Why do Catholic and Protestant Bibles have a different number of books in the OT?
“The Protestant OT is based on the Hebrew canon used by Hebrew-speaking Jews in Palestine. The Catholic OT is based on the Greek canon used by Greek-speaking Jews throughout the Mediterranean, including Palestine.” “The city of Alexandria in Egypt possessed the greatest library in the ancient world and during the reign of Ptolemy II Philadelphia (285–246 BC), a translation of the entire Hebrew Bible into Greek was begun by 70 or 72 Jewish scholars–according to tradition–six from each of the twelve tribes. From this Alexandrian translation (completed between 250–125 BC) we get the term “Septuagint,” Latin for 70 (LXX). the number of translators.” “This Greek translation of the OT was very popular because Greek was the common language of the entire Mediterranean world by the time of Christ. Hebrew was a dying language (Jews in Palestine usually spoke Aramaic), and so it is not surprising that the Septuagint was the translation used by Jesus and the New Testament writers. The great ma
