e. “second canon”), in recognition of the fact that they were mostly written in Greek slightly later than the rest of the Old Testament. In this article we’ll explore why the Catholic Church recognizes the 73-book Bible, and how she responds to some of the common objections raised by Protestants who insist on just 66 books.

Understanding the Catholic Position

The Catholic Church largely bases its canon of Scripture on the most ancient version of the Old Testament that we possess today. This version is written in Greek and is known as the Septuagint (see Dei Verbum §22). The name “Septuagint” comes from the Latin word for seventy, which is a reference to the approximately seventy scribes who worked on the translation. Because of this, the translation is frequently abbreviated using the Roman numerals LXX. The LXX was begun in Alexandria in the third century B.C., with the first five books of the Bible translated from Hebrew into Greek under the direction of King Ptolemy II. The LXX continued to evolve over time as more books were added.

Part of what makes the LXX significant is that it’s the translation favored by the New Testament writers. During the period when the New Testament was being written, Hebrew manuscripts of many of the Old Testament books were still in circulation. Nevertheless, the New Testament writers quote from the Greek LXX roughly ten times more frequently than they do from the Hebrew. (The Hebrew versions of the Scriptures are often known as the “Masoretic text,” from the Hebrew word masorah, meaning “tradition.”)

There was a clear rationale, then, behind the early Church’s decision to attach special significance to the LXX. Indeed, the LXX served as the primary Old Testament source for Christians until the end of the fourth century, and its importance can hardly be overstated. This, in turn, influenced the debate over whether to accept the deuterocanonical books as inspired, since by Jesus’s day the deuterocanonical books had become part of the LXX. Even so, this didn’t completely settle the question of the canon.

The early Christians still weren’t sure whether all of the LXX books ought to be received as inspired by the Holy Spirit. Due to this lingering uncertainty, the faithful looked to the Church to offer clarification on the issue. Writing around the year 397, St. Augustine lists as canonical all 73 books of the Catholic Bible (see On Christian Doctrine, Bk II, Ch 8). Just as significant, however, is Augustine’s observation that the way to settle disagreements over the canon is not through personal inquiry or academic investigation, but rather through the judgement of the apostolic churches. Augustine’s sentiment was later echoed by St. Jerome.

After being influenced by Jewish scholars during his formation, Jerome was skeptical as to whether the deuterocanonical books should be considered inspired. For this reason, he is often cited by Protestants in support of their position. But it is important to remember that Jerome remained deferential to the Church by including the deuterocanonical books in the Vulgate, even though he prefaced those books by expressing his doubts about their inspiration (Commissioned by Pope Damasus I in the late fourth century, the Vulgate—from a Latin word meaning “common”—was a groundbreaking Latin translation of the entire Bible which drew from both Greek and Hebrew sources). Jerome’s treatment of Judith is especially striking, since he notes that the book has been rejected as non-canonical by the Jews, before conceding that the book was recognized as Scripture by the Council of Nicaea in 325. Despite his personal reservations, Jerome, like Augustine, believed that the Church has the final word when it comes to determining the extent of the canon.

The judgement of the Church took shape over time when the need for clarification arose. In 431, for example, the Council of Ephesus described a verse from the deuterocanonical Sirach as “divinely inspired Scripture.” Likewise, a number of early local synods gave their endorsement to the full canon of Scripture as recognized by the Catholic Church today. These included the Synod of Hippo, attended by the North African bishops in 393; two separate Synods of Carthage, attended by the North African bishops in 397 and 419; and the Synod of Rome, led by Pope Damasus I in 382. The decisions of these local synods were formalized in 1442 by the Council of Florence, which was attended by the bishops of East and West a full 75 years before the Reformation broke out. After the Reformation, the Council of Trent affirmed the traditional canon yet again in 1548.

Why Protestant Bibles Are Smaller

As we’ve already begun to see, questions around biblical canonicity can get very complicated very quickly. From the Catholic perspective, there is something reassuring in the fact that the Holy Spirit does not expect us to resort to guesswork when trying to figure out these questions. Instead, the Holy Spirit has guided the Church to a sure knowledge of the complete list of inspired books. And when disagreement and confusion have arisen down the centuries, the Holy Spirit has spoken through the Church to provide definitive clarification.

This level of clarity simply isn’t open to Protestants, given their insistence on the doctrine of sola Scriptura, which holds that the Bible is the sole infallible rule of faith. Because the Bible never provides us with its own table of contents, Protestants are left resorting to arguments and evidence as best they can but without any guarantee as to whether their interpretation is the correct one.

The Protestant rejection of the Catholic canon of Scripture began with Martin Luther, who took issue with certain teachings in the deuterocanonical books which he found objectionable. In an effort to avoid the Catholic canon of the Old Testament, Luther decided to adopt the Hebrew Masoretic canon, which rejected the deuterocanonical books. He also cast doubt on the reliability of four different New Testament books: Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation. By opting for the Masoretic canon, Luther claimed to be returning ad fontes—to the sources—since most of the Old Testament was originally written in Hebrew. From the Catholic perspective, this reasoning is dubious for several reasons.

First, the form of the Masoretic text that we possess today has been transmitted to us through the Rabbis who lived after Jesus and explicitly rejected Christianity; and whereas our oldest, largely complete copy of the Greek Bible (Codex Sinaiticus) dates back to the mid-fourth century and includes the deuterocanonical books, our oldest complete copy of the Masoretic text only dates back to the beginning of the eleventh century. Second, it isn’t clear why we should favor the canon which was eventually settled on by the Jewish Rabbis over and above the canon which was eventually settled on by the Christian Church. Finally, third, Luther’s decision to go with the Masoretic Old Testament canon says nothing about the make-up of the New Testament. Hence Protestants are stuck with accepting the Church’s tradition when it comes to determining which books belong in the New Testament (although, as we’ve seen, Luther wasn’t afraid to question the reliability of that tradition).

What arguments can Protestants offer in defense of their position? An authority they’ll sometimes cite is the first century Jewish historian Josephus, who seems to have rejected the deuterocanonical books as uninspired. The problem with this, however, is that Josephus was simply defending the canon of Scripture accepted by his own sect, the Pharisees. But we know that other ancient Jewish sects—such as the Sadducees, the Samaritans, and the Essenes—possessed markedly different canons of Scripture. In addition, the many Greek-speaking Jews who lived across the Mediterranean world outside of Israel tended to recognize a larger canon than that of the Pharisees. Hence the Protestant would need to provide a reason for thinking the Pharisees’ canon must be the correct one.

Another argument which Protestants often give is that the New Testament never once quotes from any of the seven deuterocanonical books. But this objection fails for several reasons. First, there are various other Old Testament books which are never quoted in the New Testament: Joshua, Judges, Ruth, Chronicles, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Esther, and several of the minor prophets. At the same time, there are non-canonical Jewish texts, such as the Book of Enoch, which are quoted by New Testament authors. This highlights the fact that being quoted in the New Testament cannot be a reliable criterion for judging texts to be part of the Old Testament. Finally, while the New Testament never quotes from the deuterocanonical books directly, it does reference their contents on several occasions. While this doesn’t prove anything one way or the other, it makes it harder to dismiss the deuterocanonical books out of hand, since the New Testament writers themselves appear to have held the books in high regard.

The Insufficiency of Sola Scriptura

When wading into the debate over the canon of the Bible, it’s important for Catholics to remember that our Protestant brothers and sisters aren’t stupid. No doubt silly points are made on both sides of the debate, and these kinds of complex theological questions are rarely as simple or one-sided as the online keyboard warriors make out.

With that caveat in place, it is worth stating that the single biggest obstacle which Protestants face in the debates over the canon is their insistence on the doctrine of sola Scriptura. This has been described as the Achilles heel of Protestantism, and for good reason. Because sola Scriptura identifies Sacred Scripture as the only infallible rule of faith, and because Sacred Scripture never tells us what counts as Sacred Scripture, the Protestant cannot know with any certainty what is and isn’t Scripture. At best, the Protestant is left with what the renowned Reformed theologian R.C. Sproul described as “a fallible collection of infallible books.”

But this approach wreaks havoc on our understanding of the Christian faith. To take one example: Protestants object to traditional practices such as praying for the dead or giving alms to atone for sins. Yet they can’t know for sure whether the deuterocanonical books which endorse these practices (see Tob 12:9; 14:11; Bar 3:4; 2 Macc 12:43-45) are part of the inspired Word of God. Particularly when we consider that all of the world’s Catholic and Orthodox Christians accept these books as inspired, it is simply impossible for the Protestant to have any real confidence in the private judgement he has made to reject these books.

Ultimately, the Protestant has no reliable rule for knowing which books belong in the Bible. For all he knows, he might be just as mistaken as the Sadducees in the first century, who believed that only the first five books of the Bible were inspired. (In fact, the Protestant has no way of even knowing whether public revelation ended with the death of the last apostle, or whether it continued long after that!) From the Catholic perspective, by contrast, it just isn’t plausible that God would leave us with so much uncertainty over something as foundational as knowing the contents of His inspired Word.

One Catholic writer has framed the issue forcefully:

If Protestantism is true, then for more than a thousand years all of Christianity used an Old Testament that contained seven fully disposable, possibly deceptive books that God did not inspire. He did, however, allow the early Church to designate these books as Sacred Scripture and derive false teachings such as purgatory from their contents. Eventually, God’s chosen Reformer, Martin Luther, was able to straighten out this tragic error, even though his similar abridgement of the New Testament was a mistake.

Thankfully, God didn’t leave us in the dark about the canon of Scripture, just as He didn’t leave us bereft of the many moving accounts which fill the pages of the deuterocanonical books: stories about a widow’s courage in the book of Judith; about the beauty of marriage in the book of Tobit; about the eternal value of friendship in the book of Sirach; about the heroic chastity of Susanna in the book of Daniel; or about the supernatural hope of the seven martyred brothers and their mother in 2 Maccabees. Instead of rejecting these inspired accounts, Protestants should join their Catholic and Orthodox brothers and sisters in embracing the deuterocanonical books for the spiritual and theological treasures that they are.

Further Reading

Gary Michuta, Why Catholic Bibles Are Bigger (Catholic Answers Press, 2nd ed, 2017)

https://stpaulcenter.com/thoughts-on-th ... ent-canon/

https://douglasbeaumont.com/2014/09/11/ ... anonicals/

https://www.catholic.com/magazine/onlin ... e-disaster