A Protestant Bible is a Christian Bible whose translation or revision was produced by Protestant Christians. Typically translated into a vernacular language, such Bibles comprise 39 books of the Old Testament and 27 books of the New Testament, for a total of 66 books. Some Protestants use Bibles which also include 14 additional books in a section known as the Apocrypha bringing the total to 80 books. This is in contrast with the 73 books of the Catholic Bible, which includes seven deuterocanonical books as a part of the Old Testament. The division between protocanonical and deuterocanonical books is not accepted by all Protestants who simply view books as being canonical or not and therefore classify books found in the Deuterocanon, along with other books, as part of the Apocrypha. Sometimes the term “Protestant Bible” is simply used as a shorthand for a bible which contains only the 66 books of the Old and New Testaments.

It was in Luther’s Bible of 1534 that the Apocrypha was first published as a separate intertestamental section. Early modern English bibles also generally contained an Apocrypha section but in the years following the first publication of the King James Bible in 1611, printed English bibles increasingly omitted the Apocrypha. However, to this date, the Apocrypha is “included in the lectionaries of Anglican and Lutheran Churches.”

The practice of including only the Old and New Testament books within printed bibles was standardized among many English-speaking Protestants following a 1825 decision by the British and Foreign Bible Society. Today, “English Bibles with the Apocrypha are becoming more popular again” and they may be printed as intertestamental books. In contrast, Evangelicals vary among themselves in their attitude to and interest in the Apocrypha but agree in the view that it is non-canonical.