Explain how the Catholic Bible differs from the Protestant bible?

Answer 1

The Bibles used by Catholics and Protestants are not the same. The first thing to know is that Catholics have more then the bible to follow. They have a lot of other scriptures to go by as well. Some Catholics don't follow them correctly and other Catholics see that as sin to not follow it (that's the correct way). Like dressing modestly is a big problem right now. people rebel. Catholics and Protestants use the word "apocrypha" differently. There are OT books that are considered apocryphal by all Christian churches, including Catholicism. There are other books, called "Deuterocanonical" by Rome, that are considered part of the canon by Rome, and are considered apocryphal by other Christian churches. These Deuterocanonical books are: Tobit, Judith, First and Second Maccabees, The Book of Wisdom, and Ecclesiasticus (NOT to be confused with Ecclesiastes, which is accepted as canonical by all Christian churches). Protestant churches do not accept the deuterocanonical books as canonical, and you will not find them in their bibles.

Another difference are the texts from which the translations were made.

The Catholic Bible is sourced primarily from the Latin Vulgate and Codex Vaticanus. The early Protestants used the Textus Receptus. This difference is not so pronounced today with many different versions available for Protestants being sourced from additional texts.

Special note on The Jerusalem Bible:

As biblical scholarship opened up in the mid-20th century, Catholics began to pay more attention. The Dominican Biblical School in Jerusalem was called upon by a French publisher (Editions du Cerf) to rise to the occasion and produce a French translation from the best available texts. The result was a single-volume translation of the entire Bible in 1956 known popularly as La Bible de Jerusalem. This French version, of very good quality with full textual critical aparatus of a very scholarly nature, was translated into English. But the English was not simply taken from the original French. Some books were first drafted from the French into English and then compared word for word with the Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek, and other books were drafted into English from the ancient texts first and then compared word for word with the French. The desire was to be as completely faithful to the original texts as possible, while preserving the intent and scholarship of the original French materials.

The General Editor of the English translation effort was Alexander Jones, and those who are not aware of this will be fascinated to learn that among the major contributors to the work was J. R. R. Tolkien of literary fame.

This English version is called The Jerusalem Bible, and it contains the standard books of the Catholic canon. Notes are paraphrased from the first (I believe) English publication; Doubleday, Garden City New York, 1966.

AnswerBible translations developed for Catholic use are complete Bibles. This means that they contain the entire canonical text identified by Pope Damasus and the Synod of Rome (382) and the local Councils of Hippo (393) and Carthage (397), contained in St. Jerome's Latin Vulgate translation (420), and decreed infallibly by the Ecumenical Council of Trent (1570). This canonical text contains the same 27 NT Testament books which Protestant versions contain, but 46 Old Testament books, instead of 39. These 7 books, and parts of 2 others, are called Deuterocanonical by Catholics (2nd canon) and Apocrypha (false writings) by Protestants, who dropped them at the time of the Reformation. The Deuterocanonical texts are Tobias (Tobit), Judith, Baruch, Ecclesiasticus (Sirach), Wisdom, First and Second Maccabees and parts of Esther and Daniel. Some Protestant Bibles include the "Apocrypha" as pious reading.

As a side note:

The Bible is the most preserved work of literature in our history. In fact, there are approximately 5,600 original manuscripts still today. When the Catholic church translated into English in 1966, it used as many of the original texts as there were. What is most interesting is that in 1415 AD, Erasus translated to English using 5 copies of a German translation. Then King James used Erasus translation to come up with the KJV of the bible. Ever wonder why there are differences???? These differences are very minor other than the KJV not including the Apocrypha as God had originally inspired. If we all agree that the Bible is inspired by God, then how can we as man decide later that those books we don't agree with are not?

Roman Catholic Answer

It was Protestantism that removed these "deuterocanonical" books from the Bible, many centuries later. And contrary to the myth, the early Church did indeed accept these books as Scripture.

The seven disputed books are: Tobit, Judith, 1 and 2 Maccabees, Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus (or Sirach), and Baruch. Catholic Bibles also include an additional six chapters (107 verses) in Esther and three chapters (174 verses) in Daniel.

According to major Protestant scholars and historians, in the first four centuries Church leaders (e.g. St. Justin Martyr, Tertullian, St. Augustine, St. Ambrose, St. Cyprian, St. Irenaeus) generally recognized these seven books as canonical and scriptural, following the Septuagint Greek translation of the Old Testament, following the Council of Rome (382), and general consensus, finalized the New Testament canon while also including the deutercanon, in lists that were identical to that of the Council of Trent (1545-1563).

There's a scholarly consensus that this canon was pretty much accepted from the fourth century to the sixteenth, and indeed, the earliest Greek manuscripts of the Old Testament: the Codes Sinaiticus (fourth century) and Codex Alexandrinus (c. 450) include the (unseparated) deuterocanonical books. The Dead Sea Scrolls found at Qumran did not contain Esther, but did contain Tobit.

According to Douglas and Geisler, Jamnia (first century Jewish council) was not an authoritative council, but simply a gathering of scholars, and similar events occurred afterward. In fact, at Jamnia the canonicity of books such as Ester, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Solomon was also disputed. Since both Protestants and Catholics accept these books today, this shows that Jamnia did not "settle" anything. The Jews were still arguing about the canonicity of the books mentioned earlier and also Proverbs into the early second century.

And St. Jerome's sometimes critical views on these books are not a clear-cut as Protestants often make them out to be. In his Apology Against Rufinus (402) for example, he wrote:

When I repeat what the Jews say against the story of Susanna and the the Hymn of the Three Children, and the fables of Bel and the Dragon, which are not contained in the Hebrew Bible, the man who makes this a charge against me proves himself to be a fool and a slanderer; for I explained not what I thought but what they commonly say against us (Apology Against Rufinus, book II, 33)

Significantly, St. Jerome included the deuterocanonical books in the Vulgate, his Latin translation of the Bible, (And he defended the inspiration of Judith in a preface to it.) All in all, there is no clear evidence that St. Jerome rejected these seven books, and much to suggest that he accepted them as inspired Scripture, as the Catholic Church does today. But St. Jerome (like any Church father) does not have the final authority in the Church. He's not infallible. The historical evidence, all things considered, strongly supports the Catholic belief that these books are inspired and thus indeed part of Holy Scripture

from The One-Minute Apologist by Dave Armstrong; Manchester, NH: Sophia Institute Press, 2007
The main difference is the books presented in the Bible. Catholic Bibles contains the Deuterocanonical (or "second canon") books. If the Protestant Bible contains these they will refer to them as the Apocrypha.

Answer 2

The Catholics include the Apocrypha in their Bible, while Protestant Christians don't.

The Apocrypha are some other books that are included in the Old Testament of the Catholic Bible. Protestant Christians don't except these books as authoritative. The Protestant and Catholic New Testament are identical though.

See the related link at the bottom of this answer to read more on this subject.

Both Protestant and Catholic Bibles have the same number of books in the New Testament: 27.

However, Catholic Bibles have 7 extra books, and here's why:

Around 2200 years ago (so obviously before Jesus' time), Jewish scholars put together all of the Jewish Scriptures - what we call the Old Testament. There were 46 books, called the Septuagint, that were accepted until about 100 A.D. At that time, the Jewish leaders decided to get rid of the non-Hebrew books, of which there were seven.

This change was after Jesus' life, however. So He would have known all 46. And those 46 + 27 New Testament books=73.

So these 73 were accepted as the Bible for almost 1500 years, when Martin Luther began the Protestant Reformation. Because there were not Hebrew manuscripts known at the time, he changed the Bible from 46 to 39 books...and that's why there's 7 less books there today.

The Bibles used by Catholics and Protestants are not the same. The first thing to know is that Catholics have more then the bible to follow. They have a lot of other scriptures to go by as well. Some Catholics don't follow them correctly and other Catholics see that as sin to not follow it (that's the correct way). Like dressing modestly is a big problem right now. people rebel. Catholics and Protestants use the word "apocrypha" differently. There are OT books that are considered apocryphal by all Christian churches, including Catholicism. There are other books, called "Deuterocanonical" by Rome, that are considered part of the canon by Rome, and are considered apocryphal by other Christian churches. These Deuterocanonical books are: Tobit, Judith, First and Second Maccabees, The Book of Wisdom, and Ecclesiasticus (NOT to be confused with Ecclesiastes, which is accepted as canonical by all Christian churches). Protestant churches do not accept the deuterocanonical books as canonical, and you will not find them in their bibles.

Another difference are the texts from which the translations were made.

The Catholic Bible is sourced primarily from the Latin Vulgate and Codex Vaticanus. The early Protestants used the Textus Receptus. This difference is not so pronounced today with many different versions available for Protestants being sourced from additional texts.

Special note on The Jerusalem Bible:

As biblical scholarship opened up in the mid-20th century, Catholics began to pay more attention. The Dominican Biblical School in Jerusalem was called upon by a French publisher (Editions du Cerf) to rise to the occasion and produce a French translation from the best available texts. The result was a single-volume translation of the entire Bible in 1956 known popularly as La Bible de Jerusalem. This French version, of very good quality with full textual critical aparatus of a very scholarly nature, was translated into English. But the English was not simply taken from the original French. Some books were first drafted from the French into English and then compared word for word with the Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek, and other books were drafted into English from the ancient texts first and then compared word for word with the French. The desire was to be as completely faithful to the original texts as possible, while preserving the intent and scholarship of the original French materials.

The General Editor of the English translation effort was Alexander Jones, and those who are not aware of this will be fascinated to learn that among the major contributors to the work was J. R. R. Tolkien of literary fame.

This English version is called The Jerusalem Bible, and it contains the standard books of the Catholic canon. Notes are paraphrased from the first (I believe) English publication; Doubleday, Garden City New York, 1966.

Bible translations developed for Catholic use are complete Bibles. This means that they contain the entire canonical text identified by Pope Damasus and the Synod of Rome (382) and the local Councils of Hippo (393) and Carthage (397), contained in St. Jerome's Latin Vulgate translation (420), and decreed infallibly by the Ecumenical Council of Trent (1570). This canonical text contains the same 27 NT Testament books which Protestant versions contain, but 46 Old Testament books, instead of 39. These 7 books, and parts of 2 others, are called Deuterocanonical by Catholics (2nd canon) and Apocrypha (false writings) by Protestants, who dropped them at the time of the Reformation. The Deuterocanonical texts are Tobias (Tobit), Judith, Baruch, Ecclesiasticus (Sirach), Wisdom, First and Second Maccabees and parts of Esther and Daniel. Some Protestant Bibles include the "Apocrypha" as pious reading.

As a side note:

The Bible is the most preserved work of literature in our history. In fact, there are approximately 5,600 original manuscripts still today. When the Catholic church translated into English in 1966, it used as many of the original texts as there were. What is most interesting is that in 1415 AD, Erasus translated to English using 5 copies of a German translation. Then King James used Erasus translation to come up with the KJV of the bible. Ever wonder why there are differences???? These differences are very minor other than the KJV not including the Apocrypha as God had originally inspired. If we all agree that the Bible is inspired by God, then how can we as man decide later that those books we don't agree with are not?

Roman Catholic Answer

It was Protestantism that removed these "deuterocanonical" books from the Bible, many centuries later. And contrary to the myth, the early Church did indeed accept these books as Scripture.

The seven disputed books are: Tobit, Judith, 1 and 2 Maccabees, Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus (or Sirach), and Baruch. Catholic Bibles also include an additional six chapters (107 verses) in Esther and three chapters (174 verses) in Daniel.

According to major Protestant scholars and historians, in the first four centuries Church leaders (e.g. St. Justin Martyr, Tertullian, St. Augustine, St. Ambrose, St. Cyprian, St. Irenaeus) generally recognized these seven books as canonical and scriptural, following the Septuagint Greek translation of the Old Testament, following the Council of Rome (382), and general consensus, finalized the New Testament canon while also including the deutercanon, in lists that were identical to that of the Council of Trent (1545-1563).

There's a scholarly consensus that this canon was pretty much accepted from the fourth century to the sixteenth, and indeed, the earliest Greek manuscripts of the Old Testament: the Codes Sinaiticus (fourth century) and Codex Alexandrinus (c. 450) include the (unseparated) deuterocanonical books. The Dead Sea Scrolls found at Qumran did not contain Esther, but did contain Tobit.

According to Douglas and Geisler, Jamnia (first century Jewish council) was not an authoritative council, but simply a gathering of scholars, and similar events occurred afterward. In fact, at Jamnia the canonicity of books such as Ester, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Solomon was also disputed. Since both Protestants and Catholics accept these books today, this shows that Jamnia did not "settle" anything. The Jews were still arguing about the canonicity of the books mentioned earlier and also Proverbs into the early second century.

And St. Jerome's sometimes critical views on these books are not a clear-cut as Protestants often make them out to be. In his Apology Against Rufinus (402) for example, he wrote:

When I repeat what the Jews say against the story of Susanna and the the Hymn of the Three Children, and the fables of Bel and the Dragon, which are not contained in the Hebrew Bible, the man who makes this a charge against me proves himself to be a fool and a slanderer; for I explained not what I thought but what they commonly say against us (Apology Against Rufinus, book II, 33)

Significantly, St. Jerome included the deuterocanonical books in the Vulgate, his Latin translation of the Bible, (And he defended the inspiration of Judith in a preface to it.) All in all, there is no clear evidence that St. Jerome rejected these seven books, and much to suggest that he accepted them as inspired Scripture, as the Catholic Church does today. But St. Jerome (like any Church father) does not have the final authority in the Church. He's not infallible. The historical evidence, all things considered, strongly supports the Catholic belief that these books are inspired and thus indeed part of Holy Scripture

from The One-Minute Apologist by Dave Armstrong; Manchester, NH: Sophia Institute Press, 2007

The main difference is the books presented in the Bible. Catholic Bibles contains the Deuterocanonical (or "second canon") books. If the Protestant Bible contains these they will refer to them as the Apocrypha.

Answer 3

The Old Testament section of the Protestant Bible was based on the Tanach (Jewish Bible). However, it was altered to support the teachings of Christianity, these changes include a different order to the books, additional texts, adding the book of Daniel to Prophets instead of Writings (Daniel was not a prophet according to Jewish tradition), word changes, and grammar changes.

Answer 4

Catholics typically use the Douay-Rheims version of the Bible, which also contains the Apochryphal books.

Mormons (members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) use the King James version of the Bible AND the Book of Mormon.

Protestants use various versions of the Bible, depending on their personal beliefs or those of their pastor or minister. Some of the most popular are the King James version, the New King James version, the New International version, and the New Living Translation.

The difference between the Bibles is usually pretty minimal, and just involves the language. The King James Bible was written in 1611, and therefore uses some very old and formal language that can be hard for people to understand. The New International version uses more modern language and has deleted a handful of verses that were not found in all ancient manuscripts. The Douay-Rheims is somewhere in between old and modern English, but also contains an extra group of books called the Apochrypha that is not found in other Bibles.

Here is an example of the differences in the Bibles, we'll compare Acts 7:55-56:

Douay-Rheims Version: (Catholics) "But he, being full of the Holy Ghost, looking up steadfastly to heaven, saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God. And he said: Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God. "

King James Version: (Mormons and some Protestants) "But he, being full of the Holy Ghost, looked up stedfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God, And said, Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God."

New International Version: (some Protestants) "But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. "Look," he said, "I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God."

New Living Translation: (some Protestants) "But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed steadily into heaven and saw the glory of God, and he saw Jesus standing in the place of honor at God's right hand. And he told them, "Look, I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing in the place of honor at God's right hand!"

Answer 5

The Catholic Bible contains books that are often not found in Protestant Bibles. These books include the two books of Esdras, Tobit, Judith, the Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach (or Ecclesiasticus), Baruch, the letter of Jeremiah, and the two books of the Maccabees. In addition, the books of Esther and Daniel are longer. Also, in English, Catholics often use different translations of the Bible than do Protestants.

.

Catholic AnswerThere are basically four different Bibles out there. The Bible used by the Jews only contains what Christians refer to as the Old Testament, minus the Deuterocanonical books which are found in the Septuagint. The Septuagint was the original Old Testament which was used by Our Blessed Lord, Jesus Christ, it contains all 72 books of the Old Testament. The current Jewish religion threw out seven books called the Deuterocanonical books at the end of the first century/beginning of the second century because they supported specific Christian doctrines. However, they still kept religious practices based on those books, such as Hanukkah, which is only found in the books of the Maccabees.

.

The Catholic Church book the Old Testament as used by the Jews in the first century, this was the Old Testament which had been translated into Greek in the fourth century before Christ. At the end of the fourth century after Christ, the Church met at the Council of Rome, and under Pope Damascus I put together the New Testament as we have it today. The entire Bible was translated from Greek into Latin, as that was now the common language of the known world, this translation was known as the Vulgate (for the Latin word, meaning the common tongue-so everyone could understand it). This was the common Bible of all Christians except for the Orthodox until the sixteenth century. The Orthodox added some additional books into their Old Testament.

.

So the third Bible would be the Orthodox version which has significantly more books in the Old Testament that the Church fathers had not included in the Christian canon as they were not used at Mass.

The fourth Bible was the mutilated version that Martin Luther made up in the sixteenth century. He used the second century Jewish Old Testament (the one NOT approved by Christians) as his Old Testament. He then attempted to throw several books out of the New Testament that specifically supported Catholic beliefs, but the other protestant revolters would not hear of it, and saved Hebrews, Revelation, St. James, and several other from Luther's bonfire.

Answer 6

I don't think there's a difference- I think Roman Catholics and Protestants have the same Bible.

'''ANSWER 2:''' The Roman Catholic Bible is the Latin Douay version and it contains more Books than the Protestant versions, those having been removed by Martin Luther prior to the Reformation.

Protestants have many different versions of the Bible, but the majority seem to use the King James Version (KJV) or the New International Version (NIV). Not all Protestant versions agree that the transliteration of the original Hebrew into Greek and then into English should refer to Jesus as God's "only '''begotten''' son."

Answer 7

Catholic AnswerNot sure which differences you are talking about. If you are talking about the differences between the Catholic and the protestant Bibles, the easy thing to do is get the RSV CE (Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition), the RSV CE lists all the changes from the RSV (protestant edition) in Appendix 2. Aside from the obvious (the seven books that the protestants deleted from the Old Testament canon - discussed below) there are many short, but notable differences and these are all listed, verse by verse in the appendix. Most of these changes are due to the fact that the only edition that is considered authoritative by the Catholic Church, and thus free of errors is the Latin text of the Vulgate, currently the revised New Vulgate, and these changes, additions, and subtractions are all noted in the Appendix.

As for the Deuterocanonial books of the Old Testament (please note that there are Deuterocanonical books in the New Testament as well, Martin Luther removed these, but other protestant "reformers" put them back in, while they just moved the Deuterocanonicals of the Old Testament to an appendix - Luther had removed these as well; hundreds of years later, other protestants finally removed the Deuterocanonicals from the Old Testament but left the New Testament.) It was Protestantism that removed these "deuterocanonical" books from the Bible, many centuries later. And contrary to the myth, the early Church did indeed accept these books as Scripture.

The seven disputed books are: Tobit, Judith, 1 and 2 Maccabees, Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus (or Sirach), and Baruch. Catholic Bibles also include an additional six chapters (107 verses) in Esther and three chapters (174 verses) in Daniel.

According to major Protestant scholars and historians, in the first four centuries Church leaders (e.g. St. Justin Martyr, Tertullian, St. Augustine, St. Ambrose, St. Cyprian, St. Irenaeus) generally recognized these seven books as canonical and scriptural, following the Septuagint Greek translation of the Old Testament, following the Council of Rome (382), and general consensus, finalized the New Testament canon while also including the deutercanon, in lists that were identical to that of the Council of Trent (1545-1563).

There's a scholarly consensus that this canon was pretty much accepted from the fourth century to the sixteenth, and indeed, the earliest Greek manuscripts of the Old Testament: the Codes Sinaiticus (fourth century) and Codex Alexandrinus (c. 450) include the (unseparated) deuterocanonical books. The Dead Sea Scrolls found at Qumran did not contain Esther, but did contain Tobit.

According to Douglas and Geisler, Jamnia (first century Jewish council) was not an authoritative council, but simply a gathering of scholars, and similar events occurred afterward. In fact, at Jamnia the canonicity of books such as Ester, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Solomon was also disputed. Since both Protestants and Catholics accept these books today, this shows that Jamnia did not "settle" anything. The Jews were still arguing about the canonicity of the books mentioned earlier and also Proverbs into the early second century.

And St. Jerome's sometimes critical views on these books are not a clear-cut as Protestants often make them out to be. In his Apology Against Rufinus (402) for example, he wrote:

When I repeat what the Jews say against the story of Susanna and the the Hymn of the Three Children, and the fables of Bel and the Dragon, which are not contained in the Hebrew Bible, the man who makes this a charge against me proves himself to be a fool and a slanderer; for I explained not what I thought but what they commonly say against us (Apology Against Rufinus, book II, 33)

Significantly, St. Jerome included the deuterocanonical books in the Vulgate, his Latin translation of the Bible, (And he defended the inspiration of Judith in a preface to it.) All in all, there is no clear evidence that St. Jerome rejected these seven books, and much to suggest that he accepted them as inspired Scripture, as the Catholic Church does today. But St. Jerome (like any Church father) does not have the final authority in the Church. He's not infallible. The historical evidence, all things considered, strongly supports the Catholic belief that these books are inspired and thus indeed part of Holy Scripture

from The One-Minute Apologist by Dave Armstrong; Manchester, NH: Sophia Institute Press, 2007

Answer 8

The differences lie in the Old Testament.

Around 200 BC, a large amount of Hebrew scripture was translated into Koine Greek, largely for the benefit of Alexandrian Jews who did not have a good grasp of scriptural Hebrew. Both the Greek and Hebrew text of this collection of scripture was known as the Septuagint and was widely used by synagogues in Galilee where Jesus grew up.

Koine Greek was the language of the early Church. When the canon of scripture was being assembled into what we now know as the Bible, the whole of the Septuagint was included to form what we now call the Old Testament. This version of the Old Testament continues to be used by the Catholic, Orthodox and Armenian Communions who together make up over 85% of the worldwide followers of Jesus Christ.

The Pharisees who made up the Temple authorities during the lifetime of Jesus had a shorter version of scripture. Modern Judaism came about when Jewish scholars regrouped around 200AD and they adopted the Pharisaic version of scripture.

In the 16th century, the Protestant reformers, having rejected the authority of the Catholic Church looked to the Bible for authority. They felt it necessary to authenticate the Old Testament and adopted the shorter Pharisaic version used by Judaism. The reason given at the time were that the sections omitted did not exist in Hebrew although this is now known to be incorrect.

So the answer is that the Catholic Church uses the version of the Old Testament favoured by Jesus and the Protestant Churches use the shortened version favoured by the Pharisees.


The Catholic Bible uses the entire Bible of the Jews that was in common use throughout the world by Jews at the time of Jesus. This is know as the Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Scriptures made in the fourth century B.C. It includes what is known as the Deuterocanonicals, the "second canon": books that were received into the canon at a later time then the protocanonicals. The Deuterocanonical books of the Old Testament include Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, I and II Maccabees, parts of Esther and Daniel. The Deuterocanonicals of the New Testament include Hebrews, James, II Peter, II and III John, Revelation, and Mark 16:9-20. The Deuterocanonical books of the Old Testament cover the time period when the Temple was destroyed and the Jews were dispersed outside of Israel. It was a time that God was preparing the people for a religion not based on Temple sacrifice but on the sacrifice of fasting, prayer, and almsgiving. This is particularly evident in Tobit, chapters 4 and 12, I believe. These are the chapters that specifically cover these duties and are used almost verbatim by Our Blessed Lord in chapters 5-7 of St. Matthew's Gospel when Our Blessed Lord is delivering His Sermon on the Mount. The Jews of the first couple centuries eliminating these books as preaching specifically Christian doctrines, on the excuse that they were not written in Hebrew, an excuse we now know is not true. Martin Luther also eliminated them on the same grounds. But the other protestant "reformers" put the Deuterocanonicals from the New Testament back in the Bible, while continuing to ignore those from the Old Testament.

Answer 9

The Catholic Bible uses the entire Bible of the Jews that was in common use throughout the world by Jews at the time of Jesus. This is know as the Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Scriptures made in the fourth century B.C. It includes what is known as the Deuterocanonicals, the "second canon": books that were received into the canon at a later time then the protocanonicals. The Deuterocanonical books of the Old Testament include Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, I and II Maccabees, parts of Esther and Daniel. The Deuterocanonicals of the New Testament include Hebrews, James, II Peter, II and III John, Revelation, and Mark 16:9-20. The Deuterocanonical books of the Old Testament cover the time period when the Temple was destroyed and the Jews were dispersed outside of Israel. It was a time that God was preparing the people for a religion not based on Temple sacrifice but on the sacrifice of fasting, prayer, and almsgiving. This is particularly evident in Tobit, chapters 4 and 12, I believe. These are the chapters that specifically cover these duties and are used almost verbatim by Our Blessed Lord in chapters 5-7 of St. Matthew's Gospel when Our Blessed Lord is delivering His Sermon on the Mount. The Jews of the first couple centuries eliminating these books as preaching specifically Christian doctrines, on the excuse that they were not written in Hebrew, an excuse we now know is not true. Martin Luther also eliminated them on the same grounds. But the other protestant "reformers" put the Deuterocanonicals from the New Testament back in the Bible, while continuing to ignore those from the Old Testament.

Answer 10

The main differences between the Catholic Bible and Protestant Bibles are in the Old Testament.

By the early years of Christianity, the Jews still had no determined exactly which books would be included in their own Bible. By the time of the Council of Jamnia, which is believed to have made these decisions, the Christian Church was no longer communicating with its Jewish counterparts, and therefore was not aware of exactly what the Jewish Bible would contain. It included all those books that the Church thought ought to be included some of which in fact had not been included in the Hebrew Bible. The Catholic Bible now contains these additional 'deuterocanonical' or 'apocryphal' books, but the Protestant Churches follow the Hebrew Bible on this matter.

The Catholic Bible also contains some additional text now known not to have been included in the original text of certain Old Testament books. For example, the Book of Esther should contain no references to God. When Saint Jerome was translating the Greek Septuagint version of Esther, he found prayers and other references to God, which he realised were not part of the original Hebrew book. Rather than discard them, he placed them as an appendix in the Vulgate Book of Esther. Subsequent Catholic translations of Esther have returned them to their earlier positions in the book, while accepting that, although inspired, they are only interpolations.