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dolphinlove
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Yes well… umm… i just had to askThat was :newidea: my first thought, too…But nah; they just have a certain [ahem! cough, cough!!]familial resemblance.
Why wouldn't the Roman church allow scripture to be translated into the tongue of the people?
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zerinus
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That is true of your sources too. Graham’s book, which you seem to be so hung up on, makes the following comments about Caedmon: “To begin far back, we have a copy of the work of Caedmon, a monk of Whitby, in the end of the seventh century, consisting of great portions of the Bible in the common tongue.” Based on what evidence? And which were those “great portion” of the Bible? He does not tell us! Then he adds: “In the next century we have the well-known translations of Venerable Bede, a monk of Jarrow, who died whilst busy with the Gospel of St. John.” Big deal! Died while translating portions of John’s Gospel, which never saw the light of day!
I am not a scholar or historian of Bible translations into English, and I don’t intend to become one in order to prove you right or wrong. I have other priorities to spend my time on than to spend the next 6 months doing intensive research into early Bible translations in English just so I can become sufficiently proficient at it so as to give you definitive answers to the issues you have raised. The best I can do is to inform you of the most reasonable conclusions I can draw (which satisfies me) based on what I already know, the information you have provided, and what I can quickly glean from readily available sources such as the Internet; and my conclusions are that your sources are unreliable, and that there is no evidence that credible translations of the Bible existed in English that at the time of Wycliff and Tyndale so as to make their works unnecessary.
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mercygate
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Actually, considering the resources available at the time, the Douay-Rheims translation was quite good. You could label the KJV a “bad job” by today’s standards. Bringing Bible translations into closer conformation with the manuscript evidence has been an ongoing effort of scholars and translators for centuries. Even the much-venerated KJV has undergone dozens of revisions since 1611. All we can ask of any translator is to do the best he can with what is available.
Perhaps you are aware that the “Nova Vulgata” – the offical translation used by the Catholic Church today – was recemt;u translated directly from Hebrew and Greek using the best and most recent manuscript sources.
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zerinus
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This is why! Quote:
It is a fact usually ignored by Protestant historians that many English versions of the Scriptures existed before Wycliff, and these were authorized and perfectly legal (see Where We Got the Bible by Henry Graham, chapter 11, “Vernacular Scriptures Before Wycliff”). Also legal would be any future authorized translations. And certainly reading these translations was not only legal but also encouraged. All this law did was to prevent any private individual from publishing his own translation of Scripture without the approval of the Church.
Which, as it turns out, is just what William Tyndale did. Tyndale was an English priest of no great fame who desperately desired to make his own English translation of the Bible. The Church denied him for several reasons.
First, it saw no real need for a new English translation of the Scriptures at this time. In fact, booksellers were having a hard time selling the print editions of the Bible that they already had. Sumptuary laws had to be enacted to force people into buying them.
The problems with that are that 1. It relies heavily on Graham, which is an unreliable book; 2. It falsely claims that “many English versions of the Scriptures existed before Wycliff,” for which there is no reliable evidence (attempts may have been made by some many centuries earlier; but there is no evidence that they existed at the time, or were widely available, or scholarly reliable, or in the vernacular of the time, or even that they consisted of anything more than fragmentary translations); 3. It falsely claims that “there was no need for an English translation, and that such translations existed and couldn’t be sold!” That appears to be a blatant lie! No such books existed, and there is every evidence that there was a great thirst in England for a good translation of the Bible in English; and 4. It admits that Tyndale’s crime was that he translated the Bible without the permission of the Catholic Church! Well, herein lies all the problem. Actually, Tyndale did his darnest to obtain permission from the authorities to translate the Bible into English, but they wouldn’t allow him! Well, they had no right not to allow him; and he did a great service to the English speakers of the world to defy them and make his translation anyway, and paid with his life for it—for which I am sure there will be great reward in heaven.
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zerinus
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It also states that they consisted of only tiny fragments of the Bible, which would have been totally inadequate for educational or ecclesiastical purposes.
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zerinus
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Yes, I had a look, and my verdict is, as I have already mentioned, that it is an unreliable book. It obviously is a very biased book towards Catholicism. It is essentially a “Catholic apologetics” work; and as such it can never have the objectivity of good, independent historical research. Its scholarship is very poor and heavily biased towards presenting the Catholic Church in a favourable light. I cannot rely on it to give me accurate historical information.
zerinus
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zerinus
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guanophore
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Of course they did! It was their book! They owned the copyrite on it.
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zerinus
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It was not “their book”. They neither “owned” it, nor had a “copyright” to it. Who gave them that “copyright”? Show me their “copyright notice”!
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guanophore
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Jesus taught everything orally to the Apostles. They transmitted it orally to disciples. As they began to be martyrd and elderly, some of the Sacred Tradition was put into writing. This was done by, for, and about Catholics. They had a sacred charge to guard these words, and the writings that came from the words. They did not want the contents to become perverted, as they now have, by being separated from the authoritative apostolic traditions from whence they came.
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zerinus
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A copyright normally goes to the author of a book or publication. Since the Jews were the original authors of both the Old and New Testaments, I would say that the copyright to the whole book goes to them.
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bilop
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Tyndale was executed for heresy by orders of the King of England, Henry VIII. He was branded a heretic because his Bible contained many, many (intentional?) errors that tended to lead people astray. In those days, there was no mass media through which the state or the Church could communicate which translations were good or bad. That is why unnauthorized translations were suppressed.
Further, prior to the invention of the printing press, there was not much demand for vernacular Bibles. Very few people were literate, and almost all that were, read Latin. That is why St. Jerome did his Bible in the Latin (vernacular of the day). Also, Bibles were extraordinarily expensive (hand copied). It is said a Bible cost as much as a parish Church (probably $ millions in today’s equivalent). Each Parish would have ONE Bible (if that). It was chained to the lectern (like all publicly displayed books) to prevent theft, and so those in the parish who could read, could access it.
The Church never suppressed the Bible. It was read every day at Mass. When printing led literacy to grow, the Church authorized more translations (like the Douay Rheims).
The D-R is an excellent translation. Translations from the Vulgate are as good or better than from the original Greek (not Hebrew, Jesus used Septuagint OT in Greek, which is older than the Masoretic Hebrew Bible still extent), as St. Jerome had many sources available that have long since disappeared. The KJV is basically a (mis) translation of the D-R and was riddled with errors.
God Bless
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guanophore
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Certainly to the OT, which Jesus, by quoting and teaching the Apostles made them to understand were to belong to the Church as well.
However, the NT was written by Messianic Jews (Hebrew Christians) and they were shortly booted out of Judiasm, and took their sacred writings with them. These writings were preserved through the Apostolic succession.
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elvisman
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It all boils down to authority. If you’re not willing to accept the authority given the Church by Jesus, then you won’t accept anything else.NO!
zerinus
Do you believe that Jesus gave authority to the Church in matters of faith, morals and scripture?
**Judging by your, “NO!” - it doesn’t seem so.
**
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mercygate
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Huh? You disagree that the 1611 KJV has been massively revised over the centuries?
You disagree that the Nova Vulgata was translated from the most comprehensive and current manuscript evidence?
The Douay-Rheims was (naturally) a translation of the Vulgate, which was the official translation of the Church, and despite the limitations with the Vulgate, gave English-speaking Catholics a very good tool. After the Challoner revisions in the 18th Century, which owed a considerable debt to the KJV (see: Catholic scholars don’t reject a good thing just because it isn’t Catholic), it got even better.
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mercygate
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Well, the LDS doesn’t even accept Jesus on his own terms, so it’s not surprising.It all boils down to authority. If you’re not willing to accept the authority given the Church by Jesus, then you won’t accept anything else.
Do you believe that Jesus gave authority to the Church in matters of faith, morals and scripture?
**Judging by your, “NO!” **- it doesn’t seem so.
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elvisman
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Mercygate -
Thanks for opening my eyes. I didn’t even look at Zerinus’ profile and didn’t realize he/she was LDS. I usually DO look before posting.
This puts things in an ENTIRELY new perspective.
Once again - THANKS!!
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Gamera
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Parliament declared Henry to be the supreme head of the Church of England in 1534. Tyndale died in 1536.
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zerinus
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Dates don’t mean a lot in these situations. Tyndale began his efforts to translate the Bible long before that time, and he was opposed by the Catholic Church long before that time. His betrayal and martyrdom took place when he lived in hiding away from Britain on the European mainland; and it was carried out by the Roman authorities, not the British ones. The fact that Parliament made that declaration in 1534 does not mean that the whole country immediately became “Anglicans”. It takes time for attitudes, thought patterns, and allegiances to change, especially religious ones. Those who still continued to oppose him in England were still “Catholic” in their mentality, if not in name.
And by the way, while researching these matters on the Internet, I came across this passage, which confirms what I had told you before about the smuggling of Tyndale’s Bibles into England (emphasis mine):
But Tyndale also began work on the Old Testament. For this he had to learn Hebrew, which he did in the course of his wanderings in Europe. In 1530 the Pentateuch was completed and printed in Antwerp, Belgium, although Tyndale had to do the work twice because, in travelling by boat, Tyndale suffered shipwreck, and the first manuscripts were lost. Because the volumes continued to be smuggled into England and because the authorities in England could not stop the steady flow and wide distribution, their fury increased and their determination to kill Tyndale became an obsession. It was decided to send men to Europe to catch Tyndale and arrest him.
The above material was copied from this source:
prca.org/books/portraits/tyndale.htm
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Lucania
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BrandenRush, it’s been over 24 hours since I first asked you to please explain the above statement. I’m still waiting. *WHAT UGLY TRUTH? *
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