The Bible of the Church
Part 2
The Development of the English Language
Bible
Most of what we now know as the Old Testament was originally
written in Hebrew, and the New Testament largely in common Greek.
Since no printing press existed until 1450 AD, all of the original
compilations of the Bible were done by hand. The development of the
English Bible can be divided into 2 sections; ancient versions and
early English versions. Brief descriptions of the significant
versions in those time periods follow:
Ancient Versions in
other Languages:
· The
Septuagint Version 285 BC-This was a translation of the Old
Testament Hebrew Scriptures into Greek. Probably done in Alexandria.
· The
Samaritan Pentateuch-A copy of the Hebrew text done in Samaritan
characters.
· The
Peshito or Syriac 1st century AD - A common language translation of
the entire Bible used in parts of Syria.
· The
Codex Sinaiticus 330 AD - A manuscript that contained the Greek
Bible, now housed in the British Museum.
· The
Codex Vaticanus 340 AD - This manuscript is currently housed in the
Vatican library in Rome. It originally contained the whole Bible,
but parts have been lost.
· The
Vulgate 400 AD - A Roman Catholic scholar in Bethlehem by the name
of Jerome translated the entire Bible into Latin. This Bible became
the standard in the Catholic church for well over 1,000 years.
· The
Codex Alexandrinus 425 AD - This Bible is another Greek translation.
Currently housed in the British Museum, it is complete except for 40
leaves.
Early English
Versions:
All of the earliest attempts at translating the Bible into
English were fragmented. For example, Bishop Aldhelm of Sherbourne
translated the Psalms into Old English around 709. Venerable Bede, a
monk at Jarrow, translated a portion of the Gospel of John. By 900
AD all of the Gospels and most of the Old Testament had been
translated into Old English.
· John
Wycliffe (1380) John Wycliffe was the first to plan a complete
English translation of the Bible from Latin. His translation was
based on the Latin Vulgate. He completed the New Testament prior to
his death, and his friends completed the work after his death.
· William
Tyndale ( 1525-1530) Driven from England by persecution,
William Tyndale, shared Wycliffe's desire to produce a Bible that
the common English-speaking person could understand. Using the Latin
Vulgate and other ancient sources, Tyndale was able to translate the
New Testament and Pentateuch before he was martyred.
· Miles
Coverdale (1535) A friend of Tyndale's, Coverdale was able to
publish a complete Bible. It is generally believed Coverdale used
Tyndale's work in producing his New Testament. This Bible was done
to honor King Henry the VIII.
· Matthews
Bible (1537) Despite the name, it is widely accepted that a
friend of Tyndale, John Rogus, did most of the work on this Bible.
Based largely on Tyndale's previous work, it also contains evidences
of Coverdale's work as well. This might well be considered an
updated Tyndale Bible.
· The
Great Bible (1539) This Bible takes its name from its great
physical size. Based on the Tyndale, Coverdale, and Matthews Bibles,
it was used mainly in churches. Often chained to a reading desk in a
church, people would come to listen as a minister read from the
Great Bible.
· The
Geneva Bible (1560) Produced in Geneva by scholars who had
fled persecution in England under Queen Mary, this Bible was based
not only on the Great Bible, but also on the other English
translations of that day. Though very scholarly, it was a popular
Bible because of its small size.
· The
Bishops Bible (1568) This was a revision of the Great Bible
and Geneva Bible done under the direction of the Archbishop of
Canterbury during the reign of Elizabeth.
· Douay-Rheims
Bible (1582-1610) The New Testament was published in Rheims in
1582 and the Old Testament in Douay in 1610. A revision of the Latin
Vulgate, this has become the generally accepted English Version for
the Roman Catholic Church.
· King
James Version, KJV (1611) The most popular translation ever
produced, this Bible was done during the reign and at the urging of
King James the I of England. 47 scholars, divided into 6 groups,
worked on this translation. Based largely on the Bishop's Bible,
many Hebrew and Greek texts were also studied, as well as all the
other available English translations, to insure the best results. By
choosing men of many different theological and educational
backgrounds, it was hoped individual prejudices of the translators
could be minimized. Printed in a handy size and in clear type, the
KJV was supposed to please clergy and congregation alike. Despite
initial resistance, the KJV became, and still is, the largest
selling translation of the Bible.
· Revised
Version (1881-1884) Designed to be a revision of the KJV, the
Revised Version had the advantage of being able to access some of
the ancient manuscripts. Although this revision was sponsored by the
Church of England, many American scholars were invited to
participate.
Chapter and Verse
The present chapter divisions in the Bibles were created by Stephen
Langton, the Archbishop of Canterbury, as a professor in Paris in
1205. The Bible was, surprisingly, divided into verse by Robert
Stephanus, a Parisian book printer, while riding on horseback from
Paris to Lyons in 1551. The verse divisions of Stephanus,
frequently, do not do proper service to the sense of the text, as
there was no consistent method at work in this system. Verses,
sometimes, coincide with a single sentence and, at other times, they
include several sentence. In some instances a single sentence
is divided into two verses, with the result that the reader is led
to consider the second verse while forgetting the point of view of
the first verse. Especially confusing is the way in which words
introducing a direct quotation sometimes belong to the preceding
verse and sometimes to the verse in which the quotation is found.
The Lost Books of the Bible
The Church View:
In the Catholic Church, the Bible is the Douay Bible
consisting of 73 books. In the Protestant church only the 66 books
that were approved by the Synod of Dordrecht in 1618 are in what is
known as the Authorized King James Bible.
The Bible View:
Though there is no specific list or accounting of all the
books that made up the complete Bible in scripture, there are over
20 books mentioned in the Bible, but not found there. This is proof
that many have been removed and there is evidence that many more
fell under the same fate.
An Introduction
Human history has allowed precious few ancient religious
writings to survive the onslaught of the more aggressive and
powerful religious forces, which seek only to gain territory and
wealth. Genocide and cultural eradication always go hand in hand
with missionary zeal. In many cases every trace of the conquered
society's religious writings, practices, icons, and even buildings
were destroyed in the name of conversion from worship of gods
considered evil, and religious customs labeled as heresies. What
generally results from past crusades is the conqueror's religion
replacing or predominantly blending with the conquered culture's
former religious practice, making its religion almost
unrecognizable. Christianity falls into the latter category, having
been the victim of the Roman Empire, under the Emperor Constantine,
who blended the Christian Church with the institutionalized "pagan"
practices of Rome and eliminated any semblance of either the Jewish
religious influence or the first church Jesus established during his
ministry.
The First Reformation
After solidifying his position to gain complete control of
the western portion of the empire in 312, the Emperor Constantine
instituted the Edict of Milan, a "Magna Carta of religious liberty,"
which eventually changed the Empire’s religion and put Christianity
on an equal footing with paganism. Almost overnight the position of
the Christian Church was reversed from persecuted to legal and
accepted. Constantine began to rely on the church for support, and
it on him for protection. The Church and the Empire formed an
alliance, which remains to this day. Very rapidly, the laws and
policies of the Empire and the doctrine of the Church became one
with Constantine as the interpreter of both law and policy. This was
accomplished by eliminating hundreds of books thought to be against
"Church" doctrine and watering down what remained by blending
Christian beliefs and practice with long established Roman
sanctioned pagan worship.
Constantine believed that the Church and the State should be
as close as possible. Constantine tolerated pagan practices, keeping
pagan gods on coins and retaining his pagan high priest title "Pontifex
Maximus" in order to maintain popularity with his former subjects.
In 330 he began an assault on paganism, but used a clever method of
persuasion to force people to follow the laws by combining pagan
worship with Christianity. He made December 25th, the birthday of
the pagan Unconquered Sun god, the official holiday now celebrated
as the birthday of Jesus. He also replaced the weekly day of worship
by making rest on Saturday unlawful and forcing the new religion to
honor the first, not the seventh day, as a day of rest. As a way of
defining his concept of the new universal religion, he simply
classified everything "Jewish" to be an abomination. Considering
almost every aspect of the Bible is "Jewish" by association, every
doctrinal biblical principle was changed or eliminated. After 337
Constantine increased his purging of the more obvious aspects of
paganism.
Through a series of Universal Councils, he and his successors
completely altered doctrine without regard to biblical edict, set up
a church hierarchy of his own design, and established a set of
beliefs and practices, which are the basis for all mainstream
Bible-based churches. The separation of the Protestants and the
Roman Church caused a physical split, but the beliefs and practices
established by Constantine remained almost identical. Very little
has changed since the 4th century Councils changed the face of
Christianity. An effective practice instituted was the purging of
any book in the formerly accepted biblical works, over 80% of the
total, that church leaders felt did not fit within their new concept
of Christianity. The doctrines and practices remaining in the
surviving books were effectively eradicated by simply changing them
by replacing clear scripture with Church-sanctioned doctrine.
Forbidden, Not Lost
Constantine began what was to become a century’s long effort
to eliminate any book in the original Bible that was considered
unacceptable to the new doctrine of the church. At that time, it is
believed there were up to 600 books, which comprised the work we now
know as the Bible. Through a series of decisions made by the early
church leadership, all but 80 of those books, known as the King
James Translation of 1611, were purged from the work, with a further
reduction by the Protestant Reformation bringing the number to 66 in
the "Authorized" King James Bible.
What we now have in Bible-based religion, whether labeled as
"Catholic", or Protesting Catholic, known as “Protestant", is
unrecognizable from either the Hebrew religion, now known as the
Jewish religion, or the church established at Jerusalem by the
Apostles and disciples of Jesus. The practices of this first church
are not practiced by any major religion and they are almost unknown,
despite being clearly outlined in the existing New Testament. In its
place are doctrines and practices first established in the first
"true" Reformation of Christianity, which was begun by Constantine.
There is much controversy over how many books the Bible should
actually contain, but considering the depth and scope of those few
works remaining in the "accepted" Bible, we see but a fragment of
incredible wisdom and history. A study of the Lost Books of the
Bible is incomplete without a clear understanding that this is not a
matter of simple loss, but a campaign by the Roman Catholic Church
to purge books variously classified as heretical, dangerous, and
corruptive. To the public they are “lost”; to the Church they are
“forbidden”. Although the exact number of books purged is known only
to the Church, and not shared knowledge, some can be determined by
the discovery of their presence in the church prior to the
reformation resulting in what became known as the Roman "Universal"
Church.
One of the more obvious forms of discovery comes from the
surviving books themselves, which cite works not present in the
existing collection. Also, many do not know that the Apocryphal
books were actually included in the King James translation until the
Synod of Dordrecht removed them in 1618. And, other writings connect
many books to the first church. Whatever the number before the purge
by the formation of Catholicism by Constantine; even one lost book
is a great loss indeed.
We claim no expertise concerning the authenticity of any of
the lost books and leave this judgment to the reader. We do,
however, strongly reject the self-proclaimed authority of any
dogmatically motivated and church-controlled mortals who think
themselves qualified to make such decisions. One of the most
logical and realistic concepts in the Bible is the caution that one
should prove all things. We believe that proving the veracity of a
given thing is an individual responsibility, which must not, and
should not be the duty of those who think themselves better judges.
The
Bible of the Church Part 3
