What’s the difference between the Catholic and non-catholic bibles?

The books of the Bible comprise what is called the biblical canon. These books are canonical because they are divinely inspired and authoritative.

Apart from differences in wording and translation, the difference between Catholic and non-Catholic Bibles is in what books are considered canon.

The Catholic Bible has 73 books: 46 in the Old Testament and 27 in the New Testament. Protestant Bibles have fewer books, Orthodox Bibles have a few more books.

The main reason the Catholic Bible has a different number of books is because we include the Deuterocanonical books in our Bible. These were books that were always used in the history of the Church and were often considered inspired, but which the Church didn’t officially call canonical until the Council of Trent (Deuterocanonical literally means “of the second canon” because these books were declared canon later than the other books). There are 7 Deuterocanonical books: Tobit, Judith, 1 and 2 Maccabees, Wisdom, Sirach, and Baruch. There are also some additions to the books of Esther and Daniel that aren’t found in non-Catholic versions. The reason that Protestants (and Jews) don’t accept the deuterocanonical books as canon is that we haven’t found original Hebrew versions of the books. However, we have good evidence for the Hebrew originals of each of these books, and the books were in common use in the tradition of the early Church. Protestants call these books the Apocrypha. Catholics use the same word to talk about books that are not canonical.