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Dear RobbyS,

"Well, most Catholics don't read the Bible,..."

But any devout Catholic hears great gobs of the Bible over time every Sunday at Mass.

And here's the thing. Few Catholics can readily cite what's at Luke 15:11-32? I couldn't tell you without looking.

But I'll bet you a lot of Catholics who go to Mass weekly could readily relate to you the parable of the Prodigal Son.

Because, as we know, until the invention of the printing press, hardly anyone read the Bible. The Word of God was communicated by hearing, not by reading. And that is still the Catholic culture.

sitetest

"But any devout Catholic hears great gobs of the Bible over time every Sunday at Mass."

Absolutely. More than any other denomination.

"Few Catholics can readily cite what's at Luke 15:11-32? I couldn't tell you without looking."

Off the top of my head...his version of the sermon on the mount? I promise, I'm not cheating. In Matthew 5: 2-13.

Knowing me, I probably got that wrong. Maybe it was the loaves and the fishes. I'm sure site will correct me.

I suggest you read, The Book, a History of the Bible by Christopher de Hamel. It is about the way the Bible was brought together as a book. What suprised me was how available the Bible was from the 13th Century On. Portage Bibles (roughly 8x12) in very small print (with the aid of magnifying glasses) on very thin parchment were distubuted by the thousands. What is new is that these are all complete Bibles. Until then complete Bibles were rare and very large. "Most biblical manuscripts in general use had until non been separate volumes, or sets of volumes." The model for the new portable Bible was the "Paris Bible," which organized the books of the Bible in the order we now know. The new format was taken by by the friars and carried it around in their pockets and used it to preach from. "A 13th Century Bible might have 500 or so leafs but yet be no thicker than many paperbacks today." The Bible was frequently the companian to a breviary, which was about the same size.

I found this paragraph very interesting:

The Paris Bible [expecially] appealed to the Friars [because] it was definitive. This was especially relevant to the Dominicans, who were fouinded to stand against heresy. Pope Gregory IX charged them with the rooting out of the Albigenses, the hererical movement...that denied the literal truth of the Bible, especially the Old Testament.The Bible of the 1230s had brought all of established Scripture into one book. The friars immediately saw its value as a symbol, a physical three-dimensional object which represented and enclosed the totslity of the Word of God. It was the Dominicans who introduced the Correctiones, not exactly corrections but an attempt to bring comprehensiveness and consistency. Europe was facing internal heresy for the first time. the friars response was a book, the Bible, which defined authority. They must have traveled with it, shown and shaken it, and doubtless thumped their pulpits with it. This brought the defibition of the Scriptures as a single and sacred entity into almost every village of Europe, and that legacy is still with us. "

The Paris Bible was also a study Bible, easy to research. The Dominicans at St. Jacques devised a vast verbals concordance based on it. All medieval sermons are based on Bible readings and quotations. "A friar..standing the marketplace and preaching to poor people, needed to invoke Scripture by more than general allusion. Doorstep evangelists do the same toiday: urgently piling one scriptural citation upon another...."

Anyway one thinks that the people of the Middle Ages never heard the Bible preached has been misinformed! Furthermore, every literate person--that is anyone who read Latin-- could buy a Bible from the booksellers. This is to leave aside the picture books that told the Bible stories and the windows and murals in the churches, and the mystery plays. The average townsman of the late Middle Ages knew the Bible much better than the average university student today.

Because, as we know, until the invention of the printing press, hardly anyone read the Bible. The Word of God was communicated by hearing, not by reading. And that is still the Catholic culture.

Bingo! I was ashamed that I had never really sat down to read the Bible, and last year I remedied that failing. I found that I actually didn't read anything in it that I had not heard through Mass or (old) CCD classes and in HS religion classes (zzzzz..) or just by living in a Catholic world for 40+ years. Our "failing" is that, unlike the BBF guys, we can't site exact chapter and verse off the top of our heads - and, really, I'm glad I haven't ever seen the need to bring the Word of God to that level.