That’s easy. When they were commissioned to translate they took the original manuscripts in the original language and found significant errors in the Latin translations that the CC had done. The CC had gotten by with it because of the lack of wide spread availability of written word. They had preserved but not disseminated the correct translation until the time of the Reformation.
>> If in fact the Church is lying, than what Luther is working off of is a lie too.<<
Nope, the CC was using it’s own translations in Latin. The reformers were using the original language documents directly into German.
>> In order for you to get to the point where Luther is correct, you must first assume that the Catholic church preserved the bible.<<
Nope, see above.
>> Luther was a Catholic himself and a priest for many years.<<
Yep, that’s why he was given access to the original language documents. That’s when they found all the errors in the Latin translations.
>> You are trusting this one man to get it right and everyone else in the Church has gotten it wrong?<<
Nope, trusted God to bring us what He wanted. Now that we have available to all the original language documents we find that he did it right.
The CC still today insists that the Catholics use their “approved” version.
“That’s easy. When they were commissioned to translate”
Who’s they? Who was commissioned by whom to translate the bible?
“they took the original manuscripts in the original language”
What “original manuscripts” did the translators use? There are no original manuscripts of scripture in existence. They are no longer extant.
They couldn’t have used the Codex Vaticanus because that wasn’t publicly available until the latter half of the 19th century. Same with Sinaiticus. Prior to then, the Vatican had access to Codex Vaticanus. It happens to be the oldest, and most complete Greek NT manuscript.
“and found significant errors in the Latin translations that the CC had done.”
We have better and older sources today that show no such significant errors.
“The CC had gotten by with it because of the lack of wide spread availability of written word.”
Sounds like a myth to me. The most widely distributed book in those times was the Bible. We can trace the changes over time, from the older Vulgates that we do possess.
“They had preserved but not disseminated the correct translation until the time of the Reformation.”
Nonsense. They preserved the Vulgate, which btw, uses sources that are non-extant and dates back to the early 4th century. Not as old as Codex Vaticanus, but much older than anything else available to translate from.
“Nope, the CC was using it’s own translations in Latin.”
It’s called the Vulgate.
“The reformers were using the original language documents directly into German.”
And the documents that they used were?
“Yep, that’s why he was given access to the original language documents. That’s when they found all the errors in the Latin translations.”
Then why was it him and not the other priests who ‘found’ these ‘errors’? Do you know that Luther used Erasmus’s translation, and certainly not the originals?
“Nope, trusted God to bring us what He wanted. Now that we have available to all the original language documents we find that he did it right.”
Uh, no we don’t have all the original documents. The oldest full bible we do have is the Codex Vaticanus which is the early 4th century. We have some fragments that are older than this, but we do not have all the original language documents.
We don’t even have an original LXX, let alone an original Gospel.
“The CC still today insists that the Catholics use their “approved” version.”
Absolutely, because the Vulgate uses sources that are no longer extant today, that are far older than anything else that we do have.
There were numerous German versions of the Bible before Luther introduced his corrupted translation,as 19th century Protestant scholar Philip Wace Schaff testifies.
http://www.bible-researcher.com/luther02.html
“Luther was not the first, but by far the greatest translator of the German Bible, and is as inseparably connected with it as Jerome is with the Latin Vulgate. He threw the older translation into the shade and out of use, and has not been surpassed or even equaled by a successor. There are more accurate versions for scholars (as those of De Wette and Weizsäcker), but none that can rival Luther’s for popular authority and use.
The civilization of the barbarians in the dark ages began with the introduction of Christianity, and the translation of such portions of the Scriptures as were needed in public worship.
The Gothic Bishop Wulfila or Wölflein (i.e., Little Wolf) in the fourth century translated nearly the whole Bible from the Greek into the Gothic dialect. It is the earliest monument of Teutonic literature, and the basis of comparative Teutonic philology. (2)
During the fourteenth century some unknown scholars prepared a new translation of the whole Bible into the Middle High German dialect. It slavishly follows the Latin Vulgate. It may be compared to Wiclif’s English Version (1380), which was likewise made from the Vulgate, the original languages being then almost unknown in Europe. A copy of the New Testament of this version has been recently published, from a manuscript in the Premonstratensian convent of Tepl in Bohemia. (3) Another copy is preserved in the college library at Freiberg in Saxony. (4) Both are from the fourteenth century, and agree almost word for word with the first printed German Bible, but contain, besides the New Testament, the apocryphal letter of St. Paul to the Laodiceans, which is a worthless compilation of a few sentences from the genuine writings of the apostle. (5)
After the invention of the printing-press, and before the Reformation, this mediaeval German Bible was more frequently printed than any other except the Latin Vulgate. (6) No less than seventeen or eighteen editions appeared between 1462 and 1522, at Strassburg, Augsburg, Nürnberg, Cöln, Lübeck, and Halberstadt (fourteen in the High, three or four in the Low German dialect). Most of them are in large folio, in two volumes, and illustrated by wood-cuts. The editions present one and the same version (or rather two versions,—one High German, the other Low German) with dialectical alterations and accommodations to the textual variations of the MSS. of the Vulgate, which was in a very unsettled condition before the Clementine recension (1592). The revisers are as unknown as the translators.
The spread of this version, imperfect as it was, proves the hunger and thirst of the German people for the pure word of God, and prepared the way for the Reformation. It alarmed the hierarchy. Archbishop Berthold of Mainz, otherwise a learned and enlightened prelate, issued, Jan. 4, 1486, a prohibition of all unauthorized printing of sacred and learned books, especially the German Bible, within his diocese, giving as a reason that the German language was incapable of correctly rendering the profound sense of Greek and Latin works, and that laymen and women could not understand the Bible. Even Geiler of Kaisersberg, who sharply criticised the follies of the world and abuses of the Church, thought it “an evil thing to print the Bible in German.”
Besides the whole Bible, there were numerous German editions of the Gospels and Epistles (Plenaria), and the Psalter, all made from the Vulgate. (7)
Luther could not be ignorant of this mediaeval version. He made judicious use of it, as he did also of old German and Latin hymns. Without such aid he could hardly have finished his New Testament in the short space of three months. (8) But this fact does not diminish his merit in the least; for his version was made from the original Hebrew and Greek, and was so far superior in every respect that the older version entirely disappeared. It is to all intents a new work.”