Why Do Roman Catholic Bibles Have More Books in Them Than Protestant Bibles?

NATHAN W. BINGHAM: This week I'm joined by the president of Reformation Bible College, as well as the host of 5 Minutes in Church History Dr. Stephen Nichols. Dr. Nichols, why is it that Roman Catholic Bibles have more books in them than Protestant Bibles do?

DR. STEPHEN NICHOLS: Well, this is a great question because it takes us back to one of our favorite moments in church history, to the Reformation. The answer to this is because of one of the canons or decrees from the Council of Trent from 1546. And of the many things that came out of the Council of Trent, one of them was the canonization or the recognizing of the Apocrypha as canonical. The Apocrypha consists of fourteen books. And these books were always sort of there. They were part of the discussion. Theologians interacted with them. But they were never part of a churchwide canon list. They were never accepted as canonical books. Until 1546.

And the reason is this: one of those apocryphal books is 1 and 2 Maccabees. And in there, there is a reference to" after one of the battles of the Jews and the Romans and they go out among the battlefield, and then there was a reference to prayers for the dead. Well, if you remember back to the Ninety-Five Theses and the moment that started everything, it was Luther attacking the church's doctrine of indulgences"which of course was buying or getting your dead relatives, buying your dead relatives, out of purgatory.

And as Luther came to realize there was no biblical support for this text. Well, as the Roman Catholic theologians looked to try to have a counter to Luther, they landed on this text in Maccabees, as prayers for the dead for support for this whole doctrine of indulgences and purgatory and getting relatives out of purgatory. Granted, this is a very flimsy evidence for that doctrine, but it was at least something. So, in a vain and futile attempt to refute Luther and to refute where it all began with the Reformation"the attack on the indulgences"the Roman Catholic Church at Trent canonized the Apocrypha. So the Protestant Bible is sixty-six books and the Roman Catholic Bible is eighty books. But here's the simple truth: the Protestant Bible did not remove these fourteen books. It's very much the opposite. The Roman Catholic Church added the Apocrypha to the canon, and it didn't do so until 1546.