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

The Plymouth Brethren firmly affirm the 66-book Protestant canon of Scripture and deny canonical status to the deuterocanonical books (Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, 1-2 Maccabees, and additions to Esther and Daniel). These books are regarded as valuable historical and devotional literature but are not accepted as equal to the canonical books in authority, being written after the close of the Old Testament prophetic period and absent from the Hebrew Bible that Jesus and the apostles recognized. The Brethren's commitment to sola scriptura—Scripture alone—was inseparable from the recognition of a closed, defined canon.

The distinction between the Hebrew canon and the Septuagint's wider collection has been important to Brethren exegesis and theology. Since the Brethren valued the original languages and early textual witnesses, they followed Protestant scholarship in excluding books not found in the Hebrew canon. The assertion that 2 Timothy 3:16-17 refers to a completed, defined scripture; and that Revelation 22:18-19 warns against adding to Scripture, provided theological grounding for their canonical boundaries. Brethren Bible translations (like the King James Version preferred by many) do not include deuterocanonical books in the biblical text itself, though some have printed them separately as apocryphal literature for historical interest.