The Anonymous Gospel Manuscripts

[athrock]

That's what the resurrection is all about. Jesus is risen from the dead.

No they're not, they're two different statements. In Genesis there are examples of people who are "raised" by God to be in heaven (or as it puts it "walk with God"), Enoch for example. So we know the Jewish understanding of being raised to the celestial realm was not to be physically resurrected here on Earth. Mark is written before any of the other gospels - I'd say by around 55AD or so, but others say 70-80AD. In any case he does not have an understanding of a physical resurrection where Jesus then appears to people in his raised body. Paul doesn't know about this either - which is why I contend that Mark was written around the same time as Paul's Epistles. The only two things that Paul mentions are "visions of Jesus" and "receiving by divine revelation" which he claims to frequently do, and it's anyone's guess what that means. But it probably meant he was taking some kind of hallucinogen to invoke a "spiritual experience" and believed that he received things by revelation that way, as there are plenty of other examples of this throughout the centuries.

He never once claims to have met the resurrected/risen Jesus. It's Luke who makes that claim in Acts 9, but as it's at best a second-hand account we can ignore it. Especially since Paul himself never corroborates the account - he simply says he received a "revelation about Jesus" (Galatians 1:12).

And now, the REST of the story (key passages in bold):

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The attitude of the Church as to the reading of the Bible in the vernacular may be inferred from the Church's practice and legislation. It has been the practice of the Church to provide newly-converted nations, as soon as possible, with vernacular versions of the Scriptures; hence the early Latin and oriental translations, the versions existing among the Armenians, the Slavonians, the Goths, the Italians, the French, and the partial renderings into English. As to the legislation of the Church on this subject, we may divide its history into three large periods:

(1) During the course of the first millennium of her existence, the Church did not promulgate any law concerning the reading of Scripture in the vernacular. The faithful were rather encouraged to read the SacredBooks according to their spiritual needs (cf. St. Irenæus, Against Heresies III.4).

(2) The next five hundred years show only local regulations concerning the use of the Bible in the vernacular. On 2 January, 1080, Gregory VII wrote to the Duke of Bohemia that he could not allow the publication of the Scriptures in the language of the country. The letter was written chiefly to refuse the petition of the Bohemians for permission to conduct Divine service in the Slavic language. The pontiff feared that the reading of the Bible in the vernacular would lead to irreverence and wrong interpretation of the inspired text (St. Gregory VII, "Epist.", vii, xi). The second document belongs to the time of the Waldensian and Albigensianheresies. The Bishop of Metz had written to Innocent III that there existed in his diocese a perfect frenzy for the Bible in the vernacular. In 1199 the pope replied that in general the desire to read the Scriptures was praiseworthy, but that the practice was dangerous for the simple and unlearned ("Epist., II, cxli; Hurter, "Gesch. des. Papstes Innocent III", Hamburg, 1842, IV, 501 sqq.). After the death of Innocent III, the Synod ofToulouse directed in 1229 its fourteenth canon against the misuse of Sacred Scripture on the part of the Cathari: "prohibemus, ne libros Veteris et Novi Testamenti laicis permittatur habere" (Hefele, "Concilgesch", Freiburg, 1863, V, 875). In 1233 the Synod of Tarragona issued a similar prohibition in its second canon, but both these laws are intended only for the countries subject to the jurisdiction of the respective synods(Hefele, ibid., 918). The Third Synod of Oxford, in 1408, owing to the disorders of the Lollards, who in addition to their crimes of violence and anarchy had introduced virulent interpolations into the vernacular sacred text, issued a law in virtue of which only the versions approved by the local ordinary or the provincial council were allowed to be read by the laity (Hefele, op. cit., VI, 817).

(3) It is only in the beginning of the last five hundred years that we meet with a general law of the Church concerning the reading of the Bible in the vernacular. On 24 March, 1564, Pius IV promulgated in his Constitution, "Dominici gregis", the Index of Prohibited Books. According to the third rule, the Old Testament may be read in the vernacular by pious and learned men, according to the judgment of the bishop, as a help to the better understanding of the Vulgate. The fourth rule places in the hands of the bishop or the inquisitor the power of allowing the reading of the New Testament in the vernacular to laymen who according to the judgment of their confessor or their pastor can profit by this practice. Sixtus V reserved this power to himself or the Sacred Congregation of the Index, and Clement VIII added this restriction to the fourth rule of the Index, by way of appendix. Benedict XIV required that the vernacular version read by laymen should be either approved by the Holy See or provided with notes taken from the writings of the Fathers or of learned and pious authors. It then became an open question whether this order of Benedict XIV was intended to supersede the former legislation or to further restrict it. This doubt was not removed by the next three documents: the condemnation of certain errors of the Jansenist Quesnel as to the necessity of reading the Bible, by the Bull "Unigenitus" issued by Clement XI on 8 Sept., 1713 (cf. Denzinger, "Enchir.", nn. 1294-1300); the condemnation of the same teaching maintained in the Synod of Pistoia, by the Bull "Auctorem fidei" issued on 28 Aug., 1794, by Pius VI; the warning against allowing the laity indiscriminately to read theScriptures in the vernacular, addressed to the Bishop of Mohileff by Pius VII, on 3 Sept., 1816. But the Decree issued by the Sacred Congregation of the Index on 7 Jan., 1836, seems to render it clear that henceforth the laity may read vernacular versions of the Scriptures, if they be either approved by the Holy See, or provided with notes taken from the writings of the Fathers or of learned Catholic authors. The same regulation was repeated by Gregory XVI in his Encyclical of 8 May, 1844. In general, the Church has always allowed the reading of the Bible in the vernacular, if it was desirable for the spiritual needs of her children; she has forbidden it only when it was almost certain to cause serious spiritual harm.

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Okay, if that's what you believe then you have a very poor understanding of textual transmission and availability in the Middle Ages. The RCC fought to keep the Bible in Latin.

I've read repeated claims that the Bible was on scrolls of papyrus and parchment in the early centuries and that (somehow) precluded people from obtaining personal copies. This claim is rubbish. At least 2/3rds of the surviving Biblical papyrus manuscripts that exist today were codacies. But even if they weren't it wouldn't matter, Jews were quite content with using scrolls for many centuries before and after the arrival of Christianity, their entire cannon was canonised on scrolls without the use of any codacies (hence how they became 22 scrolls), but just like a codex containing one book (or a collection of smaller books) of the New Testament can be individually copied, so too could the individual constitute parts of the Hebrew cannon.

But the other thing is that we have examples of less-than-professional early texts (for example that lack majuscule lettering) of the New Testament, showing there was indeed a need and use of "personal copies".

So the Catholic church refused people the use of the Bible in its original languages, and also refused access to English translations. The only version authorised by the RCC was the Latin Vulgate. And they enforced this brutally - copies of the Tyndale Bible were burned, and William Tyndale was strangled and then burned on a stake. After being defrocked that is, which brings me nicely back to my point that even the church clergy were not allowed to read the bible in its original language - they were to use the Vulgate. This was formally delcared at the Council of Trent in the mid 16th century.

Even that section of text that you quoted has horrific examples of inhumanity in it:

• "The pontiff feared that the reading of the Bible in the vernacular would lead to irreverence and wrong interpretation"
  
• "In 1199 the pope replied that in general the desire to read the Scriptures was praiseworthy, but that the practice was dangerous for the simple and unlearned"
  
• "According to the third rule, the Old Testament may be read in the vernacular [only] by pious and learned men [...] as a help to the better understanding of the Vulgate."
  
• "The fourth rule places in the hands of the bishop or the inquisitor the power of allowing the reading of the New Testament in the vernacular to laymen who according to the judgment of their confessor or their pastor can profit by this practice."
  
• "henceforth the laity may read vernacular versions of the Scriptures, if they be either approved by the Holy See, or provided with notes taken from the writings of the Fathers or of learned Catholic authors."
  

Let's not make any mistake here - the RCC refused the laiety access to anything other than the Vulgate until the Douay–Rheims Bible which was published in the late 16th century and was translated directly from the Vulgate with no interest from the church in the Greek or Hebrew originals. This was the only Catholic-approved translation of the English Bible until the 20th century: and it wasn't even translated from Greek or Hebrew!! The bible that replaced the D-R version was the Jerusalem Bible and it wasn't translated until 1966. And it is a translation of La Bible de Jérusalem 1956 (the RCC-approved French translation) and hevily influenced by the Vulgate. But it was the first widely-available Catholic-approved Bible in English that did make use of the original language texts in its translations.

So long-story short, the RCC shackled the original Biblical texts as much as they could, even issuing a decree that the "Vulgate" is the authorised version of the Bible so that their doctrines wouldn't be threatened by people reading the original texts.

I'll being my response with a question: Which denomination of Protestant were you before you became an atheist?