One of the a lot of accepted questions a Catholic is asked by non-Catholic Christians (NCC) is, "Why does the Catholic Bible accept added books?"
Sometimes it is added of an accusation:
"You Catholics accept added added books to the Bible to absolve your aberrant beliefs."
Most Catholics too do not apperceive how they concluded up with "extra" books.
The account for the aberration in the Catholic and Protestant Bibles is absolutely interesting. It needs a little delving into the history of the accumulation of the abreast Bible. I'll try to explain it briefly here:
First of all, let's account these added books so we don't get abashed later:
Tobit
Judith
Wisdom
Sirach, aswell alleged Ben Sira or Ecclesiasticus
Baruch
1 Maccabees
2 Maccabees
Apart from these books, the Catholic Bible aswell has some additions in the books of Daniel and Esther (And abounding Catholics and Protestants don't apperceive this!).
The New Testament is the aforementioned for Catholics and Protestants.
So the Protestants accept 66 books while the Catholics accept 73.
How this all happened:
The Jews had calm a amount of books which were admired as "Scripture". They disconnected them into the Law/Torah(Genesis to Deuteronomy), the Prophets(Isaiah, Jeremiah etc) and Wisdom Writings(or artlessly Writings- Psalms, Proverbs etc).
During the Diaspora(when the acquisition nations forcibly relocated their subjects), abounding Jewish communities active far abroad from Palestine/Israel had abandoned Hebrew or begin it easier to apprehend and allege Greek, the lingua franca of their day.
These communities translated the frequently circulating Hebrew books into Greek and aggregate it as the Septuagint(meaning Seventy or LXX). This accumulation aswell independent these "extra books" which accept no accepted actual Hebrew original.
During Jesus' time, it was this Septuagint that was frequently acclimated by the Disciples and Apostles. In fact, all the Old Testament quotes in the New Testament are from the Septuagint and not the Hebrew Version!
Around the time of aboriginal Christianity, the accepted Jews (Christianity again was still advised a binding camp of Judaism like the Essenes, Zealots etc), started defining which books were "authentic" scripture and which were not. This was partly a argumentation exercise adjoin the accepted movement alleged Christianity! They capital to ambit themselves from this new "sect". This act of accumulation the "scripture" came afterwards the time of Jesus and able-bodied afterwards Christians started examination themselves as not acceptance to Judaism.
Christians connected to use the Septuagint partly to analyze themselves as a new accumulation no best affiliated to Judaism (stopping the important convenance of circumcision was addition method) and aswell because the Apostles and Paul had quoted from the Septuagint and not the Hebrew Bible. Addition acumen was that abounding new converts to Christianity were non-Jews, who were added accustomed with Greek.
From that time till the Protestant Reformation, the Bible independent 73 books for all Christians.
At the time of the Reformation, Luther was acutely black with the excesses that were accident in the Church bureaucracy and acquainted that annihilation accompanying to the Church was somehow amiss and absitively to go aback to the Aboriginal Hebrew Canon(List). However, it was still the Jewish Canon, aggregate afterwards the time of Jesus and the apostles, put calm to prove a point to the aboriginal Christian Church.
The Catholic Church about connected to use the Septuaint with its 73 books as Scripture.
Luther, afterwards declaring that alone the books in the Jewish assize were scripture, went further. He absitively that some of the books from the New Testament were aswell not allotment of scripture. He removed some Epistles (of John and Jude) and the Book of Revelation! (Bet you didn't apperceive that.)
In appearance of all this, the Catholic Church realised that if this trend were to continue, the Holy Word of God would anon be alone and trampled underfoot. The Church declared that all the Books of the Bible which were getting acclimated till that time, i.e. including the deuterocanonical books, were absolutely allotment of the Holy Scripture. This was declared in the Council of Trent in the 16th century. Note that this acknowledgment was never bare until now afterwards the Marcion heresy.
This is how the Catholic and the Protestant Bibles differ. Nowadays, abounding Protestant Bibles cover these "extra" deuterocanonical books as a array of a added at the end of their Bibles.
