Why the Apostles’ Bible Isn’t the Protestant One

Brief Overview

• The apostles and New Testament writers overwhelmingly quoted from the Septuagint, the Greek Old Testament that contained the deuterocanonical books Protestants later removed.
• Roughly 300 of the 350 Old Testament citations in the New Testament follow the Septuagint text rather than the Hebrew Masoretic tradition that Protestants adopted.
• The Hebrew canon that Protestants rely on was finalized by rabbinic Jews after the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD, partly as a reaction against the growing Christian movement.
• Catholics who understand this history gain one of the strongest arguments in all of biblical apologetics, but they must also reckon with the fact that the relationship between the Septuagint and the canon is more complicated than a simple soundbite allows.

What the Septuagint Actually Was

Around 250 BC, Jewish scholars in Alexandria, Egypt, translated the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek. Legend holds that seventy or seventy-two translators worked independently and produced identical translations, which is why the collection bears the name Septuagint, from the Latin word for seventy. The historical reality was less miraculous but no less significant. Over the course of roughly two centuries, Jewish communities translated their sacred texts into Greek because Greek had become the common language of the Mediterranean world. Most Jews outside of Palestine spoke Greek, not Hebrew, and they needed Scripture in a language they could understand.

The Septuagint included books that the later Hebrew canon would exclude, among them Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, and 1 and 2 Maccabees. These books circulated among Greek-speaking Jews for centuries before Christ. By the time Jesus began His public ministry, the Septuagint was the most widely used edition of the Jewish Scriptures in the ancient world. This is the collection the early Church inherited, and this is the Bible the apostles carried into the Gentile mission.

How the New Testament Writers Used It

The evidence in the New Testament itself is difficult to dispute. When Matthew quoted Isaiah’s prophecy about the virgin birth in Matthew 1:23, he used the Septuagint’s Greek word “parthenos,” meaning virgin, rather than the Hebrew word “almah,” which can mean young woman. When the author of Hebrews quoted Psalm 40:6 in Hebrews 10:5, the text reads “a body you prepared for me,” following the Septuagint, while the Hebrew text reads “ears you have opened for me.” These are not minor variations. They represent theological choices that the New Testament writers made by selecting the Septuagint reading over the Hebrew.

Paul quoted the Old Testament extensively in his letters, and his citations consistently follow the Septuagint. The Gospel of Luke, written for a Greek-speaking audience, relies on Septuagint phrasing throughout. The Book of Revelation is saturated with Old Testament imagery drawn from the Greek rather than the Hebrew tradition. When the apostles preached to Gentile converts who had never read a word of Hebrew, they handed them the Septuagint. That was the Church’s Bible from the very beginning.

The Hebrew Canon Came Later and Had an Agenda

The Hebrew canon that Protestants eventually adopted was not finalized until well after the time of Christ. Rabbinic Judaism consolidated its scriptural list gradually in the decades and centuries following the Temple’s destruction in 70 AD. The process, traditionally associated with discussions at Yavneh around 90 AD, though scholars debate the precise timeline, narrowed the Jewish canon to books written in Hebrew and meeting specific criteria of antiquity and theological conformity.

Several of those criteria worked against the deuterocanonical books. Texts composed in Greek, or preserved only in Greek, were excluded. Books that appeared to support Christian theological claims were treated with suspicion. The rabbinic authorities who shaped this canon were not neutral archivists. They were Jewish leaders responding to the rapid growth of Christianity, and they had reasons to define their Scriptures in ways that distinguished Judaism from the new Christian movement. Luther adopted this post-Christian Jewish canon fifteen centuries later and presented it as the original, a move that St. Augustine had explicitly warned against in the fifth century.

The Church Fathers Knew Which Bible to Trust

The early Church Fathers did not debate this question the way modern apologists do. They used the Septuagint as a matter of course. St. Clement of Rome, writing around 96 AD, quoted from Wisdom and Sirach. St. Polycarp, a direct disciple of the Apostle John, drew on Tobit. St. Irenaeus, St. Cyprian, and St. Augustine all treated the deuterocanonical books as sacred Scripture in their writings, their homilies, and their theological arguments.

Augustine made the Catholic position especially clear. In his work “On Christian Doctrine,” he listed the books of the Old Testament canon and included every deuterocanonical book. He argued that the Church should follow the Septuagint tradition rather than deferring to Jewish authorities who had rejected Christ. His reasoning was straightforward: Christians should trust the Bible that Christians had always used, not the Bible that non-Christian Jews assembled after the fact.

The Honest Complication Catholics Should Acknowledge

Not every Church Father agreed with Augustine. St. Jerome, the great translator who produced the Latin Vulgate, personally preferred the shorter Hebrew canon and referred to the deuterocanonical books as useful for edification but not for establishing doctrine. Jerome’s position is the one Protestants most frequently cite when defending their shorter Bible. Catholics need to know this and not be caught off guard by it.

However, Jerome’s personal opinion did not carry the day. The Church overruled him. When Jerome translated the Vulgate, he included the deuterocanonical books because the Church required it. The councils of Hippo and Carthage defined the 73 book canon during Jerome’s own lifetime, and he submitted to that decision. The Catholic Church teaches that the Magisterium holds the final authority on matters of canon (CCC 85), and Jerome respected that authority even when he personally disagreed. His example actually strengthens the Catholic argument. Even the greatest biblical scholar of the early Church deferred to the teaching authority of the Church rather than insisting on his private judgment.

What Protestants Chose Instead

When Luther and the Reformers looked for a basis to remove the deuterocanonical books, they reached past fifteen centuries of Christian practice and grabbed hold of Jerome’s minority opinion and the rabbinic Hebrew canon. They framed this as a return to the sources, using the Renaissance slogan “ad fontes.” But their source was not the apostolic Church. Their source was a Jewish canon shaped after Christ by authorities who rejected Christ. The irony is sharp. Protestants who claim to follow the Bible as their sole authority chose a canon assembled by people who denied the central claim of the New Testament.

The Catholic Church followed the apostles. The apostles used the Septuagint. The Septuagint included the deuterocanonical books. That chain of continuity is historically documented and logically coherent. Breaking it requires an explanation that Protestantism has never adequately provided.

So, Whose Bible Are You Reading?

The question is not abstract or academic. Every Christian who opens an Old Testament is reading either the Bible the apostles used or a shortened version assembled centuries later by authorities outside the Church. The Septuagint was the Scripture of Peter, Paul, Luke, and John. It was the Scripture of Clement, Polycarp, Irenaeus, and Augustine. It was the Scripture affirmed by the councils that gave Christianity its formal canon. The 39 book Protestant Old Testament follows a different lineage, one that runs through rabbinic Judaism and a sixteenth century reformer rather than through the apostolic Church.

Catholics stand on firm ground here, and they should say so plainly. The Church did not add books that do not belong. She kept the books that were always there. If you want to read the same Old Testament the apostles read, you need a Catholic Bible. That is not a sales pitch. It is a historical fact, and every serious scholar, Protestant or Catholic, knows it.