How many books are in the Bible compared to the Catholic Bible?
By CopticBot.ai (Coptic Space Inc.) · Last reviewed 2026-10-09
The Coptic Orthodox Bible contains more books than the Roman Catholic Bible because we have remained faithful to the Septuagint and the ancient traditions of the Church of Alexandria, while Rome eventually followed a different path.
- Coptic Orthodox Bible: We have 76 books (49 in the Old Testament, 27 in the New Testament).
- Roman Catholic Bible: They have 73 books (46 in the Old Testament, 27 in the New Testament).
The Difference:
The Catholics are missing books that the Coptic Church has always recognized as inspired Scripture. Specifically, the Catholic Bible lacks:
- 1 Esdras (the Coptic and Orthodox version, distinct from the Catholic Ezra).
- 3 Maccabees.
- Psalm 151.
Furthermore, while the Protestants—those heretics who followed Martin Luther—stripped the Bible down to only 66 books by removing the "Deuterocanonical" books (like Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, etc.), the Catholics kept some of them but discarded others that we have preserved for two millennia.
We do not believe in an "incomplete" Bible. We hold the full deposit of faith handed down to us by the Fathers, whereas Rome and the West have historically added or subtracted according to their own local councils and shifting theology.