The bible's Fight to Survive

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[quote="Zzyzx"]
Who, exactly, was “ willing to die in order to ensure that the words attributed to them be translated into the common languages of the day”? References, citations?[/quote]


The Lollards: With the help of his associates, particularly Nicholas of Hereford, [John Wycliffe] produced the first complete Bible in the English language. It was undoubtedly Wycliffe’s greatest contribution to mankind’s search for God. [...] Because of his prominence among the ruling and scholarly classes, Wycliffe was allowed to die in peace on the last day of 1384. His followers were less fortunate. During the reign of Henry IV of England, they were branded as heretics, and many of them were imprisoned, tortured, or burned to death.

Alfonso de Zamora: (Complutensian Polyglot in 1522) “We request and beg that Your Holiness help us . . . and preserve us from our enemy the bishop of Toledo, Don Juan Tavera. Every day, without letup, he causes us numerous, unpleasant afflictions. . . . We certainly find ourselves in great anguish, since we are just like beasts for the slaughter house in his eyes.” - Appeal to Pope Sixtus.

William Tyndale: "In 1523, Tyndale moved to London with the intention of translating the New Testament into English, an act that was strictly forbidden. [...] . He was arrested for heresy by imperial authorities and imprisoned for over 500 days in Vilvoorde Castle. On 6 October 1536, Tyndale was tried and convicted of heresy and treason and put to death by being strangled and burned at the stake."
www.bbc.co.uk/history/people/william_tyndale/

Francisco de Enzinas was imprisoned by the Catholic Inquisition (after 1544) for translating and publishing the Christian Greek Scriptures in Spanish - w97 10/1 p. 13 par 1

Casiodoro de Reina. 1562 Despite having a price on his head and living in constant fear of arrest, he worked incessantly on his Spanish translation. Reina’s version was published in 1569 and was revised by Cipriano de Valera in 1602. - g11 07 p. 13

Robert Morrison secretly began to translate the Bible in Canton, China, in 1807 ... Morrison had some knowledge of Chinese but needed further help with the language. Such help was not readily available, for translating the Bible into Chinese was a hazardous undertaking, punishable by death. Yet Morrison succeeded in getting the help of two Chinese scholars. One of them was so fearful of being apprehended and then put to death by slow torture that he carried poison in order to take his own life should he be caught. w74 12/15 p. 744
Additional Reading: Fox's book of Martyrs
www.biblestudytools.com/history/foxs-book-of-martyrs/

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THE HEBREW BIBLE

As one commentator pointed time and political dominance has taken its tole on many comparable Middle Eastern writings, which have been forgotten, and even the languages they were written in became extinct. However the bible, despite the fact that they were the sacred writing of a relatively small nation who existed subject to much more powerful nations, has survived for milleniums.

Syria, King Antiochus IV tried very hard to Hellenize the nation, forcing it to follow Greek customs and worship Greek gods.

What do authorities do when they want a book to disapear? Usually they ban its being reproduced, prohibit it being owned or read and destroy any existing copies. Has the bible been subject to such attacks?


In 303 C.E., Emperor Diocletian acted directly against the Bible. In an effort to stamp out Christianity, he ordered that all Christian Bibles should be burned.


While the elite latin speaking educated classes had access to the bible, and portions thereof had been translated by noble minded men and women into the venecular over the centuries, the Catholic church refused to authorize the bible in its entirity to be translated into the English spoken in the 13th Century ( the English language had changed significantly since the translations of Caedmon and Bede, due to the Norman invasion.) and made available to the common people. On the contrary they both refused to authorize their own Catholic translators to attempt to do so while banning any unauthorize scholars from attempting to do so, effectively closing off access to the holy scriptures.

In 1199 Pope Innocent III wrote such a strong letter to the archbishop of Metz, Germany, that the archbishop burned all the German-language Bibles he could find. gm chap 3 p. 26 par 3: Canon 14. We prohibit also that the laity should not be permitted to have the books of the Old or New Testament; we most strictly forbid their having any translation of these books.” – The Church Council of Toulouse 1229 AD Source: Heresy and Authority in Medieval Europe, Scolar Press, London, Englandcopyright 1980 by Edward Peters, ISBN 0-85967-621-8, pp. 194-195

THE COUNCIL OF TARRAGONA - 1234 A.D. in its second canon, ruled that: "No one may possess the books of the Old and New Testaments in the Romance language, and if anyone possesses them he must turn them over to the local bishop within eight days after promulgation of this decree, so that they may be burned...."
- D. Lortsch, Historie de la Bible en France, 1910, p.14.
Further reading: www.aloha.net/~mikesch/banned.htm

Proclamations at the Ecumenical Council of Constance in 1415 C.E.: Oxford professor, and theologian John Wycliffe, was the first (1380 C.E.) to translate the New Testament into English to “...helpeth Christian men to study the Gospel in that tongue in which they know best Christ’s sentence.” For this “heresy” Wycliffe was posthumously condemned by Arundel, the archbishop of Canterbury. By the Council’s decree “Wycliffe’s bones were exhumed and publicly burned and the ashes were thrown into the Swift River.”

Fate of William Tyndale in 1536 C.E.: William Tyndale was burned at the stake for translating the Bible into English. According to Tyndale, the Church forbid owning or reading the Bible to control and restrict the teachings and to enhance their own power and importance.

In 1559, Pope Paul IV published the first index of prohibited books, a list of works that Catholics were forbidden to read, sell, translate, or possess.

The 1596 index was even more restrictive. Authorization was no longer to be given to translate or print Bibles in the vernacular. Such Bibles were to be destroyed.

Historian Mario Cignoni states: “In practice, Bible reading by laymen ceased completely for centuries. The Bible became virtually an unknown book, and millions of Italians lived their lives without ever reading a page of it.” w05 /15 p. 15[/quote]

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Best selling



Guinness World Records: "Although it is impossible to obtain exact figures, there is little doubt that the Bible is the world's best-selling and most widely distributed book. A survey by the Bible Society concluded that around 2.5 billion copies were printed between 1815 and 1975, but more recent estimates put the number at more than 5 billion."
www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/best-selling-book-of-non-fiction/

Huffington Post: The Bible is the biggest bestseller in history.
www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/30/the-15-biggest-bestseller_n_664029.html


The New Yorker: The familiar observation that the Bible is the best-selling book of all time obscures a more startling fact: the Bible is the best-selling book of the year, every year. Calculating how many Bibles are sold in the United States is a virtually impossible task, but a conservative estimate is that in 2005 Americans purchased some twenty-five million Bibles—twice as many as the most recent Harry Potter book. The amount spent annually on Bibles has been put at more than half a billion dollars.
www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/12/18/the-good-book-business

Wikipedia: According to Guinness World Records, the Bible is the best-selling book of all time with over 5 billion copies sold and distributed.

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Scholar W. H. Green stated concerning the Hebrew Scriptures: “It may be safely said that no other work of antiquity has been so accurately transmitted.”

Sir Frederic Kenyon, wrote: “The interval then between the dates of original composition and the earliest extant evidence becomes so small as to be in fact negligible, and the last foundation for any doubt that the Scriptures have come down to us substantially as they were written has now been removed. Both the authenticity and the general integrity of the books of the New Testament may be regarded as finally established.” He also stated: “It cannot be too strongly asserted that in substance the text of the Bible is certain. . . . This can be said of no other ancient book in the world.”

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Pope St. Gregory I (died 604 AD)
Told his flock to read the bible but didn't make it possible.

St. Bonaventure (1221-1274 AD)
Bible of the poor- pictures and stories (not a bible)

After Catholics and protestants had paid for the struggle to produce the bible and get it into the hands of the common people and the printing press had finally enabled them to win the war the catholic Pope declares...


BIBLES IN LATIN

BIBLE IN LATIN (language of the Rich, educated and the Clergy) Latin Bible it hand copied minuscule script about the year 1260 (AD.). This leaf originates from Northern France (probably Paris)

BIBLE IN LATIN: This leaf (circa 1260AD) has been written by hand in Latin, originally owned by William Foyle of Beeligh Abbey England.

PRINTED BIBLE IN LATIN 1454 A.D. THE FIRST PRINTED BIBLE: A Catholic named Gutenberg caused great excitement when in the fall of that year he exhibited sample pages at the Frankfurt trade fair. Gutenberg quickly sold out all of the 180 copies of his Latin Vulgate Bible even before the printing was finished.



FRENCH THE LANGUAGE OF ROYALITY

BIBLES FOR THE KINGS

PORTIONS IN FRENCH - 7TH CENTURY THE FIRST TRANSLATION OF THE BIBLE IN TO FRENCH LANGUAGE: French Versions of the Psalms and the Apocalypse, and a metrical rendering of the Book of Kings, appeared as early as the seventh century.

- Bible for the Rich Nobility: These two leaf are from different Bibles in French. They were both hand copied about the year 1250 (AD.) and are written in a very fine, regular, hand : The initials at the beginning of every chapter are very elaborate!

- Bibles for the clergy - In the seventh Century, Irish and English monks began to leave space between the words as they copied the biblical texts by hand, before this all the letters ran together making a entire book look like one giant word.

BIBLE FOR KINGS THIRTEENTH CENTURY, THE FIRST TRANSLATION OF THE BIBLE IN TO SPANISH LANGUAGE: Under King Alfonso V of Spain.

BIBLE IN CHURCH SLAVIC 9TH CENTURY, THE FIRST SLAVIC TRANSLATION OF THE BIBLE: Old Ecclesiastical Slavic, or Bulgarian, a translation of the Bible from the Greek.

BIBLES THAT NEVER EXISTED

- In 1223 (A. D.)a complete translation was made under the Catholic King Louis the Pious.

- A complete Bible of the fifteenth [century] in general use before the invention of printing- unnamed


PORTIONS IN NORDIC: 1300 A.D. THE FIRST TRANSLATION OF THE BIBLE IN TO NORWEGIAN LANGUAGE: The earliest and most celebrated is that of Genesis-Kings in the so-called Stjórn ("Guidance"; i.e., of God) manuscript in the Old Norwegian language, probably to be dated about 1300. Swedish versions of the Pentateuch and of Acts have survived from the fourteenth century and a manuscript of Joshua-Judges by Nicholaus Ragnvaldi of Vadstena from c. 1500. The oldest Danish version covering Genesis-Kings derives from 1470. (11)​

BIBLE IN SLAV: A complete Slav Bible after an ancient codex of the time of Waldimir (d. 1008) was published at Ostrog in 1581.

PORTIONS IN GERMAN numerous partial versions in the vernacular some go back to the seventh and eighth centuries.


CRUMBS FOR THE ENGLISH

BIBLE IN SAXON - 8TH CENTURY: By Aldhelm, the Bishop of Sherborne, and Bede; A 9th century translation of the Bible in to English (Anglo-Saxon the dialect of its time) was made by Alfred. - A tenth century translation in to English was made by Aelfric.(7)

PORTIONS IN OLD ENGLISH This image is of the "Vespasian Psalter" a eighth century Catholic translation of the Book of Psalm in to English
8TH - 9TH CENTURY,

LATIN OLD ENGLISH & NORMAND 1170 A.D. THE FIRST PARALLEL ENGLISH LANGUAGE BIBLE: Eadwine's Psalterium triplex, which contained the Latin version accompanied by Anglo-Norman and Anglo-Saxon renderings, appeared it became the basis of all subsequent Anglo-Norman versions.
​
PORTIONS IN NORMAN: By 1361 a translation of most of Scripture in the English dialect (Anglo-Norman) of its time had been executed.