Why do Catholics have 7 extra books in their Bible?

What Scriptures did the Ancient Jews follow? Did the early Christians use these books?

Did Catholics really ADD books to the sacred scriptures? Where did I and II Maccabees, Sirach, Wisdom, Baruch, Tobit, and Judith—come from?

How about we clear up some misconceptions?

Jews had many different Scriptures available in the time of Jesus which were used and accepted in ancient Judaism. There has been ample disagreement over the canon—especially among Jews. They divided their sacred writings into three parts: the law, the prophets, and the writings. In Jesus’ time, the Samaritans and Sadducees accepted the law but rejected the prophets and writings. The Pharisees accepted all three. Other Jews used a Greek version (the Septuagint) that included the seven disputed books, known as the deuterocanonicals. Still other Jews used a version of the canon that is reflected in the Septuagint and included versions of the seven books in question in their original Hebrew or Aramaic. Even today, the Ethiopian Jews use the same Old Testament as Catholics.

Martin Luther removed the books from the Bible that he disagreed was taught in them. This included Purgatory. He took the freedom to remove books from a collection canonized, agreeable by all early Christians, and accepted for over 1500 years because he just didn’t want to follow the teachings of that particular book. Your current Bible has some parts of Esther and Daniel that have been removed. He also wanted to remove the book of James and Revelation from the New Testament because it went against his beliefs and teachings. So in all realness, our Bible is still intact and it is the Protestants BIble that is edited and therefore, incomplete. It is through one of these removed books, that we learn what happened to the Ark of The Covenant. WIthout it we wouldn’t know what happened to it. It is through one of these removed books, that we see what happened to the Ark of The Covenant. WIthout it we wouldn’t know what happened to it.

One particular question that I get asked frequently is from Revelation 22:18-19 which states,

“I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book.”

We can agree that no one has the right to add or subtract books from the Bible. That is why we have kept the Bible intact since it's been canonized.

However, staying within context, let us be clear that John is referring only to the book of Revelation, not the entire Bible. This is also written in the book of Deuteronomy. The Greek word here for “book” is more accurately translated as “scroll.” At the time that this revelation came to John, there was no Bible. None of the apostles knew the Bible. In the year 367 A.D., Athanasius, a 4th-century bishop of Alexandria, listed all 27 New Testament books in a letter years before it was even compiled and canonized by the Catholic Church. The books that comprise the New Testament were not canonized until centuries after Christ in the year 382 A.D. Even when that list was established, the writings were not collected into a single book until after the printing press came into existence in 1450 A.D.

Deuterocanonicals vs Apocrypha: What's the difference?

Apocrypha: Religious books written in the Old and New Testaments era that claimed a sacred origin but were ultimately judged by the Catholic Church as not inspired by the Holy Spirit. These books were excluded from the canon of Scripture, though retain some religious value.

Deuterocanonicals: Greek meaning "belonging to the second canon" and have nothing to do with the Apocrypha. Works of Jewish origin translated in the Old Testament of the Ethiopic Bible. The actual definition is:

Referring to those books and passages of the Old and New Testaments about which there was controversy at one time in early Christian history. In the Old Testament they are Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, I and II Maccabees, parts of Esther (10:4-16, 14) and Daniel (3:24-90, 13, 14). In the New Testament are Hebrews, James, II Peter, II and III John, Revelation, and Mark 16:9-20. All of these are recognized by the Catholic Church as part of the biblical canon. Among Protestants the deuterocanonical books of the Old Testament are rejected as apocryphal, along with the last twelve verses of Mark's Gospel.

The Old Testament took over one thousand years to compile, and the list of inspired books grew continuously as God’s word was revealed. This was the way in ancient Judaism. Jewish people felt no need for a fixed canon because they remained open to further revelation as God was always speaking to them. If anything is certain, it is that there was no common canon among the Jews at the time of Christ.

At the Council of Rome in 382 A.D., the Catholic Church decided upon a canon of 46 Old Testament books and 27 in the New Testament. This decision was not only confirmed but also accepted by the councils at Hippo (393), Carthage (397, 419), II Nicea (787), Florence (1442), and Trent (1546).

Early Christians read the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the Septuagint. It included the seven deuterocanonical books. The authors of the New Testament quoted freely from the Septuagint—over 300 times.

If Catholics added the deuterocanonical books in 1546 as many Protestants like to assume, then Martin Luther beat us to the punch: He included them in his first German translation, published the Council of Trent. They can also be found in the first King James Version (1611) and in the first Bible ever printed, the Guttenberg Bible (a century before Trent). In fact, these books were included in almost every Bible until the Edinburgh Committee of the British Foreign Bible Society excised them in 1825. It is historically demonstrable that Catholics did not add the books, Protestants took them out.

Luther had a tendency to grade the Bible according to his preferences. In his writings on the New Testament, he noted that the books of Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation were inferior to the rest, and they followed “the certain, main books of the New Testament.”

One must either trust a rabbinical school that rejected the New Testament 60 years after Christ established a Church, or one must trust the Church he established. Which deserves our trust?

Martin Luther makes a pertinent observation in the sixteenth chapter of his Commentary on St. John

“We are obliged to yield many things to the papists [Catholics]—that they possess the Word of God which we received from them, otherwise we should have known nothing at all about it.”