It is your assertion that the Roman Church kept people ignorant so they wouldn't know God's word that I am saying is a false accusation. Supposedly, the Roman Church knew it was wrong but wanted world domination so it desperately tried to keep people from learning the 'truth' of the bible. Nonsense!
Is it? Let's look through the ages of history.
The
Vulgate is an early 5th-century
Latin version of the
Bible and largely the result of the labors of
Jerome, who was commissioned by
Pope Damasus I in 382 to make a revision of the
old Latin translations.
--Jerome's Vulgate became the standard translation of the Bible right up until the time of Tyndale. The English speaking people did not speak Latin, neither did the rest of the world. Latin was learned by scholars in order to study the Bible and other scholarly works. If you didn't study Latin you wouldn't be able to study the Bible. And so it was from the 4th century until approximately the time of the Reformation. The Dark Ages was a long period of time. The common person was kept in the dark, particularly by the RCC.
Concerning Aldheim
Shortly after Caedmon, translation proper began. Aldheim (A.D. 640-709) has been given the credit of translating much, if not all, of the Bible into the English language, translating an old English Psalter as early as A.D. 700, Bede himself translated at least part of the Gospels into Old English. His pupil Cuthbert noted that Bede was translating the Gospel of John when he died on Ascension Eve, A.D. 735 and that he had either finished the book or reached as far as John 6:9. Tragically, all of Bede's work has perished.
http://isv.org/musings/history.htm
Aldheim wrote in the same Cryllic alphabet and style that Beowulf was written in, Old English. It is unreadable now. It was unreadable then--then because it was the Dark Ages--people could not read. The RCC made sure of that. The Vulgate was far more popular and available to the public than anything that Aldheim had. But the public could read neither one? The existence of either one is moot. Both languages are as different to the common person as Greek and Hebrew are--both then and now. Then--because they were illiterate; now--because the Old English is completely unreadable just as Arabic is.
For over a thousand years (c. AD 400–1530), the Vulgate was the definitive edition of the most influential text in Western European society. Indeed, for most Western Christians, it was the only version of the Bible ever encountered. The Vulgate's influence throughout the
Middle Ages and the
Renaissance into the
Early Modern Period is arguably even more than that of the
King James Version in English; for Christians during these times the phraseology and wording of the Vulgate permeated all areas of the culture.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_Vulgate
Again, let me emphasize, it is the RCC that was keeping the common person from the Bible, by keeping the Bible in a foreign language. How on earth can a common person in England read Latin.
Now we come to the history of John Wycliffe, the first one to translate the Bible into
the common English tongue, the vernacular of the English people, so that they might understand it. Is it any wonder, that some years after he died, the RCC dug up his bones, burned them and then scattered his ashes in the River. The reason? They thought that by doing so they would make sure that he would never rise in the resurrection. The RCC cannot thwart the plans of God.
John Wycliffe (pronounced /ˈwɪklɪf/; also spelled Wyclif, Wycliff, Wiclef, Wicliffe, or Wickliffe) (c. 1324 – 31 December 1384) was an English theologian.
His work in the endeavors of “vernacular theology” (i.e.: the translation of Scripture and dissemination of theology in the English vernacular) served to raise the English language to a footing more on par with Latin and French within the sphere of religion. Margot Lawrence has claimed that Wycliffe’s most profound influence on the history of language is the fact that he “[h]e did for Middle English prose what Chaucer did for poetry, making English a competitor with French and Latin; his sermons were written when London usage was coming together with the East Midlands dialect, to form a standard language accessible to all…” (O.C.E.L, 1135). While the grandiosity of such statements has been questioned, it has also been argued that current scholarship must acknowledge more completely the debt which present day English owes Wycliffe (Aston,”Wycliffe,” 283.)
He is known as one of the first English reformers, a heresiarch of the Wycliffite (or Lollard) movement, and as one of the first translators of the Vulgate Bible into English, although his actual involvement in this latter project has been questioned (cf. Hudson).
The main objection to the use of the vernacular lay in a belief that Christian dogma was more perfectly expressed in Latin. As one critic, the Domincan Thomas Palmer wrote (in Latin), "Not only is the English language lacking in letter, but also in expressions since there are no English words and expressions corresponding to the most well-known and common expressions in Latin." (qtd in Aston 303) Palmer further argued that the pearls of the holy mysteries ought not to be cast before the swine of the common folk: “Many things are to be hidden and not shown to the people, lest being known and familiar they should be cheapened.” Defenders of vernacular theology contended, however, that the gospel was too important to be "claspud vp, ne closid in no cloyster" and should thus be made universally available. (Watson, 839).
http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~cpercy/courses/6361russell.htm
Notice the bolded statement. The Catholic Church did not want the Scriptures in the hands of the common person. The common people were "swine." They should not cast the pearls of Scripture before the swine of the common folk, Palmer says. Many things (Scripture) are to be hidden and not shown to the people, lest being known and familiar they should be cheapened.
This is still the attitude of the RCC today. Keep the Scriptures from the people at all costs--if not one way, then another.
At this time it was illiteracy.
Then it was to keep the Bible in a language that they could not read.
Then it was to burn the Bibles (such as Tyndale's).
Then it was to tell the people that Catholics were not permitted to read the Bible (my parents era).
Then it was to tell the people that they could read the Bible but not interpret it; only a priest could interpret it for them (no sola scriptura, no priesthood of the believer).
It has always been the goal of the RCC to keep the Scriptures from the people in one way or another.
Wycliffe thwarted the RCC in that he was able to get the Bible into the English language, the language of the people. But it was translated from the Vulgate. But it was a start.
But then William Tyndale came along (1494-1536), a martyr for the faith. Schooled at Cambridge and Oxford, he was a scholar who could and did translate the Scriptures from Hebrew and Greek into the English language, which became the foundational work for the KJV and most translations that we have today. All Christians alive today owe a great debt of gratitude to William Tyndale and the work that he has done. The RCC was glad to burn him at the stake, get rid of him, gather his Bibles up and burn them as well. They still tried to keep God's Word out of the hands of the common person.
In 1522 Tyndale made this rather "prophetic" statement, as he proclaimed to one of the religious leaders at Gloucestershire: "If God spare my lyfe, ere many yeares I wyl cause a boye that dryveth the plough shall know more of the scriptures than thou doest."
Shortly after his death, the prophetic statement came true as his Bible rolled off the presses into the hands of the public, much to the chagrin of the RCC.
