Catholic apologist Gary Michuta has an interesting note about the 1611 KJV and the Apocrypha/Deuterocanonical books:
Most people do not know that the original 1611 edition of the King James Version, and a few subsequent edition, included the deuterocanon in an appendix marked Apocrypha. As with previous versions, this appendix was sandwiched between the Old and New Testaments (though there was no preface). In later editions this appendix was removed, but the cross-references that linked the text to the deuterocanon remained for some time. Scholar Bruce M. Metzger believes that these cross-references were removed because the margins were too crowded [602]. However, the Protestant theologian Daubney explains that there was much more going on than cleaning up crowded margins:
Plainly, the references to the Apocrypha told an inconvenient tale of the use which the Church intended should be made of it; so, either from dissenting influences without, or from prejudice within the Church, these references disappeared from the margin. [603]
All cross-references were removed, included the references to the Maccabean martyrs in Hebrews 11:35-37 who were inexplicably expunged or, as Daubney puts it, “illicitly suppressed” [604]. Given the exalted position this translation came to occupy within the English-speaking world, this action certainly did contribute to the ignorance of subsequent Protestant generations regarding the deuterocanon and the place it once held even in non-Catholic bibles.
Notes for the Above
[602] Metzger notes that there were 113 references to the disputed books in the King James Version (1611), with 102 found in the Old Testament and 11 in the New Testament. These 11 New Testament references are listed in Metzger, Introduction, 188 FN 6. Emphasis added.
[603] Daubney, Use of the Apocrypha, 21
[604] Ibid.
Source: Gary Michuta, Why Catholic Bibles are Bigger (rev ed.; El Cajon: Catholic Answers Press, 2017), 273-4
