“Sola Scriptura,” one significant motto of the Protestant Reformation, is Latin for “only Scripture,” demonstrating the reformers belief that doctrine should be based on the Bible alone. The counter-reformation undertaken by the Roman Catholic Church had its beginnings at the several year-long Council of Trent in Trento, Italy, in 1545. On April 8, 1548, the Council decided the official Bible of the Catholic Church would be the Vulgate translation of Jerome from AD 405. While Jerome also translated the Apocrypha with the Bible, he held to Bishop Athanasius’s previous declaration that the Apocrypha was not part of the canon of Scripture.
