[fortheDeclaration]

English was not the default language of educated England after the Norman conquests until about 1350. French, Anglo-Norman and Latin were the languages of the literate instead. Why would one create a translation into another language when anyone who could read the English could also read the extant Latin or French translations? This only motive was to inject one’s own words into the text. This is why the vernaculars were usually the product of heretics, and were viewed with just suspicion by the authorities, both ecclesial and temporal.

Vernaculars- you mean Bibles the average person could read?

Those words were not interjected into the text, they represented words that the average person could understand.

Frankly,I really have no interest in the reasoning a tyrant, either religious or secular, uses to justify his actions.

[Philo-Junius]

The average person in the English-speaking world wasn’t literate until sometime in the late 17th or early 18th century. All Bibles were equally inaccesible to the illiterate.

[MarkBsnr]

***Vernaculars- you mean Bibles the average person could read?

Those words were not interjected into the text, they represented words that the average person could understand. ***

The words were injected deliberately or else the ability of translation was poor. That’s why the Church wanted control of the translations - otherwise we got bad translations like Wyclif.

Besides, how many people could read even in the middle ages? In 1600s London, the most educated city in the world, only about 8 percent of the people were literate, and those were nobles, clergy and merchants.

And until Gutenberg got going, just how many Bibles do you think were available? They were hand written, you know, not available in the millions from Amazon.com.

[maryz]

Vernaculars- you mean Bibles the average person could read?

Up until probably the 17th or 18th century, in Europe anyway, the average person probably couldn't read more than minimally, and that only in the cities. Also, he mostly couldn't afford books until the development of cheap paper from wood pulp toward the end of the 18th century.