Development of the Old Testament canon "Apocrypha" ("hidden"). To counter Luther's "heresy", the fourth session of the Catholic Council of Trent in 1546 confirmed that the deuterocanonical books were equally authoritative as the protocanonical in the Canon of Trent in the year Luther died. Following Jerome's "Veritas Hebraica" (truth of the Hebrew) principle, the Protestant Old Testament consists of the same books as the Hebrew Bible, but the order and division of the books are different. Protestants number the Old Testament books at 39, while the Hebrew Bible numbers the same books as 24. The Hebrew Bible counts Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles as one book each,
Middle English Metrical Paraphrase of the Old Testament Middle English Metrical Paraphrase of the Old Testament The Middle English Metrical Paraphrase of the Old Testament is a retelling of the Old Testament in Middle English rhyme for lay people, dated to the early fifteenth century, c. 1400-1410. Over 18,000 verses long, it exists in two manuscripts from the middle of the fifteenth century, both written in a Northern dialect from the Yorkshire area. The poem contains 1531 stanzas of twelve lines usually rhyming ABABABABCDCD, for a total of 18,372 verses. The stanzas consist of three quatrains, the first two in tetrameter, the last in trimeter. The two manuscripts