Editions of the Bible

New Zealand Tablet, 12 July 1906, Page 33

Editions of the Bible

There are those (says the ' Sacred Heart Review'), who accuse the Catholic Church of having kept the Bible away from the people (during the ' Dark ' Ages, of course), and say that the Christian world is indebted to Martin Luther for having made popular familiarity with the Scriptures a possibility. What have we to say in answer ? We arc content with referring our readers to the following testimony from a historian, who knows and writes history :—: — ' The writings of the Dark Ages are, if I may use the expression, - made of the Scriptures. I do not merely mean that the writers constantly quoted the Scriptures, and appealed to them as authorities on all occasions, as other writers have done since their day — though they did this, and it is a strong proof of their familiarity with them— but I mean that they thought and spoke and wrote the thoughts and words and phrases of the BiWle, and that Ihey did this constantly and habitually, as the natural mode of expressing themselves. They did it, too, not in theological or ecclesiastical matters, but in histories, biographies, familiar letters, legal instruments, and documents of every description.'— Dean Maitland, ' Dark Ages,' -page 507. And again : 'To say nothing of parts of the Bible, or of books whose place is uncertain, we know of at least twenty different editions of the whole Latin Bible printed in Germany alone before Luther was born. These had issued from Augsburg, Strasburg, Cologne, Ulm, Mentz (-two), Basle (four), Nuremberg (ten), and were dispersed through Germany, I repeat, before Luther was born.'—' Dark Ages,' page 506. Besides, there had appeared in the modern languages 104 editions of the whole Bible before the version of Luther came out in 1534. Of these twenty were in Italian, twenty-six in French, two in Spanish, six in Bohemian, one in Sclavonic, and thirty in German. — Gigot Biblical Lectures, pages 311-312.