The Deuterocanonical books are those Old Testament books found in Orthodox Bibles but not in Protestant ones. You’ll find them in your Orthodox Study Bible between the standard Hebrew canon and the New Testament, books like Tobit, Judith, Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, Baruch, and 1-4 Maccabees.
If you grew up Baptist or non-denominational here in Southeast Texas, you probably never heard these books read in church. Your Bible might’ve had a section labeled “Apocrypha” that you skipped right over, if it was there at all. But walk into St. Michael’s on a Sunday morning and you’ll hear passages from Sirach or Wisdom read as Scripture during the services.
So what’s going on?
Why We Have Them
The Orthodox Church uses the Septuagint as our Old Testament. That’s the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures made a couple centuries before Christ, and it’s what the Apostles quoted from. The Septuagint included these additional books. They were written mostly between 300 BC and the time of Christ, and early Christians received them as part of the biblical tradition handed down through the Church.
When the Fathers quoted Scripture, they quoted from these books. When the Church developed her liturgy, she drew from them. The Prayer of Azariah from the additions to Daniel? We sing that. The martyrdom accounts in Maccabees? We commemorate those saints. This wasn’t controversial for the first fifteen centuries of Christianity.
The split came at the Reformation. Protestants decided to follow the shorter Hebrew canon that rabbinic Judaism had settled on after the time of Christ. They called these extra books “Apocrypha” and either removed them entirely or tucked them away as “useful for reading but not for establishing doctrine.” Catholics at the Council of Trent formally defined their list in response. Orthodox Christians just kept doing what we’d always done, reading these books in church, quoting them in our hymns, and treating them as Scripture.
What’s in Them
The list includes Tobit (a beautiful story about faithfulness and God’s providence), Judith (a widow who saves Israel), the Wisdom of Solomon (philosophical reflections on righteousness), Sirach or Ecclesiasticus (practical wisdom for daily life), Baruch with the Letter of Jeremiah, additions to Daniel and Esther, 1-4 Maccabees (the history of Jewish resistance and martyrdom), and Psalm 151. Some editions include a few other short texts like the Prayer of Manasseh.
These aren’t obscure books gathering dust. Sirach gets read constantly, it’s packed with the kind of practical wisdom that sounds like Proverbs. The Wisdom of Solomon shapes how we talk about the soul and righteousness. And 2 Maccabees gives us the clearest Old Testament witness to praying for the dead, which is why it matters when someone asks, “Where’s that in the Bible?”
A Bit of Nuance
Now here’s where Orthodox thinking gets interesting. We don’t have a pope who issued a decree defining exactly which books are in and which are out. We have the received tradition of the Church. Some Orthodox theologians distinguish between the Hebrew books as the primary canon and these additional books as “Anagignoskomena”, readable, ecclesiastical books. But that doesn’t mean second-rate. It means the Church reads them, the Fathers quoted them, the liturgy uses them, and they’re inspired and authoritative for our life together.
The distinction isn’t about doubting their value. It’s about recognizing that the Church’s relationship to Scripture isn’t primarily legal or juridical. We receive these books because the Church has always used them. They’ve formed our prayer life, shaped our understanding of martyrdom and wisdom, and given us language for talking about God’s work in history.
Why It Matters
When you’re preparing to become Orthodox, you’ll want to get an Orthodox Study Bible if you don’t have one already. You’ll start hearing these books read in the services. A passage from Wisdom might show up in a feast day hymn. The priest might reference Tobit in a homily about marriage or Sirach in a talk about raising kids.
These books aren’t extras. They’re part of how the Church has always read the Old Testament, and they’ll become part of how you understand the faith. Don’t skip over them just because they weren’t in your old Bible. Read Tobit with your spouse. Work through Sirach like you’d read Proverbs. Let the Maccabees teach you what faithfulness looked like when it cost everything.
The Church doesn’t ask you to check your brain at the door, but she does ask you to receive what she’s received. And she’s been reading these books since the beginning.
