Protestant and Catholic Bibles: What's the Difference?

If you go to a well-stocked bookshop for a Bible, you will find that some Bibles for sale are Catholic and some are Protestant. What is the difference? Why do Christians use different Bibles depending on their denomination?

The Bible is a large volume divided into two major sections, the Old Testament and the New Testament. Each Testament is divided into many smaller sections, called 'books'. If you compare the table of contents of a Protestant Bible with that of a Catholic Bible, you will find that the New Testament has the same books in both, but in the Old Testament, the Catholic Bible has seven more books: Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, and First and Second Maccabees. Also, the Catholic versions of the books of Esther and Daniel have some additional material.

This difference has its roots in Church history. During the lifetime of Jesus, the Septuagint, a Greek language translation of the Old Testament, was in common use. Jesus was believed to have used it and his disciples, who wrote the New Testament in the Greek language, certainly did. The Septuagint has all the Old Testament books found in the Catholic Bible.

When the Church began using Latin rather than Greek, a Bible translation, called the Vulgate, was made around 400 AD. This book, containing the books of the Septuagint for the Old Testament along with the New Testament books, was the common Christian Bible for over a thousand years.

The Protestant movement began in 1517. Martin Luther, the leader of the Protestant revolt and the founder of the Lutheran church, wrote his own translation of the Bible. He had learned Hebrew, the language of most of the Old Testament, from Jewish teachers. The Jews of that day no longer regarded the Septuagint as their Bible. Some of the books from the Septuagint were later works not written in Hebrew but in Greek. These books were not considered bad or immoral, but Jewish teachers had come to believe that only the Hebrew books belonged in the Bible.

Martin Luther removed these Greek-language portions from the Old Testament. He also considered removing James and Revelation from the New Testament, but did not do so.

Later Protestants, not knowing the history, came to suspect the 'extra' books of the Catholic Bible were later additions brought in to support the teaching of the Popes. They didn't know these books pre-dated the life of Christ. And Catholics were suspicious of Protestant Bibles as well.

In modern times, it's not uncommon to find Protestants who read Catholic Bibles, and Catholics who read Protestant Bibles. The suspicions of the past have died down as Christians of various denominations, finding themselves working side-by-side on issues such as abortion and aiding the poor, learn to understand one another.