Why did the Church keep the bible from the people during the Middle Ages?

Question

To all those they said because they can't read: This is why they couldn't read. Withholding books from people will ultimately lead to them being illiterate. It just a vicious circle of generations of people not being able to read because the upper class wouldn't give them a book. Who are they to keep supposedly "the word of God" for themselves?

Answer 1

It didn't. In fact, the bible was always read in the vernacular in all times in places. The oldest English bibles that we still have are from the eigth century and if you read any literature from the time period it is obvious that it was widely distributed.

The myth came from the fact that the Church required a translation be approved for quality. Luther, for example, not only translated the bible, he altered it to fit his doctrine. He added the word "alone" to the New Testament to support sola fide...faith alone saves. This is just one well known example. Likewise, when the KJV was corrected in 1890 they removed 20,000 major errors. The KJV which spawned hundreds of denomination was also one of the worst translations. This wasn't the fault of the translators, it was the fault of the text they used. Further, Protestants published their bibles using printing presses, this gave them a strong distributional advantage for a long time.

The errors can still be heard in hymns, like "peace on Earth goodwill to men." The correct verse would be "peace on Earth toward men of goodwill."

Finally, one third of all Germans were killed during the Reformation about equally Catholic and Protestant. Once you start killing people, it is hards to say, "oops, I am sorry, didn't realize that adding one word to the text would matter." Didn't realize you were going to kill several million people over it.

The first inkling that anything was wrong with the English bible was an extensive study of the early manuscripts that found 40,000 discrepencies in the source documents, let alone the discrepencies with the KJV. This struck Protestantism to its core. It implied that, since you cannot know the actual original words of the bible, you would need to use apostolic tradition to pass forward doctrine and for translations. At first, the observations were rejected, then they went to leading Protestants who also happened to be ancient writings translators, such as Plato's works. They responded that that was a known problem in all ancient works and couldn't see what the fuss was over.

For a while, it died down until the 19th century when "liberal Protestantism," took hold and historical scholarship methods took root.

Currently, from the ancient extant documents, we have 400,000 varient New Testament passages. Translators actually admit not knowing which passages are really part of the New Testament and which are not. There are better guesses and worse guesses, but not a lot of certainty. One of the problems is that many of the currently received passages are different when quoted by the apostolic fathers. Since the apostolic fathers were ordained by the apostles personally, and would have been the very first readers of the New Testament, their quotations should be of a higher quality than passages found from three centuries later. We still use the later ones though because of wide usage. Could you imagine erasing well loved passages people have memorized to put in ones people find a little obscure? Later Christians in some cases seem to have "fixed" difficult readings.

This leads to the problem, why didn't the Catholic Church worry about this. Truthfully, it is because it didn't use the bible the way Protestants do and so no one worried about it.

This lead to a distrust of Protestant uses of the bible in general and an overprotection of the bible, by limiting it to daily reading in Church 8 times per day, but not in homes.

Answer 2

It didnt keep the bible from ppl it there were just a few in circulation at the time, and it was written in latin, not toomany ppl knew latin except for the priests, now at some point in time i believe around the spanish inquisition all the priests of the day conviened and discussed what books would be included in the bible, and yes that is the bible that is being published still today, if that is what you mean by why did the chuch keep the bible from ppl in the middle ages, it is bacuse some of the books spoke about jusus as a sinning man, that he had childrn and what he was like as a child, it also spoke if incest between Adam and Eve and their children, basically the books spoke about instances that would go against most of the other books so they didnt want to include those because of too much contradiction other than what is still in the bible.

Answer 3

Maybe it had something to do with the fact that almost all people were illiterate maybe the fact that they were hand written . And the Bible was held to be sacred.The Bible Then was read aloud to all people everyday at every Mass just as it is now from start to finish in every Catholic Church in the world, is this done at your church or is the only thing you get is a sermon from pastor bubba, and you have to read it for yourself or you dont here it at all. The first printed book form was done by Guttenber and it was a Catholic Bible

Answer 4

The Middle Ages was before printing was developed. The only copies of the Bible (or any book) had to be hand copied. This made books extremely expensive and were only owned by the monks who copied them and the royalty who could pay for them. In addition, the common people were illiterate so having the Bible would have served no purpose. They learned from being "taught" by the church what they "needed" to know.

Answer 5

No one could read and a book was considered a luxury item. There were not printing presses until the late 15th century, so every book had to be hand-written. Another reason is because the Catholic church claims to have the only path to salvation and the only direct connection to God. If you want to pray or beg for forgiveness, you have to go through the Church. You have to hand it to the Catholics, it's a great way to keep a business monopoly.

Answer 6

The Bible would have exposed the Church for being corrupt. Anyone caught with a Bible was burned at the stake with the Bible chained around his neck.

For hundreds of years, Catholic services were performed in the dead Latin language to keep the people in the dark about what the Bible really says.

In the 13th century the Catholic Church established the Inquisition in France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. Its main purpose was to stamp out dissident religious groups that the clergy viewed as dangerous to the church.

Because of the inquisitors, for centuries it was almost impossible for Spaniards to read the Bible in their common language. The mere possession of one in the vernacular was deemed heretical by the inquisitors. In 1557 the Inquisition officially banned the Bible in any of Spain’s vernacular tongues. Countless Bibles were burned.

It wasn’t until 1791 that a Catholic Bible in Spanish was finally printed in Spain, based on the Latin Vulgate. The Spanish church’s first complete translation from the original languages, the Nacar-Colunga Bible, was not forthcoming until 1944.

Perhaps the proscription of the Bible for so many centuries in Spain has been one factor contributing to the interest of Spanish people in the Holy Scriptures today. Many now possess a Bible and have a sincere desire to know what it really teaches.

Answer 7

Most people couldn't read back then, so the bible wouldn't have been anything but a doorstop to them.

Also, before the printing press was invented, books were copied by hand. This was an extremely time consuming and expensive process. Bibles, (and every other kind of book), were too expensive for everyone to have one.

Answer 8

During the Middle Ages the only schools were religious school and only the elite could read.

Answer 9

A) No one else could read. (Except a few very rich educated people, who had no interest in inciting the peasants.)

B) The printing press was not invented yet. No one had ANY books but the church and the very rich.

Answer 10

It's easier to control the populus under ignorance. There are many many societies the power denied the people of literature to control them better.