yes, and has been for almost 2,000 years. what you call the “apocrypha” were in the Greek Septuagint, which was the Bible used by St Paul and all the other Apostles. We have no record from their writings nor in Sacred Tradition that these books were not accepted as Scripture. If the Bible only contains 66 books, this means that no one had the correct Bible for the first 1,500 years of Church History and the same men used by the Holy Spirit to compile the 27 book NT, somehow got the OT canon wrong. if that is possible, who is to say that they didn’t get the NT wrong as well. see how dangerous this thinking is?
Try Luke 11:51. Jesus said,"from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah...."
With this statement Jesus was saying the Old Testament is from Genesis to 2 Chronicles. In the Hebrew Bible Genesis is the first book and 2 Chronicles is the last.
No books of the apocrypha are in the Hebrew Bible as they were not accepted by the Hebrews. Even the early church fathers rejected the apocrypha(just for you catholics).
If the Bible only contains 66 books, this means that no one had the correct Bible for the first 1,500 years of Church History and the same men used by the Holy Spirit to compile the 27 book NT, somehow got the OT canon wrong. if that is possible, who is to say that they didnt get the NT wrong as well. see how dangerous this thinking is?
Actually the early church did have the right books for about the first 400 years or so...these being 27 NT and 39 OT (depending on how you count them).
Jerome did include the apocrypha in his Vulgate. However, he included a prologue before each one noting each one as apocryphal or non-canon. Jerome did not want to include these in his translation, but was forced to.
The apocrypha were never accorded the same status as the other books of the Bible. It was only at the council of Trent that the RCC declared the catholic version of the bible with the apocrypha to be dogma.
So to your point...from about 400 AD to the council of Trent it is quite possible people held the wrong books of the Bible.
By 400 AD, and you could make an argument for an earlier time period, the early church had already agreed upon the 27 books of the NT we have today.
It is possible for error to exist for a long period of time. Consider the words of Satan to Adam and Eve in the Garden. Consider the words of Satan to Jesus in the desert.
Satan's number one way of attacking Christianity has been to attack and distort the Word of God. This is why it is so important to interpret the texts of the Bible in their proper context and not to read into them something that isn't there.
Sadly, the RCC has practiced a lot of the latter.