From St. Jerome & Gutenberg to I-pod & Kindle, God's Word Goes Forth

It was on this day in 1452 that Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg 1st printed the Bible with his moveable type. The Bible was an edition of the Latin Vulgate translation by St. Jerome. Up to that time all Bibles in existance were copies made by hand by monks. Because of the work involved, copies of the Bible were rare & thus expensive & valuable. This leads to the real reason that they were chained down in Catholic Churches, to keep them from being stolen. The anti-Catholic myth is that it was to keep the average person from reading it. Not true. Back then, the average person, rich or poor usually could not read. Often only the priest had the education & thus was able to read. So St. Jerome's translation made his job of preaching the Gospel easier.

With the invention of moveable type more people were able to learn to read. & the price of books became affordable as well. Today we take the fact that everyone can have his or her own Bible. Before 1452 it was impossible.

I think it is very appropriate that today is the anniversary of that 1st printing given that it is also the feast day of St. Jerome. St. Jerome translated the Bible from the Greek & Hebrew into the everyday Latin spoken by the common man. (Hence the name Vulgate, from the Latin, vulgar.) St. Jerome was a firm believer that "ignorance of Scriptures is ignorance of Christ." He knew that if the priest could read Scripture at Mass in the everyday language of the time than people could be better Catholics. The Church wanted to make Scripture as readily available & understandable as possible at the time.

Today the Bible is being translated into more & more languages. It is becoming available in more formats, including many electronic forms. I honestly think that we have no idea how much of a blessing this is. The 1st century Catholic Church only had what we call the Old Testament (Septuagant version). It wasn't until the end of the 1st Century that all the books of the New Testament were written. It wasn't until the 4th Century that the Church officially confirmed which writings were inspired Scripture. Like I said, any copies of the Bible were hand copied, rare & expensive. It stayed that way for about 1000 yrs until Gutenberg. & while there are many languages for the Bible to yet be translated into, we are at a point where technology has made it almost universally available.

God's Word is readily available & we no longer have any excuse to be ignorant of Christ or Scripture. Yet, despite being a best seller, we don't read it, let alone listen to what God is saying as we should. People are trying to deconstruct it to justify ignoring the truths taught. Yet, if we are willing to take advantage, God is waiting to speak to us. Are we willing to listen?