Deuterocanonical Books — "Tobit, Wisdom, Sirach, Maccabees"

Churches of Christ follow the Protestant 39-book Old Testament canon and do not recognize the deuterocanonical books (Tobit, Wisdom, Sirach, 1 and 2 Maccabees, and portions of Daniel and Esther) as canonical Scripture. This position reflects the Reformation principle of returning to the Hebrew Bible as the authentic Old Testament corpus, in contrast to the Septuagint and later ecclesiastical traditions that included these works.

The Restoration Movement's commitment to sola scriptura and to linguistic and textual fidelity led Alexander Campbell and his successors to adopt the Protestant canon. The deuterocanonical books are viewed as valuable historical and devotional literature but not as Scripture carrying divine authority. Churches of Christ recognize that the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions include these texts, but they do not adopt that broader canon. This is one of the few points where Churches of Christ explicitly align with classical Protestant (post-Reformation) Christianity rather than attempting to return to pre-denominational first-century practice.