Geology Reference
In-Depth Information
Grappling with this controversy, Martin Luther emphatically labeled the Latin Bible a
flawed text and devoted himself to sorting through the different wordings of the Greek and
Hebrew texts. His efforts led him to dismiss the topics of James and Jude as true scrip-
ture and relegate them to the end of his Bible. About the Book of Revelation, he wrote that
every man could make up his own mind, but he “cannot find that it was inspired by the
cern the meaning of scripture, one had to go back and read the original texts. Even Luther
acknowledged that scriptural interpretation required care to avoid potentially flawed plain-
sense understanding.
When the sixteenth-century Council of Trent met to judge Protestant heresies and clarify
church teachings, the assembled bishops were deeply concerned that if they upheld Luth-
er's critique the Latin Bible would lose all authority. The more they debated, the more au-
thoritative Jerome's Latin translation became. The council finally declared the Latin Bible
superior to the Greek and Hebrew versions, a conclusion they considered to be inspired by
God. The bishops disagreed with Luther's claim that ordinary men could interpret the plain
words of scripture for themselves. Fearing that freedom to interpret the Bible for oneself
was the first step on the road to heresy, the Council moved to protect the church's authority
and, in a fit of brinkmanship, deemed the translation more authentic than the original.
Recognition that Moses did not write much of what was attributed to him caused quite
a scandal in 1685 when French clergyman Richard Simon outraged both Protestants and
Catholics alike with his
Critical History of the Old Testament
. He came to this conclusion
when his superiors in the Catholic Order of the Oratory asked him to provide scholarly ar-
guments for use against Calvinists who rejected the authority of the church and trusted the
Bible alone for spiritual guidance. Critically dissecting the Bible, he turned his attention
first to the opening chapters of the Old Testament. The contradictions and confusion attend-
ing various literal interpretations of scripture could be explained by recognizing the histor-
ical nature of Genesis as a compiled story. The conflicting styles, repetitions, and logical
impossibility of Moses writing about his own death implied that Genesis was compiled by
a series of scribes long after Moses died. Extending his analysis to the New Testament, Si-
mon was able to demonstrate that no original version of the Bible survived; that variations
