Translating God’s Word – A Period of Tragic Inactivity

As we saw in previous posts, in the early Church, the New Testament was translated into many different languages. However, over time this process stopped. Why did this happen?

In the year 476 AD, the Western part of the Roman empire fell to invading Germanic tribes. From this time forward, with the exception of one brief period of time, the West and the East were largely separated. This included not only governmentally, but also culturally and linguistically. 

As time progressed, Latin became totally dominant in the West. Furthermore, beginning around 600 Islam began to conquer North Africa and the East. This further separated the former parts of the Roman Empire. This had the effect of stopping missionary activity in the East, while in the West the church began to oppose translating the Bible into the language of the people. Furthermore, knowledge of Greek and Hebrew was virtually completely lost in the West.

This meant that the only access to the Scripture in the West was not in the actual Greek and Hebrew texts, but rather via the Latin translation of Jerome, the Vulgate. During this time many different languages were developing in the various regions in the West. However, the Roman Catholic Church began to oppose translations into these local languages – completely reversing what had been the practice of the early Church. Over time, even many of the priests in local parishes had only a rudimentary knowledge of Latin. This effectively removed the Word of God from the people of God.

Furthermore, when there were attempts to translate the Bible into local languages, the translations had to be based on the Vulgate rather than the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. Thus, translations such as those by John Wycliffe were really translations of a translation! On top of this, the Roman Catholic Church strongly opposed these translations. For example, the Roman Catholic hierarchy was so opposed to the work of John Wycliffe, including his translation of the Bible into the English of his day, that they even condemned him as a heretic years after his death and exhumed his bones from the grave to burn them!

This was a sad time in the history of the Church and a very low ebb for the practice of translating the Bible into the languages of the peoples of the world. However, changes were beginning to appear on the horizon which would change this situation. We will take a look at these changes next time.

In Christ,

Bret