The Catholic Bible Different than the Protestant Bible
While all 66 books in Protestant Bibles are found in the Catholic Bible, the Catholic Bible includes other additional books known as the deuterocanonicals/Apocryph. The Catholic Bible has 73 books, 46 in the Old Testament (Protestant Bibles have 39) and 27 in the New Testament (same as Protestant Bibles).
The Deuterocanonicals-Apocrypha books are: Tobit, Judith, 1 Maccabees, 2 Maccabees, Wisdom, Sirach (Ecclesiasticus), and Baruch. The Catholic Bible also has additions to the books of Esther and Daniel.
The Apocrypha/Deuterocanonical books teach many things that are not true and are not historically factual. The New Testament quotes from the Old Testament hundreds of times, but nowhere quotes or alludes to any of the Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical books.
The early church leaders after careful study to the Apocrypha decided not to include them in the canon because they were not in harmony with the rest of the Scriptures. The following principles were used to determine whether a book was truly inspired by the Holy Spirit: 1) Did the book contain information that is consistent with the doctrine of the Scriptures? 2) Did the book present a high moral and spiritual values?
The early Protestant Reformers, in agreement with Judaism, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit determined that the Apocrypha did not belong to the Bible, and therefore removed the Apocrypha from Protestant Bibles. The Apocrypha was treated as fallible historical and religious documents, not as the inspired, authoritative Word of God.
Although Jerome the translator of the Latin Vulgate believed that the Apocrypha didn’t belong to the canon, Rome insisted that they should. And the Latin Vulgate became the official sanctioned Catholic Bible, and remained for around 1200 years. It should be noted that the Apocrypha was not made a part of the Catholic Bible, until the Council of Trent, in response to the Protestant Reformation.
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