“You can thank the Reformation for that, since, otherwise, the Church would have the authority to take those scriptures away, if they deemed you a danger to yourself or others, and then burn them in a bonfire like in the good old days.”
Actually the Church still has that authority - just as the Apostles did - and I do not begrudge it in the least. What gets me is that no Christian - if he is in fact a Christian - would doubt the Apostles’ right to order a Christian to give up a heretical translation or not be in good standing in the Church. Yet, for some reason, a reason that cannot be logical, Protestants deny that authority to the later Church.
“I’m asking you to give evidence for your assertion, about Papist Bibles being freely available in England after 1408.”
First, I suggest you start calling them Catholic Bibles - since that’s what they were. Also, they must have been rather freely available or else they would not have been commented on.
“How many there were,”
Don’t know. Many were destroyed by Protestants, burned in monasteries, chapels, Catholic homes, lost in priest holes, etc. Some simply fell apart from use and old age.
“who had them,”
I don’t know who. I just know they existed because that’s what the historical record tells us. Who knows how much information has been destroyed by the depredations of Protestantism over the last 500 years? Entire libraries were raided, pillaged, sold off or destroyed by the English Protestants. Protestants were such prodigious destroyers and liars that we could end up with a situation like Andrew Gow describes with German Bibles:
“The wide distribution and availability of German and other vernacular Bible translations in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, with 22 printed full Bible translations into German/Low German/Netherlandish appearing before Luther’s famous Bible translation, has been known to scholars since at least the early eighteenth century, when various works on German Bibles before the Reformation began to appear. However, the existence of such translations did not guarantee that scholars, especially church historians and historians of the Reformation took such Bible translations seriously. Luther himself had claimed (polemically) that the Bible had been entirely unknown and unavailable when he was a young man. The rather dispassionate scholarship of the eighteenth century, which included important works on pre-Reformation German Bibles by orthodox Lutheran divines, gave way in the second half of the nineteenth century to a rather bitter polemical discourse in the context of the Kulturkampf in Germany. Luther the linguistic genius and Luther the theological hero were the protagonists on one side; the late medieval Bible, on which Luther drew heavily for his own translation, was on the other.”
Basically Luther and his followers created a myth about there being no Bibles when in fact they existed and were known to exist. Protestants today, poorly educated and believing the myths of their lying forefathers, actually believe there were no Bibles in the vernacular before Luther. Incredible.
As Gow goes on to point out:
“One of the most persistent inaccuracies regarding the European Middle Ages—both among the general public and even among scholars—is the notion that the Roman church forbade or banned the reading of the Bible in the vernacular.2 A corollary of this popular conception is the idea that there were no vernacular Bible translations before Luther’s 1522 ‘September Testament’. Greatsite.com, which sells individual leaves from a 1523 Luther Pentateuch, advertised (at least until recently) “A leaf from the earliest printing of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Old Testament) in the German language. These leaves are over 480 years old. They come with beautiful Certificates of Authenticity. If you are looking for the oldest printed scripture in any language other than Latin or Greek … this is it. It doesn’t get any older than this. A great gift for friends of German or Lutheran heritage, or anyone who appreciates Christian history.”3
“This innocent mistake (“the earliest printing of the Pentateuch […] in the German language”; “the oldest printed scripture in any language other than Latin or Greek”; “It doesn’t get any older than this”) is still widespread among the general public.” http://www.jhsonline.org/cocoon/JHS/a115.html
Yep. It sure is.
“who authorized them, etc.”
Before 1408 no one needed to. After 1408, the ordinary would do so. And if he believed the people involved to be faithful Catholics, permission was routinely granted.
Interesting post #52. Thanks!
“Actually the Church still has that authority - just as the Apostles did - and I do not begrudge it in the least.”
But apparently the RCC isn’t very good at enforcing it, considering I have a print copy of my KJV, as well as, digitally, the ESV, the LXX, Vulgate, Tanach, Webster, YLT, Textus Receptus, and translations in Spanish, Chinese and Korean.
You can bellow all you like, but they won’t come off my hard drive.
“What gets me is that no Christian - if he is in fact a Christian - would doubt the Apostles’ right to order a Christian to give up a heretical translation or not be in good standing in the Church.”
But you limit the authority of your Bishops! Because it isn’t just a way to combat bad translations, but to keep even good translations out of the hands of people whom they judge to be so incompetent that they can’t be trusted to read anything for themselves!
In 1584 Pius IV published the index prepared by the commission mentioned above. Herein ten rules are laid down, of which the fourth reads thus: “Inasmuch as it is manifest from experience that if the Holy Bible, translated into the vulgar tongue, be indiscriminately allowed to every one, the rashness of men will cause more evil than good to arise from it, it is, on this point, referred to the judgment of the bishops or inquisitors, who may, by the advice of the priest or confessor, permit the reading of the Bible translated into the vulgar tongue by Catholic authors, to those persons whose faith and piety they apprehend will be augmented and not injured by it; and this permission must be had in writing. But if any shall have the presumption to read or possess it without such permission, he shall not receive absolution until he have first delivered up such Bible to the ordinary.”
This idea that they are “freely available,” yet they need permission even to read them, is a contradiction in terms. For if one needs permission for something, they are not free to it, since if you let men be free to it, the Bible has a tendency of making Protestants out of them.