How Many Books Are in the Catholic Bible?

Open a Catholic Bible to the table of contents and you will find 73 books: 46 in the Old Testament and 27 in the New. Open many other English Bibles and the count is 66. Both numbers are accurate for the editions they describe — the difference sits entirely in the Old Testament, and the story behind it is older than most people expect.

The count at a glance

• 46 books in the Old Testament, including the seven deuterocanonical books.
• 27 books in the New Testament, the same in every Christian tradition.
• 73 books in total — the canon confirmed at the Council of Trent in 1546.

The seven books unique to the Catholic Old Testament are Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, and 1 and 2 Maccabees, along with longer Greek passages of Esther and Daniel. Each has its own story worth telling — the Maccabees alone cover the revolt that gave Judaism the feast of Hanukkah.

Where the Catholic canon comes from

The earliest Christians mostly read the Old Testament in Greek, in the translation called the Septuagint, which included the books now in question. When bishops in North Africa drew up formal lists at the Council of Hippo in 393 and the Council of Carthage in 397, the Old Testament they approved matches the Catholic table of contents to this day. More than a thousand years later, when the question was reopened during the Reformation, the Council of Trent solemnly defined the same list in 1546. Trent is often cited as the moment the Catholic canon was set, but it is better described as the moment it was confirmed — the list itself was already twelve centuries old.

Why some Bibles count fewer books

In the sixteenth century, the Reformers chose to follow the Hebrew canon used in rabbinic Judaism, which does not include the seven books. Even so, early Protestant Bibles did not simply drop them: for centuries the books were printed in a separate section between the testaments. The practice of omitting that section altogether spread mainly in the nineteenth century, when major Bible societies stopped funding its printing. That is why a Bible with 66 books feels standard to many American readers today, even though editions with the longer Old Testament have the older pedigree.

Hearing the whole collection

Most readers know the Gospels and a handful of psalms; far fewer have ever met Tobit or Judith. If you would rather hear the canon than count it, the Adorantis app carries all 73 books of the Catholic Bible for listening on an iPhone — every chapter, one voice, available offline — so the less-traveled books are as easy to reach as the famous ones.