thread: 2006-09-08 : Picky-choosy religion, 3 views
On 2006-09-16, Valamir wrote:
Actually, I'm personally interested in getting intlo the history;
By the same token, I'd like to hear more from Ralph. Specifically, Ralph, while I can dig most of what you say, I'm skeptical about the idea of there being no precedent for "Scripture as unerrant truth" prior to the Protestant Reformation."
Incidentally, any sources for further reading that Ralph, Syndey, or anybody, really, can provide would be great, specifically on topics like "Psst—they didn't even BELIEVE in inerrancy 'til Luther!"
Well, I'll see what I can do.
On the subject of the bible as the unerring word of God we need to hit up a little more history. The earliest use of written anything in the early church began around 50AD with the epistles (letters) of church founders to their scattered congregations...Paul's letters being the best known. Those letters referred to Scripture and following scripture but what they were referring to was actually the Hebrew bible (i.e. what would become known as the "old testament") in an effort to demonstrate how their teachings were in line with the old prophecies.
The Gospels didn't gain status as something even worthy of being quoted or held up as evidence until well into the second century. Remember, the Hellenistic world based its arguements heavily on citing authority and it was a good century plus after Christ that the writings of the apostles were considered authoritative enough to base an arguement on. Clearly then if there was doubt as to whether the books could be called on as an authority in a logical arguement there was no thought at the time of them being the unerring word of God.
The "new testament" didn't even begin to be assembled as a collection of authoritative works until the third century and it took another hundred years before the shape of what we typically think of as the books of the New Testament were accepted as canon. Erasmus did the heavy lifting of assembling the "canonical" works in the early 300s with the blessing and approval of Emperor Constantine, but the church in Rome didn't accept the list until 405. So basically for the first 400 years the church couldn't even agree on what writings were and weren't worthy of being canon...let alone that any could be the unerring word of God.
A good general history of the bible from the old testament scriptures through the writings of Paul, the assembling of the canon, the manuscripts of the middle ages, the rise of the humanists in the renaissance, the reformation, and on through modern biblical science is
The Bible Through the Ages1996 ed. Huber. Its a 30,000 basic survey, but its a good start and has a decent bibliography.
If you want to dig deeper into the history and politics of what became canon and what became heresy
Lost Christianities and Lost Scripturesboth by Ehrman are great sources. There's alot of fun stuff in there like how certain scriptures were rejected because of the feature role they gave women and other goodies.
The bible went from the Hebrew, through the Greek and into the Latin, but as anyone who's used Babelfish or Google Translator knows you can't simply map words over 1 for 1 and have them make sense. A translation meant figuring out what the actual meaning of the original text was and then determining how to phrase that in the new language so that it kept the same meaning even if it didn't use exactly the same words. Of course the success of that depended alot on the abilities of the translator, the quality of the source material, and was of course colored by the politics and theological debates of the day.
Misquoting Jesusanother Ehrman book (basically all three represent one large study broken up into three volumes) goes into a lot of specifics on the type of errors that cropped in through the translation and copying process including examples of several verses that were changed to adhere more closely to the doctrine of the day or to bring the different versions of the same stories found in the gospels closer together. There are even surviving manuscripts where the copiest wrote curses in the margin against any future copiest who would dare alter the text...a testament to how common such alterations were...and ultimately about as effective as the curses on Egyptian tombs against looters.
The Catholic Church was well aware of these problems and issues with the text and knew full well that lay readers, unfamiliar with the history of the translations and the tremendous volumes of theological debate that underlay church doctrine could well be led astray by reading any single version and thinking it was THE version. A knowledgeable theologian had access to several versions and dozens of scrolls of commentary written by other scholars commenting on the disagreeing texts. But someone with access to only 1 version who didn't have the advantage of a life time of theological study could well come to the wrong conclusions.
This wasn't as much of a problem when the bible was available only in Latin. The church would from time to time have to deal with an individual priest whose preaching was deemed heretical, but it was relatively easy to control.
The problem got enormously more complicated at the end of the 12th century when vernacular translations became common. Most monks (who despite the above discussion were the most qualified to handle copying of manuscripts and the most capable of dealing with conflicting texts) refused to translate into the vernacular (any one who's read Umberto Eco's novel Name of the Rose will recognize some of the debates on this topic). This meant that many of the vernacular texts were translated by lay people, whose scholarship was even more questionable. Combine this with the penitent movement and the poverty movement which attracted some pretty extreme folks (like the flagellants) and soon every wacko who could get his hands on a bible was preaching the word in a variety of really strange flavors, and gathering followers.
It got so bad at one point that the church actually outlawed lay ownership of bibles in any translation in an effort to keep flawed texts out of the hands of people who lacked the background to understand what they were reading.
That was the level of authority the Catholic Church gave the scripture. Yes it was holy, yes it was the word of God, but it was the word of God as written by the hands of men. Men who were flawed, and so the words they wrote were flawed. Scripture was the holy word of God...but it had to be interpretted and studied and conveyed by those with the background to understand it.
In a way its sort of like like listening to a Creationist talk about Evolution. They understand so little about what evolution says, that any knowledgable biologist cringes at the ridiculousness of their claims. Thats kind of how the Catholic church thought of these vernacular bibles. These preachers understand so little about the bible and its history that they cringed at the ridiculousness of their claims.
It was into that environment that Luther in 1500-something did his whole "we don't need priests we have the direct word of God right here in the bible" thing...making his own translation of the bible featuring what he thought the important emphasis should be.
Given the long history of dealing with wackos with a bible its hardly surprising that the Catholic Church condemned him as a heretic and sent Germany into a never ending series of religious wars lasting for centuries. It is a testament to the Catholic church of the day that the reformation spawned a counter reformation; where the Church realized that it was its own corruption that gave these heresies justification and set about trying to put its own house in order in response to many of its opponent's legitimate accusations.
Enter the modern evangelical protestant with their claims of the bible as the true and unerring word of God...despite the "flavor of the month" translations appearing on book store shelves (some of which make the old "Good News" version look down right traditional) and those of us who understand the need for reason combined with faith and have a grasp of church history are left scratching our heads wondering WTF are these yahoos thinking...?
