Today we remember the martyrdom of William Tyndale

The Catholic Church tried, as a matter of policy, to stop the spread of vernacular translations for commoners. Trusted wealthy patrons were permitted, but the Catholic Church actively opposed vernacular translations for the masses.

Good research.

I think we're coming up on something the BIG rubric of which is, "the devil is in the details," and the smaller rubric of which is, what buzzackly do we mean by the Catholic Church?

And in a larger and vaguer sense, there HAS been the result which our side feared. I'm thinking especially of groups like the Jehovah's Witnesses. They CLAIM to be solidly Biblically based. And they marshal arguments about, say, the use of the definite article in Koine Greek that are exhausting in their number and challenging in their obscurity.

To sum up so far,n (1) despite your evidence, there were still devout and sort of 'official' Catholics producing translations, verse paraphrases, and the rest. The Vatican and some bishops may not have been happy with it, but the junior offices seem to have been operating on the principle that it is easier to get forgiveness than permission.

(2) If we assume the impossible, that the Church was right that the Albigensians really were wicked, and that while they did have a legitimate beef against the luxury and irreligion of the prelates, still (and we would say something similar of Luther) they went too far.

(3) And (new point) I am reading (skimming) a book whose thesis is that Shakespeare was a Catholic sympathizer, if not actually Catholic. And the author mentions in a footnote that one had to have evens secular plays "registered." So the cultural mindset was one in favor of control.

I don;t think it will turn out to be as simple as either side makes it out to be.

Don't tell me . . . J, E, P, and D, right?

Just for you, ZC, I checked.

The DH is not mentioned. At all.

On page 166 he states, "Priesthood as we know it in the Catholic church was unheard of during the first generation of Christianity, because at that time priesthood was still associated with animal sacrifices in both the Jewish and pagan religions."

Greg Dues has never actually read Ignatius, or Justin Martyr, or any of the other Apostolic Fathers, has he? He's just blissfully ignorant of everything that took place in "the first generation of Christianity," and nevertheless thinks he's entitled to pontificate (and I choose the word deliberately) on it.

That is because of attempts to conform the Bible to Roman Catholicism and Anglicism, as the Greek word translated “elder,” presbuteros,” (Titus 15 etc.) or bishop, “episkopos,” is not the same as the one for priests, “archiereus,” or “hiereus,”

I think we're not understanding each other. The English word "priest" undisputably comes from the Greek word "presbyter". The English word "bishop" undisputably comes from Greek word "episcopos". Any dictionary will demonstrate that; it's not a matter of "attempts to conform the Bible to Roman Catholicism" (??), it's a simple fact of the development of language.

To this day, when official Catholic documents wish to refer to priests (as distinct from priests and bishops, or the clergy in general), the words they use in Latin are derived from presbyter.

Now, hieraeus does not mean the same thing as presbyter. It would be nice if we had a different English word for hieraeus, but we don't.

The NT is ambiguous about episcopoi and presbyteroi being the same office. They don't say flatly that they are, nor that they are not.

The writings of Ignatius of Antioch (died AD 107-110, knew at least Peter, Paul, and John personally) are not ambiguous. They clearly show an episcopos as one man having authority over the church in a (large) town or region, with his presbyteroi, under obedience to him, ministering to the needs of the people, primarily by presiding at the Eucharistic celebration. I did not say he was tried for translating the Bible.

No, but the OP and lots of Protestant Tyndale hagiography either says it outright or implies it.

Heretical according to an authority which infallibly declares she is infallible whenever she speaks in accordance with her infallibly defined (scope and content-based) formula, thus rendering her own declaration to be infallible

Circular word games aren't really required: Tyndale's notes were heretical according to Catholic teaching, which hasn't changed on these issues before or since.

Oops! There was none...

Better take it up with the people at tyndale-bible.com, whose website states quite clearly:

Besides translating the Bible, Tyndale also held and published views which were considered heretical, first by the Catholic Church, and later by the Church of England which was established by King Henry VIII. His Bible translation also included notes and commentary promoting these views.

I posted a reproduction of his first translation, which the Catholic Church tried to stop & burn. His revised edition, a few years later, DID have notes...and the Catholic Church ALSO tried to suppress it.

However, since they tried with equal vigor to suppress his translation, both with and WITHOUT notes, it seems pretty obvious it was the TRANSLATION they objected to, not the notes!

I will grant that the intentions of the Catholic Church was to stop heresy. That it tried to do so by suppressing vernacular translations is both a symptom of the times (medieval folks believed in control by the state), and a symptom of what the Catholic Church feared would happen if folks read scripture for themselves. And the latter is, I think it obvious, NOT a high note of Catholic history.

New and improved editions of the New Testament were constantly being prepared by Tyndale, many containing marginal notes, some of which were directed against the papacy.
From the book "Portraits of Faithful Saints" at the website of the "Protestant Reformed Churches in America"

it seems pretty obvious it was the TRANSLATION they objected to, not the notes!

If by "they" you mean the English church, they objected to both. But merely translating the Bible didn't make one a heretic. If done without approval, it made one an unauthorized translator.

If by "they" you mean the people in Belgium who put him on trial, they didn't care about his translation into a language they didn't speak one way or the other ... and that was reflected in his indictment.

That it tried to do so by suppressing vernacular translations is both a symptom of the times (medieval folks believed in control by the state), and a symptom of what the Catholic Church feared would happen if folks read scripture for themselves.

Then why did the Catholic church support countless vernacular translations before the Reformation? Even the translators' foreward to the KJV makes note of that fact.

For example, Wikipedia notes:

In total, there were at least eighteen complete German Bible editions, ninety editions in the vernacular of the Gospels and the readings of the Sundays and Holy Days, and some fourteen German Psalters by the time Luther first published his own New Testament translation

It's true that the possession of vernacular Bibles was looked at with suspicion in England during this time period (although many people had vernacular "primers" containing excerpts of and commentaries on Scripture), largely because it was viewed as a sign of latent Protestant sympathies.

I have not been on the internet since the early am. I have been moving things. I am on the neighbors Internet. Do not know how long I can use it. So do not presume I read your question earlier.

Try not to read minds. People keep telling me with all these rules anyway on these threads. Just saying. I do not bother the moderator.

Yes, the Geneva was a fine translation, but the KJB is the final perfected word.

Yeah.

You know that one of our arguments for the, what, validity of the Catholic Church is that we’re such a bunch of bozos that the only way we survived was with God’s help.

The bozos part is indisputable. I’m at the stage of life where I repeat stuff, but this bears repeating: One of my favorite stories about Pope John XXIII is that somebody asked him how many people work in the Vatican.

“About half of them,” he replied.

Your funny!

Thank you. If the story of JohnXXIII is true, HE’s the funny one!

I think we're not understanding each other. The English word "priest" undisputably comes from the Greek word "presbyter". The English word "bishop" undisputably comes from Greek word "episcopos". Any dictionary will demonstrate that;

What is being misunderstood is that saying this “comes from” the Greek only means that is how it came to be translated into English, but this does not establish that this represents what the Greek denotes, and in this case the the Greek word “presbuteros” (not "presbyter") indisputably (not “undisputably”) is NOT the word for “priest,” nor does it denote a unique sacrificial function, as it simply means “senior” including as denoting a senior position, while episkopeō (translated as “bishop”) means “superintendent” or “overseer.” [from “epi” and “skopos” (“watch”) in the sense of “episkopeō,” to oversee, (Strong's)]

In distinction, “hiereus” (from “hieros”) means “priest." Any lexicon will demonstrate that.

Thus hieros or archiereus (high priest) is only used in the Bible for the old Jewish or pagan priests, and that of the priesthood of Christ and of all believers, and never as the term for New Testament pastors and are distinct from what Scripture refers to as a separate clerical class of priests. They are never referred to as priests except by inclusion with all believers who engage in priestly functions, including making sacrifices. (Rm. 12:1; Phil. 4:18; Heb. 1:15,16; 1Pt. 2:5)

Therefore rendering presbuteros as a title for priests, which the DRB inconsistently does, (Acts 20:17; Titus 1:5, versus presbyters — not priests — in the official Roman Catholic Bible for America) is an attempt to conform the Bible to what Rome made presbuteros to mean by way of perceived functionality, that of a separate class of sacerdotal priests.

Roman Catholics explain that the Latin word sacerdos is the semantical equivalent of the Greek word ‘ (hiereus), but the word presbyteros took on the meaning of sacerdos due the nature of Christ's explanation of the presbyterate, that of presiding at the celebration of the Eucharist. (Which is another study on extrapolation.) And that “the Latin word presbyter has no lingual or morphological relationship with the Latin word sacerdos, but only an inherited semantical relationship.” (http://catholicforum.fisheaters.com/index.php?topic=744379.0;wap2z)

In response to a query on this issue, the web site of International Standard Version (though not my preferred translation) states,

No Greek lexicons or other scholarly sources suggest that "presbyteros" means "priest" instead of "elder". The Greek word is equivalent to the Hebrew ZAQEN, which means "elder", and not priest. You can see the ZAQENIM described in Exodus 18:21-22 using some of the same equivalent Hebrew terms as Paul uses in the GK of 1&2 Timothy and Titus. Note that the ZAQENIM are NOT priests (i.e., from the tribe of Levi) but are rather men of distinctive maturity that qualifies them for ministerial roles among the people.

Therefore the NT equivalent of the ZAQENIM cannot be the Levitical priests. The Greek "presbyteros" (literally, the comparative of the Greek word for "old" and therefore translated as "one who is older") thus describes the character qualities of the "episkopos". The term "elder" would therefore appear to describe the character, while the term "overseer" (for that is the literal rendering of "episkopos") connotes the job description.

To sum up, far from obfuscating the meaning of "presbyteros", our rendering of "elder" most closely associates the original Greek term with its OT counterpart, the ZAQENIM. ...we would also question the fundamental assumption that you bring up in your last observation, i.e., that "the church has always had priests among its ordained clergy". We can find no documentation of that claim. http://isv.org/catacombs/elders.htm

it's not a matter of "attempts to conform the Bible to Roman Catholicism" (??), it's a simple fact of the development of language.

Rather it is a fact of the developer of Rome to impose its will over language, in what Rome perceives the pastors of the N.T. as doing determines the meaning of presbuteros, despite the meaning in the Greek and its titular distinction from priests.

It would be nice if we had a different English word for hieraeus, but we don't.

We do not need one, as it means priests, and presbuteros means elder and is used in distinction to what the Bible terms a class of clerical priests, and its contrary in etymology. Jewish presbyters existed before the priesthood, and the titles are used in distinction to priests, as is episkopos, and which was also “applied to the inspectors sent by Athens to her subject states, to inquire into their state, to rule and defend them.” (Smith's Bible Dictionary)

The NT is ambiguous about episcopoi and presbyteroi being the same office. They don't say flatly that they are, nor that they are not.

It does not need to be said flatly, anymore than the Trinity must be, which rests upon the cumulative weight of clear statements and is demanded if there would be not contradictions, while this issue is not ambiguous in the light of all that Scripture states in conflation with each other. For unlike hiereus and presbuteros or episkopeō, the latter two titles are used interchangeably without distinction. Titus was to “set in order the things that are wanting, and ordain elders [presbuteros] in every city, as I had appointed thee: If any be blameless, the husband of one wife, having faithful children not accused of riot or unruly. For a bishop [episkopos] must be blameless...” (Titus 1:5-7) Paul also "sent to Ephesus, and called the elders of the church," (Acts 20:17) who are said to be episkopos in v. 28. Elders are also who were ordained in Acts 14:23, and bishops along with deacons are the only two classes of clergy whom Paul addresses in writing to the church in Phil. 1:1.

The writings of Ignatius of Antioch (died AD 107-110, knew at least Peter, Paul, and John personally) are not ambiguous. They clearly show an episcopos as one man having authority over the church in a (large) town or region, with his presbyteroi, under obedience to him, ministering to the needs of the people, primarily by presiding at the Eucharistic celebration.

It is not incongruous to surmise that that there were arch elder/bishops over other elder/bishops, but this does not support two different titles which Scripture does not use, and fosters the hierarchical class distinctions and love of titles which the Lord warned about (Mk. Mk. 10:42-44; Mt. 23:8-10, by hyperbole) )

Heretical according to an authority which infallibly declares she is infallible whenever she speaks in accordance with her infallibly defined (scope and content-based) formula, thus rendering her own declaration to be infallible

Circular word games aren't really required: Tyndale's notes were heretical according to Catholic teaching, which hasn't changed on these issues before or since.

Unlike RC attempts to negate the titular distinction between presbuteros and hiereus, there are no word games here. The description of the basis for assuredly infallible decrees is what it is, true, and her saying they are does not make them infallible, while Rome today is guilty of the type of translational “heresies” leveled at Tyndale.

For a translator, the relevant question is, “What did the original readers understand when they read the word?”

“No Greek lexicons or other scholarly sources suggest that “presbyteros” means “priest” instead of “elder”. The Greek word is equivalent to the Hebrew ZAQEN, which means “elder”, and not priest. You can see the ZAQENIM described in Exodus 18:21-22 using some of the same equivalent Hebrew terms as Paul uses in the GK of 1&2 Timothy and Titus. Note that the ZAQENIM are NOT priests (i.e., from the tribe of Levi) but are rather men of distinctive maturity that qualifies them for ministerial roles among the people.

Therefore the NT equivalent of the ZAQENIM cannot be the Levitical priests. The Greek “presbyteros” (literally, the comparative of the Greek word for “old” and therefore translated as “one who is older”) thus describes the character qualities of the “episkopos”. The term “elder” would therefore appear to describe the character, while the term “overseer” (for that is the literal rendering of “episkopos”) connotes the job description. To sum up, far from obfuscating the meaning of “presbyteros”, our rendering of “elder” most closely associates the original Greek term with its OT counterpart, the ZAQENIM.”

http://isv.org/catacombs/elders.htm

The word, when used in the New Testament, did NOT convey the idea of a priest offering sacrifices. The idea of Eucharist meaning an ongoing, continual sacrifice of Jesus had to be developed before the Eucharist (thanksgiving) could be turned into a sacrifice requiring priests.

The New Testament church had no priests, other than the priesthood of the believer, offering sacrifices of praise and obedience.

Another good, short discussion is here:

http://www.answers.com/topic/presbyter

Worth saying again. Thanks for the link also. The church began to become “unionized” quite early, with lofty titles and offices following, which the Lord warned about.