[from my parish bulletin]
We always hear the Catholic Old Testament has more books than the Protestant one. Why? The answer is simple and can be found in history. At the time of Jesus there were at least two versions of the Old Testament, one in Hebrew used in Palestine and one in Greek used by Jews throughout the Roman Empire. When Christianity emerged, Christians used the Greek version, including Saint Paul who quoted it in his letters. This version, known as the Septuagint, had a few extra books that had been written in Greek and were not found in the Palestinian Hebrew version.
In the late first century, Jewish rabbis established their Bible according to the Hebrew Scriptures from Palestine which had seven books less. From then on Christians used the Greek version of the Old Testament but some argued for the Hebrew version. Saints Augustine and Jerome argued bitterly on the subject in the 4th century. The Church never officially chose one version, so discussion and debate continued occasionally.
Martin Luther in the 16th century chose to follow exclusively the Hebrew Bible rather than the Greek Septuagint. As a response to Luther’s direct omission of these seven books, the Church in 1546 for the first time issued a decree establishing the books of the Bible and chose the Greek Septuagint for the Old Testament.
Martin Luther and Protestants after him chose to follow the Hebrew Bible established in the late first century, while the Church chose to follow the Greek Septuagint as it had been done by the earliest Christians throughout the Roman Empire.
I hope this sheds some light on this topic we get asked about often!
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