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Harley,

Again, writing about what you don't know, you wrote: "Addedum: It should be also pointed out in the eight century the Catholic Church mandated Bibles be only in the Latin Vulgate format. Latin was only taught through the Church. Even if the Bible would have found its way into the hands of the masses, many of them wouldn't have been able to read it."

Untrue. There was no such mandate regarding Bibles in the 8th century from the Catholic Church. There may have been such a mandate regarding gospel books, lectionaries used in the liturgy, however. We have plenty of examples of Biblical texts being copied IN THE VERNACULAR throughout this time period. Want some evidence? Look at what you can get by going to this one source (scroll down): http://www.asu.edu/clas/acmrs/publications/mrts/asmmf.html

England was really only converted in the 7th century. You're making a claim about the 8th century. Clearly most surviving Old English (that is, Anglo-Saxon) docs. were produced before the Norman Conquest of 1066 and after monasteries were built up, many with it's own scriptorium, in the 8th century. The decree you claim was never issued and never followed.

Please get a clue.

You're embarrassing yourself.

Actually, on this point Harley, for once, is half-right. He just doesn't understand the point of the mandating of the Vulgate. In the Carolingian renaissance of the 8thc Charlemagne instructed clerics to standardize the text of the Bible. The Vulgate had long been dominant but variant readings from the Old Latin and other versions were floating around. Charlemagne wanted standardization. He mandated textual criticism, trying to produce a standard, critical edition of the Latin text.

So it wasn't "Latin" versus "German"--no one wrote anything in German at the time. Even the German version of the Gospels, the Heliand, was transmitted orally and written down later, like Beofwulf or the Dream of the Rood. Germanic languages, Anglo-Saxon etc. were oral languages, poems and songs and homilies were composed in them but not written down until the 10th or later centuries.

That the Bible in the West was in Latin was simply a matter of course. NO one who could read could not read Latin. No other written language existed in the West. It was not the Vulgate that was being mandated but a corrected, standard, clean, precise, accurate text that was being mandated. These guys were pioneering the same methods of textual criticism (not higher criticism) that even the Fundamentalists accept as legitimate: Charlemagne was telling his "professors" (the best scholars of his day) to produce a more accurate version of the Bible's text. That it would be in Latin was a foregone conclusion. No one could have imagined it being in any other language.

So the point Harley was using the fact to demonstrate is absurd but the fact is true. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. Harley made a true statement but the point he thought he was proving by it is false and absurdly false. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.