Church and Bible

New Zealand Tablet, Volume 14, Issue 24, 14 June 1906, Page 2

Church and Bible

Party legends live long and die hard. There are, perhaps, still some simple-minded people who believe the legend that the Bible was a sealed book until Luther accidentally ' found ' it at Erfurt one fine day about the year of grace 1507 ! Yet the Venerable Bede tells us in his ' Ecclesiastical History ' (1., v., c. 19) that < according to the general custom ' of his tim,e (A.D. 673735) the four Gospels were learned by heart. And a cenkiry later (in 825) the eighth Council of Toledo made the following ordinance : That ' each bishop should, at stated periods, ma^e a regular inquiry throughout ' his diocese for the purpose of ascertaining ' (among other things) 'whether every priest could rightly interpret the Epistles and Gospels, and whether he knew the whole of the Psalms by heart.'

In the preface to his recently published work, ' The Tradition of Scriptiwro,' the Rev. Dr. Barry says :'—

'The Middle Ages had Iheir Bible on s\tone, on illuminated parchment, in st-ainod glass. It was delivered from the lips of popular preachers, reflected in the poetry of th°i " Heliand," of Dante, oi Fra Jacopo expounded on the walls, gates, and pavements of innumerable churches. It was recited in monasteries day and night, quoted in Parliaments, rhymed and sung by minstrels, so that; never perhaps was it more universally known.' J

The oldest version in a Western vernacular, though not complete, was the Maeso-Gothic of Ulfilas (311-381). No other goes back beyond the eighth century, • The earliest appear to be Old English— St. Aldlielm and Kina Alfred translatetl the Psalter ; Venerable Bede the Goßpel of St. John.; Aelfric the Pentateuch and various boo cs of thtt Old Tesbament. The Gospels were fre^ quently rehdered into English-. It is certain that many portions of Scripture were read in the different French" dialects lchg before the complete -/Translations untier St; Louis IX. (ab»ut 12&0) and Charles V. (died 1380). Guyars des Moulitts ga.e a farab-js rendering of the Vulgate historical books .between 1291-1297. Germafly, liktj France and England, had its ihym-ing paraphrases'; but its version of the Gospels was, it would appear, anVnoni eiha -^ of ni!ltn century ; while Notker (died 1U42) and Abbot William (di d 1085) were responsibHe for the Psalms. Between 1200-1500 many partial German versions saw the lipht. Danes, Swedes, Norwegians had their own texts more or less complete. SS. Cyril and Methodius founded the Sla^ij Bublc in the ninth century. To Alfonso V. ih 1270 th? Spanish version is attributed by Mariana ' the first printed Spanish Bible (1478) follows a rendering of Bonlfaz Ferrer (died 1417), brother of St. Vincent. The earliest Italian trahsl&Moh, according to Sixtus of Skna, came from the hand* of Jacobus de Voradne, author of the "Golden Legend^' and Archbishop of Genoa (died 1298) ; the printed copy edited by Malermi at Ycrice, 1471, weht through nine impressions " '.before 1500. The Hungarians received 1 EAims, Sunday Gospels and Epislles soori after their" conversion ; the whole Bible was done into Magyar, fey L Bathyani (died 1456). St. Hedwegg, Queen b£ Poland, set on foot a Polish translation towards the end of the thirteenth century, Darts of which stiU remain,. Ih the fifteepth century Bohemian ccdiccs of the .Scripture were plentiful. After printing was in\ented, the first German Hible came out in 1462 ; twenty editions of the whole followed down to 1520 in Tpper 'Germany, four in Lower. Ninety Plenaria (Sunday Gospels ?na Epistles), fourteen Psalters, two Apocalypses must le added '

Multitudes of these treasures of piety were burned or desecra.ted in the wholesale dcstructic.n of libraries that accompanied the Reformation roth in England and en 1113 Continent. Some were consigned to the flames as they stood, others helj-edl to fire bakers' ovens, to scour candlesticks, to clean boots, 1o wr^p grocers',' but= chcrs 1 , and soap-sellers' parcels. Fuller, the hotedProtestant wit, historian, ahtl divine, says in his ' Church History ' (1. vi, p. 335) : ' The Holy Scriptures themsehes, much as the Gospellers pretended t c regard them, underwent the fate of the rest. If a book had a cross on it, it was condemned f o r Po.icry, and those with lines and figures were interpreted the black art, and destroyed for conjuring..'

During the recent controversy in Wellington, we placed our Church-Council critics with thdr backs against the wall as regards the foundation of their belief in the Scripture as their ' only rule of faith and conduct.' In his ' Doctiine and Doctrinal Disruption, 1 Mr. Mallock, the well-Known ncn-Catholic writer, insists also (p. 76) that until our Reformed friends 'can tell' us definitely coherently, and fully on what foundation their belief and their interpretations of the Eible rest, all the emphasis they expend in asserting their li.al doctrines is as meaningless as the crowing of cocl.s in a farmyard.' Of the Catholic position, the same writer (p. 79) says : ' Slowly, and yet inevitably, the centuries have wrought their changes. That old foundation, ths Bible, has: ceased, in itself, to be a foundation any longer. . . It will support no structure, unles* something outside itself shall be found which will support it. That something the Roman Church supplied ; and now Reformed Christendom is beginning at last to find that, for that something which it rejected and still rejects, it is necessary to find a substitute.'