WHY THE BIBLE TRANSLATED BY THE PROTESTANTS HAS ONLY 66 BOOKS . . .

while the Catholic and Orthodox churches have about ten more, and the Jews only 39?

What are the writings in the Biblical Canon (the official list of books approved as the accepted norm) that comprise the texts recognised as inspired by God and authoritative for the Church?

DIAGRAM OF THESE DIFFERENT "BIBLES":

DIAGRAM OF THE JEWISH CANON OF THE OLD TESTAMENT :

The Tanakh gathers the books of the Old Testament. It is the Hebrew Bible, the "Bible" of Jesus and the apostles. TaNaKH is the acronym for Torah-Neviim-Ketuvim

WHY REFUSE THE APOCRYPHA?

Judaism has never recognized the apocryphal texts. Jesus and the apostles, who often quote the Scriptures and the Old Testament, never quote these writings, nor do they recognize them (see the Gospel of Luke, chapter 24, verses 27, 44 and 45).

When Jesus says "all the Scriptures", he confirms by saying "the law of Moses, the prophets and the psalms", i.e. the Torah, the Neviim and the Ketuvim, i.e. the Tanakh (see table above), in which the apocryphal books are not found (Gospel of Luke, chapter 24, verses 27, 44 and 45).

Furthermore, when Jesus speaks of the murder of the prophets since the creation of the world, he says, "from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zachariah." (Gospel of Luke, chapter 11, verse 51). These murders are reported in Genesis (Genesis 4:8) and at the end of the book of chronicles (2 Chronicles 24:20 to 22).
Jesus took the first book of the Hebrew canon (Genesis) to the last book (2^nd book of Chronicles), which is the last book in the order of the books of the Hebrew canon, the Tanakh, the "Bible" of Jesus and the apostles.
There are no other books after this last book!

Apocryphal writings lack the attributes of the Holy Scriptures: authority, truth, clarity, unity, and contain errors. Moreover, they express doctrines that often contradict the doctrine of the Hebrew canon and the New Testament.

While the statement "Thus saith the Lord", or a similar expression, is found more than 3800 times in the Old Testament, it is not found once in the Apocryphal books.

Moreover, the unknown author of the 2^nd book of Maccabees, one of the apocryphal books, confesses in his epilogue : "I too will finish my work at this point. If the composition is good and successful, that is also what I wanted; if it is of little value and hardly exceeds mediocrity, that is all I could do. For just as it is harmful to drink pure wine or pure water, whereas wine mixed with water is a pleasant drink which produces a delicious enjoyment, so it is the art of arranging the narrative which charms the understanding of those who read the work. So this is where I stop." (2 Maccabees 15:38 to 40)

Anyone who is familiar with the Holy Scriptures cannot recognise divine inspiration in these lines, whose author states that his aim was to compose a successful work and to charm the minds of those who read it!

About 400 years after Jesus Christ, in his official translation into Latin, called the Vulgate, St. Jerome does not recognize their "canonicity" either. Jerome's Galatian prologue to the two books of Samuel says: "Any work that is not among the 24 scrolls of the Hebrew Bible must be considered Apocryphal, i.e. non-canonical."
(see extract from "The History of the Bible", chapter "Jerome and the Latin Vulgate Bible")

APOCRYPHA AND PSEUDEPIGRAPHA OF THE NEW TESTAMENT

As with the Old Testament, there was an abundant literature that developed after the apostles. Alongside the New Testament, it can be classified as follows:

A DOOR OPEN TO MANY DEVIATIONS.

The apocryphal books endorse doctrines that contradict the Holy Scriptures.
This is why the Roman Catholic Church, in particular, is so keen on these ancient books, which have caused so much confusion in the past. It finds in them a "scriptural" foundation that the 66 inspired books never provided for a whole series of dogmas consecrated over the centuries by tradition.

Details of these deviations are available (French) in the comparative table: THE CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND/OR THE BIBLE.

CONCLUSION :