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Authority & Sources

Deuterocanon

DOO-ter-oh-can-unnoun

“Second canon” — books (Tobit, Sirach, 1–2 Maccabees, etc.) in Catholic and Orthodox Bibles that Protestants place outside the canon.

Not To Be Confused With

Catholics call these books “deuterocanonical” (a true but secondarily-recognized part of the canon); Protestants call the same books “apocrypha” and exclude them from Scripture.

These books were in the Greek Septuagint and are accepted as Scripture by Catholics and Orthodox (with some variation), while the Reformation returned to the Hebrew canon and set them apart. The difference is one strand of the authority debate.

Related Terms

Seen In These Debates

Deuterocanon — Definition | Theologos Media