Why did Catholics add books to the Bible?

They didn’t.

How do we know the Bible is the inspired word of God?

“I warn everyone who hears the prophetic words in this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book, and if anyone takes away from the words in this prophetic book, God will take away his share in the tree of life and in the holy city described in this book.” –Revelation 22:18-19

If anyone adds to the Bible, doom, and if anyone takes away from the Bible, gloom. Sorry to start with a doom-and-gloom verse, but this is perhaps one of the most well-known verses about the Bible because of the two kinds of Bibles floating around. Either somebody added to the Bible (Catholics), or somebody took away from it (Protestants). Which was it?

To know that, we have to know what books were first included in the Bible (before anyone added/took away) and where the Bible came from in the first place. But how can we know what’s to be included in the Bible as the word of God when God didn’t give us a list?

“All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for refutation, for correction, and for training in righteousness…” -2 Timothy 3:16

Okay, so Paul says in the Bible, in his second letter to Timothy, that all scripture is inspired by God. That’s awesome. But what counts as scripture? At the time of this letter, the only official scripture was the Old Testament. Yes, scripture is indeed inspired by God, and so this statement refers to the New Testament as well in this day and age, but you need a second witness. If I write a book and in that book, I claim that it was inspired by God, no one would believe me without someone else (probably more than one someone else) attesting to that fact as well.

Even Jesus needed more than one witness. In John 8:13-20, the Pharisees demand another person to verify his testimony, because according to the law the testimony of two men can be verified. And Jesus provides this second witness in the form of His Father.

So who is this second witness to the authenticity of the Bible? The Catholic Church!

How was the Bible created?

The Bible is composed of two parts which were created at two different times. The Old Testament originated as the scripture of the Jews, and the New Testament is a compilation of some of the writings of the early Christians. The final form of the New Testament, as we know it today, was set in stone by the Council of Laodicea in 363 A.D. It is important to note, however, that no church created the Bible. God knew which books He wanted included, and He made that known to those present at the Council of Laodicea and the subsequent councils that confirmed it.

Until the invention of the printing press in 1440, the Bible was only preserved through the painstaking copying by monks. Without the Catholic Church, we wouldn’t even have a Bible, let alone know which books should go in it.

What’s the difference between Catholic and Protestant Bibles?

The difference actually does not concern the New Testament like most would imagine. There are seven books in the Old Testament that Catholics argue should be there and Protestants argue should not be. They are referred to by Protestants as the Apocrypha and by Catholics as the Deuterocanonical books.

During Jesus’ time, those seven books were included in the Old Testament, in a translation called the Septuagint. This was the accepted Greek Bible for the Jews for 100 years before Jesus was even born. New Testament writers reference these books two dozen times, and there were many messianic prophecies included in them.

In 90 A.D. the Jewish leaders revised their canon to remove any books not written in Hebrew or did not clearly have Hebrew origins – the seven books of the Apocrypha. This revision is known as the Palestine Canon. By excluding those books and the messianic prophecies contained in them, the Jews could deny that Jesus was the Messiah. But the Christians continued using those books since they had been used since the first century.

The reformers later removed these books for the same reason the Jewish leaders in 90 A.D. did – they did not like some of the teachings included in them. The Apocrypha not only includes messianic prophecies, but also references to salvation, praying for the dead, and purgatory. They used the Palestine Canon even though it wasn’t Christian.

Do Catholics even read the Bible?

Yes, as a matter of fact, they do. They read from the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the Gospels at every Mass, and the entire Mass itself is based on Scripture. Catholics are encouraged to read and study the Bible every day.

Many people point their fingers to the Middle Ages, when the Catholic Church burned Bibles and kept them chained up away from the people, and claim this is because the Church does not want the faithful to read it. This is not true.

When the Church burned Bibles, it was because they were incredibly poor translations, and the Church did not want Christians to miscomprehend something because of it. They did provide replacement Bibles, though.

As to keeping the Bible locked away, that was a group of bishops in medieval France, not the Church as a whole. At the time there were heretics misusing Scripture to deny the humanity of Jesus and promote promiscuity, homosexuality, bestiality, and suicide, among other things. These bishops prohibited the reading of the Bible to stifle these heretics. In hindsight, that was probably not the best way to deal with it, but not much to be done about it now. Obviously all are welcome to read the Bible now.

Who’s right?

Well, I’m going to go with the Catholics. However, I’m obviously a little biased, so I’ve called on my second witness – history.

God bless,

Jill