Notice of Correction

08/18/26

I have stated many times that if I make a Biblical statement and someone, or I, discovers that it is not accurate, I will make every effort to correct my mistake. I will send out an article acknowledging the error and provide the Scriptures and other information that support the corrected understanding.

With that said, the following is an incorrect statement I made in the past, and I need to correct it.

When speaking about Catholicism, I previously stated that Catholics had added seven additional books to the Bible—73 books compared with the 66 books in Protestant Bibles—when translating the Scriptures from the original texts. Sadly, I repeated information I had heard from others without taking the time to investigate whether it was factual.

I recently read an article explaining the Catholic position, which stated that, rather than Catholics adding seven books, Protestants removed seven books from the biblical canon during the Reformation. That prompted me to investigate the matter more carefully because I desire to be accurate when I research, write, and post articles about Scripture and our faith.

My research has shown that my original statement was inaccurate. The seven books in question—Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach (Ecclesiasticus), Baruch, and 1 and 2 Maccabees—are commonly called the Deuterocanonical books by Catholics and the Apocrypha by Protestants. They were not simply books that Catholics added to the Bible in the sixteenth century. The Council of Trent formally defined the Catholic canon in 1546, but these books had already appeared in earlier Catholic canonical lists, including those associated with Rome, Hippo, Carthage, and Florence.

This does not mean that Catholics and Protestants agree about the authority or canonical status of these books. They do not. The important point for my correction is that saying, “The Catholic Church added seven books to the Bible when translating the Scriptures,” is historically inaccurate.

Therefore, I am correcting my previous statement. I should not have presented the issue as though Catholics simply took the original Bible and added seven books to it centuries later. The history of the biblical canon is considerably more complicated than that, and the disagreement between Catholics and Protestants concerns which books belong in the canon and the authority those books possess—not simply who “added” or “removed” books during translation.

I apologize for repeating information that I had not adequately researched before presenting it as fact. This is precisely why I believe we should be willing to examine what we believe, verify what we teach, and openly correct ourselves when we discover that something we have said is inaccurate.

My goal is not to defend a particular tradition at the expense of truth. My goal is to be faithful to Scripture and honest in what I write about our faith. If I make a mistake, I want to acknowledge it and correct it rather than continue repeating something simply because I have heard it many times.

You can find a more informative article at: https://pastorunlikely.com/did-martin-luther-remove-books-from-the-bible-a-pastors-answer/