Bible and the Protestant Reformation

The 15th and early 16th centuries were a time of significant intellectual change throughout Europe. This change directly affected the Bible’s availability in the vernacular language to the average reader. A significant 15th-century development was the printing press, which sped both the transmission of ideas and the production of texts. During the early years of printing, the Latin Bible was pretty popular. But after the Gutenberg Bible was printed in Germany’s Mainz around 1455, more than 90 other editions of the Vulgate, including some that had commentary, originated from presses across Europe.

The leaders of the Protestant Reformation aimed to return to a faith and practice that was more aligned with the Bible’s teachings. According to them, allegiance to a church wasn’t necessary to understand God. Instead, they argued that individual study of scripture was needed. This triggered a surge in the creation of new editions of the Bible. These Bibles printed during the Protestant Reformation were just as vital as the individuals who directed and drove the movement. Given below are some notable Bibles of the era.

The Erasmus Bible

Erasmus of Rotterdam was a renowned scholar of his age. This priest from the Netherlands believed the church needed reforms. He targeted the Vulgate, the Bible’s Latin version, translated in the fourth century, which was widely used during his time.

According to Erasmus, the Vulgate had numerous errors. He found more than 6,000 mistakes himself. Since the New Testament was initially written in Greek, not Latin, he published a New Greek translation by drawing upon multiple sources. Scholars could use his version to compare the church’s Vulgate with the original Greek scripture. Erasmus’s Bible was the first translated version to have editor’s notes regarding the meaning of the text, which proved to be enormously influential for later Protestant translators.

In his New Testament’s preface, Erasmus urged others to carry on his work by translating the word of God into their native languages. Several reformers, including Martin Luther, went ahead to do just what Erasmus had advised. Erasmus’s translated Bible didn’t just serve as the textual foundation for Luther’s German translation (1522). It was also the basis for Bible’s English translation by William Tyndale (1526) and the King James Version (1611).

Luther’s German Translation

As an act of defiance, Martin Luther posted 95 criticisms against the church on the door of a Wittenburg-based church. This is believed to be the beginning of the Protestant Reformation. Since he refused to recant what he posted, Luther was taken away to a Wartburg Castle in 1521. During this period, he chose to translate the New Testament into German. He finished the job in eleven weeks. In September 1522, his translation saw the light of day and became popular as Luther’s September Testament.

Luther’s translation consisted of his critical interpretation and explanation of the New Testament. However, Luther found the Old Testament’s translation an uphill task. Personal ill health, wars, and inadequate expertise in Hebrew slowed him down. It took Luther and a diverse team of scholars to translate and publish the whole Old Testament in twelve years. It was released in installments. The Pentateuch, the Bible’s first five books, wasn’t released until 1523.

The Tyndale’s Bible

Emboldened by Erasmus and Luther, work started on a new Bible in England. But like several places in Europe, working to produce a local-language Bible in the British Isles was perilous. This was because the law of the land handed death to anyone found to have an unlicensed possession of scripture.

William Tyndale started work to produce the first English Bible by translating directly from the original Hebrew and Greek. In 1526, Tyndale published his New Testament and followed it up with the Pentateuch (1530). An English adaptation of the Book of Jonah was also published by Tyndale, but his other Old Testament translations never got published. Tyndale’s Bible translation was regarded as such a massive act of dissent that he was strangled to death and then burned at stake.

Tyndale is frequently called the Father of the Protestant Reformation. His work impacted subsequent translators of the Bible significantly as they adopted a great deal of his style and choice of words in their translations, including the KJV (King James Version).

Final Words

The Geneva Bible and the Bishop’s Bible are other notable Bibles published during the Protestant Reformation, if you want to know more about Protestant Reformation, click here. The publication of these and several other Bibles made the church realize that it could no longer suppress the will of God. Thus, God’s word became available in the English language as well as other vernacular languages.

Original Source: https://lifeunited.org/bible-and-the-protestant-reformation/

Know All About The History Of The Christian Church

According to recent statistics, Christians are the largest religious group, with a whopping 2.3 billion believers or a noticeable 31.2% of the global population of 7.3 billion. Christians have always deemed the era of Jesus and his disciples a standard for all the other ages. This belief powered the church's faith in Jesus - the Messiah, who was resurrected. This faith also drove the anticipation of forgiveness of sins through Jesus. But have you ever wondered how the history of the Christian church changed over the years? And how it's related to the English Bible's history? Let's take a brief look.

The Middle Ages

Several dissenters emerged in the late Middle Ages, like England's John Wycliffe, Bohemia's John Hus, who was one of the followers of Wycliffe, and Florence's Girolamo Savonarola. These individuals challenged the organized church's teachings in more radical ways than Assisi's St. Francis. Despite their differences, these dissenters stood united in their critique of what they believed complicated Christianity's essence. On a Biblical prophetic basis, they wanted simplicity in Christianity's moral, cognitive, and devotional aspects.

The Protestant Reformation paved the way for infinite Christian variety and triggered the development of several Protestant bodies that debated Christianity's essence among themselves. This made it increasingly difficult for any solitary organization or the church to assert its monopoly on the custodianship of that essence. Every new sect offered a fractional discernment of a diverse essence or way of talking about it, even though the vast majority of Protestants settled on one thing - that the essence could be retrieved uniquely or in the best way via recovery of the Scriptures' core message.

It's interesting to note that the history of the Christian church is tied closely to the English Bible's history. In 1380, John Wycliffe created the first Bible manuscripts in English that were hand-written. Throughout Europe, Wycliffe was popular for his opposition to the teaching of the organized church. He used the Scriptures in Latin Vulgate as his source and translated them into English, followed by producing dozens of manuscript copies. This infuriated the Pope to such an extent that 44 years after Wycliffe's death, his bones were dug up, mashed, and dispersed in the river following the Pope's order.

Though the church threatened to execute anyone who read or possessed the Scripture in a non-Latin Bible language, John Hus vigorously endorsed Wycliffe's ideas. Wycliffe had emphasized that people should be allowed to read the Bible in their own language and should resist the Roman church's oppression. Sadly, Hus was murdered in 1415. While he was tied to a large wooden stake, Wycliffe's manuscript Bibles were employed to start the fire that eventually burned and killed him.

The Era of Reason and Revival

Renaissance humanism took pride in human achievement and supported human autonomy, while Reformation ideas stressed autonomy in expressing faith. As a result of these two, the modern church faced new difficulties in the quest to identify Christianity's essence. The Enlightenment, an 18th-century Western philosophical movement, further added steam by encouraging searches for Christianity's essence. The Enlightenment declared hopeful views of human perfectibility and reach that challenged earlier essential Christian views about human limits. Their God became a caring, albeit a distant force, instead of how He was perceived earlier an agent that organized a method of salvation for people reliant on being rescued. Additionally, the Enlightenment advocated a view of human autonomy and emphasized the use of reason in seeking truth. In other words, this era in the history of the Christian church stressed that people should no longer trust the priests' words that convey ideas of essential Christianity.

For all this positivity, we should note that while Humanist Enlightenment may embrace certain ideals of freedom in which Christianity can flourish, there is a stark difference between secular humanism and its goal of humanity self-actualizing unto perfection, and the clear teaching of Christ, that all have sinned and fallen short of God's standards, and that salvation cannot be earned or achieved, but rather it is granted by grace through the unmerited gift of God, bestowed upon His chosen. The scriptures teach, "Lean not unto your own understanding, but in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will direct your paths."

During this era, Robert Aitken printed the first English-language Bible in America, which was a King James Version. This Bible, printed in 1782, was the lone Bible that the United States Congress authorized ever. In 1791, Isaac Collins enormously enhanced the American Bibles' size and typesetting quality and produced the nation's first Family Bible. Jane Aitken, Robert's daughter, printed a Bible in 1808. She was the first woman ever to print a Bible.

The Era of Ideologies

From the two World Wars to the modern era of the late 1900's, new contenders seeking to replace God came to the forefront to assert their power on secular people. Nazism was lauded throughout much of Europe. Communism taught to render God irrelevant in its worship of the State as supreme. Meanwhile, individual rights were respected by the American Democracy. These were troubled times for the Christian church. However, thanks to the work of the missionaries from Europe and North America, as well as indigenous church planters in Latin America, Asia, and Africa, the Christian Gospel made tremendous advancements around the world.

Final Words

The history of the Christian church stands testimony to Jesus Christ's Gospel. The church's relationship with English Bible's history indicates that even though some may call the Scriptures irrelevant, God's Word will continue to inspire people and collectors of rare and antique Bibles and Bible leaves available here.