Why does the Catholic Church have seven more books than the Protestant Churches?
While Protestants are in agreement with the Church as to the works of the New Testament (27 works), most Protestants do not accept seven works of the Old Testament which have judged canonical by the Church. These works at issue are called the deuterocanonical works, or the Apocrypha, as the Protestants refer to them. Why the difference? The canon (the official list of biblical books) was formally settled in the 5th century AD (though earlier councils and canons had already approved the same), at the time when St. Jerome translated the works of the OT and NT into the common language of the time, Latin. His translation, the Vulgate, functioned as the official text of the Church for well over a thousand years. But at the time of the Reformation, Protestant leaders rejected or diminished the value of the seven works of the OT which had been debated in the early centuries of the Church. Their reasons for rejecting these works, after so long a history of use by the Church was principal relat
