Before the reformation

Were their Baptists before the Reformation?

 

I'll answer my own question:

The Reformation began on October 31, 1517, when German monk Saint Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the CastleChurch door in Wittenberg, Germany. This was one of the greatest events of the past 1,000 years.

http://www.reformation.org/


The Bible used before the Reformation was the Bishop's Bible. http://www.bible-researcher.com/kjvhist.html



The earliest GeneralBaptistChurch was thought to be founded about 1608 or 1609. Its chief founder was John Smyth and it was located in Holland.

http://www.reformedreader.org/smyth.htm

 

The Bishop's Bible was used prior to the Reformation:

http://www.bible-researcher.com/kjvhist.html

You'll never make sense of statements by the KJVonly crowd regarding Bibles prior to the KJV. If other Bibles were the Word of God prior to the KJV then why did we need the KJV? If the KJV is the only true Bible, then no one had the true word of God till 1611.:BangHead:

 

http://www.americanvision.org/bwarchive/1-07 Lost Treasure.pdf

Read that and it may help.

 

Confusion for sure

Contributing factors:

1. True Baptists are not Protestants. Their faith and practice predates Luther by 1500 years. All denominations can be traced to a man/woman. The New Testament Churches are not a denomination. They have been in every generation since their inception on the shores of Galilee during the personal ministry of the Lord. He started them, He maintains them, without a holy see, convention or synod. They are His Bride and He is returning to marry Her.

2. Jesus said He would never leave Her nor forsake Her. He has kept that promise. To suggest that His Bride has somehow been lacking in correct revelation and spiritual guidance until The Reformation, is to suggest that Jesus cannot do what He said He would do.

3. The fact that the holy see has had much, not all, control over secular information and biblical knowledge. They have been successful in misguiding millions with misinformation and coverup, even today.

4. God has a remnant in every generation, they are seldom in the majority. They are in the Catholic Encyclopedia--under heretics. (not all heretics are in the remnant) Look at their faith and practices. They are basically the same all the way back to the first.

I have read a lot of different translations into English. Some are better than others. The Word of God still draws to Christ. It is the footnotes that get folks in trouble. The Word of God needs no commentary. It is sharper than a two edged sword.

Selah,

Bro. James

 

The average person before the reformation didn't have access to the Bible..
So even if there were Pre-Baptistic people that existed before the reformation they would have only had bits and peices of the Bible...

The powerful thing is this, God still worked despite not having the word of God in circulation.

The early church didn't have the NT... it wasn't finished until 60 or more yrs after the resurrection..
Then the canonization took another 400-500 yrs... Arguments over what books should be included...
Then came the dark ages .... Still the Bible was not widespread..

Only after the printing press was the bible printed for the masses...

This means one thing to us...
WE have been widely blessed, and with this much blessing, we are going to be held more accountable than those that lived in the 12th century.

 

God is able to call out His lost sheep whenever and wherever He so desires.

May we have a more detailed description of this "average" person prior to the 16th century. Is this person functionally illiterate? Where does he get bits and pieces of scripture? Probably not Vatican City.

God has taken care of His people in every generation, including before the Reformation. Our Baptistic forefathers went to a fiery deaths quoting scripture, refusing to baptize their infants; a witness to a lost and dying world. Where did they get their scripture? Certainly not from the holy see. They could not have done it without the Holy Spirit bearing witness to The Word of God, with or without covers and typeset.

Selah,

Bro. James

 

In the early churches, gospel stories were relayed verbally until the gospel writers finished, then each church had copies of the gospels, the various copies were part of the canonization factor.

 

Evidence of perpetuity

Study John 14-17. See also Mt. 16:18, 28:20, Eph. 3:21.

Now read Foxes: "Book of Martyrs".

Jude 3 is still being fulfilled.

The deceiver is redoubling his efforts--he knows his days are numbered.

Re: some saved in Catholicism--true; however their religion does not save them. Salvation and church membership are different. There is no universal, mystical body, visible or invisible. There are some who are saved "yet so as by fire". See I Cor. 3:10-15.

Selah,

Bro. James

 

Some Baptists and KJV-only advocates link Baptists to the pre-Reformation Waldenses. Some KJV-only advocates attempt to link the KJV to the Bibles used by the Waldenses.

David Sorenson maintained that the Waldenses “used translations of the Bible based upon the Received Text from the second century up to and including the time of the Reformation” (Touch Not, p. 47). In his Appendix E entitled “Evidences of a historical connection between the Waldenses and the KJV,“ Sorenson wrote: “Though there is no conclusive evidence that Beza used Waldensian manuscripts, circumstances allow theories to arise suggesting the possibility. If this is the case, then there could be a direct lineage of the Received Text from the end of the first century through the Italic churches to the Vaudois to the Waldenses to Beza to the King James’s translators” (p. 261). Jack Moorman also asserted that “the noble Waldenses in northern Italy still possessed in Latin the Received Text” (Forever Settled, p. 108). Will Kinney suggested that God may have preserved His perfect words “in the Waldensian latinized Bibles till the time of the Reformation” (Flaming Torch, April-June, 2003, p. 18). Ruckman wrote: “When the world is a Latin speaking world, God has a Book in the Old Latin of the Waldenses and Albigenses which is carried all over the world” (Alexandrian, Part Seven, p. 12). Ruckman maintained that “the AV translators had available three Waldensian Bibles” (Bible Babel, p. 72). David Loughran asserted that the Waldenses “used the Old Latin Vulgate and rejected Jerome’s Vulgate” (Bible Versions, p. 9). In a quotation that is from Benjamin Wilkinson’s book, Floyd Jones claimed “the translators of the 1611 had before them four Bibles which had come under Waldensian influences: the Dioadati in Italian, the Olivetan in French, the Lutheran in German, and the Genevan in English” (Which Version, p. 105). Robert Sargent presented a chart in his book that showed the Waldensian Bibles leading up to the same four Bibles (English Bible, p. 103). This statement in Jones’ book is also quoted in Joe Gresham’s book, and Gresham quoted Wilkinson’s claim that the KJV translators had before them “at least six Waldensian Bibles written in the old Waldensian vernacular” (Dealing with the Devil’s Deception, p. 49). David Cloud suggested that the Romaunt New Testaments used by the Waldenses “represented the Traditional Text” and that the Tepl was a Waldensian version that “represents the Traditional Text“ (Faith, pp. 139-140). Cloud indicated that “the Scripture was also preserved . . . in the translations from Latin such as the Waldensian Romaunt, the old German Tepl” (Bible Version Question/Answer, p. 92). Gail Riplinger claimed that “the Codex Teplensis (Tepl Bible) of 1389 is thought to be of the Waldensian type (KJV) and not a Latin text type (In Awe, p. 977). Riplinger asserted that “Luther used the German Tepl Bible, which represented a translation of the Waldensian Bible into German” (Which Bible, p. 53). Riplinger wrote that “God has spoken to men around the world through a text like the KJV in the German Tepl Bible” (p. 74). Jones also maintained that the “Tepl ms represented a translation of the Waldensian Bible into the German dialect which was spoken before the time of the Reformation” (Which Version, p. 105).

In 2005, David Cloud acknowledged that some of Wilkinson’s “history, in fact, is strongly influenced by his devotion to Seventh-day Adventist ’prophetess’ Ellen G. White” and that “Wilkinson got the idea that the Waldensian Bible is ’preserved uncorrupted’ from Ellen White’s Great Controversy” (Bible Version Question/Answer, p. 13). Thomas Armitage wrote that “he [Peter Waldo] employed Stephen of Ansa and Bernard Ydross to translate the Gospels from the Latin Vulgate of Jerome into the Romance dialect for the common people, as well as the most inspiring passages from the Christian Fathers” (History of the Baptists, I, p. 295). Andrea Ferrari wrote that “Waldo of Lyons paid some clergy to translate parts of the Bible from the Vulgate” (Diodati’s Doctrine, pp. 71-72). Paul Tice confirmed that Waldo “enlisted two clerics to translate various parts of the Bible, including the four Gospels, into the native Provencal language” (History of the Waldenses, p. vi). H. J. Warner maintained that the base for this translation was “for the most part the Vulgate of Jerome” (Albigensian, II, p. 222). Warner noted that Stephen de Ansa, a [Roman Catholic] priest, translated some books of the Bible into the Romance tongue while another priest Bernard Udros wrote his translating down for Peter Waldo (p. 221). Glenn Conjurske affirmed that “the medieval Waldensian version in the old Romance language [was] translated from the Vulgate” (Olde Paths, July, 1997, p. 160). KJV-only author Ken Johnson wrote that “we openly grant this” [“the fact Waldo used the Vulgate as the basis of his translation”] (Real Truth, p. 21).


Deanesly wrote that “the earliest existent Waldensian texts, Provencal, Catalan and Italian, were founded on a Latin Bible, the use of which prevailed widely in the Visigothic kingdom of Narbonne, up to the thirteenth century” and that this Latin Bible “is characterized by a set of peculiar readings, amounting to over thirty, in the Acts of the Apostles” and these same readings appear in “the early Provencal, Catalan and Italian Bible” and “in the Tepl manuscript” (Lollard Bible, pp. 65-66). Deanesly referred to this Latin Bible as “the Visigothic Vulgate” and indicated that it was later superseded by the Paris Vulgate (p. 66). James Roper maintained that the two Provencal versions “are derived from the Latin text of Languadoc of the thirteenth century, and hence in Acts contain many ‘Western’ readings of old Latin origin” (Jackson, Beginnings, III, p. cxxxviii). Roper added: “The translators of these texts merely used the text of Languadoc current in their own day and locality, which happened (through contiguity to Spain) to be widely mixed with Old Latin readings” (p. cxxxviii). Referring to Codex Teplensis and the Freiberg manuscript, Roper wrote: “The peculiar readings of all these texts in Acts, often ‘Western’ go back (partly at least through a Provencal version) to the mixed Vulgate text of Languadoc of the thirteenth century, which is adequately known from Latin MSS” (pp. cxxxix-cxl). Roper asserted: “A translation of the New Testament into Italian was made, probably in the thirteenth century, from a Latin text like that of Languadoc, and under the influence of the Provencal New Testament. It includes, like those texts, some ’Western’ readings in Acts” (p. cxlii). Since Languadoc or Languedoc was the name of a region of southern France, especially the area between the Pyrenees and Loire River, and since Narbonne was a city in southern France in the same region and it was also the name of a province or kingdom in this area, both authors seem to have been referring to the same basic region. For a period of time, this area was not part of the country of France. Glenn Conjurske cited Herman Haupt as maintaining that “the old Romance, or Provencal, Waldensian version invariably reads Filh de la vergena (‘Son of the virgin’) instead of ‘Son of man’--except only in Hebrews 2:6, where (of course) it has filh de l’ome, ‘son of man’,” and Conjurske noted that he verified Haupt’s claim (Olde Paths, June, 1996, p. 137). H. J. Warner observed that “in St. John 1, the Romance version had ‘The Son was in the beginning,‘ and in verse 51 ‘The Son of the Virgin’ for ‘the Son of Man,‘ and so throughout all the Dublin, Zurich, Grenoble and Paris MSS. in every corresponding place” (Albigensian, II, pp. 223-224). The above evidence indicates that the mentioned Waldensian translations were made from an edition of Jerome’s Latin Vulgate that was mixed with some Old Latin readings, especially in the book of Acts. L. Cledat had the N. T. as translated into Provencal printed in 1887 (Warner, p. 68).

Conjurske observed that the “Codex Teplenis is a fourteenth-century manuscript, which has never been modified at all, but exists today just as it did in the fourteenth century, and just as it was written by the scribes who wrote it” (Olde Paths, June, 1996, p. 138). Conjurske pointed out that Codex Teplensis included the Epistle Czun Laodiern, “to the Laodicens” (p. 133). He noted that this manuscript included a list of Scripture portions to be read on certain holy days and saints’ days and at the end included a short treatise on “the seven sacraments” (pp. 133-134). Out of the eighty-two places where the N. T. has “son of man,” Conjurske pointed out that “the Tepl manuscript reads ’son of man’ only seven times, all the rest having ’son of the virgin’” [sun der maid or meid or another spelling variation] (p. 137; also Oct., 1996 issue, p. 240). He affirmed that the “Teplensis itself reads heilikeit, that is, ’sacrament’” at several verses (Eph. 1:9, 3:3, 3:9, 5:32; 1 Tim. 3:16) (p. 139). Conjuske concluded that “it is an indubitable fact that the version contained in Codex Teplensis closely follows the Latin Vulgate and differs in a myriad of places from the Textus Receptus and the King James Version” (pp. 139-140). According to J. T. Hatfield‘s examination of this text, some other example differences include that the Tepl has “Jesus” at Acts 9:20 where the KJV has “Christ,” “his name” at Acts 22:16 where the KJV has “name of the Lord,” “Lord God” at Revelation 1:8 where the KJV has “Lord,” and “Jesus” at Revelation 22:17 where the KJV has “Jesus Christ.”

 

If you agree that the Bride is also called the Body of Christ, then go to I Cor 12:27 "Now YE are the body of Christ, and members in particular."

Paul was writing to a specific local congregation, which he called THE body of Christ.

Brother James is right when he says:

It serves no kingdom purpose whatsoever, is a useless fantasy and is a colossal failure at carrying out the Great Commission.

 

Well, where did the Waldenses or Waldensians (12th century), who emphasized Biblical authority for life and doctrine over Papal authority, get their Bible? They were common laity. Is it totally beyond reason that common Christians had access or knowledge of the Scriptures prior to the Reformation? Or, is this just what we have been told by scholarly theorists who have no real persuasive evidence from primary sources? Considering the preserved knowledge of the Scriptures in Iron Curtain countries before the fall of Communism, it is not irrational to suppose that simple Christians had some and knowledge of the Scriptures prior to the Reformation. I think our concept of the Middle Ages is highly and wrongly skewed toward a view of ignorance and superstition. Perhaps we ought to rethink our historiography. Sometimes, it is good to think for ourselves instead of spouting the accepted politically correct view. Now, please consider and answer my question. I am interested to hear your thoughts.