The majority non-Catholic scholarly opinion seems to be against you, my friend. Now, that doesn’t mean you are wrong, but perhaps you should take a close look at the facts before automatically siding with the Catholic defenders, who seem all too willing to sugar-coat church history sometimes.
I agree about the translation issues and am fully aware that they cause problems. If we are going to get picky about translation, though, it should be remembered that Latin is also not the original tongue of the Bible and as such doubtless has a few of its own problems. Why then, was the Bible translated into Latin? Because it was in the people’s common tongue – they could understand it. This provides an advantage even when there are translation problems.
Now, please see it from my perspective for a moment. Suppose the Catholic Church really didn’t like vernacular translations. Would they then declare a reasonably accurate vernacular translation “bad” despite the fact that it is translated correctly?
I don’t see why the wouldn’t! That doesn’t, however, mean that the translation actually is bad. It tells me nothing about the translation, actually, because I can’t tell if they are being accurate or misleading. The Catholics would declare a bad translation bad. They would also declare a good translation bad. So please don’t come to me saying “the Catholic church at the time said the translation is bad.” Why should I care what they think about the matter?
As a reminder, the work of the Protestant translators is still used today. The KJV, for example, is about 50-60% of Tyndale’s work, depending on the estimate. Other translators continue to have their influences as well. So why should I accept your claim that they were bad?
Finally, I’m curious, can you name a vernacular translation that the Catholics of that time period did approve of and that was widely circulated? (Extra credit if it is still in widespread use today!)
