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In the Year 250 B.C., an effort was underway to translate all Jewish Scripture into the Greek language. The thing is, more Jews lived outside of Palestine than in. In the third century B.C., nearly two-fifths of the population in Egypt alone, especially in Alexandria, was Jewish and yet unable to read or write in Hebrew. These Greek-speaking Jews were known as Hellenistic Jews.

According to pious tradition, 70 scholars gathered together to begin the daunting task of translation, hence the term Septuagint from the number 70 in Greek for this version of the Bible. However, no parallel effort was afoot at this time to compile a strictly Hebrew collection of the Old Testament books. Because most of the world's Jews were no longer speaking Hebrew but speaking Greek, the need for an all-Greek version of Jewish Scripture was obvious. The smaller community of Hebrew-speaking Jews in the Holy Land wasn't as plentiful, influential, or interested at the time to compile a strictly Hebrew version. The Septuagint Version of the Bible contained 46 books and because the standard collection of Jewish Scripture, at least for the Hellenistic Jews, and even the Jews in Palestine accepted this collection of books.

Seven of the 46 books were never composed or written originally in the Hebrew language but were regarded as inspired texts nonetheless. These seven books -- the Books of Baruch, Maccabees I and II, Tobit, Judith, Ecclesiasticus (also known as Sirach), and Wisdom -- were known and used by Jews even in the Holy Land, including Jesus and his disciples. The early Christians likewise accepted the inspired status of these seven books, because no one had refuted them during the time of Christ. Because they were later additions to the more ancient Hebrew writings, however, these seven books were called the Deuterocanonical Books (meaning second cannon); the 39 Hebrew books were known as the Canonical Books.

Jewish authorities in Jerusalem had no explicit objections to these seven books until the year A.D. 100, well after the Christians had split from the formal Judaism and formed their own separate religion. The Temple of Jerusalem was destroyed in A.D. 70, and in the year A.D. 100, Jewish leaders at the Council of Jamnia sought to purify Judaism of all foreign and Gentile influence, which meant removing anything not purely Hebrew. Because the seven Deuterocanonical Books were never written in Hebrew, they got pitched.

By now, though, Christianity was totally separate from Judaism and didn't doubt the authenticity of the seven books, because these books were always considered equal to the other 39. That is, at least until Martin Luther initiated the Protestant Reformation in 1517 and chose to adopt the Hebrew canon rather than the Greek canon of the old Septuagint.

So in the listing of the Old Testament, a discrepancy exists between the Catholic and the Protestant Bibles. Catholic Bibles list 46 books and Protestant Bibles list 39. Recently, though, many publishers have added the seven books in Protestant Bibles, such as the King James Version, but they're carefully placed at the back, after the end of the canonical texts, and they're identified as being part of the Apocrypha, which is from the Greek word apokryphos meaning hidden.

So what the Catholic Church considers Deuterocanonical, Protestant theologians consider Apocrypha. And what the Catholic Church considers Apocrypha, Protestants call Pseudepigrapha (meaning false writings), which are the alleged and so-called Lost Books of the Bible. These Lost Books were never considered as being inspired by the Church, so they were never included as part of any Bible, Catholic or Protestant. Such books as the Assumption of Moses, the Apocalypse of Abraham, the Ascension of Isaiah, the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Peter, the Acts of St. John, and others, were all considered uninspired and therefore never made it into the Bible.

Interestingly enough, Catholics and Protestants have never seriously disputed the list of the New Testament books, and both the Catholic and the Protestant Bibles have the exact same names and numbers (27) of books in the New Testament.