My LORD’s BibleWhat Is the Apocrypha?
Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant Bibles disagree about a specific set of books. They are not obscure — the King James Version printed every one of them in 1611.
What the word means
“Apocrypha” means “hidden” or “set apart.” In practice it names a group of Jewish writings composed mostly between about 200 BC and AD 100, in the last centuries before and the first century after Christ. Catholics and Eastern Orthodox call them the deuterocanonical books — “second canon” — and read them as scripture. Most Protestants call them the Apocrypha and read them, if at all, as useful but not authoritative.
Which books
The core Catholic list is Tobit, Judith, the Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach (also called Ecclesiasticus), Baruch with the Epistle of Jeremiah, 1 and 2 Maccabees, and the additions to Esther and Daniel (the Song of the Three Holy Children, Susanna, and Bel and the Dragon). The Eastern Orthodox canon adds more: 1 Esdras, 3 Maccabees, Psalm 151, the Prayer of Manasses, and 2 Esdras as an appendix.
Why the canons differ
These books were part of the Septuagint, the Greek Old Testament that the early church mostly used. But they were not in the Hebrew Bible that rabbinic Judaism settled on. When Jerome translated the Latin Vulgate around AD 400, he flagged this difference. For a thousand years Western Bibles carried the books anyway. At the Reformation, Protestant leaders returned to the Hebrew canon for the Old Testament and moved these books into a separate section; the Catholic Church responded at the Council of Trent in 1546 by affirming them as fully canonical.
The King James Version had them
The 1611 King James Bible included the Apocrypha as a section between the Testaments — that was standard. They were gradually dropped from Protestant printings over the following centuries, and by the mid-1800s most English Bibles left them out entirely. Their absence from a modern Protestant Bible is a relatively recent development.
Where to read them
This site carries the full Apocrypha — the Catholic deuterocanon and the Eastern Orthodox additions — in public-domain translations, cross-referenced against the rest of the canon.
Common questions
- What books are in the Apocrypha?
- Tobit, Judith, Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, Baruch, the Epistle of Jeremiah, 1 and 2 Maccabees, and the additions to Esther and Daniel, plus the Eastern Orthodox additions: 1 Esdras, 2 Esdras, 3 Maccabees, Psalm 151, and the Prayer of Manasses.
- Why did Protestants remove the Apocrypha?
- Reformation-era Protestants adopted the shorter Hebrew canon for the Old Testament and treated the extra books as edifying but not authoritative. They were kept in a separate section at first, then dropped from most printings by the nineteenth century.
- Is the Apocrypha in the Catholic Bible?
- Yes. Catholics call these books deuterocanonical and read them as scripture; the Council of Trent affirmed them in 1546. The Eastern Orthodox canon includes them and a few more.
- Did the King James Bible include the Apocrypha?
- Yes. The original 1611 King James Version printed all of the Apocrypha in a section between the Old and New Testaments.