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 didn’t 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.
sadly, church history does not seem to be your strong point.
you say the church for the first 400 years had a 66 book bible. really? please provide one canon of scripture during this time period that lists 66 books. i’ll save you time, one doesn’t exist.
the OT used by St Paul contained these books, and they have always been used by the Catholic Church.
some ancient churches broke away from the Catholic Church in the 3rd and 4th centuries, such as the Coptics and Oriental Orthodox. here is a history homework assignment for you, do they have a 66 book canon?
I do agree that Satan attacks Christianity by attacking the Word of God, but also the authority of the Church. Sadly, in the 16th century, by claiming the Bible was wrong and the Church was wrong, he did great damage to Christianity.
Whether or not any church group had a 66 or 73 book canon doesn't change the fact that they STILL had a correct Bible. No one disagrees on the undisputed books (66) and there is NOTHING in the disputed books that is absolutely necessary to know for our salvation and life of holiness that was left out of the other 66 books. The only thing that is "dangerous" is when any particular church thinks it can mandate to all other churches what is or is not the word of God. That can only lead to further heresy where the next thing they do is try to command obedience to traditions which have no basis in Scripture. The Holy Spirit is who illuminates the word of God in our hearts and Jesus' sheep hear His voice throughout it.