'STAND FAST IN THE FAITH'

New Zealand Tablet, 15 July 1915, Page 11

'STAND FAST IN THE FAITH'

(A Weekly Instruction specially written for the , N.Z. Tablet by Ghimel.)

So far we have spoken only of the printed editions of the Bible in Latin, the ordinary language of communication, and in. the vernacular.- But let us not forget that for centuries monks and nuns had made it their serious business in life to multiply by transcription the whole or parts of the Scriptures. Archbishop Carr, from whom I have quoted most of these facts, thinks that there must have been some 300,000 copies of the Bible in Latin and other languages, when Luther stumbled across that forlorn copy of the Bible at Erfurt. To conclude, Karl Pearson, a bitter opponent of the Church, writes: The Catholic Church has quite enough to answer for . . . but in the fifteenth century it certainly did not hold back the Bible from the folk ; and it gave them in the vernacular a long series of devotional works, which, for language and religious sentiment, have never been surpassed. Indeed, we are inclined to think it made a mistake in allowing the masses such ready access to the Bible. It ought to have’ recognised the Bible once for all as a work absolutely unintelligible without a long course of historical study; and, so far as it was supposed .to be inspired, very dangerous in the hands of the ignorant’ ( Academy , Aug. 7, 1886).

THE CHURCH'S ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE SACRED SCRIPTURES-—II. To continue our record of some , of the facts which prove beyond all question that, in the period we are considering (the period just before the dazzling light did not f t rmatl ° n ? r ° ke iU ° n the world), the Popes did lot take very stringent measures to see that the .Bible remained a closed book to the people. M togm by quoting from tne Anglican Dean Maitland, who in his day was recognised as a firstclass historian :—‘Before Luther was born, the Bible had been printed in Rome; and the printers had had the assurance to memorialise his Holiness,' praying that he would help them off with some copies/ It had been printed too, at Naples, Florence, and Piacenza ; and Venice alone had furnished eleven editions. No doubt we shall be within the truth if we were to say that beside the multitude of manuscript copies, not yet fallen into disuse the press had issued fifty different editions of the whole Latin Bible, to say nothing of Psalters New Testaments, or other parts, and yet more than wen y years after, we find a young man who had received “a very liberal education,” who "had made <> r eat proficiency in his studies at Madgeburg, Eisenach* and Erfurt, and who, nevertheless, did not know what a Bible - was, simply, because “the Bible was unknown in those days. ’ (Dark Ayes, p. 506.) Let us amplify this statement a little : (1) Italy. ' Before Luther unearthed the Bible Venice had printed thirty-one editions of the Scriptures in Latin, and of course an Italian who could read at all was familiar with Latin. We may remark too, that publishers were not likely to print so many editions unless they were needed. J . An . Italian Bible was printed at Rome and at \ enice in 1471, reprinted at Venice'in 1477. was edited thirteen tunes before Luther issued his Gorman translation, and forty times before a Protestant version in Italian was printed. What were the Popes doiim ? The first five books of the Bible were printed in Hebrew in 1482, and this was the first time the Scriptiires were ever printed in Hebrew. The whole of the Old Testament was printed in Hebrew at Soncino in 1488, and again this was the first edition. . (2) France. The Latin Bible was edited, accord- . ing to Coppinger, the Protestant historian, no less than ninety-two times at Paris and Lyons alone before Luther published his Bible. - A translation in French of the New Testament was published in 1477 at Lyons; a second translation followed, and went through several editions before 1534, and still a third translation came from Paris (1523) and Antwerp (1530). (3) Spain. In the home of the Inquisition, where we are so often assured, a layman dare not become learned, the whole Bible was translated into Spanish as early as 1405, printed at Valencia in 1478, and reprinted in 1515. A translation in Spanish of the Gospels and Epistles came out about 1513. A Cardinal, the illustrious Ximenes, had the Scriptures printed in parallel columns in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, . and Chaldee (1514-1517). Again this was the first occasion on which the Bible was edited in this form. The second occasion, strangely enough, was duo to Spaniards (Antwerp, 1569-1572). About a century 4, er (1657) the first English edition rff this description came out. 1 . ( 4 ) Other Countries. A translation in Flemish was printed at Cologne in 1475, and rapidly passed through seven editions.- Another translation in the same iSS Uag6 ° f - the New Testamei ifc appeared at Delft in 1524, and it, too, ran through several editions in a short time. Cracow saw an edition in Slavonic in 14781479, and two translations in Polish-Russian appeared in 1517 and 1525 respectively.