March 31st, 2026
by Hannah Sarver
by Hannah Sarver
11 “And now, O Lord God of Israel, who brought your people out of the land of Egypt with a mighty hand and with signs and wonders and with great power and outstretched arm and made yourself a name that continues to this day, 12 we have sinned, we have been ungodly, we have done wrong, O Lord our God, against all your ordinances. 13 Let your anger turn away from us, for we are left few in number among the nations where you have scattered us.”
Sounds like the Bible, right? Yet if you try to find this passage in most Protestant Bibles, you won’t. This passage is an excerpt from Baruch 2, a book included in the Catholic canon but excluded from ours.
Many Protestants have been surprised to learn that Catholic Bibles have seven more books than Protestant Bibles. How did it end up this way? And which canon of Scripture has the correct number of books? To answer these questions, we first need to consider some history behind the Old Testament.
Historical Overview
The Christian Old Testament comes from the Hebrew Bible. Though their contents are the same, their books are arranged in a different order. The Hebrew Bible was subdivided into three collections: the Torah (Law), Nevi'im (Prophets), and Ketuvim (Writings). In contrast, the Old Testament follows the book arrangement used in the Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible.
During the intertestamental period, the 400-year period between the Old and New Testaments, there was a need to translate the Hebrew Bible into Greek, the common language of the time. It is important to note that the process of translating the Hebrew Bible into Greek was not instantaneous; the books were not translated all at once but were translated over a period of time when there was a flurry of literary activity.1 These translations are collectively referred to as the Septuagint.
During this period, many Jewish writings began to emerge and circulate. These writings were highly valued among the Jewish community and offer insight into Jewish culture and history to readers today.
Of these writings, there are works that Catholics include in their canon of Scripture and Protestants exclude. These works, known to Catholics as the Deuterocanon (second canon) and by Protestants as the Apocrypha, include Tobit, Judith, 1 & 2 Maccabees, Wisdom (of Solomon), Sirach (Ecclesiasticus), and Baruch, along with additions to Esther and Daniel. There are some other works beyond these which Eastern Orthodox Christians include in their canon. Additionally, there are other valuable writings that emerged, such as the Book of Jubilees, Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, and Psalms of Solomon, which would have been revered but not considered Scripture by any tradition.
By the fourth and fifth centuries, some Christians such as the early church father Augustine understood the Apocryphal writings to be sacred, equal to the Hebrew Scriptures. Others, like Jerome, disagreed, believing that Christians should stick with the books in the Hebrew Bible.
Around this time the codex (the earliest form of book) was gaining prominence. The earliest codified Greek Bibles we have are from the fourth and fifth centuries: Codex Vaticanus, Codex Sinaiticus, and Codex Alexandrinus. What’s interesting is that these codices contain the Apocryphal books side-by-side with Scripture without distinction (though these codices are inconsistent in which Apocryphal books are included).2
Even more interesting, in Jerome’s translation of the Bible into Latin around 400 AD, he prefaced the Apocryphal books with an inscription stating they should not be read as Scripture but that they are useful for the edification of the church. Having extensively studied Hebrew, Jerome was convinced that Christians should only view as authoritative the books in the Hebrew canon. Ironically, Jerome’s Latin Vulgate would eventually lose these inscriptions and become the translation of the Bible endorsed by the Catholic Church at the Council of Trent—Apocryphal books included.
At this Council in 1546, the Catholic Church formally recognized the Apocryphal books in the Vulgate as canonical, with a warning that to reject them would mean anathema, or excommunication.
Martin Luther disagreed, placing the Apocryphal books in their own section between the Old and New Testaments. Like Jerome, Luther believed Christians should recover the Hebrew canon. Protestants throughout history have followed Luther’s lead, and eventually the Apocrypha has been removed from the Bible altogether. Naturally, the question that follows is, “Was Luther right to do this?”
Should Christians view the Apocrypha as Scripture?
To answer this question, it is vital that we understand how Jesus and his apostles used their Bible.
By Jesus’ day, the common languages were Greek and Aramaic, and out of necessity, many Christians used the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. It appears that Jesus and his apostles often used the Septuagint from verses such as Luke 4:18-19, in which Jesus reads Isaiah 61:1-2 from a scroll using the Greek translation of the text.3
Now, the question arises: If Jesus and his apostles quoted from the Septuagint, did they consider the Apocryphal books authoritative?
Catholics argue yes, Jesus and his apostles quoted from the Septuagint, which contains the Deuterocanonical books in its corpus. There are even places in the New Testament that seem to be referencing or alluding to the Deuterocanonical books.
Conversely, Protestants contend that while Jesus and his apostles used the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, it does not inherently mean that they understood the Apocryphal books to have the same authority as the Hebrew Scriptures.
Before moving forward, it is important to keep in mind that in Jesus’ time, books of the Bible were written on scrolls. Remember, they did not have a complete book with a table of contents like the 4th century Codex Vaticanus. It is reasonable to argue that Jesus could read the Greek rendering of the Hebrew texts without endorsing the Apocryphal books as Scripture. Even if a synagogue Jesus was teaching at had a scroll of 2 Maccabees, it does not inherently mean that Jesus or the other rabbis considered it Scripture.
That said, here are three reasons why Protestants do not consider the Apocryphal books Scripture:
Reason 1: When Jesus talked about “the whole Bible”, he used the Hebrew canon.
As mentioned above, Jesus and his apostles quoted from the Septuagint as Scripture. The primary spoken language was Greek, and Jesus quoted from the Greek Bible so that his hearers would understand. However, when Jesus referred to the whole corpus, or complete body of Scripture, he would describe it in terms of the Hebrew canon.
Why is this important? If when Jesus describes the collection of Scriptures from beginning to end, he uses the Hebrew Bible, this necessarily excludes the Apocrypha from the canon of Scripture. Here are two examples in which this occurs:
1. Luke 24:44 - Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.”
Note how Jesus follows the tripartite structure of the Hebrew canon, not the arrangement of the Septuagint. When Jesus explains how the whole Bible is about him, he is referring to the books in the Hebrew Bible.
2. Luke 11:49-51 - “49 Therefore also the Wisdom of God said, ‘I will send them prophets and apostles, some of whom they will kill and persecute,’ 50 so that the blood of all the prophets, shed from the foundation of the world, may be charged against this generation, 51 from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who perished between the altar and the sanctuary.”
Here, John Piper makes a compelling argument in favour of Jesus’ use of the Hebrew canon.4 In this passage, Jesus is referring to all the Old Testament prophets. He lists Abel, who is martyred in Genesis 4. Then, Jesus mentions Zechariah, who is killed in 2 Chronicles.
However, Zechariah is not the last prophet to be killed chronologically in the Bible. Chronologically speaking, Uriah is killed after Zechariah (Jer. 26:22–23). Did Jesus make a mistake here? No, the reason Jesus cites Zechariah as the last martyred prophet is that he’s working from the Hebrew canon, which ends with 2 Chronicles.
So, even if Jesus and his apostles quoted from the Greek translation, it still seems that Jesus viewed the material in the Hebrew Bible to be the entirety of the Scriptures.
Reason 2: The Jews in Jesus’ day assumed the canon of the Hebrew Bible.
Josephus, a non-Christian Jewish historian writing around 90 AD affirms that Jews limited their Scriptures to the books in the Hebrew Bible: “For we have not an innumerable multitude of books among us, disagreeing from and contradicting one another, [as the Greeks have,] but only twenty-two books [emphasis added].”5 These twenty-two books account for the books in our Old Testament by combining Judges and Ruth, 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, 1 and 2 Chronicles, Jeremiah and Lamentations, Ezra and Nehemiah, and the Twelve Minor Prophets. But no Apocrypha.
It doesn’t seem that Jesus was in disagreement with the Jews about the contents of their Bibles.6 In fact, in many of Jesus’ debates with the Jewish religious leaders, there was never a question of who had the correct Bible. If Jesus was diverging from the Jewish tradition by accepting the Apocryphal books as canon, there is no record of it in the New Testament.
Reason 3: The New Testament never quotes the Apocrypha as Scripture.
Consider how of the many, many references to the Old Testament in the New Testament, the Apocryphal books are never quoted as Scripture with phrases such as, “It is written in Scripture” or “The Scripture says…” Though there may be some allusions to these works in the New Testament, it is apparent that they do not carry the same weight as do the Hebrew Scriptures because they are not referred to as Scripture.
One seeming exception is a quotation of a prophecy in Jude 14-15 from 1 Enoch 1:9. However, Catholics also do not include 1 Enoch in their canon, and it is possible to quote this prophecy without endorsing the rest of the book as Scripture, in the same way Paul quoted from Greek poets without considering them Scripture (Acts 17:28).
There is no clear instance of the Apocryphal works being quoted as Scripture. Though it is true that there are a few Old Testament books not referenced in the New Testament, most of them are, and the Apocryphal books are not among them.
Implications
Ensuring you’re using the right canon of Scripture is a weighty matter.
Merrill puts it well: “It then becomes an issue of virtual life-and-death dimensions; for to add to the completed revelation is to impose human judgment and opinion on the reader, and to eliminate portions from the revelation is to deny to the reader a Word from God.”7
Protestants have good reason to believe that the Apocryphal books are not Scripture. Yet, as Jerome argued, these books can be edifying to the church when rightly handled.
Let’s recover a healthy appreciation for these works. But let us not add to Scripture beyond the completed revelation.
Sounds like the Bible, right? Yet if you try to find this passage in most Protestant Bibles, you won’t. This passage is an excerpt from Baruch 2, a book included in the Catholic canon but excluded from ours.
Many Protestants have been surprised to learn that Catholic Bibles have seven more books than Protestant Bibles. How did it end up this way? And which canon of Scripture has the correct number of books? To answer these questions, we first need to consider some history behind the Old Testament.
Historical Overview
The Christian Old Testament comes from the Hebrew Bible. Though their contents are the same, their books are arranged in a different order. The Hebrew Bible was subdivided into three collections: the Torah (Law), Nevi'im (Prophets), and Ketuvim (Writings). In contrast, the Old Testament follows the book arrangement used in the Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible.
During the intertestamental period, the 400-year period between the Old and New Testaments, there was a need to translate the Hebrew Bible into Greek, the common language of the time. It is important to note that the process of translating the Hebrew Bible into Greek was not instantaneous; the books were not translated all at once but were translated over a period of time when there was a flurry of literary activity.1 These translations are collectively referred to as the Septuagint.
During this period, many Jewish writings began to emerge and circulate. These writings were highly valued among the Jewish community and offer insight into Jewish culture and history to readers today.
Of these writings, there are works that Catholics include in their canon of Scripture and Protestants exclude. These works, known to Catholics as the Deuterocanon (second canon) and by Protestants as the Apocrypha, include Tobit, Judith, 1 & 2 Maccabees, Wisdom (of Solomon), Sirach (Ecclesiasticus), and Baruch, along with additions to Esther and Daniel. There are some other works beyond these which Eastern Orthodox Christians include in their canon. Additionally, there are other valuable writings that emerged, such as the Book of Jubilees, Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, and Psalms of Solomon, which would have been revered but not considered Scripture by any tradition.
By the fourth and fifth centuries, some Christians such as the early church father Augustine understood the Apocryphal writings to be sacred, equal to the Hebrew Scriptures. Others, like Jerome, disagreed, believing that Christians should stick with the books in the Hebrew Bible.
Around this time the codex (the earliest form of book) was gaining prominence. The earliest codified Greek Bibles we have are from the fourth and fifth centuries: Codex Vaticanus, Codex Sinaiticus, and Codex Alexandrinus. What’s interesting is that these codices contain the Apocryphal books side-by-side with Scripture without distinction (though these codices are inconsistent in which Apocryphal books are included).2
Even more interesting, in Jerome’s translation of the Bible into Latin around 400 AD, he prefaced the Apocryphal books with an inscription stating they should not be read as Scripture but that they are useful for the edification of the church. Having extensively studied Hebrew, Jerome was convinced that Christians should only view as authoritative the books in the Hebrew canon. Ironically, Jerome’s Latin Vulgate would eventually lose these inscriptions and become the translation of the Bible endorsed by the Catholic Church at the Council of Trent—Apocryphal books included.
At this Council in 1546, the Catholic Church formally recognized the Apocryphal books in the Vulgate as canonical, with a warning that to reject them would mean anathema, or excommunication.
Martin Luther disagreed, placing the Apocryphal books in their own section between the Old and New Testaments. Like Jerome, Luther believed Christians should recover the Hebrew canon. Protestants throughout history have followed Luther’s lead, and eventually the Apocrypha has been removed from the Bible altogether. Naturally, the question that follows is, “Was Luther right to do this?”
Should Christians view the Apocrypha as Scripture?
To answer this question, it is vital that we understand how Jesus and his apostles used their Bible.
By Jesus’ day, the common languages were Greek and Aramaic, and out of necessity, many Christians used the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. It appears that Jesus and his apostles often used the Septuagint from verses such as Luke 4:18-19, in which Jesus reads Isaiah 61:1-2 from a scroll using the Greek translation of the text.3
Now, the question arises: If Jesus and his apostles quoted from the Septuagint, did they consider the Apocryphal books authoritative?
Catholics argue yes, Jesus and his apostles quoted from the Septuagint, which contains the Deuterocanonical books in its corpus. There are even places in the New Testament that seem to be referencing or alluding to the Deuterocanonical books.
Conversely, Protestants contend that while Jesus and his apostles used the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, it does not inherently mean that they understood the Apocryphal books to have the same authority as the Hebrew Scriptures.
Before moving forward, it is important to keep in mind that in Jesus’ time, books of the Bible were written on scrolls. Remember, they did not have a complete book with a table of contents like the 4th century Codex Vaticanus. It is reasonable to argue that Jesus could read the Greek rendering of the Hebrew texts without endorsing the Apocryphal books as Scripture. Even if a synagogue Jesus was teaching at had a scroll of 2 Maccabees, it does not inherently mean that Jesus or the other rabbis considered it Scripture.
That said, here are three reasons why Protestants do not consider the Apocryphal books Scripture:
Reason 1: When Jesus talked about “the whole Bible”, he used the Hebrew canon.
As mentioned above, Jesus and his apostles quoted from the Septuagint as Scripture. The primary spoken language was Greek, and Jesus quoted from the Greek Bible so that his hearers would understand. However, when Jesus referred to the whole corpus, or complete body of Scripture, he would describe it in terms of the Hebrew canon.
Why is this important? If when Jesus describes the collection of Scriptures from beginning to end, he uses the Hebrew Bible, this necessarily excludes the Apocrypha from the canon of Scripture. Here are two examples in which this occurs:
1. Luke 24:44 - Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.”
Note how Jesus follows the tripartite structure of the Hebrew canon, not the arrangement of the Septuagint. When Jesus explains how the whole Bible is about him, he is referring to the books in the Hebrew Bible.
2. Luke 11:49-51 - “49 Therefore also the Wisdom of God said, ‘I will send them prophets and apostles, some of whom they will kill and persecute,’ 50 so that the blood of all the prophets, shed from the foundation of the world, may be charged against this generation, 51 from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who perished between the altar and the sanctuary.”
Here, John Piper makes a compelling argument in favour of Jesus’ use of the Hebrew canon.4 In this passage, Jesus is referring to all the Old Testament prophets. He lists Abel, who is martyred in Genesis 4. Then, Jesus mentions Zechariah, who is killed in 2 Chronicles.
However, Zechariah is not the last prophet to be killed chronologically in the Bible. Chronologically speaking, Uriah is killed after Zechariah (Jer. 26:22–23). Did Jesus make a mistake here? No, the reason Jesus cites Zechariah as the last martyred prophet is that he’s working from the Hebrew canon, which ends with 2 Chronicles.
So, even if Jesus and his apostles quoted from the Greek translation, it still seems that Jesus viewed the material in the Hebrew Bible to be the entirety of the Scriptures.
Reason 2: The Jews in Jesus’ day assumed the canon of the Hebrew Bible.
Josephus, a non-Christian Jewish historian writing around 90 AD affirms that Jews limited their Scriptures to the books in the Hebrew Bible: “For we have not an innumerable multitude of books among us, disagreeing from and contradicting one another, [as the Greeks have,] but only twenty-two books [emphasis added].”5 These twenty-two books account for the books in our Old Testament by combining Judges and Ruth, 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, 1 and 2 Chronicles, Jeremiah and Lamentations, Ezra and Nehemiah, and the Twelve Minor Prophets. But no Apocrypha.
It doesn’t seem that Jesus was in disagreement with the Jews about the contents of their Bibles.6 In fact, in many of Jesus’ debates with the Jewish religious leaders, there was never a question of who had the correct Bible. If Jesus was diverging from the Jewish tradition by accepting the Apocryphal books as canon, there is no record of it in the New Testament.
Reason 3: The New Testament never quotes the Apocrypha as Scripture.
Consider how of the many, many references to the Old Testament in the New Testament, the Apocryphal books are never quoted as Scripture with phrases such as, “It is written in Scripture” or “The Scripture says…” Though there may be some allusions to these works in the New Testament, it is apparent that they do not carry the same weight as do the Hebrew Scriptures because they are not referred to as Scripture.
One seeming exception is a quotation of a prophecy in Jude 14-15 from 1 Enoch 1:9. However, Catholics also do not include 1 Enoch in their canon, and it is possible to quote this prophecy without endorsing the rest of the book as Scripture, in the same way Paul quoted from Greek poets without considering them Scripture (Acts 17:28).
There is no clear instance of the Apocryphal works being quoted as Scripture. Though it is true that there are a few Old Testament books not referenced in the New Testament, most of them are, and the Apocryphal books are not among them.
Implications
Ensuring you’re using the right canon of Scripture is a weighty matter.
Merrill puts it well: “It then becomes an issue of virtual life-and-death dimensions; for to add to the completed revelation is to impose human judgment and opinion on the reader, and to eliminate portions from the revelation is to deny to the reader a Word from God.”7
Protestants have good reason to believe that the Apocryphal books are not Scripture. Yet, as Jerome argued, these books can be edifying to the church when rightly handled.
Let’s recover a healthy appreciation for these works. But let us not add to Scripture beyond the completed revelation.
1Greg Lanier, "Septuagint: Why the Greek Old Testament Still Matters," Desiring God, October 27, 2021, accessed
February 13, 2026, https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/septuagint
2BibleProject Scholarship Team, "Why the Deuterocanon / Apocrypha Is in Some Bibles and Not Others,"
BibleProject, June 2, 2025, accessed February 13, 2026,
https://bibleproject.com/articles/why-deuterocanon-apocrypha-some-bibles-and-not-others/
3Greg Lanier, “Septuagint: Why the Greek Old Testament Still Matters,” Desiring God, October 27, 2021, accessed February 13, 2026, https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/septuagint.
4John Piper, "Why We Believe the Bible, Session 2: The Inspiration, Inerrancy, and Authority of the Bible"
(sermon, Desiring God, February 15, 2008), video/audio, accessed February 13, 2026,
https://www.desiringgod.org/messages/why-we-believe-the-bible-ses sion-2
5Flavius Josephus, Against Apion, trans. William Whiston, in The Works of Flavius Josephus, vol. 3 (Peabody, MA:
Hendrickson, 1987, repr. of 1737 ed.), accessed February 13, 2026, Project Gutenberg,
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2849/2849-h/2849-h.htm
6Piper, Why We Believe the Bible, Session 2.
7Eugene H. Merrill, Mark F. Rooker, and Michael A. Grisanti, The World and the Word: An Introduction to the Old
Testament (B&H Academic, 2011), 107.
February 13, 2026, https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/septuagint
2BibleProject Scholarship Team, "Why the Deuterocanon / Apocrypha Is in Some Bibles and Not Others,"
BibleProject, June 2, 2025, accessed February 13, 2026,
https://bibleproject.com/articles/why-deuterocanon-apocrypha-some-bibles-and-not-others/
3Greg Lanier, “Septuagint: Why the Greek Old Testament Still Matters,” Desiring God, October 27, 2021, accessed February 13, 2026, https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/septuagint.
4John Piper, "Why We Believe the Bible, Session 2: The Inspiration, Inerrancy, and Authority of the Bible"
(sermon, Desiring God, February 15, 2008), video/audio, accessed February 13, 2026,
https://www.desiringgod.org/messages/why-we-believe-the-bible-ses sion-2
5Flavius Josephus, Against Apion, trans. William Whiston, in The Works of Flavius Josephus, vol. 3 (Peabody, MA:
Hendrickson, 1987, repr. of 1737 ed.), accessed February 13, 2026, Project Gutenberg,
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2849/2849-h/2849-h.htm
6Piper, Why We Believe the Bible, Session 2.
7Eugene H. Merrill, Mark F. Rooker, and Michael A. Grisanti, The World and the Word: An Introduction to the Old
Testament (B&H Academic, 2011), 107.
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