the books of the bible that are considered canonical number 24 for jews, 66 for protestants, 73 for catholics, and 78 for most orthodox christians. in addition to these, many versions of the bible contain books which have not been considered canonical by their publishers, called apocrypha. all these books have different lengths from a single page of modern type to dozens of pages. all but the shortest are divided into chapters, generally a page or two in length.