Steven will tell you it was the medieval Council of Trent that had the most to do with solidifying what Catholics use as the Bible and how they use it. (New Catholic Encyclopedia: "... the proximate criterion of the Biblical canon is the infallible decision of the Church. This decision was not given until rather late in the history of the Church (at the Council of Trent)...") The Church originally accepted the LXX (Greek) version of the OT, which contained the apocryphal books the Jews had passed up. The rest had more to do with religious politics than God, Jesus or theology. (The KJV, 'the Protestant Bible', originally included the Apocrypha, by law, and an intro that lambasted "that man of sin"- the Pope!)
Your Middle East info may be confused with others, like the Nag Hammadi library and the Cairo Geniza (qq.v.)
Jerome, not my kind of theologian, was correct when he said, "All [NT] apocryphal books should be avoided; but if [one] ever wishes to read them, not to establish the truth of doctrines, but with a reverential feeling for the truths they signify, [one] should be told that they are not the works of the authors by whose names they are distinguished, that they contain much that is faulty, and that it is a task requiring great prudence to find gold in the midst of clay." Emphasis added.
You might want to read what Catholic scholars had to say about an apocryphal book of the NT, the Protevangelium of James. Although not accepted by Rome as scriptural, it's the sole source of "accurate" information behind at least two major RCC feast days, both recently celebrated.
http://newadvent.org/cathen/01538a.htm