Why does the Catholic Bible have different chapters than the King James version of the Bible?
Both Protestant and Catholic Bibles have the same number of books in the New Testament: 27. However, Catholic Bibles have 7 extra books, and here’s why: Around 2200 years ago (so obviously before Jesus’ time), Jewish scholars put together all of the Jewish Scriptures – what we call the Old Testament. There were 46 books, called the Septuagint, that were accepted until about 100 A.D. At that time, the Jewish leaders decided to get rid of the non-Hebrew books, of which there were seven. This change was after Jesus’ life, however. So He would have known all 46. And those 46 + 27 New Testament books=73. So these 73 were accepted as the Bible for almost 1500 years, when Martin Luther began the Protestant Reformation. Because there were not Hebrew manuscripts known at the time, he changed the Bible from 46 to 39 books…and that’s why there’s 7 less books there today. Credit to be given to Generation Cross at
