catholic bible

The Septuagint (Greek translation, from Alexandria in Egypt under the Ptolemies) was generally abandoned in favour of the Masoretic text as the basis for translations of the Old Testament into Western languages from St. Jerome's Bible (the Vulgate) to the present day. In Eastern Christianity, translations based on the Septuagint still prevail. Some modern Western translations make use of the Septuagint to clarify passages in the Masoretic text, where the Septuagint may preserve a variant reading of the Hebrew text. They also sometimes adopt variants that appear in other texts e.g. those discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls.

A number of books which are part of the Peshitta or Greek Septuagint but are not found in the Hebrew (Rabbinic) Bible are often referred to as deuterocanonical books by Roman Catholics referring to a later secondary (i.e. deutero) canon. Most Protestants term these books as apocrypha. Evangelicals and those of the Modern Protestant traditions do not accept the deuterocanonical books as canonical, although Protestant Bibles included them in Apocrypha sections until around the 1820s. However, the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Oriental Orthodox Churches include these books as part of their Old Testament.

The Roman Catholic Church recognizes the following books:

• Tobit
• Judith
• 1 Maccabees
• 2 Maccabees
• Wisdom of Solomon
• Sirach also called Ecclesiasticus
• Baruch
• Greek Additions to Esther
• Greek Additions to Daniel

In addition to those, the Greek and Russian Orthodox Churches recognize the following:

• 3 Maccabees
• 1 Esdras i.e. Greek Ezra paraphrase
• Prayer of Manasseh
• Psalm 151 as part of the Psalter

Some other Eastern Orthodox Churches include a few others, typically:

• 2 Esdras i.e. Latin Esdras in the Russian and Georgian Bibles
• Odes

The Syriac Orthodox Church also has:

• The Apocalypse of Baruch 2 Baruch
• The Letter of Baruch

The Ethiopian Orthodox Church also has some others such as:

• Jubilees
• Enoch

The Anglican Church uses some of the Apocryphal books liturgically, but not to establish doctrine. Therefore, editions of the Bible intended for use in the Anglican Church include the Deuterocanonical books accepted by the Catholic Church, plus 1 Esdras, 2 Esdras and the Prayer of Manasseh, which were in the Vulgate appendix.

There is also 4 Maccabees which is only accepted as canonical in the Georgian Church, but was included by St. Jerome in an appendix to the Vulgate, and is an appendix to the Greek Orthodox Bible, and it therefore sometimes included in collections of the Apocrypha.