3155.—The Catholic Bible and Its Extra Books
A Catholic lady tells us that the Catholic Bible contains three more books than the Protestant church Bibles. Is this so? And if so, where did these books come from, and why were they rejected by the other churches? If our questioner has access to one of the large family Bibles, he will find between the Old and the New Testament, in many of them, what is called The Apocrypha. That Apocrypha is composed of fourteen different books, beginning with First and Second Esdras, ending with First and Second Maccabees. The word "Apocrypha" itself means hidden, and is so applied to these because their origin is somewhat concealed, and the books themselves obscure; and the word is also used in the sense of uncanonical; that is, not belonging to the regular Scripture standard. The Hebrew canon composed of Scriptures considered inspired, was fixed before the Christian era, and of this Josephus is a witness. But he does not use any of the books of The Apocrypha as belonging to any of the sacred Scriptures. Then again, the New Testament quotes from the Scriptures of the Old Testament often as the Holy Scriptures, but it make no express quotations from The Apocrypha. In the early lists of books which have come down to the church we find The Apocrypha left out, and Jerome decidedly opposed its admission as a canonical scripture. What served also to separate them, the Old Testament Scriptures were written in Hebrew, while The Apocrypha was written in Greek. Jerome, who translated the Scriptures from the Hebrew into the old Latin translation, omitted The Apocrypha. It is possible, of course, that some parts of The Apocrypha may be true Scripture, but The Apocrypha as a whole is not considered and does not seem to be written as inspired Scripture, but as useful exhortations to God's children.