Have you ever opened a Protestant Bible and wondered why it only has 66 books instead of the 73 you find in your Catholic Bible? These seven books — 1 and 2 Maccabees, Sirach, Wisdom, Baruch, Tobit, and Judith — are woven into the standard canon of the Old Testament in the Catholic Bible, while in the Protestant Bible they are separated out and viewed as historically valuable and spiritually edifying, but not divinely inspired Scripture. To get to the root of the differences, you have to take a trip through Church history, beginning with the earliest Christians and progressing through the Protestant Reformation. Let’s look at the Catholic defense of these seven books as divinely inspired Scripture and a fuller revelation of God’s wisdom.