The Bible: A History by Stephen M Miller

Author:Stephen M Miller [Miller, Stephen M]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lion Books
Published: 2015-05-14T23:00:00+00:00

Beehive huts

Early Irish monasteries were not big sprawling buildings like the ones in Europe. Rather, they were composed of a group of small beehive-shaped huts, or cells – one for each monk. There was also a chapel, a refectory (communal dining room) and a kitchen. Larger monasteries included other buildings needed for farming work, and perhaps a scriptorium and library. But monks were also known to copy manuscripts in their cells, or even outdoors.

Bibles for Europe

By the time the church scholar Jerome had got around to translating the Bible into Latin, the official language of the Romans, the Roman empire was on its last legs. Jerome finished his work in about AD 405. At that moment in history, Latin was the perfect language for the Bible in Europe. Latin was the language of choice for literature, and was widely understood, especially by people in cities.

Five years later, Rome was sacked by tribal warriors, and the empire was dead by the end of the century. Yet Latin lingered for several centuries, just as Greek had done earlier. Although fewer and fewer people spoke Latin, it remained the preferred language of the Church and the Bible. Unfortunately, this meant that in time, people were listening to Bible readings in church services without understanding a word. Eventually, even the less-educated priests did not understand the words they were reading from the Bible, or reciting in liturgies.

To communicate God’s message in this new era, the nations needed to produce Bibles in their native languages. Beginning in the 600s, Europeans began to see at least parts of the Bible, especially the Gospels and Psalms, in their own languages. Translating the entire Bible was a monumental task, and there are no known copies of it in any European language before the 1200s.

At first, translators took tiny steps. They would copy the Latin Bible, and then add above each line notes that scholars call glosses. These could be explanatory notes, but were often word-for-word, literal translations of the Latin text. These glosses did not provide smoothly flowing prose. For example, the Latin phrase, ‘Damnant quod non intelligent’ is usually translated, ‘They condemn what they do not understand.’ A word-for-word translation would be, ‘Condemn what not understand.’

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