Why I believe that Luter never saw a Bible to read the whole thing is that it wss not normal for the peasants to have any books even Bibles...they were expensive and the peasants could not read...
The parish priest might have a Bible and noble families would but not peasants...
The Catholic Church controlled the reading of the Bible...
However when the students got to the University..there was the Bible...
Several of the leaders in the Reformation had the same experience...
If Bibles were in every home like today...I own a dozen Bibles and commentaries..then I’d saw Hmmmmmm
But the odds are that Luther was correct when he said “ I was twenty years old,” says Luther, “before I had ever seen the Bible. I had no notion that there existed any other gospels or epistles than those in the service...” meaning the Mass etc in which the priest or bishop would have quoted the scripture from the Bible...
About the same thing happened in England France, Germany..the Catholic Church had a central governing office...the Vatican...with a set way of doing things..
Information was controlled...both secular and church...
Remember my family if they were churched (Usually they were by law) were all Catholics back then...before they were Protestants...
You wrote:
“Why I believe that Luter never saw a Bible to read the whole thing is that it wss not normal for the peasants to have any books even Bibles...”
Luther was not a peasant. His father had been a peasant, but then became a prosperous miner, and some sort of municiple official in Mansfeld - hardly a peasant. Also, you are conflating two different things. Luther, as a child may have possessed few or no books at all, but he ATTENDED SCHOOL and CHURCH and it was routine for books to be in those places. Also, it was considered common knowledge among Protestant hagiographers of Luther (I dare not say “biographers”) that Luther’s father was an avid reader who collected books. As D’Aubigne said about him “he read a great deal” and he “let pass no opportunity of procuring them.” NOT peasants at all.
“...they were expensive and the peasants could not read...”
Again, Luther was not a peasant. He could read. He attended schools and church.
“The parish priest might have a Bible and noble families would but not peasants...”
Again, Luther was not a peasant.
“The Catholic Church controlled the reading of the Bible...”
Incorrect. If someone had access to the Bible, how could the Church control reading of the Bible? You’re not making any sense.
“However when the students got to the University..there was the Bible...”
There were Bibles in the churches and schools. Luther attended several schools BEFORE university. He lived in several different towns - all prosperous towns and rich cities. The idea that he never saw a Bible is insane.
“Several of the leaders in the Reformation had the same experience...”
No, they did not.
“If Bibles were in every home like today...I own a dozen Bibles and commentaries..then I’d saw Hmmmmmm”
Bibles were in the churches and schools back then. I have more Bibles than I can count off the top of my head and just ordered another one from Ireland yesterday. Yet, I know that Bibles were much more common then than people realize today.
“But the odds are that Luther was correct when he said “ I was twenty years old,” says Luther, “before I had ever seen the Bible. I had no notion that there existed any other gospels or epistles than those in the service...” meaning the Mass etc in which the priest or bishop would have quoted the scripture from the Bible...”
No. The odds are that Luther was LYING. Or at least exaggerating as he often did - especially when he was drinking.
“About the same thing happened in England France, Germany..the Catholic Church had a central governing office...the Vatican...with a set way of doing things..”
Utter nonsense. The Vatican had little or no direct control over far flung diocese until after the Council of Trent. This easily demonstrated by the entirety of medieval history where the bishops of France, England, Germany, etc. as well as their kings routinely flouted papal authority.
“Information was controlled...both secular and church...”
Again, nonsense. There was no way to control information and anyone who thinks there was is incredibly anachronistic. How would information be controlled? The Vatican was in Rome with no access to modern methods of communications at all. None.
“Remember my family if they were churched (Usually they were by law) were all Catholics back then...before they were Protestants...”
So what? Does that mean you suddenly have insight into their lives? That’s like saying, “My ancestors were all Irish so, of course, I know all about the Irish language.” The one has NOTHING IN ITSELF to do with the other.
As S.R. Maitland, one of the greatest Protestant church historians of the nineteenth century put it in his famous work, Dark Ages:
“Really one hardly knows how to meet such statements, but will the reader be so good as to remember that we are not now talking of the Dark Ages, but of a period when the press had been half a century in operation; and will he give a moment’s reflection to the following statement, which I believe to be correct, and which cannot, I think, be so far inaccurate as to affect the argument. To say nothing of parts of the Bible, or of books whose place is uncertain, we know of at least twenty different editions of the whole Latin Bible printed in Germany only before Luther was born. These had issued from Augsburg, Strasburg, Cologne, Ulm, Mentz (two), Basil (four), Nuremberg (ten), and were dispersed through Germany, I repeat, before Luther was born; and I may add that before that event there was a printing press at work in this very town of Erfurt, where, more than twenty years after, he is said to have made his * discovery.’ Some may ask what was the Pope about all this time ? Truly one would think he must have been off his guard; but as to these German performances, he might have found employment nearer home if he had looked for it. Before Luther was born the Bible had been printed in Rome, and the printers had had the assurance to memorialize his Holiness, praying that he would help them off with some copies. It had been printed too at Naples, Florence, and Placenza; and Venice alone had furnished eleven editions. No doubt we should be within the truth if we were to say that beside the multitude of manuscript copies, not yet fallen into disuse, the press had issued fifty different editions of the whole Latin Bible; to say nothing of Psalters, New Testaments, or other parts. And yet, more than twenty years after, we find a young man who had received “ a very liberal education,” who “had made great proficiency in his studies at Magdeburg, Eisenach, and Erfurt,” and who, nevertheless, did not know what a Bible was, simply because “the Bible was unknown in those days.””
Let us be clear, the reason peasants would not have a Bible is that before the invention of the printing press, when they had to be hand written, they were just so expensive. (How many people out there have a main frame computer at home?) There was no attempt by the Church to keep them out of the hands of the people. Also remember the low level of literacy. Even if they had a Bible, for most people it would still have been a closed book.
Also... Luther was no peasant. By the time he was 20, he had spent many years in his religious studies.
The defense of Luther’s statement is that MOST of his contact with the bible would have been under the direct supervision and guidance of someone else; he may not have been free to peruse his own bible. However, this defense is that the spirit of what he said is true, even if his words aren’t... but the spirit isn’t true, either.
Luther would have had a personal breviary, and he would have had to study from it eight times a day. It’s true that the breviary is not a bible; it is a condensation of it, emphasizing the prayers (Pslams, canticles, etc.), gospels and moral instructions. Combined with Lectionary, he would annually have studied the entirety of the New Testament, every Psalm, the Torah (minus “the begats,” etc.) , and every passage of the Old Testament quoted by the New. There’s no chance that he only discovered any portion of St. Paul’s writings as an adult. Paul’s justification by faith was repeated several times in the breviary and lectionary, for instance.
(The lectionary is a selection of biblical passages for use in masses; since monks went to mass daily, they would get almost 900 unique passages in a year.)