Luther’s Scissors and the Seven Missing Books of the Bible

Brief Overview

• Martin Luther removed seven Old Testament books from the Protestant Bible not because they lacked ancient support but because they contradicted his new doctrines.
• The deuterocanonical books had been part of Christian Scripture for over a thousand years before the Reformation, used in liturgy, quoted by Church Fathers, and affirmed at multiple councils.
• Luther also attempted to demote four New Testament books, including James and Revelation, a fact most Protestants today have never heard.
• Understanding why these books were cut requires confronting an uncomfortable truth about how theological agendas can reshape even the Word of God.

The Books Luther Threw Out

The seven books in question are Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, and 1 and 2 Maccabees, along with portions of Daniel and Esther. Catholics call these the deuterocanonical books, meaning “second canon,” because their acceptance was debated in some circles during the early centuries. Protestants call them the Apocrypha, a term that carries the implication of falseness, which is itself a rhetorical choice that prejudges the question.

These books were part of the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament that Jewish scholars produced around 250 BC. The Septuagint was the Bible of the early Church. When New Testament authors quoted the Old Testament, they overwhelmingly drew from the Septuagint rather than the Hebrew text. The apostles and the Church Fathers treated these books as Scripture, and the councils of Hippo in 393 and Carthage in 397 formally defined a canon that included all seven.

What These Books Actually Teach That Luther Hated

The real reason Luther targeted these books becomes obvious when you read them. Second Maccabees 12:43-46 describes Judas Maccabeus sending money to Jerusalem for a sin offering on behalf of fallen soldiers, “that they might be delivered from their sin.” This passage directly supports the Catholic doctrine of prayer for the dead and, by extension, Purgatory. Luther had publicly rejected Purgatory. A biblical text that affirmed it was a problem he needed to eliminate.

The Book of Wisdom and Sirach posed similar difficulties. Sirach 7:33 teaches that almsgiving atones for sin. Wisdom 3:1-7 describes the souls of the righteous as being tested and purified by God before entering glory, language that fits the Catholic understanding of purification after death. Tobit 12:9 states plainly that “almsgiving delivers from death and purges every kind of sin.” These verses did not sit comfortably alongside Luther’s doctrine of salvation by faith alone. Rather than rethink his theology, Luther rethought the Bible.

The New Testament Books He Also Tried to Cut

Most Protestants have no idea that Luther’s scissors reached into the New Testament as well. In the preface to his 1522 German translation, Luther separated four books from the rest of the New Testament, placing Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation at the end without numbering them. He treated them as lesser writings, not fully canonical. His reasoning was blunt. He called the Epistle of James “an epistle of straw” because James 2:24 states that “a man is justified by works and not by faith alone,” the only verse in the entire Bible that uses the phrase “faith alone,” and it directly denies Luther’s central doctrine.

Luther also questioned Hebrews because it teaches in Hebrews 6:4-6 that those who fall away after receiving grace cannot simply be renewed by faith, a position that complicated his theology of assurance. He doubted Revelation because he found it confusing and could not reconcile its imagery with his framework. His own followers quietly restored these four books to full canonical status after his death, but the Old Testament cuts remained. The result is a strange situation where Protestants accept Luther’s judgment on seven Old Testament books while silently rejecting his judgment on four New Testament books.

The Argument Luther Used and Why It Fails

Luther’s stated justification for removing the deuterocanonical books rested on a claim that only books preserved in Hebrew should be considered part of the Old Testament canon. He appealed to the shorter Hebrew canon used by rabbinic Judaism after the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD. This argument has a serious flaw. The Jewish rabbis who finalized that shorter canon did so partly in reaction against Christianity. Early Christians had been using the Septuagint, with its broader collection, to argue that Jesus was the Messiah. Rabbinic authorities had their own theological reasons for narrowing the list.

Luther was a Catholic priest who knew the deuterocanonical books had been in the Church’s Bible for over a millennium. He was not recovering some lost original. He was choosing a Jewish canon that postdated Christ over the Christian canon that the Church had used since the apostolic era. St. Augustine had explicitly argued against this move in the fifth century, insisting that Christians should not defer to Jewish authorities on which books belong in the Christian Bible. Luther ignored Augustine on this point while claiming Augustine’s authority on others.

What the Catholic Church Actually Did at Trent

Protestants sometimes argue that the Catholic Church “added” these books at the Council of Trent in 1546. This claim inverts the historical record. Trent did not add anything. Trent reaffirmed the same 73 book canon that the councils of Hippo and Carthage had defined over a thousand years earlier. The Church convened Trent precisely because Luther had removed books, and a formal reaffirmation became necessary to address the confusion he had created.

The Catechism teaches that the Church, guided by the Holy Spirit, recognized which writings were truly inspired and included them in the canon of Sacred Scripture (CCC 120). Trent exercised that same authority by confirming what the Church had always held. The burden of proof does not fall on the Catholic Church to justify books that were already in the Bible. The burden falls on Luther to justify taking them out.

So, Were Protestants Robbed of Scripture?

Yes, and the historical record supports that conclusion without ambiguity. Seven entire books of the Old Testament, books read by the apostles, quoted by the Church Fathers, affirmed by ecumenical and regional councils, and used in Christian worship for fifteen centuries, were removed by one man in the sixteenth century because they contradicted his personal theological system. Luther applied a standard to the Old Testament that he borrowed from non-Christian Jewish authorities, and he attempted to apply the same standard to the New Testament before his own followers stopped him. The fruit of that decision is a Protestant Bible that is historically thinner than what any Christian community used for the first 1,500 years of the faith.

If you are a Protestant who has never read Tobit, Wisdom, Sirach, or Maccabees, consider picking them up. Read them honestly and ask yourself whether these texts sound like the Word of God. Millions of Christians across every century thought so, right up until one German reformer decided otherwise. The question every honest reader must face is simple: did Luther have the authority to override the Church that gave him his Bible in the first place?