Should the Apocrypha be included in the Bible?

Whether the Apocrypha belongs in the Bible has divided Western Christianity since the Reformation. Catholic and Orthodox Christians include these books, in some form, as authoritative Scripture; Protestants do not. This is not a minor footnote question — it shapes what counts as the final authority for doctrine and practice.

Answering it well requires looking honestly at both the historical case made for including these books and the historical and theological reasons the Reformers, and Protestants ever since, have concluded they do not belong in the canon proper.

It is also worth saying at the outset that this disagreement, real as it is, does not place either side outside the bounds of historic Christian faith. Faithful, gospel-believing Christians hold both positions, which is why the question deserves careful, respectful engagement rather than dismissive labeling of the other side.

Those who favor including the Apocrypha point out that these books appeared in the Septuagint, the Greek Old Testament widely used by Greek-speaking Jews and quoted extensively by New Testament writers, and that early Christian writers sometimes cited them respectfully, suggesting a level of acceptance in parts of the early church.

The Catholic Church formally affirmed these books as deuterocanonical at the Council of Trent in 1546, arguing that longstanding liturgical use across centuries of church tradition carries real authority, particularly since some early copies of the Septuagint included them alongside the recognized Hebrew books.

Despite this history, the case for full canonical status runs into serious problems. The Jewish community that originally produced and preserved these Hebrew Scriptures never included the Apocrypha in its authoritative canon, a fact confirmed by Josephus around AD 93, who described a closed, twenty-two-book Hebrew canon completed by the time of Malachi centuries earlier.

Early church figures who could actually read Hebrew, most notably Jerome, translator of the Latin Vulgate, explicitly distinguished these books from the Hebrew canon, calling them useful for edification but not authoritative for establishing doctrine — a distinction later echoed by the Reformers, who returned to this earlier, more careful standard.

Perhaps the strongest evidence against including the Apocrypha is the silence of Jesus and the New Testament writers. Jesus quotes or alludes to the Old Testament hundreds of times but never once cites any of the apocryphal books as Scripture, and he affirms the Hebrew Scriptures as a settled, three-part collection — Law, Prophets, and Writings (Luke 24:44) — matching the thirty-nine-book Old Testament, not the expanded Catholic canon.

The New Testament writers, similarly steeped in the Old Testament and quoting it constantly, never once introduce a quotation from the Apocrypha with the formula “it is written” or “Scripture says” — phrases they use routinely for the recognized Old Testament books (Romans 15:4).

Beyond questions of origin and reception, several apocryphal books contain teachings that conflict with the rest of Scripture. The book of 2 Maccabees commends prayers offered for the dead to atone for their sins, a practice in tension with the Bible's consistent teaching that salvation comes through faith alone and that judgment follows death, not further opportunity for atonement (Hebrews 9:27).

Such internal tensions, alongside the acknowledged absence of prophetic authorship, since 1 Maccabees itself admits that prophecy had ceased in Israel during this period, provide strong theological, not merely historical, grounds for excluding these books from the authoritative canon of Scripture.

The wisest historic Protestant position, following Luther and other Reformers, is neither to dismiss the Apocrypha as worthless nor to elevate it to Scripture. These books offer genuine historical value, especially for understanding the four hundred years between the Testaments, and can be read profitably like other respected ancient literature.

But when it comes to establishing what Christians must believe and how they must live, Scripture alone, the sixty-six books recognized by Jesus, the apostles, and the historic Hebrew canon, remains the sufficient and final authority (2 Timothy 3:16), fully able to make you “wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 3:15) without any addition.

So you can read the Apocrypha, if you choose to, without fear — approaching it the way you might approach any respected work of ancient religious history. Just hold it with an open hand rather than a closed fist, ready to learn from it, but never asking it to bear the weight that only God-breathed Scripture can carry.