The first chapter has indicated that there is no such thing as the Bible, if by the Bible is meant a collection of material whose content is identical for each and every copy. It has been noted that there are Bibles with and without the Apocrypha, and that even where the Apocrypha is present it can have several variations. It may be integrated among the books of the Old Testament, or gathered together as a separate section between the Old and New Testaments, and in the latter case may contain extra books such as Psalm 151 and 3 and 4 Maccabees.

It is now necessary to introduce a further complication. In Chapter 1 it was noted that the NRSV with its enlarged Apocrypha claimed to represent the Bible as accepted by the Eastern Orthodox Churches as well as western Catholics and Protestants. This claim is not quite accurate. The official Bible of the Eastern Orthodox Church is the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Old Testament that began to be produced in the third century BCE. The Septuagint not only contains books not found in the Hebrew Bible; in some cases, its version of books found in the Hebrew text differs significantly from the Hebrew version.