L14 Renaissance, Printing and the Bible

The Gutenberg Bible was a great achievement of printing with movable type. The Greek New Testament was constructed by Erasmus, challenging the hegemony of Jerome’s Latin Vulgate, elevating scholars who read Greek over the priests who knew only Latin.

1. European Renaissance of 15^th and 16^th centuries represent a particular kind of learning.

   1. Fall of Constantinople in 1453 meant an emigration of scholars and of Greek and Arabic manuscripts to the west.

   2. New texts in Greek religion and philosophy challenged the medieval synthesis, which created a certain unified view of Church and state, of philosophy and theology.

   3. With an altered sense of history came a new sense of the possibility of change: humanism: where the human fits in the natural world as reflected in art and literature; sense of control as seen in science and technology i.e. Leonardo da Vinci 1452-1519; and development of Italian states on political theory rather than divine rights theory (i.e. Machiavelli 1469-1527).

2. Invention of the printing press in Europe changed the publication of bibles and reading of the bible.

   1. Block printing was invented in China in 888 and movable clay type in 1041. The first iron printing press was used in China in 1234.

   2. Gutenberg developed movable metal type, oil-based inks, a mould for casting type and a new kind of printing press modeled on the presses used to make wine. Gutenberg printed a 2 volume version of the Vulgate in 1455. The Bibles were illuminated by hand. The first printed volumes lacked page numbers, indentation, or paragraph breaks. Chapter and verse divisions were introduced by Stephen Langton into the Vulgate in 1205 and to some Greek manuscripts by 1400. These did not appear in printed texts of the New Testament until 1565 and the Old Testament in 1571.

   3. The art of printing spread rapidly and made books less expensive. Availability of books meant the possibility of individual ownership and individual reading.

3. Invention of printing combined with recovery of ancient learning to stimulate the quest for a better Bible.

   1. The Greek original version of the New Testament along with Greek writings of Plato held appeal as “original texts” whereas the Latin were “later and therefore secondary.

   2. Scholars tried to create a version of the Bible that was more “scientific” than the Vulgate in ordinary use. In Spain a group of scholars published the bible in six folio volumes between 1514-1522. The Greek New Testament appeared in print in 1514. and the entire Bible with parallel columns of Hebrew, LXX and Latin for the Old Testament appeared in 1522.

   3. Erasmus a Christian Humanist produced an edition of the Greek New Testament with his own translation into classical Latin in 1516.

   4. The Textus Receptus (received text) that was the basis for the King James Bible was based on the versions of Erasmus.

4. Tensions developed between scholar and priest, university and church, that has never been completely resolved.

   1. In the life of the Church the Vulgate was popular as it fit the use of Latin in the liturgy. The clergy could read Latin but rarely Greek.

   2. In the academy, scholars had access to Greek, Hebrew, and Latin texts.

   3. Very soon the people asked that Scripture be translated into the language of the people.

What would it be like if the translations had not occurred into common languages?