What is Scripture?

Most Protestant Bibles contain thirty-nine books in the Old Testament. Catholic Bibles contain seven additional books—Tobit, Judith, Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach (Ecclesiasticus), Baruch, and 1 and 2 Maccabees—along with additional material in Esther and Daniel. Catholics call these writings the Deuterocanon; Protestants traditionally call them the Apocrypha (Evert; Armstrong).

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For most of my life, I simply assumed the Protestant Old Testament was the Bible and that Catholics had added extra books.

 

After studying the question more carefully, I no longer think that explanation fits the evidence.

I believe the Deuterocanon should be received as Scripture.

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1. These Are Ancient Jewish Writings, Not Later Catholic Additions

 

The first important fact is chronological.

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The Deuterocanonical books existed before Christianity. They belong to the Jewish world of the Second Temple period—the same broad historical and religious environment from which the New Testament emerged (Michuta; Beaumont).

These writings were preserved within the Greek Old Testament tradition inherited and extensively used by early Christians. The New Testament itself frequently quotes Old Testament passages in forms corresponding to the Greek Septuagint rather than the later standardized Hebrew Masoretic Text (Akin, “Defending”; Beaumont).

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This does not mean that there was one universally fixed Septuagint table of contents in the first century. The history of the Jewish canon was more complicated than that. But it does establish that early Christianity inherited a Greek scriptural world considerably broader and more textually diverse than a simple appeal to the later Protestant Old Testament suggests (Beaumont; Michuta).

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Nor can these writings simply be dismissed as late Greek compositions disconnected from Judaism in the land of Israel.

Fragments of Tobit have been discovered at Qumran in Aramaic and Hebrew, and Hebrew portions of Sirach have survived from ancient Jewish sites. The discovery of Deuterocanonical material among ancient Jewish manuscripts confirms that these books circulated among Jews before and around the beginning of Christianity (Beaumont; Michuta).

This does not, by itself, prove inspiration.

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But it does overturn the idea that the Deuterocanon was invented or added by medieval Catholicism.

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These are ancient Jewish writings deeply embedded in the world from which Christianity emerged.

 

2. The New Testament Knows the Deuterocanon

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One of the strongest examples is Hebrews 11:35.

 

Hebrews is recounting the great heroes of Israel's faith and describes people who were tortured, refused release, and endured death because they hoped for a better resurrection (Heb. 11.35).

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Where is that story found in the Old Testament?

 

The clearest parallel is 2 Maccabees 7, where Jewish martyrs accept torture and death rather than abandon God's law because they believe God will raise them again. One of the brothers explicitly expresses hope that the King of the universe will raise the faithful to renewed life (2 Macc. 7.9; Akin, “Defending”).

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Hebrews therefore appears to hold up events recorded in 2 Maccabees as examples of the faith of God's people.

 

That is significant.

 

There are other striking correspondences.

 

Jesus teaches his followers to pray:

 

“Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors”

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and immediately connects receiving God's forgiveness with forgiving others (Matt. 6.12, 14–15).

 

Sirach had already taught:

“Forgive your neighbor's injustice, and then when you pray, your sins will be forgiven” (Sir. 28.2).

 

Jimmy Akin notes that the connection between forgiving one's neighbor and receiving divine forgiveness has a particularly striking precedent in Sirach (Akin, “Referring”).

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There are many other proposed New Testament echoes of Wisdom, Sirach, Tobit, and Maccabees. Some are stronger than others, and an allusion by itself does not establish that a book is Scripture. The New Testament can also quote or allude to writings that Christians ultimately did not include in the canon.

 

But that cuts both ways.

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The claim that “Jesus and the apostles never used or referred to these books” is too strong.

 

The New Testament clearly inhabits the same Jewish literary world, and Hebrews 11:35 provides an especially important connection with 2 Maccabees (Beaumont; Akin, “Defending”).

 

3. “The New Testament Never Directly Quotes Them as Scripture” Is Not a Valid Test

 

A common objection is:

If the Deuterocanonical books were Scripture, why doesn't the New Testament explicitly quote them with formulas such as “It is written”?

 

Initially, that sounds persuasive.

 

But the same test creates problems for books Protestants already accept.

 

Several books of the Protestant Old Testament are never directly quoted in the New Testament. The absence of an explicit New Testament quotation therefore cannot prove that an Old Testament book is uninspired (Evert; Beaumont).

 

The reverse is also true.

 

Jude uses material from 1 Enoch, yet most Christians did not consequently include 1 Enoch in the biblical canon.

 

Therefore:

 

Direct quotation does not automatically establish canonicity.

 

And:

 

Lack of direct quotation does not establish non-canonicity.

 

New Testament quotation patterns are relevant evidence, but they cannot function as the sole test for determining the Old Testament canon (Beaumont).

 

4. Early Christians Widely Received These Books as Scripture

 

This is where the historical evidence becomes especially important.

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Early Christians inherited an Old Testament that was predominantly encountered in Greek, and early Christian writers repeatedly used Deuterocanonical books. As summarized by Protestant patristics scholar J. N. D. Kelly, the Old Testament received by early Christianity was broader than the later Protestant Old Testament, and in the first centuries many Christians treated these additional writings as Scripture (Akin, “Defending”).

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Examples are widespread.

 

Early Christian authors use Wisdom, Sirach, Tobit, Baruch, and the Deuterocanonical additions to Daniel, among other writings. Their usage is not absolutely uniform, and there were genuine disagreements about the precise boundaries of the canon. But the Deuterocanonical books were plainly part of the scriptural life of early Christianity (Akin, “Defending”; Michuta).

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Ancient Christian biblical manuscripts tell the same broad story. Codex Sinaiticus, for example, contains books such as Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, and Sirach alongside other biblical writings. It also contains some writings that Christians ultimately did not receive as canonical, so manuscript inclusion alone cannot prove inspiration. But these manuscripts unmistakably demonstrate that the Deuterocanonical writings were being copied and transmitted within early Christian collections of sacred writings (Beaumont).

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That is very different from the idea that Catholics suddenly introduced them many centuries later.

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5. The Same Early Church That Recognized the New Testament Also Received the Deuterocanon

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This may be the most important historical consideration.

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Christians did not receive a divinely inspired table of contents listing the twenty-seven books of the New Testament.

Some New Testament books were disputed in parts of the early Church. Hebrews, James, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, Jude, and Revelation all faced questions or varying levels of acceptance in different places.

 

Yet Christians today receive all twenty-seven books.

 

How did the Church arrive at that consensus?

 

Through a historical process of discernment and reception.

 

And when late-fourth- and early-fifth-century Christian councils and leaders listed the books to be read as Scripture, they did not recognize the twenty-seven-book New Testament alongside a thirty-nine-book Protestant Old Testament.

The councils of Hippo (393) and Carthage (397 and 419) included the Deuterocanonical writings among the biblical books. Pope Innocent I supplied essentially the same canon in a letter in 405 (Akin, “Defending”; Michuta).

 

This creates an important question.

 

If Christians are willing to trust the early Church's discernment in recognizing disputed books such as Hebrews, James, Jude, 2 Peter, and Revelation, on what basis should the same historical Christian reception of Wisdom, Sirach, Tobit, Judith, Baruch, and Maccabees simply be dismissed?

 

The point is not that a fourth-century council magically made a book inspired.

 

The historical question is how Christians came to recognize which writings God had given them.

 

And the historical Church that handed down the twenty-seven-book New Testament also overwhelmingly handed down an Old Testament broader than the later Protestant canon (Akin, “Defending”; Michuta).

 

6. The Council of Trent Did Not Suddenly Add These Books

 

The Deuterocanon was not invented in 1546.

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These books had been read by Christians for well over a millennium before the Council of Trent. They appeared in ancient Christian manuscripts, were used by Church Fathers, appeared in Christian canonical lists centuries before the Reformation, and remained part of the Latin biblical tradition throughout the Middle Ages (Akin, “Defending”; Evert).

Even the Reformation did not immediately cause the books to disappear from every Protestant Bible.

Martin Luther placed the Deuterocanonical books in a separate section rather than treating them as equal to the other Old Testament books. The 1611 King James Version also contained the Apocrypha between the Testaments (Evert; Armstrong).

 

Their later disappearance from most Protestant Bibles should therefore not be confused with the much earlier history of Christian Scripture.

 

The historical sequence is important:

 

The Deuterocanonical books existed before Christianity.

 

Early Christians knew and used them.

 

Many early Christian writers treated them as Scripture.

 

Fourth- and fifth-century canonical lists included them.

 

They remained in Christian Bibles for many centuries.

 

Trent reaffirmed their canonicity; it did not discover or invent them.

 

7. What About Jerome?

 

Jerome is one of the strongest historical objections and therefore deserves to be acknowledged.

 

Jerome preferred the books preserved in the Hebrew Jewish collection and expressed reservations about some of the Deuterocanonical books.

 

That is real historical evidence.

 

But Jerome was one important Christian voice within a larger Christian debate, not the entire early Church.

 

Other major Christian authorities, particularly Augustine, accepted a broader Old Testament, and the North African councils included the Deuterocanonical books. Jerome nevertheless translated or transmitted Deuterocanonical material within the Latin biblical tradition, and the Vulgate tradition continued to contain these books (Akin, “Defending”; Michuta).

 

Jerome therefore proves that there was debate.

 

He does not prove that early Christianity rejected the Deuterocanon.

 

In fact, the very existence of this disagreement demonstrates that the history is more complicated than the simple claim that Christians always possessed a universally recognized thirty-nine-book Old Testament until Catholics added seven books.

 

They did not.

 

8. What About “The Jewish Canon”?

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Another major Protestant argument is that Christians should accept the books recognized in the later Hebrew Jewish canon.

 

But the situation around the time of Jesus was not that simple.

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Second Temple Judaism was diverse. Questions about the boundaries and status of some Jewish writings continued well beyond the lifetime of Jesus, and scholars have abandoned the old simplistic picture of a single “Council of Jamnia” definitively closing the Jewish canon around A.D. 90 (Beaumont; Michuta).

 

Various Jewish communities used different collections and textual traditions. The Greek Scriptures used throughout the Jewish diaspora and subsequently inherited by Christians preserved a broader body of literature than the later rabbinic Hebrew canon (Beaumont).

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There is also a basic theological problem with allowing later rabbinic Judaism to determine the Christian canon.

Christians obviously do not accept the Jewish canon simply because later Judaism accepts it.

 

If we did, we would have to reject the entire New Testament.

 

The relevant historical question is therefore not merely:

 

Which books did later rabbinic Judaism eventually recognize?

 

It is:

Which Scriptures did the Christian community inherit, use, and ultimately receive as it emerged from the Jewish world?

 

The evidence points toward an Old Testament broader than the later Protestant collection.

 

The Cumulative Case

 

No single fact proves the Deuterocanon.

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But put the evidence together:

 

The books are ancient Jewish writings.

They were circulating before Christianity.

Some have survived in Hebrew or Aramaic manuscripts.

They belonged to the broader Greek scriptural world inherited by early Christianity.

The New Testament knows and uses material contained in them.

Hebrews 11:35 appears to hold up the martyrs recorded in 2 Maccabees 7 as examples of faith.

The absence of a formal New Testament quotation cannot be used as a test for excluding a book, because several books Protestants accept are never formally quoted either.

Early Christians repeatedly read and used Deuterocanonical writings.

Major early Christian canonical lists included them.

The same historical Church that ultimately received disputed New Testament books such as Hebrews, James, 2 Peter, Jude, and Revelation also received the Deuterocanon.

And these books remained part of Christian biblical tradition for centuries before the Reformation.

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For me, the cumulative evidence is compelling.

I believe these books belong in Scripture.

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That matters because they contain extraordinary material about God, the connection between Wisdom and the Holy Spirit, resurrection, martyrdom, prayer, morality, creation, and the hope of God's people.

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Christians lose something important when these writings disappear from their Bibles.

 

For a Much Fuller Case

 

The resource that most convinced me was Gary Michuta's The Case for the Deuterocanon: Evidence and Arguments.

Michuta gives a much more comprehensive treatment than I can provide here, examining the New Testament evidence, Jewish history, early Christian reception, objections to the books, and the historical development of the canon (Michuta).

I strongly recommend it.

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This article is intended only to give the basic cumulative case. If this question matters to you, Michuta's book is an excellent place to study the evidence in depth.

 

Further Study

 

Gary Michuta, The Case for the Deuterocanon: Evidence and Arguments — This is my strongest recommendation and the resource that persuaded me to reconsider the Protestant Old Testament canon.

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Jason Evert, “How to Defend the Deuterocanonicals,” Catholic Answers Magazine — A concise overview of common Protestant objections and Catholic responses.

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James Akin, “Defending the Deuterocanonicals,” EWTN — A fuller historical and biblical defense.

 

Douglas Beaumont, “Defending the Deuterocanonicals” — Particularly useful because Beaumont approaches the issue as a former Evangelical and carefully examines common Protestant objections.

 

Jimmy Akin, “Defending the Deuterocanonicals” — Includes the important Hebrews 11 / 2 Maccabees connection and evidence from the early Church.

 

Dave Armstrong, “How to Defend the Deuterocanon (or ‘Apocrypha’),” National Catholic Register — Additional biblical and historical arguments.

 

John DeRosa, “Defending the Deuteros with Gary Michuta,” Classical Theism — An interview with Gary Michuta discussing the positive case and common objections.

 

William Hemsworth, “Deuterocanon: These Books Are Scripture and Need to Be Defended,” Patheos — Another interview and introduction to Michuta's case.

 

Jimmy Akin, “Referring to the Deuterocanonicals,” Catholic Answers — A short discussion of New Testament allusions to the Deuterocanon.

 

Works Cited

 

Akin, James. “Defending the Deuterocanonicals.” EWTN. Accessed 5 Sept. 2026.

Akin, Jimmy. “Defending the Deuterocanonicals.” JimmyAkin.com. Accessed 5 Sept. 2026.

Akin, Jimmy. “Referring to the Deuterocanonicals.” Daily Defense Podcast, Catholic Answers, 1 Nov. 2023. Accessed 5 Sept. 2026.

Armstrong, Dave. “How to Defend the Deuterocanon (or ‘Apocrypha’).” National Catholic Register, 12 Mar. 2017. Accessed 5 Sept. 2026.

Beaumont, Douglas. “Defending the Deuterocanonicals.” Douglas Beaumont, 11 Sept. 2014. Accessed 5 Sept. 2026.

DeRosa, John. “BONUS | Defending the Deuteros with Gary Michuta.” Classical Theism, 31 May 2019. Accessed 5 Sept. 2026.

Evert, Jason. “How to Defend the Deuterocanonicals.” Catholic Answers Magazine, 1 Sept. 2000. Accessed 5 Sept. 2026.

Hemsworth, William. “Deuterocanon: These Books Are Scripture and Need to Be Defended.” Patheos, 16 Nov. 2020. Accessed 5 Sept. 2026.

The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition. National Council of Churches, 2021.

Michuta, Gary G. The Case for the Deuterocanon: Evidence and Arguments. Nikaria Press, 2015.