The Deuterocanonical books are the parts of the Old Testament that Orthodox Christians accept as Scripture but Protestants don’t include in their Bibles. If you grew up Baptist or in another Protestant church around here, your Bible probably had 39 Old Testament books. The Orthodox Bible has more, about 49 or 50, depending on how you count them.
These aren’t “extra” books we added later. They’re books that were always part of the Septuagint, the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures that the early Church used. When the Apostles quoted the Old Testament in the New Testament (which they did about 300 times), they were usually quoting from this Greek version. It’s what Christians have been reading since the beginning.
Which Books Are We Talking About?
The main deuterocanonical books are Tobit, Judith, Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach (sometimes called Ecclesiasticus), Baruch, 1 Maccabees, and 2 Maccabees. There are also additions to the books of Esther and Daniel that include stories like Susanna and the Elders, and the Prayer of Azariah. Some Orthodox Bibles include a few others like 3 Maccabees, Psalm 151, and the Prayer of Manasseh.
The word “deuterocanonical” literally means “second canon.” It doesn’t mean second-rate. It just acknowledges that these books came into the formal lists a bit later in Church history, even though Christians had been reading them in worship from the start. The Synod of Jerusalem in 1672 officially affirmed them as “Canonical Books and Sacred Scripture” for the Orthodox Church.
Why Don’t Protestants Have Them?
During the Reformation in the 1500s, Protestant leaders decided to follow the Hebrew canon used by Jews rather than the Septuagint canon used by Christians. They moved these books into a separate section called the Apocrypha, useful for moral teaching but not for establishing doctrine. Early Protestant Bibles like the King James Version actually included them (you can still find old KJV Bibles with them tucked between the testaments), but over time most Protestant publishers dropped them entirely to save printing costs and because they supported teachings Protestants rejected.
One example: 2 Maccabees mentions praying for the dead, which connects to beliefs about the afterlife that Protestants wanted to distance themselves from. So out went the books.
How Do We Use Them?
These books aren’t just sitting on a shelf. We read them in church. They show up in our liturgical lectionaries. Sirach, for instance, is packed with practical wisdom that sounds a lot like Proverbs. The story of Tobit teaches about faithfulness, marriage, and God’s providence through the angel Raphael. The Maccabees books tell the story of faithful Jews resisting persecution, which is why we read from them during times of martyrdom commemorations.
Are they as authoritative as Genesis or Isaiah? There’s some nuance here. Church Fathers and Orthodox tradition treat them as inspired and true, appropriate for reading in worship and teaching.
If you want to read these books yourself, pick up a copy of the Orthodox Study Bible. It includes the full Septuagint Old Testament with notes from the Church Fathers. You’ll find these books right where they’ve always been, woven into the story of God’s people, not set apart as something lesser.
For folks coming from Protestant backgrounds, this can feel strange at first. You might wonder if we’re adding to the Bible. We’re not. We’re just using the Bible the Church has used from the beginning, the one the Apostles knew, the one that shaped Christian worship before anyone decided to narrow the list. The Orthodox Church received the Scriptures from the Apostles and has guarded them ever since. That includes these books.
So next time you hear a reading in Liturgy and think, “I don’t remember that story from Sunday School,” there’s a good chance it’s from one of these books. Welcome to the fuller library.
