Christian Holy Bibles Across Different Traditions

There are many versions of the Christian Bible; and edits to the main Bibles have continued with every new version and translation. One source of continual change comes from when archeological disocver are used to reconstruct what original Biblical texts said, as otherwise we have very few original documents. Aside from textual edits, over the centuries entire books have been rejected or included by various traditions. Different people have different impressions about what books are actually holy and biblical. In this table, background colours denote where books from one traditions have been moved around by another.

1. The Books of the Jewish, Protestant, Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Bibles
2. Apocrypha and Pseudepigraphia: Which Churches Accept Which of These Books?
3. Search on Bible Gateway

1. The Books of the Jewish, Protestant, Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Bibles

Judaism and Christianity are two of the main monotheistic (single-god) religions. Judaism is older by far, and the Christian 'old testament' is largely based on re-ordered, editted, and translated versions of older Judaistic originals.

This table of books reflects some of the most popular collections of books. Some traditions consider some books as holy, divine and inspired. Others reject them. There is a lot of overlap between these major traditions. Nearly all geographic areas have distinct ideas of what they accept in the Bible, and what they reject. Here I only attempt to document the biggest traditions.

In addition to entire books being included or omitted, many books have (sometimes hundreds) of verses that are included in some tradition's copies of the book, but not included in others. Historians and researchers very frequently know with some accuracy when edits, additions, re-orderings, mistranslations and intentional re-wordings have taken place.

Fundamentalists and church organisations going through authoritarian phases have often resorted to violence, murder, book-burning and aggressive rhetoric in asserting that their canon is exclusively accepted.

In this list, I have employed some colour-coding to try to make it easy to spot which books appear where in four main traditions. The books are listed in the correct order for each tradition, and I've added some whitespace so books that are common to all traditions appear on the same row, but this is not always possible where books are in a different order.

• In 1998 complete Bibles had been translated into 310 languages (and New Testament's into 695 languages). [United Bible Society (1988)₁]
• We have no original document for the Old Testament, only copies and edits of the originals.₁

2. Apocrypha and Pseudepigraphia: Which Churches Accept Which of These Books?

“The word apocrypha comes from a Greek word meaning "hidden". It is applied to all the books of scripture which are not included in the Protestant Bible, but particularly to the Old Testament books which are included in Roman Catholic versions. There are many other apocryphal books of both Old and New Testaments, which have been rejected as spurious or doubtful authenticity, and these are now usually referred to as pseudepigraphia.”

"Bible Facts" by Jenny Roberts (1997)₂

The Septuagint translation of the Hebrew Scriptures included many books that have not been universally accepted by different Christian churches. They are collectively called the apocrypha. Their presence has caused much controversy and debate between different Christian Churches. This table indicates which institutions accept or reject these books. Some of them may "partially accept" some of these books but give them less value than other books, whilst some "partially reject" them; they are not in the canon but they are valued and given religious value.

Notes:

• The Letter of Jeremiah often appears as chapter 6 of 1 Baruch₃.
• 2 Ezra is called 1 Esdras in the Septuagint and 3 Esdras in the Vulgate₃.
• Protestant denominations vary in their regard for these writings, but all consider them extracanonical₃.
• The Roman Catholic church accepts twelve writings as "deuterocanonical" (i.e., as a second collection of canonical writings), according to the ruling of the Council of Trent in 1546₃.
• Eastern Orthodox churches regard them all as scriptural, but with various degrees of inspiration₃.

Letter of Jeremiah

3. Search on Bible Gateway