The Orthodox Bible: which books it has, and why they vary

The short answer

An Eastern Orthodox Bible has every book of the 73-book Catholic Bible plus 1 Esdras, 3 Maccabees, the Prayer of Manasseh and Psalm 151, because its Old Testament follows the Septuagint, the ancient Greek translation. Editions then differ. Greek Bibles usually add 4 Maccabees in an appendix, Slavonic and Russian ones add 2 Esdras, and no council binding on every Orthodox church has fixed a single list. Counted as books, that comes to about 76 to 78, with the same 27-book New Testament.

In this guide

1. How many books are in the Orthodox Bible?
2. The Orthodox Bible books list
3. What the Orthodox Bible adds to the Catholic one
4. Why Orthodox Bibles differ from one another
5. Orthodox vs Catholic vs Protestant Bible
6. What Bible do Orthodox Christians use in English?
7. An Orthodox Bible reading plan, at your own pace
8. Questions people ask
9. Sources

Ask how many books are in the Orthodox Bible and the answers run from 76 to 81. Some of that is a mix-up: 81 is the count of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, one of the Oriental Orthodox churches, whose Bible differs again. The rest is real, because the Eastern Orthodox churches (Greek, Russian and the others in their communion) share the Septuagint’s Old Testament but have never bound themselves to one list of its books. What follows is the Orthodox Bible books list in full, what each kind of edition adds, and what reading it through takes.

• 78books in the widest Orthodox list
• 1,386chapters in it, by our count
• 52chapters more than the Catholic Bible
• 63 hoursto read it all silently, at an average pace

How many books are in the Orthodox Bible?

An Eastern Orthodox Bible has between 76 and 78 books, depending on the edition and on how its books are counted. The core is shared: all 73 books of the Catholic Bible, with Esther and Daniel in their longer Greek forms, plus 1 Esdras, 3 Maccabees, the Prayer of Manasseh and Psalm 151. The New Testament is the same 27 books in every one.

Psalm 151 never changes the count, because Greek Orthodox Bibles generally treat it as part of the Book of Psalms. The rest depends on what is counted as a book:

The list OrthodoxWiki gives is the 76-book form: 49 Old Testament books with the Letter of Jeremiah apart, and 4 Maccabees and the Prayer of Manasseh in an appendix. Bible Gateway likewise gives “about 76” books, 49 of them in the Old Testament, with the Prayer of Manasseh and Psalm 151 alongside, and Wikipedia puts the Orthodox Old Testament at “up to 49” books. The list our tables count takes in every book these editions print: 78 books, with 4 Maccabees, 2 Esdras and the Prayer of Manasseh each counted, and with the Letter of Jeremiah kept as the sixth chapter of Baruch, as Catholic Bibles print it. Its Old Testament comes to 51 books and 1,126 chapters.

The Orthodox Bible books list

The Orthodox Old Testament holds every book of the Protestant and Catholic Old Testaments, plus the Septuagint books those leave out. The table gives each book with its chapters in all five canons we count, so a dash shows which Bibles leave a book out. The books are in the order of a Western Bible, with each Orthodox book placed beside its neighbors.

The New Testament is the same in Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant Bibles: 27 books from Matthew to Revelation, 260 chapters.

Orthodox Bibles print the Old Testament in an order of their own. In the list OrthodoxWiki gives, Psalms comes before Job, the twelve Minor Prophets come before Isaiah, and the Old Testament ends with Ezekiel and Daniel. Our guide to the books of the Bible in order sets the different orders side by side, and there is a one-page Orthodox books checklist to print (also in A4).

What the Orthodox Bible adds to the Catholic one

Compared with a Catholic Bible, the widest Orthodox list adds five books and one psalm, 52 chapters in all:

By our count of the World English Bible, a public-domain translation that includes all of them, these come to about 50,500 words, or three and a half hours of silent reading.

• 1 Esdras (9 chapters, about 47 minutes). The Septuagint’s other account of the return from exile. It begins with the last two chapters of 2 Chronicles and runs parallel to Ezra and part of Nehemiah, with one addition of its own: a contest between three guardsmen at the court of King Darius. It is canonical in the Eastern churches and generally treated as apocryphal in the West.
• 2 Esdras (16 chapters, about an hour and a half). An apocalypse whose core, chapters 3 to 14, is seven visions of Ezra. Its Hebrew and Greek originals are lost, and it comes down in Latin and other translations. Slavonic and Russian Bibles print it in an appendix, and its standing varies from one Orthodox tradition to another.
• 3 Maccabees (7 chapters, about half an hour). Despite the name, it has nothing to do with the Maccabean revolt. It tells of the Jews of Egypt under Ptolemy IV Philopator, condemned to be trampled by drunken elephants that turn on the king’s own men instead.
• 4 Maccabees (18 chapters, about 40 minutes). A philosophical address arguing that devout reason masters the emotions, built on the martyrdoms of Eleazar and of the mother and her seven sons in 2 Maccabees. Greek Bibles print it in an appendix.
• The Prayer of Manasseh (1 chapter, about 2 minutes). A short prayer of repentance in the voice of King Manasseh of Judah, whose prayer 2 Chronicles 33 mentions but does not give. Depending on the edition it stands among the Odes that follow the Psalms, in an appendix, or at the end of 2 Chronicles.
• Psalm 151 (7 verses). David on his fight with Goliath, found in most copies of the Septuagint and, in a Hebrew form, among the Dead Sea Scrolls. Its own heading places it outside the numbered psalms:

This Psalm is a genuine one of David, though extra, composed when he fought in single combat with Goliath. I was small among my brothers, and youngest in my father’s house. I tended my father’s sheep.

Psalm 151:1, World English Bible

The seven books that Catholic and Orthodox Bibles share and Protestant Bibles leave out are Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch and 1 and 2 Maccabees. Our guide to the deuterocanonical books and the Apocrypha goes through every one of them, book by book.

Why Orthodox Bibles differ from one another

Orthodox Bibles differ because no list of Old Testament books has ever been made binding on every Orthodox church. The Eastern Church has read the Septuagint from the earliest times, and Greek Orthodox generally regard it as divinely inspired. What has varied is where its edges fall.

The nearest thing to a defined list is the Synod of Jerusalem of 1672. It set out a Greek Orthodox canon close to the one the Catholic Council of Trent had approved, naming books such as Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach and the Maccabees as genuine parts of Scripture. But it was a regional council, and its decrees bind only if every Orthodox church accepts them. In OrthodoxWiki’s words, “there has been no official acceptance of the canon outlined at Jerusalem.” So the printed Bibles of each tradition differ at the margins:

• Greek Bibles include the books the synod named. 4 Maccabees was printed with the Old Testament without being formally counted as canonical, and today is often set in a separate section or left out.
• Slavonic and Russian Bibles carry 2 Esdras in their appendix instead, as 3 Esdras. In the Russian church, St. Philaret of Moscow’s Longer Catechism counts only the books of the Hebrew Bible as the Old Testament.
• Georgian Bibles tend to print 4 Maccabees too, and a recent edition marks it as noncanonical.

Anagignoskomena: “worthy to be read”

Greek Orthodox, following the Synod of Jerusalem, call the books that are in the Septuagint but not in the Hebrew Bible the anagignoskomena, “readable” or “worthy to be read”. Some Orthodox writers also say “deuterocanonical”, a word the Orthodox took up after the sixteenth century, but they mean by it a secondary authority, where Catholic usage means the books’ place in the canon was confirmed later. Protestants call much the same books the Apocrypha. Each name says how a tradition holds the books, not what is in them.

Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Bibles

The Oriental Orthodox churches are a different family, and their Bibles differ again. The Coptic, Syriac, Armenian, Malankara, Ethiopian and Eritrean churches have not been in communion with the Eastern Orthodox since the split that followed the Council of Chalcedon in 451, and their canons differ from the Eastern Orthodox one and from each other. The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church counts 81 books, among them Enoch and Jubilees. It does not include the four books of Maccabees found in Greek Bibles; its own three books of Meqabyan, which its lists also call Maccabees, are different works. Our guides to the Ethiopian Bible and to whether the Book of Enoch is in the Bible go through those books.

Orthodox vs Catholic vs Protestant Bible

The three Bibles share the 27 books of the New Testament and the 39 books of the Protestant Old Testament. They differ in how many more books the Old Testament holds and in the text behind it: the Masoretic Text, in Hebrew, is the basis for most Protestant translations, while the Septuagint remains the basis of the Old Testament in the Eastern Orthodox Church.

In chapters and hours, by our count of the widest Orthodox list:

An edition without 4 Maccabees is 18 chapters shorter than the Orthodox row, and one without 2 Esdras 16 shorter. How the Catholic and Protestant lists came apart is in our guide to Catholic and Protestant Bibles.

What Bible do Orthodox Christians use in English?

An English Bible with the Orthodox Old Testament has to be a translation of the Septuagint, such as the Orthodox Study Bible, and most English Bibles are not: the King James Version, the ESV, the NASB and the NIV are all based on the Hebrew Masoretic Text. English editions that carry the Orthodox Old Testament, in whole or in part, include these:

• The Orthodox Study Bible (Thomas Nelson, 2008). Its Old Testament is a translation of the Septuagint by the Saint Athanasius Academy of Orthodox Theology, made from Alfred Rahlfs’ edition of the Greek, taking the New King James Version’s Old Testament as its base and changing it wherever the Septuagint differs. Its New Testament is the NKJV. A first edition in 1993 had only the New Testament and Psalms. It is not an official text of the Orthodox Church, though several Orthodox bishops endorsed it.
• Brenton’s Septuagint (1844), Lancelot Brenton’s English translation, reprinted several times since and consulted by the Orthodox Study Bible’s translators.
• The New English Translation of the Septuagint (2007), a translation from critical editions of the Greek, sponsored by the International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies.
• Ecumenical editions of modern translations such as the RSV and NRSV, which include Psalm 151 and 4 Maccabees.

An Orthodox Bible reading plan, at your own pace

An Orthodox Bible reading plan through the whole canon is a steady amount each day until every book has been read, and it can sit beside the readings the Church appoints for each day rather than replace them. Those daily readings follow the church calendar, and the Orthodox Church in America, for one, publishes them online day by day.

On the widest Orthodox list of 1,386 chapters, here is what common finishing times ask for each day:

A year is 3.8 chapters a day, about 13 minutes. Two years is under two chapters a day, and three years about one and a quarter. If your Bible leaves out 2 Esdras or 4 Maccabees, or both, a one-year plan changes by less than a tenth of a chapter a day, so the table barely moves. For dates and a day-by-day list, the reading plan calculator works for the Orthodox canon too.

A few things make the Orthodox books easier to fit into a plan:

• Read each one beside the book it belongs with. 1 Esdras next to Ezra and Nehemiah, the Prayer of Manasseh after 2 Chronicles 33, 3 and 4 Maccabees after 2 Maccabees, and Psalm 151 at the end of the Psalms.
• Go by your own Psalter’s numbers. A plan made for most English Bibles calls Psalm 50 of an Orthodox Psalter Psalm 51. Reading the Psalms straight through in your own Bible’s order avoids the mismatch.
• Borrow a translation for a missing book. If your edition has no 2 Esdras or 4 Maccabees and you want to read them, the World English Bible, free and in the public domain, includes 1 and 2 Esdras, 3 and 4 Maccabees, the Prayer of Manasseh and Psalm 151.

Where your Bible’s appendix ends is where your reading list ends, and a plan only has to follow the Bible on your shelf.

Questions people ask

Is the Orthodox Bible the same as the Catholic Bible?

Close, but not the same. Every book of the 73-book Catholic Bible is in Orthodox Bibles too, and the New Testament is identical. Orthodox Old Testaments add 1 Esdras, 3 Maccabees, the Prayer of Manasseh and Psalm 151, and some editions add 4 Maccabees or 2 Esdras in an appendix. They also follow the Septuagint's text and its numbering of the Psalms.

Do Orthodox Christians use the King James Bible?

Not as an Orthodox Old Testament. The King James Version translates its Old Testament from the Hebrew Masoretic Text rather than the Septuagint, so it differs from the Orthodox Old Testament in places and in how it numbers the Psalms. The Orthodox Study Bible, an English edition for Orthodox readers, uses the New King James Version for its New Testament, and its Old Testament is a Septuagint translation that took the NKJV's Old Testament as its starting point.

Is 4 Maccabees in the Orthodox Bible?

In some editions. Greek Orthodox Bibles printed it with the Old Testament without formally counting it as canonical, later moved it to an appendix, and today often set it apart or leave it out. Slavonic and Russian Bibles carry 2 Esdras in their appendix instead. 4 Maccabees is 18 chapters, a philosophical address on reason mastering the emotions, built on the martyrs of 2 Maccabees.

What is Psalm 151 about?

David's fight with Goliath, told in his own voice in seven verses, from the youngest brother keeping his father's sheep to the victory. It is in most copies of the Septuagint, and a Hebrew form was found among the Dead Sea Scrolls. Its heading sets it outside the numbered psalms. The Eastern and Oriental Orthodox churches accept it as canonical, and Greek Orthodox read it as part of the Book of Psalms.

Does the Orthodox Church accept the Book of Enoch?

The Eastern Orthodox churches do not, and Enoch is not among the books Greek, Russian or other Eastern Orthodox Bibles print. It is scripture for the Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Churches, which belong to the separate Oriental Orthodox family, and for the Ethiopian Jewish community Beta Israel. Most other churches, Catholic and Protestant among them, do not count it as canonical.

Sources

1. Old Testament Canon, OrthodoxWiki
2. Deuterocanonical books, Wikipedia
3. Old Testament, Wikipedia
4. Jacob Edson, Bible Gateway (March 23, 2026): how many books are in the Ethiopian Bible, with the Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox counts
5. Fr. Charles Grondin, Catholic Answers (August 30, 2019): Do Catholics and Orthodox have the same Bible?
6. Esdras, Wikipedia
7. 1 Esdras, Wikipedia
8. 2 Esdras, Wikipedia
9. 3 Maccabees, Wikipedia
10. 4 Maccabees, Wikipedia
11. Prayer of Manasseh, Wikipedia
12. Psalm 151, Wikipedia
13. Psalms (numbering), Wikipedia
14. Oriental Orthodox Churches, Wikipedia
15. Biblical canon, Wikipedia
16. Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church: the canonical books of the Bible
17. Book of Enoch, Wikipedia
18. Orthodox Study Bible, Wikipedia
19. Masoretic Text, Wikipedia
20. Lancelot Charles Lee Brenton, Wikipedia
21. New English Translation of the Septuagint, Wikipedia
22. Scripture Readings, Orthodox Church in America
23. Brysbaert, M. (2019). How many words do we read per minute? A review and meta-analysis of reading rate. Journal of Memory and Language, 109, 104047.
24. World English Bible, verse-per-line edition (public domain), eBible.org
25. King James Version, verse-per-line edition (public domain), eBible.org