hi ck.
well i am sleepy and really not the best person to explain this … AT ALL,

but i am going to start with the basics and let those with more knowledge jump in.
think of this in terms of a time line. we have all these “books” of scripture from the Jews that were around when Jesus walked the earth. the Jews did not have them all bound up in one book like you see in the Bible now.
there were different groups of Jews. you had the essenes, the pharisees, sadducees and others. each group accepted or rejected certain books. Jesus, being God must have known which ones were truly inspired so he used the greek translated ones called the Septuagint. these collections of books have and always will be used by the Catholic Church as the OT.
around 90 AD the Jews at the council of jamnia got together and decided for the first time to put together a collection of books they thought were inspired. keep in mind this is well after Christ died and Christianity is growing. they decided to not accept the Septuagint which is kind of funny because the pharisees had accepted it up until (well i guess it is speculation… but it seems like) the early Christians had adopted it then they didn’t want want it anymore.
so now fast forward to luther and he decides to remove certain books (which is why they are not in your KJV). he decides to take out what Christians have been using from day one and replace it with what the jews came up with as inspired from the council of jamnia. you will sometimes hear protestants saying, "well we got the OT from the jews shouldn’t they know what is inspired or not?). well then you have to ask yourself, this is all happening AFTER Jesus walked the earth and taught the apostles. we choose to go by what He thinks is inspired. why would we decide to use what the jews decided upon after the fact? they also denied Jesus is God, so you have to make a choice. anyways, luther has created a big stink here so to speak.
so the Catholic Church even though they have always used the same books decided to close the matter once and for all at the council of trent (1545 AD) and declare the books they have (and have always had) are truly inspired books. they did this when the big stink was happening so now protestants like to claim that all of a sudden we added these books when in reality we have had them all along.
here are some good sites to go to:
speroforum.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=5715
agapebiblestudy.com/documents/Church_History_Menu.php
angelfire.com/ms/seanie/deuteros/graham_contents.html
and an interesting thread from CA on this very subject:
forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=238010
ok, well that wasn’t a very good response, but hopefully it helped a bit. i’m about to pass out here!

and i’m sure i’ll wake up tomorrow and be embarrassed at this weak explanation.
you know, when i was your age (15 right?) my eyes would have glossed over at terms like
apocrypha and
deuterocanonical. i’m really impressed by how quickly you are learning and taking in all this data! :tiphat:
hopefully someone can come along and add/correct this.