Was the Catholic church responsible for compiling and preserving the Bible?

Answer 1

Pastor Billy says: simply YES!

Doug mentions Monks in the wilderness who were...........Catholic

Br.Michael mentions English Catholics in Wycliffe, Tyndale, Dutch Catholic Erasmus and German Catholic Luther, yes these helped to spread heresy yet they knew from where they received their bibles that being.......the Catholic Church who preserved it for over 1500 years and compiled it in the early Christian centuries. (Council of Hippo and affirmed at other Catholic councils)

Later Protestants cannot admit they received their Christian version bibles from a Catholic authority for fear of falling apart especially the "bible believing" "bible alone" crowd. God forbid to admit to the authority of Catholic councils in the establishment of at least their New Testament canon would be criminal in their eyes and yet.........historically accurate.

There is much propaganda in your reply Br. Michael. Tyndale got himself in trouble as he was no bible scholar and there was already a very good vernacular bible in England at the time. His most damming fault was the additional notation Tyndale added to his bible. Luther decided to remove books from his bible which included Hebrews, Revelation and the Epistle of James from the NT do you agree with that decision?

Finally the Catholic Church established vernacular versions all over Europe for the purpose of study long before the Protestant reformers came on the scene it is ye Oyde wife's tale that explains differently

Answer 2

The answer is No.

The New Testament was written by Jewish-Christian apostles and none of them are Catholics because there was no Roman Catholic Religion at the time.

The fact is that the Catholic Religion did not exist at the time of Jesus so Peter had nothing to do with something which did not exist.

The Old Testament Canon was determined by at least the 3rd century B.C. and the New Testament Canon was almost universally accepted by the churches as inspired by the 2nd century A.D.

Catholic Church did not give us the Bible. However, Catholic monks helped preserve the Bible by copying it and made it in latin. That's a "FACT" from HISTORY.

Answer 3

The Christian church, of which one attribute was "catholic", was made up of congregations in different cities, occasionally meeting in synods and councils to judge matters of faith and practice. The "canon" or official list of Christian scriptures was decided by such a council in the Fourth Century. Those scriptures were in Greek.

In the Fifth Century, the Western Roman Empire stopped speaking in Greek, so the scriptures were translated into Latin. When the Western Roman Empire fell, many of its former subjects lost touch with Rome and Latin began to develop into other languages. But the scriptures remained in Latin. Nobody KNEW any Greek so the Greek scriptures were lost to the West, along with the ancient Greek classics. During the dark ages, monks carefully copied the manuscripts they had, preserving them from being lost, but all in Latin.

The common people couldn't read at all, so the Bible was a closed book to them. Their Bible was displayed in stained glass windows, reanacted in morality plays and preached from pulpits. A few people began translating scripture from the Latin to the language of the people so that those who could read could share it, but they did it without the permission of the Church, and so were condemned.

The Church was apparently concerned about bad translations and misinterpretations of the scriptures, but to others it looked like Rome was keeping the Bible locked up. In the 16th Century, after contact was re-established with Eastern Europe, Western intellectuals discovered that the scriptures were originally written in Greek, not Latin, and that the Eastern Orthodox Churches had just as carefully recopied the Greek versions to preserve them. This provided an opportunity to pry control of the scriptures loose from the authories in Rome.

A lot of things happened at this time. The Protestant Reformation began. Some people began to learn Greek as fast as they could. Eventually, a new compilation of the scriptures, in Greek, was made out of a variety of manuscripts. The manuscripts were relatively new and there was no way to verify which one was the best. The compilation was done quickly. There were some mistakes. But it was an independently produced Bible. People began translating it into their native languages.

The Church in Rome, now known as the "Catholic" Church, condemned all of this, for the same reasons as before, but the die was cast. Eventually, they produced their own English translation, based on the only scripture they knew, the Latin Vulgate. Of course, it was only read by Catholics, since the Protestants had their own "original" Greek source.

In the 19th Century, even older Greek manuscripts came to light, fromn the 4th and 5th Centuries. There were a few differences and a split developed between those who favored the older, fewer copies and those who favored the newer, plentiful copies. The Catholics continued to base any translations on the Latin until the 1960s, when they threw their lot in with the older-source crowd and began translating from the Greek and Hebrew, just as had been done when the Latin Vulgate was first produced.

What became the "Catholic" Church did decide what books belonged in the Bible and its monks did a great deal to preserve them, but so did the Orthodox Church (and the Jews, for that matter). And in the West, there was no other agency to preserve them. As to how well things were "preserved", you can see how the answer might be a matter of opinion.

When the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in 1947, there was much speculation about the impact of these 1st Century copies of the Hebrew Scriptures on Judaism and Christianity. There was much concern that they might reveal changes to the Bible over time. A few verses were somewhat different but largely the surviving version was vindicated. Only a few fragments of the New Testament survive from the first few Christian centuries.

Answer 4

The Jews compiled the Jewish Scriptures (Old Testament).

The Catholic Church compiled the Christian Scriptures (New Testament).

The Catholic Church was instrumental in preserving the Bible over the centuries, copying and recopying by hand for more and more people to use.

An interesting sidelight:

The Dead Sea Scrolls contain, among other writings, all of the books of the Old Testament except Esther.

The scrolls testify to the accuracy of the people who copied and recopied the Scriptures over the centuries. Despite minor errors, they show us that the Old Testament has not changed since it was compiled.

With love in Christ.

Answer 5

Yes, the Catholic Church was responsible since it is the oldest church since the time of Christ.

St. Jerome, Saint / Writer

Born: 347
Birthplace: Pannonia (now Slovenia)
Died: 420
Best Known As: The medieval scholar behind the Latin translation of the Bible

Name at birth: Eusebius Hieronymous

Also known as Sophronius, Jerome was a medieval church scholar, first a hermit and then a secretary to Pope Damasus in the 380s. From there he went to Palestine and devoted himself to study and writing. He wrote ecclesiastical histories, exegeses and translations, and is credited with shaping the Latin version of the Bible (called the Vulgate) from Hebrew and Greek texts.

Answer 6

<> From God. <> The Holy Spirit presented the Divine education mandatory to parent which books belonged in the Bible, and which of them did not. << it incredibly is a considerable dilemma for people who contend that the Catholic Church isn't the authentic Church that Jesus based. if it fairly is the case, how can everybody have faith or place self assurance in the Bible through fact the understanding of God? it variety of feels that each physique Christians who declare they're Bible believing are forced to settle for that the Catholic Church had God's authority to convey together the Bible and alter into inspired by the Holy Spirit in the job.>> In doing so, they validate the Authority of the Catholic Church - it fairly is the reason a number of them attempt so not undemanding to distance the Catholic Church from the Bible. <> additionally, IF the Bible substitute into incredibly "of guy" - then it could have been uncovered as a fraud by now. the reality it hasn't Confirms the Catholic Church's Authority.

Answer 7

GOOD QUESTION!!

Wow.

No.

It was the individually operated monastaries that made copies of the Bible. When the Vikings invaded and raided these monastaries, quite frankly, the Catholic Church didn't care.

In fact, the Catholic Church condemned anyone of doing that! They kept it in Latin so only they could know. With the Protestant movement came new translations of the Bible in readable languages.

Answer 8

The Holy Spirit is responsible for preserving the Word.

It is God breathed.


Matt 24:35
5 Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.
NIV

blessings to you!

Answer 9

John Wycliff's hand-written manuscripts were the first complete Bibles in the English language (1380's). Wycliff (or Wycliffe), an Oxford theologian translated out of the fourth century Latin Vulgate, as the Greek and Hebrew languages of the Old and New Testaments were inaccessible to him. Curiously, he was also the inventor of bifocal eyeglasses. Wycliff spent many of his years writing and teaching against the practices and dogmas of the Roman Church which he believed to be contrary to the Holy Writ. Though he died a nonviolent death, the Pope was so infuriated by his teachings that 44 years after Wycliff had died, he ordered the bones to be dug-up, crushed, and scattered in the river!

Gutenburg invented the printing press in the 1450's, and the first book to ever be printed was the Bible (in Latin). With the onset of the Reformation in the early 1500's, the first printings of the Bible in the English language were produced illegally and at great personal risk of those involved.

William Tyndale was the Captain of the Army of English reformers, and in many ways their spiritual leader. His work of translating the Greek New Testament into the plain English of the ploughman was made possible through Erasmus' publication of his Greek/Latin New Testament printed in 1516. Erasmus and the printer and reformer John Froben published the first non-Latin Vulgate text of the Bible in a millennium. For centuries Latin was the language of scholarship and it was widely used amongst the literate. Erasmus' Latin was not the Vulgate translation of Jerome, but his own fresh rendering of the Greek New Testament text that he had collated from six or seven partial New Testament manuscripts into a complete Greek New Testament.

Erasmus' translation from the Greek revealed enormous discrepancies in the Vulgate's integrity amongst the rank and file scholars, many of whom were already convinced that the established church was doomed by virtue of its evil hierarchy. Pope Leo X's declaration that "the fable of Christ was very profitable to him" infuriated the people of God.

With Erasmus' 1516 translation, the die was cast. In 1517 Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses of Contention to the Wittenberg Door. Luther, who would be exiled in the months following the Diet of Worms Council in 1521 that was designed to martyr him, would translate the New Testament into German from Erasmus' Greek/Latin New Testament and publish it in September of 1522. William Tyndale would do the same into English. It could not, however, be done in England.

Laboring under Luther's shadow, in the relative safety of Cologne and Worms, Tyndale worked to completed his New Testament in English. Tyndale was fluent in eight languages and is considered by many to be the primary architect of the modern English language. Already hunted because of the rumor spread abroad that such a project was underway, inquisitors and bounty hunters were on Tyndale's trail to abort the effort. God foiled their plans, and in 1525/6 Tyndale printed the first English New Testament. The Bishop of London sought to confiscate and burn them, but copies continued to be smuggled into England. The more the King and Bishop resisted its distribution, the more fascinated the public at large became. Bishop Tunstal declared that Tyndale's translation contained thousands of errors as they torched hundreds of New Testaments confiscated by the clergy. One risked death by burning if caught in mere possession of the forbidden books.

Like the Pharisees of old, the clergy realized that having God's Word available to the people in the language of common English, would mean disaster to the church. No longer could they control access to the scriptures. If people were able to read the Bible in their own tongue, the church's income and power would crumble. They could not continue the selling of indulgences (the forgiveness of sins) or bartering the release of loved ones from "Purgatory". People would begin to challenge the church's authority if the practices of the church were exposed to the light of Scripture. The contradictions between God's Word and what the priests taught, would open the "eyes of the blind" and the truth would set them free. Salvation by GRACE alone -- through faith (not by works) would be revealed. The need for "priest craft" would give way to the priesthood of all believers. The veneration of canonized Saints and of the Virgin would be called into question. The availability of the scriptures in English was the greatest threat imaginable to the corrupted Romish church. The Church of Rome would never give up without a fight.

Tyndale New Testament was the first ever printed in the English language. Its first printing occurred in 1525/6, but only two complete copies of that first printing are known to have survived. Any Edition printed before 1570 is very rare and valuable, particularly pre-1540 editions and fragments. Tyndale's flight was an inspiration to freedom loving Englishmen who drew courage from the 11 years that he was hunted. Books and Bibles flowed into England in bales of cotton and sacks of wheat. In the end, Tyndale was caught: betrayed by an Englishman that he had befriended. Tyndale was incarcerated for 500 days before he was strangled and burned at the stake in 1536. His last words were, "Lord, open the eyes of the King of England".

Answer 10

council of trent