FACTS OF FAITH By Christian Edwardson
Forging New Weapons
(18) The Roman
church had discovered that the root of her troubles lay in the reading of the
Bible by the laity, and had opposed it with all the power at her command. But
she finally realized that her open war on the Scriptures had aroused suspicion
that her life and doctrines were out of harmony with God's word, and could not
endure the light of an open Bible.
To allay such feelings she must make it appear that she was
not opposed to the Scriptures, but only to the "erroneous Protestant
Bible." But how could such an impression be made, when that Bible was a
faithful translation of the Hebrew and Greek texts, in which the Scriptures
were originally written? Then, too, the Protestants had, at that time, some of
the most able Hebrew and Greek scholars in all Christendom.
Providence had brought the Reformers in contact with some of
the best sources of Bible manuscripts: (1) When the Turks captured
Constantinople in 1453, many of the Greek Scholars fled to the West, bringing
with them their valuable manuscripts from the East where Christianity
originated, and then Greek and Hebrew learning revived in the West. (See
"History of the English Bible," by W. F. Moulton, pp. 34-36.) (2)
With this influx from the East came also the Syrian Bible, used by the early
church at Antioch in Syria (Acts 11:26), which was translated directly from the
Hebrew and Greek manuscripts long before the Massoretic (O.T.) text, and is the
oldest known Bible manuscript (unless it should be the one lately discovered by
Chester Beatty. (Copies of the Syriac Bible were later found among the Syrian
Christians at Malabar, South India, with all the earmarks of the old Syrian
manuscripts. See "The Old Documents and
the New Bible," by J. P. Smyth, pp. 166, 167; "Indian Church History," by Thomas Yates,
p. 167; "Christian Researches in Asia,"
by Claudius Buchannan, pp. 80, 143.) (3) During their severe persecutions the
Waldenses came into contact with the Reformers at Geneva, and thus their Bible,
which had been preserved in its purity from the days of the apostles, was
brought to the Reformers. (An illustration of how some learned Roman Catholics
have estimated the Protestant Greek New Testament can be seen when we read of
the Catholic legislation on forbidden books. A commentator says: "In
diocesan seminaries the textbook prescribed in Greek was very often some
portion of the original text of the New Testament, and Protestant editions were
selected, as they contained a more ample vocabulary, and, perhaps, better
grammatical annotations than Catholic editions. Such an act would appear quite
pardonable and excusable, as the text was entire and pure....But according to
the present rule...bishops have no power to select such works." - "A Commentary on the Present Index
Legislation," Rev. T. Hurley, D. D., p. 70. New York: Benziger
Brothers, 1908. With their feelings
against Protestant books, such permits could not have been given, unless the
superiority of the book demanded it.)
(19) Translations
direct from the original languages in which the Holy Scriptures were written,
and comparisons with ancient sources, by men of high scholarly ability and
sterling integrity, gave the Protestants a perfectly reliable Bible. (See the
previous footnote.) In spite of these plain facts, the Catholic authorities had
to do something to turn the minds of their people away from the Protestant
Bible, so widely distributed. They therefore advanced the claim that Jerome's
Latin Vulgate translation was more correct than any copy we now have of the
original Hebrew and Greek texts. We shall now examine this claim.
THE LATIN
VULGATE BIBLE
At the Council of Trent (1545-1563), in the fourth session,
the second Decree, in 1546, they decided that the Latin Vulgate should be the
standard Bible for the Roman church. But then they discovered a curious fact,
that during the 1050 years from the time Jerome brought out his Latin Vulgate
Bible in 405 A.D., until John Gutenberg printed it in 1455, it had been copied
so many times, mostly by monks, and so many errors had crept in, that no one
knew just what was the actual rendering of the original Vulgate. The learned
Roman Catholic professor, Dr. Johann Jahn says of it:
"The universal admission of this version throughout the
vast extent of the Latin church multiplied the copies of it, in the
transcription of which it became corrupted with many errors....Cardinal
Nicholas, about the middle of the twelfth century, found 'tot exemplaria quot codices' (as many
copies as manuscripts)." - "Introduction
to the Old Testament," Sec. 62, 63. (Quoted in "History of Romanism," Dr. John
Dowling, ed. of 1871, p. 486.)
(20) The Catholic Encyclopedia says of the Latin
Vulgate:
"From an early day the text of the Vulgate began to
suffer corruptions, mostly through the copyists who introduced familiar
readings of the Old Latin or inserted the marginal glosses of MSS. which they
were transcribing." - Vol. XV, p. 370, art. "Versions,"
"The Vulgate."
The Council of Trent having made Jerome's Latin "Vulgate
the standard text," (See Cardinal Gasquet's article in the Formum for August, 1926, p. 203.) it must
now determine which of the hundreds of copies (all differing) was the correct
"Vulgate." A commission was therefore appointed to gather materials
so as to "restore St. Jerome's text," but its members were "not
to amend it by any new translations of their own from the original Hebrew and
Greek." ("History of the Council of
Trent," T. A. Buckley, Part II, chap. 16, p. 127.) They "were
merely to collect manuscripts and prepare the evidence for and against certain
readings in the text, after which the Pope himself, by reason not of his
scholarship, but of his gift of infallibility, decided straight off which were
the genuine words!" - "The Old
Documents and the New Bible," J. Paterson Smyth, b. C., LL.D.,
pp. 174, 175. London and New York: 1907.
Pope Sixtus V undertook this work of revision, and to make
sure of its being correct, he read the proofs himself. This edition was printed
at Rome in 1590, accompanied by a bull forbidding the least alteration in this
infallible text. "But alas!...The book was full of mistakes. The
scholarship of Sixtus was by no means great, and his infallibility somehow
failed to make up for this defect." - Id., p. 175.
The Catholic Encyclopedia comments:
"But Sixtus V, though unskilled in this branch of
criticism, had introduced alterations of his own, all for the worse....His
immediate successors at once proceeded to remove the blunders and call in the
defective impression." - Vol. II, p. 412.
(21) All available
copies of the Bible of Pope Sixtus were called in and burnt as were the
heretics. Pope Clement VIII, in 1592, ordered a better edition to be made,
accompanying it with a similar bull. Dr. James, keeper of the Bodleian Library
at Oxford, where one of Pope Sixtus's Bibles remained, compared it with that of
pope Clement, and found two thousand glaring variations in them. He published
his findings in a book called: "Bellum
Papale, i.e. the Papal War." ("History
of Romanism," Dr. J. Dowling, p. 487. New York: 1871.)
"Dr. Jahn candidly relates the facts above named, and
makes the following remarkable admission: 'The more learned Catholics have
never denied the existence of errors in the Vulgate; on the contrary, Isidore
Clarius collected eighty thousand.' It
is amusing to notice the embarrassment caused to this learned Romanist, by the
decree of the Council of Trent establishing the authority of the Vulgate. As a
good Catholic he was bound to receive that decree, and yet his learning forbade
him to blind his eyes to the errors of that version, elevated by the said
decree to a higher stand than the original Hebrew and Greek Text." - Id.,
pp. 487, 488.
The Catholic Encyclopedia says of the latest revision of Pope
Clement:
"This revision is now the officially recognized version
of the Latin Rite and contains the only authorized text of the Vulgate. That it
has numerous defects has never been denied." - Vol. XV, p. 370.
That the Roman church is not satisfied with the present
Vulgate text is seen by the fact that in 1907 Pope Pius X, according to
the Forum, commissioned H. E.
Francis Aidan Cardinal Gasquet, with his Benedictine Order, to reproduce the
true Latin text of St. Jerome by a new revision. Cardinal Gasquet says of the
former attempt made by Pope Clement VIII, in 1592:
"The commission labored for some forty years, and
strange to say, many of the changes proposed by them were never inserted in the
final revision. From the notes of this commission it may be safely said that
had they been accepted we should have had a much better critical text than we
now possess." - "Forum," August,
1926, p. 203.
(22) The Catholic
Encyclopedia points out a fact often overlooked by scholars today, that
"the Hebrew text used by St. Jerome was comparatively late, being
practically that of the Masoretes. For this reason his version, for textual
criticism, has less value than the Peshito and the Septuagint. As a translation
it holds a place between these two." - Vol. XV, p. 370.
E. S. Buchanan, M. A., B. Sc., says of Jerome's translation:
"Jerome, to the great loss of posterity, did not dig
deep into the history of the text. He did not revise on the Latin and Greek
texts of the second century; but solely on the Greek text of the fourth
century, and that was a text too late and too limited in range and attestation
on which to base an enduring fabric....He was not bidden to make inquiry for
the lost autographs with a view to the reconstruction of the Apostolic text. He
was only bidden to prepare a suitable text for ecclesiastical usage. And this
he has done; but it is painful to think of all he left undone, that with his
position of vantage he might have done." - "The Records Unrolled," p. 20. London: John
Ouseley, Ltd.
From these considerations we see, that, even if the original
text of Jerome's translation could be reconstructed, it would not be of as much
textual value as is sometimes supposed. We are not depreciating the Catholic
Bible. We wish Catholics would read it more than they do. All we are here
aiming at is this: When leading Catholic authorities admit that their Bible is
of so little value as a "Standard
Text," then why do they so relentlessly oppose the circulation
of the authorized Protestant Bible, which is translated from the best original sources? Henry Guppy, M. A., D.
Ph. et Litt., Librarian of the John Rylands Library, England, says:
"The Church of Rome has always bitterly opposed any
attempt to circulate the Bible in the language of the people, and license to
read the Scriptures, even when truly and catholicly translated, was but
sparingly granted.
(23) "In
spite, however, of the denunciations uttered by the Roman Catholic priests
against what they were pleased to term the incorrect and untruthful
translations which were in circulation, the Bible continued to be read by
increasing numbers of people. Indeed, the attempts to suppress it created a
prejudice against the Roman Catholic Church; and, as time wore on, it was felt
by many Catholics that something more must be done than a mere denunciation of
the corrupt translations in the direction of providing a new version which the
Roman Church could warrant to be authentic and genuine." - "A Brief Sketch of History of the Translation of
the Bible," p. 54. London: University Press, 1926.
After the Jesuits had been expelled from England in 1579,
they settled at Rheims, France, where they translated the New Testament from
the Latin Vulgate into English. This was printed in 1582. Later they moved to
Douay, where they printed the Old Testament in 1609. We have seen that the
learned Catholic doctors, Johann Jahn and Isidore Clarius, acknowledged that
there were 8,000 errors in the Vulgate Bible, and as a stream cannot be
expected to rise higher than its fountain, we must conclude that the errors are
carried over into the Douay Version. We shall take the space to mention only
two of them:
1. The Douay Bible uses the word "adore" where the
Protestant Bible has "worship." (Compare Matthew 4:10 in both
Bibles.) While the Protestant Bible says that Jacob "worshiped, leaning upon the top of his rod."
Hebrews 11:21. "The Approved Holy Catholic
Bible," with "Annotations by the Rev. Dr. Challoner," and
approved by Pius VI, says "Jacob...worshiped the top of his rod."
Thus Catholics have proof for worshiping relics.
2. Our Protestant Bible correctly translates 2 Timothy 3:16
to read, "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God," but the
Douay Version reads: "All scripture, inspired of God, is profitable."
As can be readily seen, this latter rendering gives no assurance that the Bible
is inspired, but simply makes the superfluous statement that what is inspired
is profitable. And so it is left with the church to say what is inspired.
(24) In full view
of all the foregoing facts, how can Roman Catholic authors shut their eyes to
it all, and brazenly declare that their church alone has the true and correct
Bible? They say:
"She alone possesses the true Bible and the whole Bible,
and the copies of the Scriptures existing outside of her pale, are partly
incorrect and partly defective.
"This Bible was the celebrated Vulgate, the official
text in the Catholic Church, the value of which all scholars admit to be simply
inestimable....The Council of Trent in 1546 issued a decree, stamping it as the
only recognized and authoritative Version allowed to Catholics...It was revised
under Pope Sixtus V in 1590, and again under Pope Clement VIII in 1593, who is
responsible for the present standard text. It is from the Vulgate that our
English Douai Version comes." - "Where
We Got the Bible," Right Rev. Henry G. Graham, pp. 7, 16, 17.
London: Eighth Impression, 1936.
Do these men actually believe that Protestants have no access
to the facts of history, but are dependent on such misstatements! Or are they
vainly hoping that the public will have no opportunity to read the Protestant
side of the story?
The interesting part of it all is the fact that the Catholic
Church, after proclaiming so loudly since 1546 that the Latin Vulgate is
"the only recognized and authoritative version," and crying out
against the Protestant Bibles (translated from the original Hebrew and Greek
text) as "heretical," is herself at last driven, by facts long known
within her own circle, to translate the Bible "from the original
text," Hebrew and Greek. What a complete somersault! This late Catholic
version is called "The Westminster Version" (printed by Longmans,
Green, and Co., London). But, as the work is entrusted mostly to the Jesuits,
we can expect very little change from their former Douay Version, except that
it will be more carefully written to conform to the Roman viewpoint (judging
from the portions that have already been published). For instance, the correct
note under Revelation 13:18 is entirely changed, but Revelation 22:14 reads the
same as in the Douay Version: "Blessed are they that wash their
robes." In our Authorized Protestant Version (King James') it reads:
"Blessed are they that do His commandments."
(25) P. P. Bliss,
who assisted D. L. Moody, and composed many beautiful hymns, inspired by
Revelation 22:14, wrote the hymn:
"Hear
the words our Saviour hath spoken,
Words of
life unfailing and true:
Careless
one, prayerless one, hear and remember,
Jesus
says, 'Blessed are they that do.'
Blessed
are they that do His commandments,
Blessed,
blessed, blessed are they."
Later Mr. Bliss went to Rome, where he learned that
"Blessed are they that wash their robes," "must be the
correct" rendering. And "during his last week in Rome," he told
his brother-in-law that he was sorry he had written that hymn. He declared:
"I see so clearly its contradiction of the gospel that I have no liberty
in singing it." Then he wrote the hymn: "Free from the law, oh, happy
condition." - "Memories of
Philip P. Bliss," D. W. Whittle, pp. 131, 132. New York: A. S.
Barnes and Co. 1877. It is
deplorable that this good Christian man should get such impressions at Rome.
But, sad to say, P. P. Bliss is not the only beloved Protestant that has been
in touch with Rome, and lost his desire and liberty to
teach the good old truths of the Protestant Bible.
Some follow the Roman Catholic translation of Revelation
22:14, because the Vatican possesses one of the three oldest Bible manuscripts
(Codex Vaticanus). But that manuscript ends with Hebrews 9:14, so that it could
not give Catholics the proper rendering of Revelation 22:14. (For further light
on this point see "A Brief Sketch of the
History of the Translation of the Bible," H. Guppy, p. 7, and
"The Records Unrolled" by E.
S. Buchanan, p. 50.)
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