The Living Tradition An Orthodox Archive of the Church Fathers and Early Church

For Protestant readers

Which books, and who decided

Why does an Orthodox Old Testament contain books a Protestant Bible does not?

  • Historical consensusBroadly agreed among historians working from the surviving evidence. Consensus can shift when the evidence or the method changes.
  • Received Orthodox teachingTaught consistently and received throughout the Orthodox Church, though not necessarily formulated in a conciliar definition. This is not a claim that no Father ever wrote differently.

Primary evidence verified Content last reviewed 2026-09-04

What still needs checking (3)
  • Obtain the Westminster Confession chapter I on the apocrypha and the Thirty-Nine Articles article VI, so the Protestant position is stated confessionally rather than summarised.
  • Obtain an official Orthodox statement on the canon: Orthodox jurisdictions differ among themselves on the status of some books, and this page should show that rather than imply uniformity.
  • Obtain tier D scholarship on the Septuagint and the Hebrew canon, and on Jerome's position, all of which this page treats only in outline.

Report an accuracy issue on this page

The New Testament lists converged early and are effectively identical. The Old Testament differs, and the reason is a decision about which text of Israel's scriptures the Church inherited. Neither side simply added or removed books at a council.

What is held in common

Orthodox and Protestants receive the same twenty-seven books of the New Testament, in the same order, with no dispute. The four Gospels were settled long before any council. Whatever else divides the two, the New Testament does not.

The Orthodox position

The Church received the Scriptures of Israel principally in their Greek form, the version the apostles and the early Christian writers ordinarily quote, and that collection is wider than the Hebrew one. Those additional books are read in the Orthodox Church, appointed in its services, and printed in its Bibles.

Orthodox usage does not, however, speak with one voice about their precise standing, and some Fathers who used them distinguished them from the books used to establish doctrine. That internal variation is real and this page will not tidy it away.

The texts

These are fountains of salvation, that they who thirst may be satisfied with the living words they contain. In these alone is proclaimed the doctrine of godliness. Let no man add to these, neither let him take ought from these.

Athanasius of Alexandria, From Festal Letter 39 (for 367), Section 6 Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. 4, trans. Archibald Robertson — public domain Read this work in the archive

On this text. The archived edition prints extracts, not the whole letter; fuller Greek, Coptic and Syriac witnesses exist and are not held here. Athanasius' list is famous for the New Testament, but his Old Testament list matches neither a modern Protestant nor a modern Orthodox Bible exactly, and he goes on to name further books as appointed to be read without being in the list. A reader who cites him as settling the canon in favour of either side has not read the whole passage.

Where the difference actually lies

The Reformers took the Hebrew collection as the Old Testament canon and set the remaining books apart, in many editions still printed but in a separate section and not used to establish doctrine. Later printings often dropped them. The Orthodox Church continued with the wider Greek collection it had always used.

So the difference is inherited from a decision about which textual tradition of Israel's scriptures the Church stands in, and it long predates the sixteenth century. Jerome had raised the question in the fourth.

Not yet stated here: the teaching of the Protestant confessions

The confessional statements are specific about the status they assign these books, and paraphrasing them tends to overstate the rejection. This site will quote them or leave the space empty.

To write this section, a maintainer must obtain and cite:

  • Westminster Confession of Faith, chapter I, on the books commonly called Apocrypha
  • The Thirty-Nine Articles, Article VI, which lists the books and states the use made of the others
  • A Lutheran statement, since Luther's own practice of printing them between the Testaments differs from the Reformed treatment

Why this is empty. A claim about what another Church teaches requires that Church's own authoritative text — tier E in the source policy. No such text has been obtained, so the claim is not made. This gap is the honest state of the evidence, not an oversight.

Sources for this page

  1. Tier C Athanasius: Select Works and Letters Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (eds.); Archibald Robertson (trans.) Athanasius, Festal Letter 39 (for 367), section 6 translated edition of primary texts Source record

Tiers are explained in the methodology. No page on this site has been reviewed or approved by any bishop, priest, synod or seminary.