No one was prohibited from owning a copy of Scripture before the Reformation.
What was prohibitive was the cost.
It never ceases to amaze me that anyone buys the notion that Jesus intended the personal reading and personal interpretation of Scripture to be the ONLY source of knowledge about him, when during his lifetime on earth, and for 1500 years after, the cost of a copy of the Bible was astronomical, and the vast majority of people were illiterate.
What was prohibitive was the cost.
It never ceases to amaze me that anyone buys the notion that Jesus intended the personal reading and personal interpretation of Scripture to be the ONLY source of knowledge about him, when during his lifetime on earth, and for 1500 years after, the cost of a copy of the Bible was astronomical, and the vast majority of people were illiterate.
Paul in the book of Acts commends us to go
shalom b'SHEM Yah'shua HaMashiach
to the Synagogue on Shabbat to hear
the WORD of G-d.
This question was addressed on a previous thread. Perhaps, GeronL, you missed it.
Various Christians wrote books explaining the history of the Christian Church (including Gospels about the life of Christ and more general histories such as the Acts of the Apostles) and letters addressed to specific communities and persons (such as the letters of Saint Paul) and also what are best considered to be “open letters” (such as Hebrews). There were hundreds of different documents circulating around, all of them purporting to the authentic Christian teaching and accurate history and doctrine.
However, many of these documents were not what they claimed to be – they were forgeries not written by the people whose names they bore, or were heretical documents advancing novel notions about Christ. Some of these documents have survived today – examples are the Gospel of Judas and the Gospel of Thomas. Neither of these documents were written by their alleged authors – they are late forgeries designed to cash in on the success and popularity of Christianity.
Out of all these hundreds of documents – many of them forgeries – the current 27 book New Testament appeared. This process took a long time – roughly 300 years went by from the writing of the last book of the New Testament (Revelation) until the list was finalized.
The list was compiled by the bishops of the Catholic Church. Initially, local canons were assembled by individual bishops. These canons were lists of books which could be read aloud in Churches at Mass. Despite the fact that these canons were independently assembled they bore a great deal of similarity to each other – because the Catholic bishops were all using the same criteria to determine which books should be included. They looked to see if the books were written by an apostle or someone who was reporting the words of an apostle. They checked to see how much the book was being used by other bishops and priests in their Masses, and also looked at how often the book was quoted by the Church Fathers in their writings. Only those books which “scored” favorably on all three of these criteria made it into their canons.
In the early fourth century Christianity was made the official religion of the Roman Empire and it became possible for the bishops to meet without being imprisoned or killed by the pagan authorities. Beginning in the late fourth century and continuing until the very early fifth century the Catholic Church met at a number of councils where the canon of the Bible was debated. These councils produced canons which were identical to the current 73 book Roman Catholic canon.
As can clearly be seen the canon of the Bible was produced by the Catholic Church. The Church also existed long before the Bible – it was the early fifth century before the Bible existed as we might recognize it today, and none of the books of the Bible were even written until around 50 AD. But the Catholic Church began 20 years earlier, at Pentecost when the Holy Spirit descended on the apostles.
The Christians who wrote the New Testament were Catholic – they were Catholic for two reasons. One, they believed everything which the current Catholic Church (and only the Catholic Church) teaches (as is shown by the writings of the Church Fathers). And they were Catholic because there was no other church at the time. Myths such as the “Trail of Blood” simply do not hold water – the Catholic Church was, quite literally, the only game in town.
Accordingly, the Bible can be considered to be two things – it is younger than the Catholic Church and it is the product of the Catholic Church. This means that the Bible is not the sole rule of faith for Christians, but rather “the Church is the pillar and foundation of the truth” as it says in I Timothy 3:15.
Versions of the whole or parts of the Bible in the language of the common people first appeared in Germany in the eighth century, in France and Hungary in the twelfth, and Italy, Spain, Holland, Poland and Bohemia in the thirteenth century. In the 1500's in Italy, there were more than 40 vernacular editions of the Bible. France had 18 vernacular editions before 1547, and Spain began publishing editions in 1478, with full approval of the Spanish Inquisition. In all, 198 editions of the Bible were in the language of the laity, 626 editions all together, and all before the first Protestant version, and all having the full approval of the Church.
The area known as England was invaded and settled by Germanic tribes called "Saxons" who aligned with tribes from the area of Denmark called "Angles". In the 700's, (St. Bede the Venerable), the area was speaking a Germanic dialect. In the Middle Ages, between 1066-1377, there were different dialects depending on where you went, between the different tribes. The Normans had invaded the area, There was no written vocabulary, so Latin and Greek were most commonly used by the literate.
For centuries before the invention of the printing press, the only way to duplicate the text of the Bible was to copy it by hand. Copyists could have made mistakes, but, they took more care with Scripture than with any other book. Errors, while they are possible and certainly have occurred in some instances, can not be too easily admitted or accepted as an excuse to disregard these copies. Moreover, God in His Providence has faithfully protected His Bible from any serious corruption.
“It never ceases to amaze me that anyone buys the notion that Jesus intended the personal reading and personal interpretation of Scripture to be the ONLY source of knowledge about him”
Nobody holds that it needs to be the only source or knowledge about him, that is a straw man. Some of us merely hold that it should be the definitive source of knowledge, especially in matters of doctrine.
When, what time period were the vast majority of people illiterate? Peter was a simple fishermen but managed to write a few epistles. The Jews of the era were well versed in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek. The Roman Empire Gentiles had a common language of Greek and Latin.
The Early Christians as Jews and Diaspora Jews would understand the reading of Scriptures on the Sabbath. Paul called for his cloak and codex books at the end of an epistle. So I think this early church was a lot more written and gathering to hear the Word savvy than we give them credit for. With the rise of the ecclesiastical in the following centuries we see the laity becoming servants to overseers/bishops instead of partners in the Great Commission. So the widespread illiteracy you claim happened much later and flourished in the grand days of popery.