Bible-Burners (build it yourself bibles)

New Oxford Review ^ | February 2004 | Dwight Longenecker

[NYer]

Tales continue to circulate about how the Catholic Church opposed translating the Bible into the vernacular. But the Church has never opposed that. After all, the Vulgate was originally translated by St. Jerome to make the Bible available in the vernacular of the day, Latin, which continued to be the lingua franca of educated Europe up to the late 18th century and beyond. Nor were the Reformers the first to translate the Bible into more modern European languages. The Catholic Church approved of Gutenberg's German Bible in 1455. The first printed Flemish edition came out in 1477. Two Italian versions of the Bible were printed in 1471, and a Catalan version came out in 1478. A Polish Bible was translated in 1516, and the earliest English version was published in 1525. Most of these were editions of the entire Bible. Individual books had appeared in the vernacular centuries earlier. The first English-language Gospel of John, for example, was translated by the Venerable Bede into Anglo-Saxon in the year 735.

The Church didn't object to William Tyndale's translating the Bible into English. Rather, she objected to the Protestant notes and Protestant bias that accompanied the translation. Tyndale's translation came complete with prologue and footnotes condemning Church doctrines and teachings. Even King Henry VIII in 1531 condemned the Tyndale Bible as a corruption of Scripture. In the words of King Henry's advisors: "the translation of the Scripture corrupted by William Tyndale should be utterly expelled, rejected, and put away out of the hands of the people…."

Protestant Bishop Tunstall of London declared that there were upwards of 2,000 errors in Tyndale's Bible. Tyndale translated the term Baptism into "washing," Scripture into "writing," Holy Ghost into "Holy Wind," bishop into "overseer," priest into "elder," deacon into "minister," heresy into "choice," martyr into "witness," etc. In his footnotes, Tyndale referred to the occupant of the Chair of Peter as "that great idol, the whore of Babylon, the anti-Christ of Rome."

The Catholic response was not to burn the Bible, but to burn Tyndale's Bible. This was an age when making your own version of the Bible seemed to be all the rage. The Reformers cut out the Deuterocanonical Books, Luther wanted to get rid of the Epistle of James as well as Hebrews, Jude, and Revelation because they didn't agree with his theory of justification. The Reformers themselves fought about which version of the Bible was best. Zwingli said of Luther's German version of the Bible, "Thou corruptest the word of God, O Luther; thou art seen to be a manifest corrupter of the holy scripture; how much are we ashamed of thee…!" To which Luther politely answered, "Zwinglians are fools, asses and deceivers." At the same time Molinaeus, the French Reformed theologian, complained that Calvin "uses violence to the letter of the gospel, and besides this, adds to the text."

The Protestant Reformers may have been revolutionaries, but their revolution was extremist, not unlike that of the Taliban. This is exemplified by their zeal for destruction. Catholics burnt some Bibles, but the Protestants burned books on a scale that makes the Catholic fires look like the odd candle flame. In England, when the monasteries were suppressed, their libraries were most often destroyed as well. So the vast monastic libraries of religious texts encompassing many ancient, rare, and hand-copied Catholic Bibles were put to the flames. In 1544 in the Anglican controlled sections of Ireland, the Reformers put an immense number of ancient books, including Vulgate Bibles, onto the bonfires as they ransacked the monasteries and their libraries. In an effort to reduce the Catholic Irish to ignorance, King Henry VIII decreed that in Ireland the possession of a manuscript on any subject whatsoever (including sacred Scripture) should incur the death penalty.

King Henry VIII even burnt the Protestant Bibles of Tyndale, Coverdale, and Matthew, with the Catholic Latin Vulgate helping to feed the fires.

In 1582 The Rheims Catholic New Testament in English was issued. This Catholic version, with its accompanying notes, aroused the fiercest opposition in Protestant England. Queen Elizabeth ordered searches to seek out, confiscate, and destroy every copy. If a priest was found in possession of it, he was imprisoned. The Bible-burning wasn't limited to England. In 1522 Calvin had as many copies as could be found of the Servetus Bible burned, and later Calvin had Michael Servetus himself burned at the stake for being a Unitarian.

Sadly, the destruction was not limited to the burning of Bibles. Sixteenth-century England and Ireland witnessed the most monumental pillage of sacred property and destruction of Christian architecture, art, and craftwork the world has ever seen. In England between the winter of 1537 and spring 1540 over 318 monasteries and convents were destroyed. Parish churches were ransacked. Beautiful paintings and carvings were smashed. Sacred vestments and altar hangings with rich embroidery were confiscated and recycled into curtains and clothes. Vessels of the altar were stolen, melted down, and sold. The Protestants destroyed a religious heritage with the zeal and fury of terrorists, and what was left by the iconoclasts during the reign of Henry VIII was smashed further during the Puritan regime of Oliver Cromwell.

In France the Calvinists, in one year alone (1561), according to one of their own estimates, "murdered 4,000 priests, monks and nuns, expelled or maltreated 12,000 nuns, sacked 20,000 churches, and destroyed 2,000 monasteries" with their priceless libraries, Bibles, and works of art. The rare manuscript collection of the ancient monastery of Cluny was irreparably lost, along with many others.

Living in England, as I do, the legacy of this mindless destruction by anti-Catholic forces is present everywhere. A map of the countryside marks countless bare ruins of medieval monasteries, abbeys, and convents. Visit the medieval parish church in any village and you will notice the empty niches, the whitewashed walls, the side chapels turned into store-rooms, the stained-glass windows once riotous with pictures of the saints and stories from Scripture, now merely plain glass windows. The iconoclasm was followed by a campaign which, for three hundred years, continued to persecute Catholics relentlessly, while it concealed the destructive fury of the Protestant forces and continued to paint the Catholic Church as the incarnation of evil.

The final irony is that the very forces that pulled down and smashed the images of the saints in the medieval churches soon filled those same churches with carved memorial stones and statues of the rich and famous of their day. The figures of the Blessed Virgin Mary and all the saints and angels are now replaced by figures of English military heroes, prime ministers, and forgotten landed aristocrats. The church which exemplifies this most is Westminster Abbey. Any Catholic visitor to London will be amazed at how this once proud Benedictine Abbey has been turned into a museum of English civil heroes. At every turn one finds statues of statesmen, kings, and politicians, while the heroes of the Christian faith are relegated to the margins.

Time does not heal all wounds. Terrible and violent events cannot simply be forgotten. Telling ourselves that certain things never happened is a lie. Saying that they don't matter now after so many years is another form of the same lie. Terrible events need to be faced, acknowledged, repented of, and forgiven. The violent events and terrible persecution of both Catholics and Protestants can only be put right through repentance and mutual forgiveness.

Catholics must own up to their own faults and sins of the past. In the Jubilee Year, Pope John Paul II took an amazing step forward with his historic mea culpa for the sins of Catholics. On Ash Wednesday in the year 2000 he led the Catholic Church in a public act of repentance. However, this admission of guilt and act of repentance has been met here in England and throughout the Protestant world with stony silence. Not one Protestant leader has offered a similar corporate examination of the past. Isn't it time that the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Queen of England took the lead as international Protestant leaders, and offered their own reassessment of the past? If they did so, maybe others would follow and the process of healing could begin.

[klossg]

After searching on Five solas alone, I would not argue with you about these 5 things being important in loving Christ. For like you, I am after Christ and Christ is more than after me. My goal is to follow the Christ and love those around me and throw my sins upon him and beg for his love.

I do this as much as possible. As I am sure you do as well. And yet I still need more. In my human weakness and fallen nature, I continue to pine for Christ, though some assure me that I have him since I confess him as my Lord and Savior. When I attend Mass and receive Christ in the Eucharist, I rejoice and yet I still want more. When I hear the gospel at Church, during mass or a bible study or on my own with my family or by myself ... I feel Christ and know Christ made me for himself. But, still I want more and know that I am not worthy of the Love of the Trinity.

You can put your faith in something like "Five solas alone" and I say fine, it is better than stating that you have heaven all locked up because you are Protestant and that is all that is required. But, that should not really lead to saying Catholics in general are false Christians and you have it all wrapped up like a 99 cent Taco Bell burrito. I mean continue to search for the truth but know that neither you nor I are perfect. Or can you assure me that either of us would land straight in heaven to day if we dropped dead.

It seems you are not doing this by your comment of "I totally agree with you post on keeping a scorecard. I am just attempting to show that they are not the poor innocent victims."

But, I have seen you post the same type of "flamebait" from a Protestant point of view. (By the way I like that - flamebait. It is what it is). So, continue to cast stones. It keeps us busy from experiencing the truth together.

I bet you are a fantastic guy and loaded with the love of Christ, even though you might think calling Paul St. Paul is a terrible thing! You might find the same with me, if we could get past the point of me believing in Transubstantiation and the Assumption.

[dangus]

>> The evidence should have been looked into regardless ("The judges must make a thorough investigation..."), as you see in the second passage (that you conveniently failed to quote). I am not diminishing Daniel's importance in that specific instance in the least, I am saying that this adds no precedence that did not already exist. <<

Like I said, the prophet Daniel did not surpass Mosaic law, but rather demonstrated a techniques of investigation which had not been common: cross-examination and crime-scene investigation. Without demonstration of the need for these practices, even the judges in Daniel's time failed to discover the truth. (You'll note that Daniel was not a judge at the time.)

>> Being a Protestant, I do not acknowledge the extra verses in the Book of Daniel. <<

My point exactly. But aren't you even curious why this one chapter was excluded, suddenly, in the 16th century, when it had been included for 1800 years?

[sanormal]

Henry 8th needed out of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon for political reasons, not for lack of an heir.

Catherine's nephew (Charles V) became the Holy Roman Emperor and united the Houses of Burgandy and Hapsburg. Henry understood that being married into such a family would eventually threaten his sovereignty with vassalage and the very independence he had been fighting for against France.

ANY child that Henry and Catherine would produce would eventually threaten England's independence because of dynastic succession. This, in part, explains why the English were so opposed to Mary's marriage to Philip II.

Henry and Catherine's daughter Mary married Philip for political reasons and the result was an eventual subordination of English sovereignty to the Holy Roman Empire.

The only way out was for Henry to get out of that family, hence putting Catherine away. Just as the only way for England to preserve its independence was to overthrow Mary.

[DTwistedSisterS]

No, you forget the ACLU...

[Iscool]

As I mentioned earlier in the thread, the Church couldn't execute anyone. It was the state that did this.

During the Dark Ages, wasn't the church, and the state one and the same (since Constantine) and continues today (Vatican)???

[annalex]

Not at all. They were often mutually hostile. Check out the Investiture Controversy.

Wiki
Sources

[muawiyah]

Hey, I always watch for the guys wearing their nightrobes ~ and that puts these formal hierarchy guys in the same bag as the Taliban.

(NOTE: just showing how little thinking can go into these broad, sweeping statements that seek to have us apply modern standards to ancient history).

[muawiyah]

Anti-Spanish sentiment is frequently mistaken for anti-Catholicism. You have to notice the national sympathies of statements made at the time.

For the most part Americans were unchurched and wouldn't have been concerned if you were a Catholic, or a Jew, or a Hindu, or whatever ~ and this is exceedingly frustrating to geneologists. Sometimes if you know what church they belong to you can figure out which Bob Smith they might be.

[muawiyah]

BTW, the Inquisition gets the blame for a lot of things that were not part of the Inquisition. The Grimaldi family, for example, was into genocide, and they were powerful enough to get the Pope to "bless" what they were doing ~ or they would have killed him and gotten a new pope, Fur Shur.

There's quite enough to blame the Catholic hierarchy for without burdening them with stuff they didn't really do (like start the Dark Ages ~ which is a popular belief ~ even among Catholics)

[muawiyah]

Not just the Cathers, but also the Waldensians.

[muawiyah]

I suspect you are a cousin ~ one of our number (under a different name) was in the company of Pizarro in Peru. In the end, the Governor sent by the King of Spain had him excuted by being quartered and drawn (the reverse of the more humane normal method). Then, tossed his remains into the fields to be eaten by the wild dogs.

His crime, however, wa refusing to confess to a priest. Seems there really were Spanish Protestants.

[muawiyah]

And both of you guys are confounding the so-called "Religious Wars" in France (which occurred between two royal factions) with the Inquisition.

My own French ancestors LOST the Religious Wars, but escaped to America.

[muawiyah]

Henry's grandfather (great grandfather?) in France (Rene of Anjou) had 2 wives and 3 concubines.

Not just that it was a family tradition, but these guys were in the wool trade. They transported uncarded wool to Italy, and carded wool from Italy to Turkey to be made into rugs. They then peddled the rugs throughout their various domains in France, etc. Columbus worked for Rene for awhile.

The very same family is easily found involved in the development of the Camisard movement and the Quaker movement. They were also involved in starting the Counter Reformation.

I think it's safe to say that Moslem cultural values filtered into the top run of the French aristocracy, and this colored the history of religious development for the next 500 years.

[muawiyah]

Lincoln's mother and sister are buried on a farm owned by one of my ancestors at the time. It's now a state park. I do not tolerate any disrespect directed at the Lincolns.

By the time of his Second Inaugural it was clear that Lincon had been selected by God to lead this nation to a new beginning.

[muawiyah]

If you knew Hindu tradition regarding the symbolic meaning of The Great Fish, you'd understand what and who was discussing matters with Jonah.

Kind of interesting to find that reference in the Bible.

[AlaninSA]

I do know it. They are extra because they are not in the Protestant Bible. Snippy today, aren't you?

The comment to which I was responding was somewhat obnoxious in its dismissal of books found in the Catholic Bible. It showed "snippy" behavior (at best) or outright ignorance (most likely from a 19-year-old) at worst.

[TradicalRC]

By the time of his Second Inaugural it was clear that Lincon had been selected by God to lead this nation to a new beginning.

All power comes from God. So I wouldn't argue that aspect, however, it was a bloody and unnecessary war. Shameful.

[muawiyah]

Yes, the South should have given up slavery earlier in its history.

[TradicalRC]

The northern states weren't without slavery. Other countries eliminated it without war. We could've as well, however, that war wasn't *about* slavery.

[muawiyah]

The Northern states had eliminated slavery. That was the issue that brought on the war.

Else, why would the South have demanded the enactment of the laws that punished people for freeing slaves.