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The choice here is quite a bit more com­plex than the last one.  On this page, each choice is more exclu­sive than the pre­vi­ous one.  If you choose the 66-Book Canon, for exam­ple, then all bibles will be con­sid­ered for rec­om­men­da­tion.  If you choose the Roman Cath­o­lic Canon, then only bibles that include at least the entire Roman Cath­o­lic canon will be con­sid­ered for rec­om­men­da­tion.  There­fore, if you choose the East­ern Ortho­dox Canon, only bibles that include that entire canon will be con­sid­ered for rec­om­men­da­tion.

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Overview

The fol­low­ing is a very shal­low over­view of the dif­fer­ences between the four choices.  If you wish, you can jump directly to the leng­thy preliminary detailed dis­cus­sion of why there are four choices:  the exact con­tents of each, their com­plex his­tory, who made the deci­sions, why they made those deci­sions, and what rea­son­ing might be used to sup­port one choice over the other.

Bib­li­cal Canon — the term bib­li­cal canon means what Scrip­tures are included in a bible.  Yes, it’s true:  some of you believe that all bibles are the same, but in fact many bibles include books not included in other bibles.  In fact, many bibles include addi­tional chap­ters to the books of Esther and Dan­iel that are not included in other bibles!  For the rest of this dis­cus­sion, keep in mind that all of the Scrip­tures men­tioned are pre-Chris­tian Scrip­ture.  In other words, all of these bib­li­cal canons include the very same Scrip­tures in their New Tes­ta­ments; only the Old Tes­ta­ments dif­fer.

• 66-Book Canon
  Some­times inap­pro­pri­ately called the Prot­es­tant Canon, this includes the same Scrip­tures in the Old Tes­ta­ment as are included in Hebrew (Jew­ish) bibles.  Most Eng­lish Prot­es­tant sects other than the very numer­ous Angli­can Com­mun­ion use only this 66-Book Canon.
• Roman Catholic Canon
  This includes all of the Scrip­tures author­ized by the Roman Cath­o­lic Church, which includes 7 books and 5 addi­tional Scrip­tures not included in the 66-Book Canon.  Note that this is not the same as the Apoc­ry­pha!  The Eng­lish Prot­es­tant Apoc­ry­pha includes 2 books and 1 addi­tional Scrip­ture not included in the Roman Cath­o­lic Canon.  Also note that all edi­tions of the Luther Bible that Mar­tin Luther him­self edited included these same Scrip­tures.

• Complete Western Canon
  This includes all of the Scrip­tures of the Eng­lish Prot­es­tant Apoc­ry­pha, includ­ing the Roman Cath­o­lic Apoc­ry­pha.  In the mid-1500s when var­i­ous Euro­pean Chris­tian sects were estab­lish­ing bib­li­cal canons, nearly all West­ern bibles retained all of these Scrip­tures.  Yes, even the King James Ver­sion Standard Text of 1769, and Eng­lish Roman Cath­o­lic bibles up until 1750, included all of these Scrip­tures.  Select­ing this choice excludes about half of all mod­ern bible ver­sions from con­sid­er­a­tion, but includes all of the Scrip­tures used by nearly every West­ern church.
• Eastern Orthodox Canon
  This includes the books of 3 & 4 Mac­ca­bees and Psalm 151 in addi­tion to the Scrip­tures of the Com­plete West­ern Canon.  However, it does not usually include the book of Odes that appears in the bibles of some Eastern Orthodox sects.  Select­ing this choice will leave you only about half a dozen dif­fer­ent bible ver­sions from which to choose (but still in many dif­fer­ent, some­times excel­lent edi­tions).

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Decision Time!