Which specific books did Martin Luther move to the Apocrypha and which did he keep in the canon?
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Executive summary
Martin Luther relocated the Old Testament deuterocanonical books—commonly called the Apocrypha—out of the main Old Testament and printed them in a separate section labeled "Apocrypha" in his German Bible, while retaining the 27-book New Testament even as he expressed sharp reservations about a handful of New Testament books (notably Hebrews, James, Jude and Revelation) [1] [2] [3]. The move was not a wholesale deletion: Luther included the deuterocanonical books in his editions, described them as "not equal to the Holy Scriptures, but useful and good to read," and continued to revise his Bible during his lifetime [1] [4] [3].
1. Which Old Testament books Luther moved to the Apocrypha — the specific titles
Luther placed the deuterocanonical works commonly listed in the Western tradition into an appended "Apocrypha" section rather than the Old Testament proper; examples named in the reporting include Tobit (Tobias), Judith, Wisdom (of Solomon), Sirach (Ecclesiasticus), Baruch, and 1 and 2 Maccabees, which are explicitly identified as part of the Catholic 73‑book canon and as the books Protestants call the Apocrypha [5] [2]. Contemporary summaries of Luther’s practice likewise say he "relocated" these deuterocanonical books to a separate intertestamental section and labeled them as useful but not equal to canonical Scripture [1] [2].
2. What Luther kept in the canon and the New Testament caveats
Luther kept the 27‑book New Testament in his translations and editions; the 1534 complete Bible included the New Testament and the Old Testament proper while appending the Apocrypha, and Luther continued to revise these editions through his life [3]. At the same time, he treated four New Testament books as antilegomena — Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation — voicing strong theological reservations about them and sometimes placing them in a lesser category in his writings and prefatory remarks [1] [6]. Historical commentators record Luther’s famously dismissive words about James and his overall critical stance toward certain books, even as he left the New Testament corpus intact in publication [5] [7].
3. Why he moved them: theology, textual lines, and historical precedent
Luther’s decisions flowed from a mix of factors: a preference for the Hebrew Masoretic textual boundary of the Old Testament over the broader Septuagint list, longstanding patristic categories (such as "apocrypha" and "antilegomena"), and doctrinal objections—especially where texts seemed to support practices he rejected, like prayers for the dead mentioned in 2 Maccabees [2] [7] [8]. He and many Reformers treated the deuterocanonical books as deuterocanonical (useful for reading but not authoritative for establishing doctrine), a position that fit broader Protestant caution about books not attested in the Hebrew canon [4] [2].
4. What this action did — immediate reception and long-term legacy
Luther’s practice did not create an immediate, universally standardized Protestant canon; different Protestant traditions treated the extra books variously for centuries, and the strict 66‑book Protestant canon did not become essentially enforced until later bodies and societies standardized editions in the 17th–19th centuries [3]. Scholars note the nuance: Luther printed the Apocrypha rather than purging it, and for some decades Protestants continued to regard these books as deuterocanonical or useful rather than simply "removed" [1] [4] [3]. Critics, particularly Catholic commentators, have characterized Luther’s stance as a truncation of the received canon and have highlighted his sharp rhetoric about James and other books [5].
5. The sensible takeaway: a relocation, not a simple deletion
Reporting emphasizes that Luther’s move was largely structural and theological—relocating and re‑categorizing the deuterocanonical books as Apocrypha and flagging a few New Testament books as disputable—rather than annihilating them from his Bible editions, which continued to include the Apocrypha and the full New Testament during his lifetime [1] [3] [4]. Where contemporary debates persist, sources differ on motive and degree, and the historical record shows a spectrum from cautious exclusion to continued practical use of these books in Protestant contexts [4] [2].