Latin Bible

[Guest Olafina]

We were reviewing for a test, and the question was something like "Why did the Catholic church oppose and persecute so harshly those who translated the bible from latin into a language ordinary people could understand?"

And the answer was "Because now people could read the bible for themselves and think for themselves what it meant".

Why did the Catholic church want to keep the bible in latin if no one understood it? -_-

[BLAZEr]

First of all, there was not a persecution of those who wanted to translate the Bible. The first mass printing of a non-latin bible was done in German by Johannes Guttenburg, a Catholic. It was very expensive and so it wasn't used widely, but it did become quite a devotional among those wealthy Germans who could afford it.

There were also other places wher vernacular translations were commonly used by people for prayer. This was true in France and England. Still, the bibles were only common among the upper class. This was not only because the Bibles were expensive, but also because most of the lower classes were illiterate. They could not read the Bible on their own anyway. A real system of literate education did not begin until after the Catholic Church's Universitites began to teach nuns so that they could go into rural towns and teach women and children. Men who received an education usually received it from a tutor, who was typically a priest.

Now, that being understood, the Catholic Church did have to be very careful WHO was translating the bible. In the Guttenburg bible there are something like 5,000 errors because the typeset wasn't right. In other places the Church had to worry that those who translating the bible were doing so authentically. Heresy has always been widespread in the Church and the Church had to make sure that those vernacular bibles were not being tainted by anti-Christian thought. This is why the Church stressed that the only AUTHORITATIVE version of the Scriptures were the ones that were translated from the Greek and Aramaic and Hebrew by St. Jerome. The Jerome Bible, became the Vulgate bible which is still to this day, the official version of the Bible, though even the latin in it has been cleaned up to be most faithful to the Original sources.

There is also some truth to the answer in your test review. The Church has to be careful that people who are reading the Bible, even an authorized version, are not misunderstanding what it says. The Bible is not a straighforward book, like a textbook. When we read in the Psalms that a "Mighty Fortress is our God." We need to be clear that it is not saying that, literally, our God is a strong fortress. In the same way when Christ says "If you do not eat my flesh and drink my blood you do not have life within you," the Church must be clear that it is Christ's actual body and blood that must be consumed and that this happens in the Mystery of the Eucharist.

Hope that Helps.

[Pontifex]

Blazer,

Very good answer, I couldn't have said it better myself.

Peace