Catholic Trivia: Translations of the Bible

It's commonly said that the first translations of the Bible into the language of the laity was done either by Wycliffe (14th Century) or Tyndale (16th Century).

In fact, portions of the Bible were translated into German in the 8th Century and by the time Tyndale got around to making his famous translation, more than 198 translations into the various languages of the laity had been made under the auspices of the Catholic Church. Translation into English was not a great priority before the 16th Century in part because of the relative size of the population in England and in part because the English had less influence globally than they later would develop. Translation into English also had to wait for a stable English language to develop out of the predominant, mixed languages of the Angles, Saxons, Danes, and Normans. Until it did, literate people in those areas read Latin. St. Jerome had embarked on the first translation of the Bible into Latin in the 4th Century. His opinion of scripture? Ignorance of scripture is ignorance of Christ.

The first Bible printed on a press was printed by a Catholic (Guttenberg) and was in Latin.

The Catholic Church protected the Bible from destruction (because monks copied and kept manuscripts) and from poor translations (by requiring that translations be authorized before they could be published). To point out just how important this is, Luther's original translation eliminated 4 books that are contained in the Protestant New Testament because he felt they were not canonical: Hebrews, Jude, James, and Revelation, which he added as an appendix. Although these books were eventually retained by Protestant denominations, seven books of the Old Testament were eventually excluded by the Reformers, with the result that Catholic Bibles have more books than Protestant ones.

Underscoring the Catholic belief in the protection of infallibility (the Pope cannot teach error) is the interesting story of Pope Sixtus V. He translated the Bible into Latin, and did a poor job of it. He had already issued the Bull (notification of his intent to publish and to make the translation binding on the faithful) on his new translation despite opposition from the Bishops who opposed it for its mistakes and omissions. Pope Sixtus V died the night before the translation was to be issued, apparently of natural causes, despite the fact that he was relatively young and in good health. The erroneous translation was not issued. St. Bellarmine corrected the translation, allowing the new translation to be issued with approval under the auspices of the next Pope.