Actually that's not true. Church Slavonic (which is an exact rendition of Greek specifically created for liturgical and theological use) and Syriac, were also widely used languages in Christendom.
ALL literate Christians could read Greek or Latin and usually both
Actually, the Church became separated along linguistic lines early on (5th century) and by the end of the first millennium the linguistic aparthied was complete. The Greeks refused to learn Latin and the Latin west was not very proficient in Greek. Even early Latin apologists such as St. Augustine knew Greek very marginally. Some of his key errors are base don his own faulty translations.
It was only with the appearance of the Renaissance that a desire for ancient Greek returns to the West where the language of science was strictly Latin.
It was Erasmus who, in the 15th century, translated the Bible from what he believed were reliable Greek copies of the Codex Alexandrinus, and called it Textus Receptus (received text), a translating which was later used as the basis for the "error-free" KJV.
Needless to say, not only was his Greek marginal, but the copies he used were terribly corrupt latter-day versions. He was forced to actually retro translate (!) from Latin into Greek (and thus create new text) because he was missing a portion of the New Testament, so he used the Latin Vulgate, which itself is not a very good translation of the Greek.
Even when Gutenberg first printed his Bible the cost was far greater than the average person could afford (of the Bibles printed by Gutenberg, only one is known to have been privately owned by an individual); however, as with ALL technology, the cost eventually came down
Absolutely, spot on! Besides, most of the population were farmers, and farmers did not send their children to schools to learn how to read and write, let alone learn a foreign (Latin) language. They needed all hands on the farm.
Now consider this, God KNEW that the Christian world would be almost totally illiterate for FIFTEEN CENTURIES after the Resurrection, why would He develop a means of Salvation that was conditioned on technology that wouldn't exist for FIFTEEN CENTURIES? It would be as if Christ had said, "There will be a new Covenant, but NONE of you will be part of it and neither will the next fifty generations."
Again, your points are spot on. I couldn't agree more.
“”Church Slavonic (which is an exact rendition of Greek specifically created for liturgical and theological use) and Syriac, were also widely used languages in Christendom.””
Here is some good information on how this comes together from UPENN-Robert Kraft..
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/rak//temp/toronto3/report-frame.html
In Search of Jewish Greek Scriptures:
Exposing the Obvious? by Robert A. Kraft
Abstract: Jesus and his earliest followers apparently were Semitic speaking Jews living in Roman Palestine, but their messages quickly spread into the Greek speaking worlds in which Jews had been quite active for centuries. The Greek sources left to us by the early Christian authors, compilers, and copyists include Jewish writings and traditions of various sorts, especially those that later became “canonized.” Greek speaking Jews tend to disappear from our preserved sources in the second century CE, leaving the impression that the gradually dominating Semitic Judaism of the Rabbis has displaced most other Jewish representatives. This paper will challenge that simplistic assessment by drawing together evidence from and about Jewish scriptures in Greek throughout the Greco-Roman period.
More good reading...
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CONCEPT Of “ORTHODOXY”
IN EARLY CHRISTIANITY By Robert Kraft
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/gopher/other/journals/kraftpub/Christianity/orthodoxy.htm
A few excerpts..
By the year 400 of the common era, there had developed what can be called “classical Christian orthodoxy.” This type of Christianity became mainstream Christianity in both the eastern and the western world prior to the time of the Protestant Reformation. It not only defined its beliefs in terms of standard creeds, such as the so-called “Apostles’ Creed” and the so-called “Nicene Creed,” but it judged the conduct of its adherents in terms of certain prescribed rules and practices for worship and for private life. It not only appealed to a standard collection of religious writings as authoritative, but it also acknowledged the presence of institutional authority in the leaders of the church, an authority believed to have been passed down from generation to generation in a line of spiritual transmission that could be traced back to Jesus Christ himself. It not only actively sought to bring non-Christians into the fold, but it also actively fought to exclude so-called “heretics” and to prohibit such “heretics,” insofar as that was possible, from providing competition for so-called “orthodoxy.”
“modern Protestant Christianity has not been known for its attention to the details of early church history beyond the so-called NT period, despite the real relevance of such a broader awareness”