BaruchExcellent question ...Fri Jan 20, 2012 12:5168.89.238.218Well please look at the bigger picture. Martin Luther gets too much credit sometimes ... there were prior movements within Catholicism that emphasized colloquial reading of the Bible, though this was before there was a printing press ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waldensians
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lollards
The Waldensians were earlier, founded by the Frenchman, Waldo, and first tried to do lay exegesis of the Bible, but ultimately translated it illegally, into French. The Lollards were later, founded by the Englishman, Wycliffe, who was an Oxford academic, who translated the Bible illegally into Middle English. Wycliffe was the precursor to Jan Hus of Bohemia, and of the Congregational and Puritan churches in general.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Hus
Both Wycliffe and Hus were nationalists, which is something the Catholic Church worked hard to prevent ... Latin and Catholic clergy being the predecessor to today's EU. Waldo was neither a clergyman nor a scholar, but embarked on radical preaching of poverty, not unlike St Francis, but operating outside of Catholic control. Wycliffe directly inspired the Jan Hus, as well as such men as John Oldcastle (a lay preacher who was the inspiration for Falstaff, a character in Shakespeare's plays), who in reality was executed (though Falstaff wasn't).
So the point being, that anti-colloquial versions of the Bible were too easy for lay people to read and exegete ... the Latin Vulgate version, given the lack of common knowledge of Latin, by the High Middle Ages, was much harder to read. This was all overturned by the confluence of two things ... a colloquial translation and the onset of the printing press (the first European printed book being the so-called Gutenberg Bible ... though Gutenberg himself was no longer associated with it, by the time it was published, because he had gone bankrupt trying to produce the first edition, and was bought out). Gutenberg's intention however, wasn't Protestant. This was a Latin Bible, and was merely a way to produce cheap copies of Bibles for churches, not individuals, since until his invention, a Bible cost a king's ransom. He was simply using technology to undermine the existing scribal system, just as Apple does with its technology in things like iTunes.
Why anti-rational? This goes back to Apostle Paul. And that is why Martin Luther was anti-rational as well, not because he was Augustinian though. Will post more on that later.
Shalom
- Excellent question ... — Baruch, Fri Jan 20 12:51
