Counter for Wide as the Waters -- Wycliffe

[Catholic_Cobb]

I am having to respond to the praise given by a Fundementalist regarding a book called Wide as the Waters by Benson Bobrick, which traces the history of the English bible and the resulting political change that accompnaies its widespread distribution. Specifically, I would like to answer the argument that “church leaders reacted like the Pharisees of Jesus’ day to Wycliffe’s work…44 years after Wycliffe’s death, church authorities exhumed and burned his body, charging him with heresy.”

 

[Liberian]

Catholic Cobb:

I am having to respond to the praise given by a Fundementalist regarding a book called Wide as the Waters by Benson Bobrick, which traces the history of the English bible and the resulting political change that accompnaies its widespread distribution. Specifically, I would like to answer the argument that “church leaders reacted like the Pharisees of Jesus’ day to Wycliffe’s work…44 years after Wycliffe’s death, church authorities exhumed and burned his body, charging him with heresy.”

Catholic Cobb,

First, welcome to the CA Forums. I wish you great joy and much learning here.

The Roman hierarchy of the time would probably have condemned Wycliffe’s translation for its doctrinal errors (or at least potential for doctrinal errors, since he didn’t prepare it under ecclesiastical supervision) rather than simply for existing. A quick Google search of “wycliffe bible translation doctrinal errors” brings the (admittedly unreliable–but I am not an expert on the subject and don’t really have time to do a real search) results …

• Wycliffe’s translation was in some places a literal translation and in other places virtually a paraphrase
• Wycliffe held to some pretty heterodox ideas including that the Church should not own property; he also did not believe transubstantiation; and he challenged the authority of the Pope.

Another page notes that Wycliffe was so “out in left field” (my term) politically that his Bible translation was naturally suspect. So on the face of it, yes, the Church reacted as the Pharisees did to Jesus (this wording itself is biased), but the difference is that the Church was right.

• Liberian

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

Catholic Cobb:

I am having to respond to the praise given by a Fundementalist regarding a book called Wide as the Waters by Benson Bobrick, which traces the history of the English bible and the resulting political change that accompnaies its widespread distribution. Specifically, I would like to answer the argument that “church leaders reacted like the Pharisees of Jesus’ day to Wycliffe’s work…44 years after Wycliffe’s death, church authorities exhumed and burned his body, charging him with heresy.”

He died in 1384. His remains were exhumed and burnt in 1428 by a church court.​

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

Liberian:

Catholic Cobb,

First, welcome to the CA Forums. I wish you great joy and much learning here.

The Roman hierarchy of the time would probably have condemned Wycliffe’s translation for its doctrinal errors (or at least potential for doctrinal errors, since he didn’t prepare it under ecclesiastical supervision) rather than simply for existing. A quick Google search of “wycliffe bible translation doctrinal errors” brings the (admittedly unreliable–but I am not an expert on the subject and don’t really have time to do a real search) results …

• Wycliffe’s translation was in some places a literal translation and in other places virtually a paraphrase

FWIW, that is true of probably all translations - to make sense in the receptor language, the text translated usually has to be rephrased, if it is not to be barbaric English, or simply unintelligible. Fidelity in translation does not require a word by word translation - it often requires anything but that.​

It is difficult for us moderns to appreciate the status that the Latin Bible had - there was a real psychological block to the idea of translation; Latin was a sacred language - English most definitely was not. Paraphrase is one thing; there were many of those - but translation on the scale undertaken by Wycliffe’s disciples was another thing entirely; in addition to which, complete Bibles were a rarity; if only because they required a lot of work.

Read Margaret Deanesley’s The Lollard Bible and Other Medieval Biblical Versions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1920. It is something of a classic on these subjects.

The first Wycliffite Bible, which goes as far as Baruch 3.20 IIRC, is very literal, very close to Latin word order; the second, made a few years later, is in a much more natural English. ##

• Wycliffe held to some pretty heterodox ideas including that the Church should not own property;

It’s a very good idea, in principle - Peter did not possess vast lands nor extort taxes.​

[Mod edit: deleted off topic content]

Wycliffe was saying much the same as other Catholics in many ways; he was no lone voice; that idea is an illusion of perspective, caused by looking at him alone. ##

 

[RyanL]

Source

John Wycliffe, who taught sola scriptura, denied the authority of the pope and bishops, denied the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and wrote against penance and indulgences

Source

A great deal of nonsense has been written on the subject of translations of the Bible into the vernacular or current speech of the people. It is often asked whether it is not true that, before the Protestant Reformation, the Bible existed only in Greek and Latin manuscripts. It is forgotten that the Latin manuscripts themselves were translations from the Greek into the vernacular or current speech of the Latins. And from the earliest times, in all countries, there were further translations of Scripture into their various languages.

Restricting ourselves here to England, we find St. Thomas More writing in the sixteenth century that “the whole Bible was long before his [Wycliffe’s] day, by virtuous and well-learned men, translated into the English tongue; and by good and godly people, and with devotion and soberness, well and reverently read.” The Venerable Bede died in 735 as he was finishing the translation of the Gospel of St. John. A manuscript containing a complete Anglo-Saxon interlinear translation of the Book of Psalms, dating from 825, is still preserved in what is known as the Vespasian Psalter.

King Alfred the Great also undertook the work of translating the psalms into the vernacular English of his time. The abbot Aelfric about 990 translated many parts of both the Old and the New Testaments into English.

This translation was condemned by the Catholic authorities mainly because it was issued with a prologue containing the heretical views of the Lollards, Wycliffe’s disciples. Later editions of it, without the prologue, escaped ecclesiastical censure and attained to a wide general use even among Catholics -as far, of course, as the laborious transcription by hand in the pre- printing press days would permit the multiplication of copies.

Source

scholars do not accept the traditional or popular belief that Wycliffe was the first person to translate the entire Bible into English. The earliest surviving translation of parts of the Bible into formative English was done supposedly by Caedmon who, in the late seventh century, attempted to paraphrase passages of the Scriptures. Other work included the Lindisfarne Gospels, the translations of part of the Gospel of John by the Venerable Bede, and the Paris Psalter with its translations of parts of the Psalms. The language used by the Anglo-Saxons was virtually unrecognizable today, save by those with training in old English. There were also interlinear glosses of the Gospels and Psalms to partial translations used in the laws of King Alfred the Great in England during the 9th century.

God Bless,
RyanL