The Orthodox Bible contains the same 27 New Testament books you’ll find in any Protestant or Catholic Bible, but a larger Old Testament, somewhere between 49 and 52 books depending on which Orthodox tradition you’re counting from. That brings the total to about 76 to 79 books.
If you grew up Baptist or Methodist here in Beaumont, your Bible probably has 66 books total. The difference is in the Old Testament.
Why the Extra Books?
The Orthodox Church has always used the Septuagint as its Old Testament. That’s the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures that the early Church used. When the Apostles quoted the Old Testament in the New Testament, they were usually quoting from the Septuagint. It’s what the first Christians read.
The Septuagint includes books that Protestants call the Apocrypha and that Catholics and Orthodox call deuterocanonical. Books like Tobit, Judith, Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach (also called Ecclesiasticus), Baruch, and 1 and 2 Maccabees. The Orthodox canon also includes 3 Maccabees, 4 Maccabees in some traditions, 1 Esdras, the Prayer of Manasseh, Psalm 151, and some additions to Esther and Daniel.
These aren’t new additions. They’ve been read in the Church since the beginning. When the councils of Hippo and Carthage in the late 300s recognized which books belonged in Scripture, they included these books. The Church didn’t remove them. Protestants did, during the Reformation in the 1500s, when reformers decided to follow the shorter Hebrew canon instead of the Septuagint that Christians had been using for fifteen centuries.
Scripture Lives Inside Tradition
Here’s where Orthodox Christianity differs most sharply from what you might’ve learned growing up Protestant. We don’t believe in “the Bible alone.”
That doesn’t mean we don’t love Scripture or consider it authoritative. We absolutely do. But Scripture didn’t fall from the sky as a complete book. The Church wrote the New Testament, the Church recognized which books were inspired, and the Church has always read Scripture within the living memory and teaching of the community guided by the Holy Spirit. That’s what we mean by Holy Tradition.
Scripture is part of Tradition, not separate from it. It’s the most important part, but it can’t be ripped out of the context that produced it and understood it. When St. Paul tells Timothy that the Church is “the pillar and ground of the truth,” he means it. The Church doesn’t sit under Scripture waiting to be judged by each person’s private interpretation. The Church is the living body that gave us Scripture and knows how to read it.
This isn’t about adding human traditions on top of God’s Word. It’s about recognizing that the Holy Spirit guides the Church in understanding what God has revealed. The same Spirit who inspired the Scriptures also guides the Church in interpreting them through the Church Fathers, the ecumenical councils, the liturgy, and the consensus of the faithful across time.
Reading the Orthodox Bible
If you want to read an Orthodox Bible in English, the Orthodox Study Bible is your best option. It’s based on the Septuagint tradition for the Old Testament and includes study notes that explain how the Church has understood these passages. You’ll find references to the Church Fathers, connections to the liturgy, and explanations of how Orthodox Christians have read these texts for two thousand years.
When you open it, you’ll notice something different right away. The Psalms are numbered slightly differently than in Protestant Bibles because of how the Septuagint divided them. Some passages are worded differently because they’re translated from the Greek rather than the Hebrew. And you’ll find those additional books that Protestants removed.
But the real difference isn’t just what books are included. It’s how we read them. In Orthodox worship, Scripture is everywhere. We hear the Psalms in every service. We read through the Gospels and Epistles systematically throughout the year. The hymns are saturated with biblical language and imagery. We don’t just study the Bible. We pray it, sing it, and live inside it.
What This Means for You
If you’re coming from a Protestant background, this might feel unsettling at first. You’ve been taught that Scripture is your sole authority, that you can read it and understand it on your own with the Holy Spirit’s help. The Orthodox approach asks you to trust that the Holy Spirit works through the Church, not just through individuals.
But think about it practically. When you read your Bible at home, you’re already interpreting it through some tradition, whether that’s the theology you learned at your Baptist church, the study notes in your Scofield Reference Bible, or the sermon you heard last Sunday. Nobody reads Scripture in a vacuum. The question is which tradition you trust. We trust the one that goes back to the Apostles, that’s been tested and refined through councils and saints, that’s produced people like St. John Chrysostom and St. Basil the Great.
The Orthodox Bible isn’t a different book. It’s the Church’s book, read the way the Church has always read it. And if you’re serious about exploring Orthodoxy, you’ll want to get yourself a copy and start reading it within the life of the Church, where it’s always belonged.
