Some Bibles have more books than others. The word-by-word pages in this program have 66 books. A Catholic Bible has 73. Orthodox and Ethiopian Bibles have more. This page shows which books those are, what is in them, and why churches disagree about them.
Pick a part below.
The books of the Hebrew Bible. Jewish lists count the same books as 24 or 22, by joining some together. The KJV and the ASV follow this list. None of the books on this page is in it.
The 39, plus Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, and 1 and 2 Maccabees. It also has longer forms of Esther and Daniel. The Catholic Church calls these books deuterocanonical.
Everything in the Catholic Old Testament, plus 1 Esdras, the Prayer of Manasseh, Psalm 151, and 3 Maccabees. Greek Bibles add 4 Maccabees in an appendix. Slavonic Bibles add 2 Esdras.
The church lists 46 Old Testament and 35 New Testament books. Its Old Testament includes 1 Enoch and Jubilees. Ways of counting to 81 differ between lists.
These are the books and additions the Catholic Church counts as Scripture. Orthodox churches count them too. The 1611 KJV printed them in its Apocrypha section.
Read them in: King James Version (with Apocrypha), and the Catholic Douay-Rheims. The Douay prints the additions to Esther and Daniel inside those books.A story about one Israelite family in exile. Tobit lives in Nineveh. He is known for burying the dead of his people. He loses his sight.
His son Tobias makes a long journey. A traveling companion goes with him. Near the end, the companion says he is the angel Raphael. Tobias marries Sarah, whose seven earlier husbands died on their wedding night. Tobit is healed.
Nebuchadnezzar’s general Holofernes lays siege to the Israelite town of Bethulia. The town is about to give up.
Judith, a widow, goes into the enemy camp. She wins Holofernes’ trust. She cuts off his head while he lies drunk. His army flees.
The Greek Esther is longer than the Hebrew. It adds a dream of Mordecai, prayers of Mordecai and Esther, and the text of the king’s letters.
The KJV printed these as Esther 10:4 to 16:24. Catholic Bibles place them inside the book of Esther.
A book that speaks in the voice of King Solomon. It praises wisdom. It contrasts the end of the righteous with the end of the wicked. It looks back on the Exodus from Egypt.
Jerome called it a falsely ascribed work: a book given Solomon’s name that Solomon did not write.
A long book of wise sayings by Jesus son of Sirach. Its teaching is on daily life: work, money, friends, family, speech and the fear of God. It ends with praise of famous men of Israel.
Jerome said he had seen it in Hebrew. Hebrew pieces of it were also found among the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Baruch was Jeremiah’s scribe. The book is set among the exiles in Babylon. It has a prayer of confession, a poem in praise of wisdom, and words of comfort to Jerusalem.
The Letter of Jeremiah warns the exiles not to worship idols. In Catholic Bibles it is chapter 6 of Baruch. The KJV printed it as the last chapter of Baruch.
A prayer and a song added to Daniel chapter 3. They are said by the three young men in the furnace. Catholic Bibles place them inside Daniel 3.
Two elders accuse a married woman, Susanna, of adultery after she refuses them. She is condemned to die. The young Daniel questions the two men apart. Their stories do not match, and she is freed.
Two short stories. Daniel shows that the priests of the idol Bel are eating the food left for it. Then he kills a dragon the Babylonians worship. He is thrown to the lions again and is kept safe.
A history of the Jewish revolt against the Greek king Antiochus IV Epiphanes. The king outlaws the Law and defiles the Temple.
The priest Mattathias and his sons fight back. His son Judas, called Maccabeus, retakes Jerusalem and cleanses the Temple. The book follows his brothers Jonathan and Simon after him.
A second account of the same years, told in a different way. It says it shortens a longer work in five books by Jason of Cyrene.
It tells of the old scribe Eleazar and of a mother and her seven sons, killed for keeping the Law. In chapter 12, Judas has an offering made for fallen soldiers. The Catholic Catechism quotes 12:46 when it teaches prayer for the dead.
The Council of Trent did not list these books. Some Latin Vulgate Bibles print them in an appendix after the New Testament. Orthodox churches keep some of them.
Read them in: King James Version (with Apocrypha).A Greek retelling of the end of 2 Chronicles, the book of Ezra, and part of Nehemiah.
It adds a contest between three young guards of King Darius. Each says what is strongest: wine, the king, or women. The third, Zerubbabel, ends by saying that truth is strongest of all. He wins, and asks the king to let the Temple be rebuilt.
Greek and Slavonic Orthodox Bibles include it.
A short prayer of repentance in the voice of King Manasseh of Judah. 2 Chronicles 33 says that he prayed in captivity and that God heard him. This is a prayer written for that moment.
Greek and Slavonic Orthodox Bibles include it.
A book of visions given to Ezra after the fall of Jerusalem. Ezra asks why God let Israel suffer. The angel Uriel answers him. The visions speak of the end of the age and the coming judgment.
Slavonic Bibles include it. Greek Bibles do not.
These are in many copies of the Greek Old Testament. Neither the KJV nor the Catholic list includes them.
Not in Open Scroll yet.Despite its name, this book is not about the Maccabees. It is set earlier, in Egypt, under King Ptolemy IV Philopator.
The king is kept out of the Temple in Jerusalem and turns his anger on the Jews of Egypt. He has them brought in chains to the race-course in Alexandria. He orders 500 elephants, maddened with wine and incense, let loose on them. God delivers them, and the elephants turn on the king’s own army.
A short psalm in David’s voice. He says he was the least of his brothers, that God chose him to be anointed, and that he killed Goliath.
Its Greek title says it is outside the number: an extra psalm after the 150. A longer Hebrew form was found in the Psalms Scroll from Qumran Cave 11.
Not a history but a speech. It sets out to prove that reason devoted to God can rule over the passions, such as fear and pain.
Its proof is the story of the old scribe Eleazar, the seven brothers and their mother, told much more fully than in 2 Maccabees. Greek Bibles place it in an appendix. Russian Bibles leave it out.
These two books are in the Old Testament of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. No other church counts them as Scripture. Both were known only in Ethiopic in full until modern times. Hebrew and Aramaic pieces of both were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Not in Open Scroll yet.A book given in the name of Enoch, the man in Genesis 5 who walked with God. It is in five parts.
The Watchers (chapters 1 to 36): angels come down and take human wives, and their children are giants. The Parables (37 to 71): visions of judgment and of a Son of Man. The Astronomical Book (72 to 82): the courses of the sun, moon and stars. The Dream Visions (83 to 90): the Flood, and the history of Israel told with animals. The Epistle of Enoch (91 to 108): warnings to the wicked and comfort to the righteous.
The letter of Jude, verses 14 and 15, gives a prophecy of Enoch. The same words are in 1 Enoch 1:9.
A retelling of Genesis and the first part of Exodus. It says an angel of the presence gave it to Moses on Mount Sinai.
It dates every event in jubilees, periods of 49 years. It shows the patriarchs keeping laws given later at Sinai. It argues for a calendar of 364 days, in place of a moon calendar.
The Jewish historian Josephus wrote that his people had only twenty-two books that were believed to be divine. He said the history written after the time of King Artaxerxes was not held in the same honor.
“because there hath not been an exact succession of prophets since that time”Josephus, Against Apion 1.8, Whiston translationJerome translated the Bible into Latin. He wrote that the Church reads Judith, Tobit and the books of Maccabees but does not count them among the canonical Scriptures. He said the same of Wisdom and Sirach.
“for the edification of the people, not to give authority to doctrines of the Church”Jerome, Preface to the Books of SolomonLuther’s full German Bible took these books out of their places in the Old Testament. It printed them together, after the Old Testament, under this heading.
“These books are not held to be equal to Holy Scripture, but they are useful and good to read.”Luther Bible, Wittenberg, 1534, title page of the ApocryphaArticle VI of the Thirty-Nine Articles lists the Old Testament books of the Hebrew Bible as canonical. It then lists the other books and quotes Jerome.
“the Church doth read for example of life and instruction of manners; but yet doth it not apply them to establish any doctrine”Thirty-Nine Articles, Article VIThe KJV was made for the Church of England, which held Article VI. It printed 14 of these books between the Old and New Testaments, in a section headed Apocrypha.
The Westminster Confession of Faith became the standard of Presbyterian churches. Its first chapter lists the 39 Old Testament books as Scripture. It then says this about the rest.
“The books commonly called Apocrypha, not being of divine inspiration, are no part of the canon of the Scripture”Westminster Confession of Faith, chapter 1, section 3The ASV, the Bible on the word-by-word pages, has the 39 Old Testament books and the 27 New Testament books. It has no Apocrypha section.
A church council at Carthage ruled that only canonical Scripture be read in church under the name of divine Scripture. Its list names Tobit, Judith and two books of Maccabees. It also names five books of Solomon. B. F. Westcott explained that this takes in Wisdom and Sirach. The council said it received this list from the fathers.
Trent met during the Reformation. It listed the books it received. The Old Testament list includes Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, and the first and second books of Maccabees. It required the books to be received whole, with all their parts, as they stand in the Latin Vulgate.
“But if any one receive not, as sacred and canonical, the said books entire with all their parts … let him be anathema.”Council of Trent, Fourth Session, 8 April 1546The Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 120, says the Church discerned the list by the apostolic Tradition. It gives 46 Old Testament books and 27 New Testament books.
The disagreement touches teaching, not only lists. Paragraph 1032 grounds prayer for the dead in part on 2 Maccabees.
“Therefore [Judas Maccabeus] made atonement for the dead, that they might be delivered from their sin.”Catechism of the Catholic Church 1032, quoting 2 Maccabees 12:46A church’s list of the books it counts as Scripture. Canonical means “on the list.”
The Protestant name for the extra books. Luther and the 1611 KJV used it as the heading of their separate section.
The Catholic name for the same books it keeps. Deutero means second.
Books given the name of a famous figure of the past who did not write them. VanderKam and other scholars put 1 Enoch and Jubilees in this group.
The old Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, made by Jews. It carries most of the books on this page.
Jerome’s Latin Bible. Trent named it the authentic Latin text. Its appendix holds 1 and 2 Esdras and the Prayer of Manasseh.