The Books of the Bible

are a collection of writings which the Church of God has solemnly recognized as inspired.

The name is derived from the Greek expression biblia (the books), which came into use in the early centuries of Christianity to designate the whole sacred volume. In the Latin of the Middle Ages, the neuter plural for Biblia (gen. bibliorum) gradually came to be regarded as a feminine singular noun (biblia, gen. bibliae, in which singular form the word has passed into the languages of the Western world. It means "The Book", by way of eminence, and therefore well sets forth the sacred character of our inspired literature. Its most important equivalents are: "The Divine Library" (Bibliotheca Divina), which was employed by St. Jerome in the fourth century; "the Scriptures", "the Holy Scripture" — terms which are derived from expressions found in the Bible itself; and "the Old and New Testament", in which collective title, "the Old Testament" designates the sacred books written before the coming of Our Lord, and "the New Testament" denotes the inspired writings composed since the coming of Christ.

The first English Catholic version of the Bible, the Douay-Rheims (1582-1609/10), and its revision by Bishop Challoner (1750) were based on the Latin Vulgate. In view of the relative certainties more recently attained by textual and higher criticism, it has become increasingly desirable that contemporary translations of the sacred books into English be prepared in which due reverence for the text and strict observance of the rules of criticism would be combined.

The above information was found on two Web sites:
The New Advent Web site at http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02543a.htm
The United States Confederence of Catholic Bishops at http://www.usccb.org/nab/bible/prefaceold.htm

* The seven Deutero-Canonical books, missing from non-Catholic Bibles.

There is a very good online version of the Catholic Bible at the following link: Douay-Rheims Bible