How many books are in the Bible?
Short answer
It depends on the edition. The Catholic Bible has 73 books — 46 in the Old Testament and 27 in the New. The Protestant Bible has 66, with 39 in the Old and the same 27 in the New. The difference lies in seven Old Testament books, called deuterocanonical, and in passages of Esther and Daniel.
- Written by
- Maria Luisa Navarro Schmitt
- Reviewed by
- Raphael Navarro Schmitt
- Published on
- Reading time
- 4 min read
Two Bibles open side by side can show contents pages of different lengths, and neither one has a printing error. The count depends on which list of Old Testament books that edition adopts — and both lists in circulation are ancient, each with its own reason for being.
The seven books that appear in one count and not in the other are Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach (also called Ecclesiasticus), Baruch, 1 Maccabees and 2 Maccabees. Beyond those, there are additions inside Esther and Daniel — among them the story of Susanna and the song of the three young men in the furnace. None of this is an obscure appendix: these are texts read in Catholic liturgy, and the author to whom Baruch is attributed is the same scribe who wrote at Jeremiah’s dictation.
The origin of the difference is historical and well documented. The collection of sacred writings circulating in Greek in the world of the first century, quoted often by the New Testament authors, already included these books. The list fixed by rabbinic Judaism, which the Hebrew Bible preserves to this day, does not include them. The Reformation adopted that second list for the Old Testament; the Council of Trent, in 1546, confirmed the first. Hence the two numbers.
Two details usually get left out and are worth recording. First: about the New Testament there is no disagreement at all — the same 27 books, in the same order, for Catholics and Protestants alike. Second: 73 and 66 do not exhaust the subject. The Eastern Orthodox churches count a few further writings, and the Ethiopian Orthodox Church holds a considerably larger canon. The question "how many books are in the Bible" has a single answer only after you say which Bible you mean.
What the passages say
44And he said to them: “These are the words that I spoke to you when I was still with you, because all things must be fulfilled which are written in the law of Moses, and in the Prophets, and in the Psalms about me.”
Jesus refers to the Scriptures by the three parts the Hebrew collection was organised into: the law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms. It is the oldest snapshot the New Testament gives us of the shape of that library — and in it there is still no closed list with a number of books.
1And these are the words of the book, which Baruch the son of Neraiah, the son of Mahseiah, the son of Zedekiah, the son of Hasadiah, the son Hilkiah, wrote in Babylon,
The opening of one of the seven books that enter one count and not the other. Notice the genealogy: the Baruch son of Neriah introduced here is the same scribe who appears in Jeremiah 36 writing at the prophet’s dictation. This site publishes all 73 books, so the page exists and can be checked.
1But the souls of the just are in the hand of God and no torment of death will touch them.
Probably the best-known deuterocanonical verse anywhere, because it is a frequent reading at Catholic funerals. Many people who have heard it all their lives never learned where it comes from — and cannot find it in the Bible they keep at home.
43And, calling an assembly, he sent twelve thousand drachmas of silver to Jerusalem, to be offered for a sacrifice for the sins of the dead, thinking well and religiously about the resurrection,
44(for if he had not hoped that those who had fallen would be resurrected, it would have seemed superfluous and vain to pray for the dead,)
45and because he considered that those who had fallen asleep with piety had great grace stored up for them.
46Therefore, it is a holy and beneficial thought to pray on behalf of those who have passed away, so that they may be released from sins.
The passage that shows why the difference in counting is not merely arithmetic. It is the Old Testament text most cited in the debate about praying for the dead, and it exists only in the longer canon — which is where the discussion about books and the discussion about doctrine meet.