WHERE IT ALL BEGAN (Part XII)

IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE WORD

Sometimes it helps to be reminded of certain blessings so that we increase our appreciation for what we take for granted. Hopefully this will give you a new admiration for that Bible you hold in your hand or having lying on your desk or nightstand.

For the first several hundred years after the church was born in Antioch in Syria and spread throughout Galatia and Greece, there was no published New Testament. The churches would copy letters received written in Greek from the Apostles, copy them and pass them on. Printing was not yet invented so it took time and money to copy a manuscript, so there were few. The apostles would used Old Testament Scriptures to prove the deity of Christ and the right to call Him the Messiah.

Furthermore, Greek began to wane as a universal language, especially in Europe, so Pope Damascus I commissioned St. Jerome in 382 to take all of the known manuscripts used by the Roman Catholic Church that had been translated from Greek into Latin, called Vetus Latina (Old Latin), and provide a translation more suitable to the language of the day. So St. Jerome provided a new translation called the Latin Vulgate (Common Latin), which by the 16^th century would become the Catholic Church’s official version of the Bible.

This was the Bible that a Dutch Catholic priest named Desiderius Erasmus used for his studies of theology. Erasmus was also caught up in the Renaissance movement, and became a social critic and teacher. One key factor of the Renaissance was the resurgence of the Greek language, because true Renaissance participants were driven to go back to the original of anything in search of the truth, whether it be the writings of Pluto or Aristotle. For Erasmus, his vision was the New Testament because he was drawn to the Word of God as a source of undisputed truth.

However, when Erasmus began to read the Greek manuscripts he found that the Latin version by Jerome was not loyal to the original Greek, and unclear on many passages because it followed church teachings rather than Scripture. So in 1512, he began his work on his Latin New Testament. He collected all the manuscripts available to find the best ones. Then in an effort to be fair and open, he wrote his new Latin version side by side with the Greek. Said Erasmus, “It is only fair that Paul should address the Romans in somewhat better Latin.”

But something else began to stir in Erasmus spirit. Like many before him, he saw the necessity of making comments along with the text to explain what the writer of the New Testament manuscript was trying to say. This led to his taking the opportunity of pointing out where the writings of Paul and the other Apostles differed from what the Roman Catholic Church was teaching and practicing during that time. So Erasmus used a form of paraphrase to develop his commentary on theology in the New Testament.

It was at this same time that a great invention was born called the printing press. Without this press, most of the work by Erasmus would have lain around in handwritten manuscripts to collect dust, except for those who might have any interest in the long tedious task of copying them to pass on. But the two came together and that would result in one of the greatest spiritual revolutions in the history of the church. So Erasmus’ work was first published in 1516 with a second edition in 1519.

This second edition of Erasmus’ parallel Greek/Latin translation with commentary fell into the hands of a German monk, Catholic priest, and professor of theology at the University of Wittenberg named Martin Luther. From 1510 to 1520, Luther lectured on the Psalms, the book of Hebrews, Romans, and Galatians. As he studied these portions of the Bible, he came to view the use of terms such as penance and righteousness by the Catholic Church differently than the way they were being taught. Over time, Luther became convinced that the path taken by the Catholic church had led it’s followers astray from the core truths of what Jesus taught.

One of the most important factors for Luther was the doctrine of justification by faith. The one scripture out of Erasmus’ translation/commentary that impacted Luther most deeply was Galatians 3:11, how the just shall live by faith. In other words, justification was an act of God in declaring a sinner righteous by faith alone through God’s grace, not through any works done by man to gain salvation. So Luther began to teach that salvation is a gift of God’s grace and is obtained only through faith in the work of Jesus as the Messiah.

Even though they disagreed on other matters and doctrines, Martin Luther was so impressed by what Erasmus had done to start this debate through his translation and commentary, that he wrote him a letter that contained this expression of gratitude: “My dear Erasmus… I praise and commend you highly for this also, that unlike all the rest you alone have attacked the real issue, the essence of the matter in dispute, and have not wearied me with irrelevancies about the papacy, purgatory, indulgences, and such like trifles (for trifles they are rather than basic issues), with which almost everyone hitherto has gone hunting for me without success. You and you alone have seen the question on which everything hinges, and have aimed at the vital spot.”

With the Protestant Reformation gaining steam, Martin Luther was now confronted with the same dilemma Erasmus had. There was no Bible in the German language for the common person to read and study. So Luther took Erasmus’ new Latin translation and translated it into German. There were many Germanic dialects leading up to Luther’s day, so the one he chose for God’s Word would become the official language that tied the German people together through a common dialect in 1522.

English scholar and leading reformer in England William Tyndale wanted to use the same 1516 Erasmus text as a source to translate and print the New Testament in English for the first time in history. Tyndale showed up on Luther’s doorstep in Germany in 1525, and by year’s end had translated the New Testament into English. Tyndale had been forced to flee England, because of the wide-spread rumor that his English New Testament project was underway, causing inquisitors and bounty hunters to be constantly on his trail to arrest him and prevent his project from going forward. But God foiled their plans and in 1525-26 the Tyndale New Testament became the first printed edition of the scripture in the English language.

So anyone who passes off the development of our Christian faith as a matter of happenstance or the effect of karma, does not understand that God has been at work from the start. He does not react to situations because He has already prepared in advance before the circumstances occur. God foreknew that His church would need the written Word, so He arranged every part of this beautiful story. Therefore something planned by our heavenly Father many thousands of years earlier to provide a reformation for His church through the study of His Word, all took place in the span of 10 years. Does God know what He’s doing or do you still have doubts?