English Bible History

GREATSITE.com ^ | John L. Jeffcoat III

[metmom]

This was originally posted by Elsie in another thread.

It was very good and should have it's own thread.

He did a better Job at formatting it with pictures and all at this link....

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/3135058/posts?page=511#511

[metmom]

Ping

[KoRn]

I saw no mention of the 'Rock People' as illustrated in the "Noah" movie!

This is boring!

/S

[wideawake]

the 1,000 years of the Dark & Middle Ages when the Word was trapped in only Latin

This statement underlines the ignorance of this historical analysis.

Latin was the only language people in Europe shared.

There was no "English" or "German" or "Spanish" in the year 500 or 800 or 1200.

Everyone who could read or write pretty much read and wrote in Latin, because most people in Europe spoke only a local dialect that was incomprehensible to someone who lived 50 miles away.

Luther's Bible was unreadable to probably 75% of Germans.

The Tyndale New Testament was unreadable to probably 50% of English speakers.

Luther's Bible made the Saxon dialect "German" and Tyndale helped make East Anglian dialect into "English."

The Reformers wrote in Latin to one another, because they couldn't understand each other's language.

The notion that the vernacular that one spoke was also what one read and wrote was a new concept introduced gradually from the 1300s to the 1500s.

[Colonel_Flagg]

1611 AD: The King James Bible Printed

Ho history is necessary after this. :)

Thanks for the post. Bless your day.

[Little Bill]

I had a chance to buy a Wycliff Bible for short money about 15 years ago, there were questions about it so I chickened out.

There is a lot of similarity with The KING JAMES, I am kicking my but because a lot of those Bibles were broken up into pages.

[detch]

And so, using the corrupt and inaccurate Latin Vulgate as the only source text, they went on to publish an English Bible with all the distortions and corruptions that Erasmus had revealed and warned of 75 years earlier. Because it was translated at the Roman Catholic College in the city of Rheims, it was known as the Rheims New Testament (also spelled Rhemes). The Douay Old Testament was translated by the Church of Rome in 1609 at the College in the city of Douay (also spelled Doway & Douai). The combined product is commonly referred to as the “Doway/Rheims” Version.

To the above — baloney.

I think the Duoay Reheims Bible – taken from the Latin Vulgate that had lasted fro more than a 1,000 years — is the more authentic version.

For the reader — from the Catholic encyclopedia — “That he is the creator of the new High German literary language is hardly in harmony with the facts and researches of modern philological science. While from the standpoint of the philologist it is worthy of the highest commendation, theologically it failed in the essential elements of a faithful translation. By attribution and suppression, mistranslation and wanton garbling, he made it the medium of attacking the old Church, and vindicating his individual doctrines.”

About Martin Luther, quoted often by the Third Reich in their attempt to exterminate Jews —
At the end of his life, Luther turned strident in his views, and pronounced the pope the Antichrist, advocated for the expulsion of Jews from the empire and condoned polygamy based on the practice of the patriarchs in the Old Testament.
Acting like the Pope himself, or perhaps God himself, he saw fit to remove chapters from the Old testament that he didn't like.

The article eulogizes Martin Luther, glosses over the place the Duoay Reheims Bible had in German and english translations, i.e., very one-sided and very much slanting of history.

Sorry to bring this to your attention — NOT.

[Former Fetus]

Very interesting! Thank you for posting.

[ducttape45]

the 1,000 years of the Dark & Middle Ages when the Word was trapped in only Latin

Actually this statement is wrong. The Word was in other languages as well. It's just that the Roman Catholic Church was confiscating those scriptures and burning them. The Waldenses were one group of people who were murdered for their adherence to those manuscripts.

The work of the reformers did not come by way of the RCC, or the Latin Vulgate. There were other manuscripts that survived the Pope's purge of true scriptures and those are the ones that became the Textus Receptus and the eventually the King James Bible.

[Pyro7480]

There were other manuscripts that survived the Pope's purge of true scriptures

Um, what?

[ducttape45]

Wycliffe produced dozens of English language manuscript copies of the scriptures. They were translated out of the Latin Vulgate, which was the only source text available to Wycliffe.

Again, wrong.

Tyndale's work was based on, but not limited to,

The Peshitta Version (AD 150),
The Italic Bible (AD 157),
The Waldensian (AD 120 & onwards),
The Gallic Bible (Southern France) (AD177),
The Gothic Bible (AD 330-350),
The Old Syriac Bible (AD 400),
The Armenian Bible,
The Palestinian Syriac (AD 450),
The French Bible of Oliveton (AD 1535),
The Czech Bible (AD 1602),
The Italian Bible of Diodati (AD 1606),
The Greek Orthodox Bible (used since the time of the Apostles)

Tyndale's work was NOT based on any RCC manuscripts. He purposely stayed away from the corrupt manuscripts used to translate the bible used by the RCC.

[ducttape45]

You read correctly. The Roman Catholic Church's persecution of Christians in the Dark Ages was done partially to destroy their manuscripts. Anything and anyone that taught that the RCC was not the true church was destroyed.

What, you were never taught that in catechism? Catholics on Guam used to joke about the Inquisition all the time. They laughed about how those poor deluded "Protestants" never knew what hit them and about how they were still deluded.

Ever read Fox's Book of Martyrs?

[Pyro7480]

The Roman Catholic Church's persecution of Christians in the Dark Ages was done partially to destroy their manuscripts. Anything and anyone that taught that the RCC was not the true church was destroyed.

Which? The Albigensisans (heretics)? The Gnostics (also heretics)? Be more specific.

Ever read Fox's Book of Martyrs?

I think you mean Foxe (with an "e"), which was a piece of Elizabethan propaganda.

[Pollster1]

This is not a new discovery, but it’s a nice summary of Bible history that may interest you or the GGG list.

[donaldo]

Amen! I’m a King James man. Most atheists prefer the King James. See below:

H. L. Mencken (agnostic):

“It is the most beautiful of all the translations of the Bible; indeed, it is probably the most beautiful piece of writing in all the literature of the world. Many attempts have been made to purge it of its errors and obscurities. An English Revised Version was published in 1885 and an American Revised Version in 1901, and since then many learned but misguided men have sought to produce translations that should be mathematically accurate, and in the plain speech of everyday. But the Authorized Version has never yielded to any of them, for it is palpably and overwhelmingly better than they are, just as it is better than the Greek New Testament, or the Vulgate, or the Septuagint. Its English is extraordinarily simple, pure, eloquent, lovely. It is a mine of lordly and incomparable poetry, at once the most stirring and the most touching ever heard of.”

Christopher Hitches:

“For generations, it provided a common stock of references and allusions, rivaled only by Shakespeare in this respect. It resounded in the minds and memories of literate people, as well as of those who acquired it only by listening. From the stricken beach of Dunkirk in 1940, faced with a devil’s choice between annihilation and surrender, a British officer sent a cable back home. It contained the three words “but if not … ” All of those who received it were at once aware of what it signified. In the Book of Daniel, the Babylonian tyrant Nebuchadnezzar tells the three Jewish heretics Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego that if they refuse to bow to his sacred idol they will be flung into a “burning fiery furnace.” They made him an answer: “If it be so, our god whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thy hand, O King. But if not, be it known unto thee, O King, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up.”

In the passage below note the reference to George Orwell:

“A culture that does not possess this common store of image and allegory will be a perilously thin one. To seek restlessly to update it or make it “relevant” is to miss the point, like yearning for a hip-hop Shakespeare. “Man is born unto trouble as the sparks fly upward,” says the Book of Job. Want to try to improve that for Twitter? And so bleak and spare and fatalistic—almost non-religious—are the closing verses of Ecclesiastes that they were read at the Church of England funeral service the unbeliever George Orwell had requested in his will: “Also when they shall be afraid of that which is high, and fears shall be in the way, and the almond tree shall flourish, and the grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail: because man goeth to his long home. … Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern. Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was.”

Harold Bloom:

With Shakespeare, the KJV is the sublime summit of literature in English.

The KJV or authorized version is still going strong for over 400 years. No wonder. It’s been a cultural and spiritual cement that never erodes. It’s impossible to know how many times its been quoted at births, burials, marriages, etc. I’ll take it any day. Ever time I pick it up I’m in communion with the saints of humanity. Another thing, I prefer Jeremiah to “Jerry.” Give me that old time religion!

[Mr Rogers]

This is an image of what the first Tyndale NT looked like. I believe the reprint is still for sale on Amazon:

What is commonly referred to as the DR Bible was significantly revised in the mid-1700s with reference to the KJV...with Roman Catholic theology added (do penance instead of repent). Of course, the KJV was required by King James to use words like church and bishop, since as King James noted, "No Bishop, No King"...so arguably the Tyndale NT remains superior in accuracy to the KJV nearly 100 years later!

[S.O.S121.500]

See, God gave mankind Reason - not Religion......

[xone]

At the end of his life, Luther turned strident in his views, and pronounced the pope the Antichrist,

It wasn't later, and it wasn't the Pope, other than that you're correct.

[xone]

he saw fit to remove chapters from the Old testament that he didn't like.

Source and link please.