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Catholic Q & A → The History of Catholic Bible Translations

Did the Church "keep" the bible from Catholics by translating it only in the Latin language?

Time-out for some facts about the Church and the bible…

Before one claims that “the Church kept the Scripture in Latin to keep it from the people”, consider this:

• At the time of St. Jerome's translation into Latin (392 A.D.), the current Latin Vulgate, Catholic translations existed in Greek, Latin, Armenian, Syriac, Coptic, Arabic, and Ethiopic.
• At the time of Luther's German transliteration (not a true translation), there were 27 versions of the Bible in German, 9 of which were produced prior to Luther's birth.
• Prior to the production of the KJV, the Bible in English had already been produced by the Catholic Church in the Douai-Rheims Version of 1582-1609, the KJV being dated 1611. At that same time there existed 40 versions in Italian, 18 in French (prior to 1547) and versions in Spanish begun in 1478. The complete text of the Scriptures in English, done by the Venerable Bede in the 8th century were no longer extant but partial versions did exist.
• St. Methodius, in A.D. 878 was sent to the Holy See, charged with heresy and with celebrating Mass in Slavonic. He was cleared of heresy, the Slav liturgy was deemed desirable, and he returned to his people. During the last four years of his life, he completed the Slavonic translation of the Bible (except the Books of Maccabees). He died, April 6, 885.
• Alfred Aetheling (849-900), Alfred the Great, personally shared in the translation of portions of the Bible. Blessed Hedwig, Queen, dedicated to giving Christianity real roots in Poland, founded the Benedictine abbey of the Holy Cross and superintended the translation of the Bible into Polish. She died on June 12, 1399 shortly after the translation was produced. Father Jacob Wujek (d. 1597), besides distinguished service as preacher and professor, edited a good Polish translation of the Bible.
• Of the 626 editions of the Bible known to have been extant prior to the KJV, 198 were in the vernacular. Not a bad record at all for a Church doing it all by hand. Of course, you are aware that the first book printed was a Catholic Bible, at Gutenberg (the Gooseflesh Bible).
• The Latin Vulgate, itself, was "in the language of the people", insofar as there existed two major classes of people through most of the early Western history: those who could read Latin and those who could not read. The word "Vulgate" refers to the "vulgar" or "common" language. It was produced by the Church for the express purpose of putting the Bible into the "common" or "vulgar" language so that people could have access to Sacred Scripture in a language they could read or listen to and understand.
• The Eastern, Greek-speaking Catholic Church has always had the Bible in the original Greek.

And of course there exist many translations in a wide range of languages today. I believe you will agree that this short compilation of historical evidence (with appreciation to a great Catholic father and husband, A.R.L.), evidence which can be researched and confirmed, should dispel any questions of the motives behind the Church's translations.

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