Canon Bible – Protestant-Catholic – 66 or 73 books?

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One of the ongoing disputes between the Protestant and Roman Catholic churches is the number of books included in the biblical canon. One only has to take a closer look at these “special writings” to realize that their removal from the canon was not only justified, but long overdue.

Protestants have “censored” the Bible

The so-called Protestant Bibles differ from Catholic Bibles primarily in the number of books they contain. The difference is 7 books and is already apparent at first glance. 66 books in Protestant books and 73 books in the Roman Catholic version. A closer look even shows some serious differences in the written or translated text passages.

It is alarming that the Church of Rome has also approved the new Bible translations used by Protestant communities. These Bibles, based on the original texts revised by Nestle and Aland, clearly meet the “standards” of the ongoing ecumenism. (Info).

The dispute over the “missing” 7 books has been going on for many years. However, the argument is usually turned around and it is claimed that the (first) Protestants threw out or censored these books without justification. In fact, the Church of Rome reformulated the canon of the Bible at the Council of Trent. If you look at the additional 7 books a little more closely, then these writings were quite rightly thrown out.

The additional books contained in the Catholic Bibles are Tobit, Judith, 1 Maccabees, 2 Maccabees, the Book of Wisdom (Wisdom of Solomon), Sirach and Baruch. The Book of Daniel contains two more chapters than the “normal” Bibles and also an “extended” Book of Esther.

The Arch-Catholic Bible of Douay-Rheims has another special feature. This Bible was “developed” in the second half of the 16th century as a direct response to the Reformation. This edition contains two additional writings, 3 Ezra and 4 Ezra.

Rough outlines of the additional books

The following descriptions of the extra books contained in the Catholic Bibles only provide rough outlines, but they certainly show that the exclusion of these special writings from the Reformed canon can be justified.

The Book of Tobit

This book was written in the 2nd to 3rd century BC, in the Elephantine region of Egypt, or alternatively in the eastern diaspora (Persia). Other historians speak of Judea. It is therefore not certain where exactly these writings were written. The geographical and historical inaccuracies in the stories contained are striking. The main character, Tobit, lived to be 112 years old, but he was dealing with events that spanned a period of around 300 years. On a journey from Nineveh to Rages, a distance of around 300 km, Tobit only needed 2 days.

There are also stories that are reminiscent of alchemy and magic, but not of the gospel. In Tobit, chapter 6, an angel told Tobias (son of Tobit) that in order to obtain medicine he had to cut out the heart, liver and gall from a fish. This angel was “Raphael”. He explained that the heart and liver of the fish should be burned in the presence of a person possessed by a demon in order to drive out the demon.

The book of Tobit is therefore a purely fictional story. A fantasy story.

The Book of Judith

The document Judith first appeared in the Septuagint (LXX – Info). This book was written in the course of the 1st century BC. A female figure, who inspired the translator Jerome in particular to make additional changes to the already dubious reports when translating into the Latin Vulgate. He constructed a chastity and divine intervention for Judith, although in the Greek original of the LXX Judith acted alone.

In Judith, King Nebuchadnezzar is portrayed as an Assyrian ruler. However, this is completely untenable from a historical perspective, because Nebuchadnezzar not only attacked the Assyrian city of Nineveh, but even replaced the Assyrian Empire with his Babylonian Empire. Nebuchadnezzar was a Chaldean and not an Assyrian.

Judith is portrayed as a heroine who saved Israel from the siege by the Assyrians with 183,000 men. According to this, Judith cut off the head of the Assyrian general Holofernes. What actually happened can be read in 2 Kings 19:35-37.

The book of Judith can also be described as a work of fiction.

Expanded Book of Esther

The Catholic version contains an expansion of the Book of Esther. It was written in the 3rd century BC in the Persia region, i.e. at the beginning of the Greek Empire and the prevailing Diadochi wars. The Bible translator added the additional chapters 11 to 16 contained in the LXX for the Catholic Vulgate. There are a total of 105 additional verses.

Books 1 and 2 Maccabees

The 1st Book of Maccabees was written in the period 135/134 BC. The 2nd book was written in the second half of the 1st century BC. The Maccabees were rebels against the Greek Seleucid Empire. What is striking in 1 Maccabees is that Rome in particular is portrayed in a particularly positive light, while 2 Maccabees contains instructions for prayers for the dead and the offering of sacrifices for the sins of the already dead.

Book of Wisdom

This book was written in the Alexandria region of Egypt in the 1st century BC. It is also not included in the Jewish Tanakh. Solomon’s supposed statements are permeated with Gnostic “wisdom”. Examples:

“The Essence of Wisdom”
Wisdom 7:26-27:
“She is the reflection of the eternal light, / the unclouded mirror of God’s power, / the image of his perfection.
She is only one and yet can do all things; / without changing, she renews everything. From generation to generation she enters into holy souls / and creates friends of God and prophets;”

Wisdom 7:29:
“She is more beautiful than the sun / and surpasses every constellation. / She is more radiant than the light;”

The saving power of wisdom (Chapter 10)
Wisdom 10:1:
“She protected the first father of the world after his creation, when he was still alone; she rescued him from his sin.”

Wisdom 10:12:
“She protected him [Jacob] from his enemies and gave him security from his persecutors. In a hard battle she gave him the prize of victory, so that he knew that the fear of God is stronger than all else.”

Wisdom 10:18:
“She led them [Israel] through the Red Sea and guided them through mighty waters.”

The Book of Sirach

This text, also called Ben Sira or Jesus Sirach, was written in Jerusalem around 190 to 180 BC. What is striking in this book is the analogies between Ben Sira and the “goddess Isis” of ancient Egyptian mythology. With the Torah of Moses, the “incan cosmic wisdom” came into the world. A superior god of the deities, e.g. in Sir 24:23 (Praise of Wisdom):
“All this is the book of the covenant of the Most High God, / the law that Moses commanded us, / inheritance for the communities of Jacob.”

Gnostics also put their worldview on paper with the Book of Sirach.

Book of Baruch

The author of this book was obviously not confident enough to write it under his own name. Baruch was written in the second half of the 2nd century BC. The author named in it was supposedly the scribe of the prophet Isaiah. The author himself immediately reveals this untruth by revealing that he was familiar with Daniel 9 and Sirach 24. In other words, writings that were written long after Isaiah.

In addition, the text contains a very heavily Hebrewized Greek. In other words, only formulations that occur in Hebrew are translated directly into Greek. In addition, there are significant translation errors compared to the original Hebrew work.

The Book of Baruch is clearly a so-called pseudonym. An unknown author who pretended to be someone other than he actually was.

additional chapter of the Book of Daniel

In the Catholic version, the Book of Daniel contains two more chapters (13 and 14). This was adopted from the Greek LXX. There are also additions in Chapter 3. The men in the fiery furnace were assumed to have performed songs.
In Chapter 13, Daniel saves a Susanna in Babylon. However, there are differing stories, depending on the copy found.
In Chapter 14, Daniel appears as a fighter against the Babylonian deity Marduk. Because Daniel exposed Babylon’s idolatry, the Babylonian ruler responded by destroying the temple in Jerusalem. This completely contradicts God’s announcement that he wanted to take the people of Judah into captivity because of their stubborn disobedience to God.

Chapter 14 describes the reason that Daniel was thrown into the lion’s den because the prophet was said to have killed the “deified dragon”.

The two additional chapters in the book of Daniel are fictions

Books 3 and 4 of Ezra

The books 3 and 4 of Ezra originate from the Septuagint (LXX). These were adopted directly for the Latin Vulgate. The designation 3 and 4 is due to the division in the Vulgate and can therefore be called something different in other Bibles.

The 4th book of Ezra was written around 100 AD. However, the narrator places Ezra in the time around 587 BC. He thus constructs the destruction of the temple in 70 AD as the destruction of the temple by the Babylonians. It is also said that Ezra received visions from the “Archangel Uriel”.

The 3rd book of Ezra is of particular interest. In addition to numerous parallels to 2 Chronicles, it shows a modified sequence of events under the Medo-Persian kings Darius, Xerxes and Artaxerxes. There is a specific reason why the 3rd Book of Ezra appears in the Jesuit-motivated Douay-Rheims Bible, i.e. the Counter-Reformation Bible.

A central concern of the Jesuits was the destruction of the Reformation and its recognition of the papacy as the biblical Antichrist (Info). Therefore, this order, led by Francis Ribera and Robert Cardinal Bellarmine, as well as Manuel Lacunza, formulated a new version of the prophecies. This was intended to place the Antichrist in a fictional future. (Info).

A major prophecy in the Bible is based on temporal events during the reign of King Artaxerxes. His command to rebuild the city of Jerusalem (457 BC) is the beginning of the extremely important prophecies in the book of Daniel (e.g. 70-year week – Info). The same command is also based on the longest prediction in the Bible, which predicts 2300 years “until the cleansing of the sanctuary”. (Info). If the historical events are mixed up as in the third book, then the prophecies either come to nothing or can be misused to create one’s own stories. This is exactly what the Catholic Jesuit order did.

The 2 books of Esther are also pseudographs and fictions.

Conclusion: Expulsion was long overdue

The fact alone that these books were written long after the last prophet of the Old Testament (Malachi) indicates that these authors had ill intentions. The Jewish communities had already done their best to avoid such writings being brought to the temple complex for lectures. They knew about the Gnostic content, influenced by Hellenism and Greek philosophies.

Until shortly before the Reformation, knowledge of the Bible was anything but self-evident. The Catholic priests only knew, taught and acted as they were taught. Just the traditions of this church. With the Reformation, this misery changed. The Bible was read, the truth was recognized, as were the institutional lies of the Roman church. Those who believed the word of God “tend” to be Protestant. Others, on the other hand, saw the Church of Rome as the higher authority and continued their idolatry.

Even today, Catholic clergy justify the worship of the dead on the basis of the above-mentioned books. The removal of this Gnostic nonsense from the biblical canon is therefore not only justified, but was absolutely necessary.

Somewhat exaggeratedly, one could speculate that had time and circumstances permitted, the Roman Catholic Church would also have included writings such as the “Star Wars Trilogy, Alice in Wonderland and Lord of the Rings” in the canon.

Bible verses from King James Version (1611)