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Lesson 83

THE CATHOLIC HIERARCHY AND THE BIBLE (Part 1)

"The Roman Catholic Church" had its beginning under the rule of Constantine the Great. During his reign occurred the fusion of Roman paganism and apostate Christianity which had developed. Constantine adopted the title and office of "vicegerent of the Deity", the title later assumed by the pope of Rome. As political head of the Roman Empire, Constantine's office was also that of "Pontifex Maximus" or "Supreme Pontiff", which pagan title and office were later assumed by the pope. In such religious offices the pope is the successor, not of Peter, but of the pagan emperor.

Meddling in religious affairs, Constantine called the first council at Nicaea, in A.D. 325. Under his supervision the so-called Nicene Creed was drawn up; and his authority, backed by the civil sword, made it the belief required for membership in the religious organization. This creed has been adopted and enlarged upon by the Roman Catholic organization. It is contrary to God's written Word on the subject of the "Trinity", trinity not being even named in the Bible, much less taught therein. The first pope in the modern sense dates from Leo I, A.D. 440-461. He concentrated on one aim: to establish the office of the Roman pope over all "Christendom". Such office not being authorized in the Bible, his endeavor shows that the Roman Catholic Hierarchy, from its top down, is out of line with the Bible.  —1 Cor. 4:8.

Since the Roman Catholic sect began (at the earliest) in the fourth century after Christ, it is manifest that the Bible existed centuries before that cult. The last of the apostles died A.D. 100, and the sixty-six books of the canon of the Holy Bible were brought together in the second century. By the third century the books of the Bible were known in collected form, being viewed as God's inspired Word. The Roman Catholic Hierarchy bases its claim to have made the Bible largely on the fact that in the fourth century (A.D. 397) a religious council at Carthage (not Rome) formally ratified a catalogue of the books of the Holy Scriptures. This catalogue was thereafter accepted by the Latin religious organization.

Before that Council of Carthage the work on the Latin Vulgate Bible was begun, A.D. 383, by Jerome. Old Latin versions of the Bible existed before this, but there were disagreements between them. By A.D. 404 Jerome had rendered the entire Bible, from the Hebrew and Greek texts, into the Latin. His translation came to be known as the Vulgate, or vulgata editio, meaning the vulgar or common edition of the Scriptures. It did not prove popular at first. It was more than a century in displacing the old Italic or Latin versions, to become the accepted Bible version to the Western religious organization. Many thousands of copies were made, and it came to be regarded by the Hierarchy as of as great authority as the original text of the Scriptures.

As time passed Latin ceased to be the language of the people. The Vulgate version became less and less understandable to them. This worked in with the ambitions of the Roman Catholic clergy. In the eleventh century Pope Gregory VII expressly thanked God for this circumstance, as tending to save the people from misunderstanding the Bible. Lack of the Bible in their tongue made the people dependent upon the clergy for hearing God's Word and subjected them to the interpretations of such clergy. These assumed to be the interpreters of the Bible. The clergy

claimed that the Bible was not meant for the people, being misunderstood by the uneducated and tending to disagreement with the clergy and hence to "heresies" and schisms.

John Wycliffe and his associates were first to complete the Bible in English. Wycliffe began this work in 1382, and translated the Greek Scriptures and about half of the Hebrew Scriptures before his death, in 1384. The work was finished by Nicholas of Hereford. About eight years after its completion the whole translation was revised by Richard Purvey. The Catholic religious organization in England strongly opposed the circulation of the Wycliffe Bible. Archbishop Arundel, of Canterbury, spoke of "that pestilent wretch, John Wycliffe, the son of the old Serpent, the forerunner of Antichrist, who had completed his iniquity by inventing a new translation of the Scriptures". Shortly thereafter, the Convocation of Canterbury forbade such translations. Bible readers were burned with copies of it round their necks; children were forced to light the death fires of their parents; and Roman Catholic henchmen hunted down the possessors of the Wycliffe translation as if they were wild beasts. In 1415 the Council of Constance condemned his writings, and in 1428 his remains were dug up and burned and his ashes thrown into the river Swift, near by.

In the fifteenth century printing from movable type was invented, and the first work turned out was the Latin Bible, about 1456. The Hierarchy turned the press to its own ends. In 1522 Cardinal Ximenes, of Spain's university at Alcala or Complutum, published the celebrated Complutensian Polyglot. The first four volumes set out the "Old Testament" with the Hebrew, Latin, and Greek, in three columns, and also the Targum or Chaldee paraphrase and a Latin translation of the same. Such an expensive work was not meant for the people's use; it included no popular tongue, only dead languages. Six hundred copies were printed, limiting circulation.

Now came the rise of Martin Luther, and his break with the Hierarchy in 1521. Thereafter he translated the entire Bible into German (completed in 1534). The Hierarchy fumed, and Pope Leo X issued a bull against Luther. But the Hierarchy's sorrows respecting God's Word in a popular tongue were only begun. In 1535 the complete Bible was first printed in English by Myles Coverdale. However, William Tyndale's translation of the Greek Scriptures had preceded it (1525). Despite the rage of the bishop of London, Cardinal Wolsey, and the "sainted" Sir Thomas More, the translation entered England in quantity. Tyndale was finally seized, strangulated at the stake, and burned, in 1536. While he was in prison Coverdale's edition was printed, but outside of England. Other English editions followed, such as "Matthews Bible" (1537), the "Great Bible" (1539), the "Geneva Bible" (1560), and the "Bishops' Bible" (1568). An English Bible was printed for the first time in England itself in 1538.

Since the Hierarchy could not stop the Bible in the popular tongue, they must try to counteract the non-Catholic editions. The English Roman Catholic Version of the "New Testament" was published at the English College of Rheims, France, in 1582. The "Old Testament" was issued at Douai in 1610. The complete work, known as the "Rheims and Douay Version", was merely a secondary translation of the Scriptures through Jerome's Latin Vulgate. It was a stiff, uncertain translation and difficult to understand. The English bishop, Richard Challoner, vice-president of Douay University, revised the English Douay Version in 1749-1750. However, the Douay Version never attained to the popularity and circulation of the Protestant Bible of 1611, known as the King James or Authorized Version. The latter became the most widely circulated version in the world, and hence against it the wrath of the Roman Catholic Hierarchy has been specially leveled.