If you walk into a Christian book store and compare a Catholic Bible (if they have one) and a Protestant Bible, sure enough, the former has 73 books while the later has 66. Did the Catholic Church indiscriminately add 7 books to the Bible? 

 

the seven books in question are

--Tobit, Judith, 1 and 2 Maccabees, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, and Baruch--

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The Catholic Bible has included 73 books since the bible was first canonized in 382 A.D.  The books were removed because they were written in Greek and not in Hebrew, so they were not considered part of the Old Testament by the Jews.

 

If you are just beginning to discover the Bible,  I suggest that you begin with a Catholic Youth Bible or the Catholic Children's Bible.