“The Church accepts and venerates as inspired the 46 books of the Old
Testament and the 27 books of the New.”¹ (The O.T. has 45 books if
Jeremiah and Lamentations count as one). The complete list is given in the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, # 120, and can be found at the front of
any Catholic Bible. The Protestant rejection of certain books of the Bible
moved the Catholic Church to define the contents of the entire canon for
the first time in 1546, in the first months of the Council of Trent. The list of
books given was the same as that recognized by the Council of Florence in
1442 and other earlier lists.
At the time of Christ, there existed two collections of the Old Testament––
the Hebrew of the Palestinian Jews and the Greek Septuagint of the
Alexandrian Jews. The latter was a translation of the Hebrew Old
Testament into Greek, begun about 250 BC. According to a tradition,
seventy Greek-speaking Jewish scholars performed the work. Thus the
name Septuagint—Greek for ‘seventy.’ Due to the Hellenization of the
eastern Mediterranean world after the conquests of Alexander the Great,
Greek became the popular and common language of that part of the world.
The large Jewish communities outside of Palestine no longer spoke Hebrew
or Aramaic as their first language. Therefore, it was felt necessary to
produce a vernacular version of the Scriptures for them in Greek.
A dispute arises over the canon of Scripture because the Greek Septuagint
contains forty-six books while the Hebrew version only thirty-nine. The
additional books are Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach (Ecclesiasticus),
Baruch, and 1 & 2 Maccabees. In addition, there are extra fragments and
chapters in the Septuagint versions of Esther and Daniel, namely: the seven
last chapters of Esther (10:4 to 16:24); the prayer of Azarias and the
canticle of the three children in the fiery furnace (Dan. 3:24-90); the history
of Susanna (Dan. 13); and the history of Bel and the Dragon (Dan. 14).
Together, these additional books and paragraphs constitute the
deuterocanonical books.
An occasional dispute has also arisen over the canon of the New
Testament. Some early Christians had doubts as to the genuineness of
Hebrews, 2 Peter, 2 & 3 John, St. James, St. Jude and Revelation. These
doubts were echoed by some of the early Protestant Reformers, notably
Martin Luther. Added to this confusion, some in the early Church regarded
1
Catechism of the Catholic Church, # 138.
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