Is it true there were 80 books in the Bible bit the Vatican reduced them to only 62? If so, are many of these missing books not available to the public and are locked in the Vatican? If so why not release them to the world?

 

The Protestant Bible has 66 books. The Catholic Bible has 73 books. The Ethiopic Bible has 84 books. The Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox Churches use a Bible that has 82 books. The British Museum has an Ethiopic Bible that contains 84 books - I presume that this includes two books that are not considered canonical by the Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox Churches, just as many Protestant editions of the Bible include the seven extra books accepted by the Catholic Church, but categorized as “apocrypha.” So the Protestant edition of the Bible is the shortest, and the Ethiopian/Eritrean Orthodox version is the longest. The “missing” books are all available to the public - just go to Amazon and look for Ethiopian Bible.

In a comment, James Morgan says that the King James Version has 80 books. I had already made the point that some Protestant editions of the Bible include a section entitled Apocrypha which contains the seven books included in the Catholic Bible but considered unbiblical by Protestants. What I need to add is that Catholic Bibles have extra chapters in the books of Esther and Daniel, and each of these extra chapters is counted as an additional apocryphal book. The Book of Baruch is treated as canonical by the Catholic Church but apocryphal by Protestants, and the last chapter is treated as a separate book in the Apocrypha.