Re: Recovery, just not the normal sort

"Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz" <spamtrap@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
There was a period when Christian doctrine was uncomfortably close to
that; you were supposed to ask your priest rather than reading it
yourself.

Nah, if you could read Latin it was, AFAIK, pretty much fine for you
to have and read a Bible on your own; the tricky bit was translating
it into English, for which you were supposed to rely on the word of a
priest. And given that the majority of people in that age were
illiterate, or only semi-literate, it was more a concession to
practicality, combined with the idea that the wealthy shouldn't be
able to create a Bible that said something different to them than what
the poor got.

I don't think it is unreasonable, when you consider how ambiguous some
passages are, to have a more-or-less authoritative line on how to
translate them, or even to have an official language for the book, and
leave all the rest as varying degress of unofficial, if you like.

After all, the official Torah[0] is in Hebrew, and the official Koran
is in Arabic; having the only "official" translation of the Bible be
in Latin is certainly in keeping with that spirit. Even now, at least
for Catholics (not sure how the Protestants handle this one), you need
to have a bishop, at least (maybe a Cardinal, I won't swear either
way), sign off on your translation before you can call it a Catholic
Bible.

I'm not sure how controversial the Targum[1] was in its day.

[1] Translation of Tanach into Aramaic.

Was it used in services, or just as a handy copy for the locals whose
Hebrew was maybe a bit weaker than they'd have liked?

-=Eric

[0] Okay, not THE official Torah; I'm sure there are several, but any
given Torah that is considered "official" is in Hebrew, no?

.

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