How We Got Our Bible L#11b

Opening

Okie dokie. All right, let's see here. Brother Keaton, you want to open us in prayer, please? Amen. Okay, so last week we started in on the word of the Lord is precious, or the word of the Lord was precious in those days. And we mentioned, that everything was hand copied, that it took sometimes almost a year to produce a Bible that a lot of people couldn't read. That was another problem. You have to kind of put yourself back in what it would have been like and think about what it would have been like. We didn't, there was no printing press. There's no mass production of anything. And so the word of the Lord was precious.

And when you add to the fact that Europe was overrun by people that were illiterate, they spoke a language, but they didn't, a lot of them used some runic characters, but it wasn't a grammatical syntax like we would consider a written language. And so you had most of Europe didn't read at all. And then the church, of course, in the East had a Greek Bible and the church in the West had a Latin Bible. But for the most part, and there were exceptions, but for the most part, they kept that Bible in the church. And there weren't always efforts made to translate it into what we call the vulgar tongues.

And so that's where the term vulgate comes from. It was an attempt to put the Bible into the vulgar Latin, spoken Latin, the Latin of the people. And so Europe was in flux and the Greek world was a mess and rich and drunk on its own history. The Eastern Roman Empire continued on for a thousand years after Rome fell and didn't produce hardly any literature of note. The art it produced was architecture, maybe some colorful iconography. But just the rich part, it was a rich part of the world, but had a very dead church, as we talked about last week, a church that would fight over a vowel, fight over a fight over a word.

And evangelism by the Greek church really slowed down. Well, I want you to look at second Corinthians chapter four, second Corinthians chapter four. And so you had challenges beyond just getting the scripture to people. You had people that couldn't read. And so in order for them to read, you had to teach them the Bible. Excuse me, you had to teach them Latin. And then on top of that, that doesn't mean that you would have a Bible to give them. And we just take that for granted. But there were even churches that only had portions of a Bible churches into the Middle Ages. There were churches that they had Psalms that they would read and sing.

They might have lessons from some books. They might have a copy of the gospel. But there were churches all throughout Europe, especially in the midst of the of the barbarian invasions, which were constant for a few centuries. They didn't even the churches sometimes didn't have a whole Bible. And so it's it's hard for us to imagine. But that was the world of the Bible after the fall of the of the Western Roman Empire. And there were more Bibles in the East because you had some stability in the Greek churches, but not as much in the West. Now, first Corinthians, chapter four, first Corinthians, chapter four. And did I say second?

Well, that's where we should be. I mean, yeah. Sorry. Thank you. Who said that? Thank you, brother. Second Corinthians, chapter four. And look at verse seven, where the Lord says this. We have this treasure. And he's talking, of course, about the Christian's body. But we have this treasure in earth and vessels. And what you have. This is different from how the Hebrew Old Testament was transmitted. The Hebrew Old Testament. There was a dedicated group as we study the dedicated group of scribes that they were entrusted with taking care of it. Now, there were times when those scribes apostatized. There were times when the Levites weren't up to snuff. And so a king would have to kind of crack the whip and get them in order.

That's what Josiah did. Right. That's what Hezekiah did. That's what Ezra and Nehemiah did. But yet you had a specific group that was entrusted with taking care of the Hebrew Old Testament. Now, you don't have that with the New Testament as much. You don't. No one sat down at any point and said, OK, you guys, your job. Now, there were people that did it, but there were no official. There weren't official Bibles. The Bible spread out faster than there was any official to control it. And so it was kept by the power of God. And you always got to remember that the priesthood in the New Testament in the church age is not an ordained priesthood like the Catholic Church or like the Levitical priesthood.

The priesthood is every believer to every believer. And that's important to remember. And so God used the church, the priesthood, to protect his word. And, it's it's in that church. Right. Has heretics. That church has or Orthodox heretics and it has Aryan heretics and it has schismatics and it has people that are backslidden and people that are selfish and people that are in it for the wrong reasons. Right. And as Thomas Hobbes said, he said, the Catholic Church is the ghost of the deceased Roman Empire sitting crowned upon the grave thereof. And as the Roman Empire fell, as you learned in church history, the organization of the church moved in to fill the administrative void.

Right. And that worked both ways. Churchmen were promoted to government positions. But oftentimes old Roman aristocrats. Right. Trained in statecraft were promoted within the Catholic Church. and I've told you this. Right. A good a good example of that would be Ambrose in the fifth century, who was baptized and ordained to the deaconate. And then to be a bishop and then an archbishop all in one week. And he was he basically he was the he was asked by a bishop in Italy if he could if he could fill an administrative hole. He says, I'm not even baptized, man. He says, that's OK. And so the church began to be filled with people that were that were gifted in administration.

Right. And it's a church of a billion people today, but not necessarily godly. Right. And as Durant said, the church sees to be a set of devotees and became an organization governing the lives and destinies of millions of men. And a big difference, big difference. And so and this it's so, the church as a whole. And by this now, I mean everybody that say born again, it's it's human. And you had break off groups from that church and you had you had independent groups in Spain. Right. It's important to remember church history. I know that there are certain churches that claim that they gave us the Bible, but it's important to remember medieval Christian Spain after being overrun by the Moors, the Muslims in the sixth and seventh centuries.

The parts of it that remain Christian had their own church. Right. They didn't even follow the pope. there's this there's this idea that the Roman church has always been homogenous and everybody always submitted to Peter's chair and all that kind of stuff. And this is not true. This is not true. Right. Europeans were they were the descendants of Vandals and Visigoths and Huns, barbarians, and they were very independent. Right. And so, the Spanish church had a Catholic church had a different flavor than the Italian Catholic church and the British and Irish churches big time. Right. Never for a long time, never recognized the supremacy of Rome. And so they kind of all had their own thing going on.

And sometimes it was a spiritual thing and sometimes it was a political thing. in Christian Visigothic Spain, the ecclesiastics, the churchmen, essentially, they essentially had were a second nobility. They owned land. They owned they controlled serfs. Right. Had a feudalistic society, owned slaves, conducted their own wars. I'm talking bishops. Right. And so it's just, it's it's it's different, varied, regional, not homogenous. And in this mess. Right. Of barbarian overthrow and people trying to step in and bring order to the post Roman society in this, you have born again Christians preaching the gospel and trying to live right. And like they always have. Right. And so what is it? What is this Bible?

The Lesson

It's a treasure in earth and vessel vessels. And it always has been. It always has been. Right. When I hold this hand, I hold the treasure in an earth and vessel. I hold something breathed on by God, blessed by God, ordained by God, empowered by God. Right. With all of God's power and authority vested in it. What am I? An earth and vessel. And it's always been that way. But that what? But look what he says. The excellency of the power might may be of what? Hallelujah. And not of us. Amen. That's where the power is. The powers of God. Not of us. It always has been. And it always will be.

And it's why he told Gideon, get rid of those people. Let's let's get it down to 300. So I'll get the glory. Right. And so now when we talk about this age of the word of the Lord is precious. We're just going to we're going to we're going to we're going to move on here. We're going to we're going to we're going to move on here. I talked about at the start of the Middle Ages. The Greek Eastern Church had a Greek Bible. Right. The Latin Western Churches had a had a Latin Bible. The Syrian Church had a Syrian Bible known as a Pashida. And, all of these Bibles, when you got into the age of printing and the Bibles were translated and printed in the modern tongues, Italian, Dutch, French, English.

Right. These were the main versions that were consulted. Hebrew, Greek, Latin and Syrian. Those were the main ones. There were other ones consulted as well. The Armenian was consulted. The Gothic was consulted. And we'll talk a little bit more about that later. But let's just let's get going here. Now, as Europe fell apart, as Europe fell apart, when the Roman Empire fell apart, the Bible was protected and copied by different people, by different groups. God said he would preserve his word. All right. And one of the places that those that happened was in that old ascetic world. And they were ascetic. They were very much taken over by leaving houses and lands and families and this type of thing.

Right. But in that ascetic world, in those monasteries, the silver lining of the monastic tradition is that you had men that in those monasteries all over the Greek East, all over Ireland, Britain, Italy, Greece, you had men that would copy the scriptures and they dedicated their lives to doing that. Right. And those places, those were that were dedicated to the preservation of manuscripts and the copying of scriptures were called scriptoriums, scriptoriums. And so we'll talk about a little bit about this. Now, when I talk about feudal chaos in Europe, right, this is this is the world that the Bible was preserved in. Right. But it is just I just kind of pasted this.

But right. This is this is I've talked about this. But right. These are the vandals. They came all the way through what would be France today and all the way down through Spain and all the way across North Africa. And they attacked Corsica and they attacked Rome and they attacked southern Italy and Sicily, went all the way over to Sparta. Right. This these are all attacks by Eastern like the Huns came out of the Asian steppes. Right. I think the Huns are purple here. Right. These are all attacks by Eastern and Germanic tribes. Right. Now, this is A.D. 526. But this is this is what tore up Europe. Right. And you have a European Bible.

Right. This class is how we got our Bible, how we got our English Bible. Right. Well, it came out of this world. This is this is this is just countless. it's the oldest, the oldest story in the world is, the Magyars showed up, the Huns showed up, the Vikings, the Danes, they were mostly called the Danes showed up. And what did they do? Well, they went they went into the churches. They stole the golden chalice and the golden candlesticks because that's where the wealth was. And then they burned everything. And time and time again, you read of libraries being burned, of monasteries being burned, of scriptoriums being burned. Right. And this is the world our Bible was in at that time.

Right. And so and it's depicted in it's depicted in a thousand artworks, and that's the Magyars. They came. They were like the Bulgars. They came out of Eastern Europe and the Black Sea region and just tore Europe up. All right. This is a little later. Right. This is around 814 A.D. Right. But here's the here's the Magyar invasions right here. Right. And they just tore up. They tore up central Europe and everywhere they went. There was one town that had 43 churches and they burned every single one of them. Right. So when you when you when you think about the paucity of ancient manuscripts, this is one of the big reasons.

Right. And so, of course, then anywhere on the coast for a couple hundred years, they lived in terror of the Viking invasions. Right. And then, of course, from the south, you have the Moors. Right. With the explosion of Islam in the seventh century. Right. Now, it got to this point. It got to this point in Europe. It got to this point where a European nation, they say, couldn't float a plank on the high seas. And I'm talking the great nations, Italy. Right. The Gauls. Right. The old the old stalwarts of ancient Rome, the Roman powers. Right. This area was controlled by Muslim pirates and organized navies. Right. And this area was controlled by I mean, you just never knew when the Danes were going to show up.

Right. And so Europe, in another way, it became very insulated, became very insulated. And that's why one of the reasons we call it the Dark Ages. Right. So you have illiteracy. Right. And then you've lost contact. You've lost contact with the East, which is where the literature comes from. It's where the science comes from. In fact, in this era, in this era, the heart of culture and science and education was actually the Arab world. Right. The best place to get science, mathematics, astronomy, Greek philosophy even, was kept and preserved in a hundred Muslim libraries all over the Muslim world. And so. But this part, it didn't go dark. It didn't go dark, but it was it was squished.

It was squished. And one of the reasons, actually, one of the only connections in this dark age with the East, which that's where, when you when you went to when you were in school, you learned about the Italian Renaissance. Right. And what was that is essentially a revival of Greek learning in the European world that kind of opened their eyes again to literature and science. Right. We learned that as a generality. OK. The world in many it was there's still stuff around, but the circulation of books and the copying of books, it wasn't as it wasn't as saturated at this time. And one of the only connections, interestingly enough, between the Eastern world.

Right. Where all the old knowledge is. We're talking Babylon. We're talking Persia. We're talking Assyria. We're talking Egypt. Right. The part of the world that knew something. Yeah. These people were barbarians. They didn't even have a real language, written language, a real written language. Right. The part almost cut off. And this is one of the reasons, the sailing and the other was. Well, there are other reasons, but one of the only connections, interestingly enough, between the two worlds was Jewish traders. And Charlemagne, the French, the Holy Roman Empire, Charlemagne was very assiduous about protecting the Jews in his kingdom because they were able to travel between the Muslim North Africa, between the Byzantine East.

Right. They knew both worlds and they kind of kept a little bit of the culture and the trade open. And so he was very careful about taking care of the Jews in his kingdom because of that. And just an interesting little note for all you, for all you Instagram historians. Now, when we talk about this world and how the Lord in different ways preserved our Bible. Right. The money was in the East. The wealth was in the East. I think I was talking about this with somebody. You think about the wealth of the world. Right. So like Solomon's Temple. Right. Well, what happened to Solomon's Temple? Well, some of the gold went to Egypt.

Some of the gold went to Babylon. Right. And then the Persians conquered them. So then the Persians got all that gold. Right. And then the Greeks conquered them. So then the Greeks got all that gold. Then the Romans conquered them. And what happened to all that wealth? But most of it was in the East. The East was much more developed. Much more advanced. And so in the East, you had you had some organization, Constantinople. This is the this is libraries and scriptoriums of the Byzantine world, all the way up to where it was overthrown by the Ottoman Turks, 1453 A.D. This is the Hagia Sophia, the great cathedral in Constantinople.

And all these outbuildings here. Now, with the patriarchal library of Constantinople, it was one time housed in an outbuilding of the Hagia Sophia. And it and it kept lots of manuscripts and up to 100,000, they say, not just of Bibles, but of all literature until when the Crusaders came through, the European Crusaders came through in 1204 A and laid siege to Constantinople, any book that had any jewels or any gold gilting on it or anything like that, they just ripped it all up and they burned a lot. So it's been through a lot, but there were a lot of libraries established. In fact, Constantine, the first emperor there in Constantinople in the fourth century, established a library there.

So with Europe and post Roman flux, the Eastern Empire continues on for another thousand years, preserving manuscripts of the Bible. And then the Crusaders sacked it in 1204, Mohammed, the Conqueror, sacked it in 1453. And both times those libraries suffered terribly. But this was one of the great libraries of the post Roman world. And it was established by Constantine. But then talk about, God preserving things. Right. Julian the Apostate purged it of Christian books in 363. They had a pagan empire, tried to take Rome back to the pagan world. And so he purged it of Christian books. But it was restored by later emperors. It was said to have housed 100,000 volumes.

Right. Now, in that Greek world, you had these Greek Orthodox monasteries. This is the Studios Monastery. It was established in 463 A.D. And this particular one, this is also in Constantinople. This particular one, it's just ruins now. But it existed for the sole purpose of preserving and copying and passing on copies of both the Bible and church fathers. And so thousands, thousands were copied here over the centuries. Men just dedicated to it. Now, also, you have the Cappadocian monasteries in northern Turkey. These are caves. But you have places like this. Right. In a world where you constantly had Persians coming in and sacking things and barbarians coming in and sacking and burning.

And then you had emperors that the Eastern Roman emperors or the Greek emperors. Right. They enforced the law of the church. OK. Heresy was a capital crime. In other words, if you had a different opinion on the Trinity, different opinion on the Bible, different opinion on the second advent. Right. They could kill you. Right. And so it was not uncommon for in different eras, depending on who was in charge, who was enforcing what for Christians to flee into the mountains. And so you even had all honeycombed over the Eastern world. You have places where people would run and hide and they'd bring the scriptures with them and they'd and they'd copy them there.

And that, you can still go see some of these places. All right. Now, this is another place. This is the this is Athos. It's an island. Right. In Greece. And there's over 20 monasteries there that there's no women allowed on that island, which I'm not sure. I don't know. But I don't know, man. well, you got Lesbos right across the water. So, I don't know. They got to have their counterpart. But it Christians resorted here long ago. Christians resorted here for refuge in the earliest times. So you had little places like this. And these places weren't all built at once. Right. You'd have a little building. Then you'd have outbuildings added.

And then at some time they'd add that little, Coppola and stuff like this. And you would that these would take these would develop over the centuries. But a lot of these, a lot of the Greek manuscripts now that you have in libraries in Europe can be traced to places like this. Very, very old. Long time ago. And just some dude growing cabbage and carrots and tomatoes and garlic and copying the scriptures. And I'm glad somebody did it. Amen. Praise the Lord. Somebody did it. And, the monastic life is another subject. Right. But you can't question their dedication. You can't question their dedication. So these places, you have places, this is the ruins of a, of a scriptorium in Calabria, right?

Southern Italy. Manuscripts underlying your Reformation text, your Bible have been traced to this. This was established in 544 by Cassidorius. And he, Emperor Cassidorius, established this one because, once again, with, with the fall of the Roman Empire, learning kind of fell into decay. And so certain, certain, I want you to go to Ecclesiastes. But, before you go there, before you go there, let's go to 2 Chronicles. Let's go to, I want to show you something. it's more the subject of theological history or church history, but especially the Eastern Church had a horrible habit of fighting over stupid stuff. And, we're much better now as Christians, as Baptists. And, but, I mean, to the point that, and I'm not kidding now, to the point where when a new preacher was installed at a church, if the people didn't approve of them, I mean, they threw rocks at them from the crowd.

That happened in Alexandria, right? with, with, with the Eastern Church debating Arianism, right, and, and the, if Christ was the same essence as God, and the Council of Nicaea ruled against them, right, the, the churches were already fighting and sometimes resorting to physical violence, okay, over, over these doctrines. And so what, what would happen sometimes is, especially in areas that were, had a high percentage of Christians, because you had regions in the, in the Greek East where 50% or more of, of towns were Christian. Even 75%, right, even 75%, right, the gospel had really permeated Syria and, and, and, and Egypt and, and Palestine and, and, and these, and a lot of Mesopotamians.

So, but, they, as, as Paul, as James said, from whence come wars and fightings among you, right, this was all prophesied that this would happen. Paul said if you err, you err for the faith, right, you get your doctrine messed up, right, it'll bring a lot of problems. He said that in 2nd Timothy, right, and so, and so what would happen sometimes is rulers would step in, which is unfortunate, right? I think Paul might have talked about that. Why are you bringing things before the unjust, right? But there's, it was a great carnality, and the church forsook Paul's doctrine, right? And they adopted a mixture of paganism and Christianity, and, and it was a mess.

And so, and so sometimes emperors would have to step in. Look at 2nd Chronicles 24, and, and, and, and really the, the wedding, the, the, the joining of, of church and state is, is, is, is, is, is, is, it's more the church's fault than anyone else's. And 2nd Chronicles chapter 24, and, and this is Joash, and look what it says in verse 6. And the king called for Jehoiada the chief, right, that's the chief of the Levites, and said unto him, Why hast thou not required of the Levites to bring in out of Judah and out of Jerusalem the collection? what you had in Israel's history sometimes? You had a, you had a king, and he had to get on the case of the Levites to tell him to do their job.

Look at 2nd Chronicles chapter 29. 2nd Chronicles chapter 29. And this is speaking about when Hezekiah restores proper temple worship. And Hezekiah shouldn't have to be doing this, right? This should be, God set up an authority structure within the sons of Aaron, within the, the Levites. The king should not have to, the king should be worried about fighting the enemies, and taxes, and, and digging canals, and building roads. But notice 2nd Chronicles 29.25, and He set Levites in the house of the Lord, right? And you'll, you'll read this chapter. Hezekiah is instituting reforms because the Levites had, they'd apostatized. They'd apostatized. And, look at, look at chapter 34. Look at chapter 34, and look at verse, verse 30.

And the king, the king went up into the house of the Lord, and all the men of Judah, and the heavens of Jerusalem, and the priests, and the Levites, and all the people, great and small. And he read in their ears all the words of the book of the covenant that was found in the house of the Lord. So there were just, there were times in Israel's history where the king, had to, had to, step in. And, and you'll see that if you read, toward the end of 2nd Chronicles. Now, I want you to go to Ecclesiastes, Ecclesiastes, and, look at, chapter 8. And look what the Bible says about this. the powers that be, the Bible says, are what?

They're ordained to God. And I don't know how all that works, right? But God works with authority, I know that. And look at Ecclesiastes, chapter 8, and, and, and verse, and it's unfortunate that this has to happen, but when you have Christians that are, that, are, are throwing rocks at each other in churches, and this happened several times in this era, the, the, the king just has to step in and say, okay, this is what we're going to do. And the problem with that is you let the camel get his nose in the tent, and you get how that works, right? But they'll go, what are you guys arguing about?

Well, this is what we're arguing about. Okay, tell me your side, okay, this is what we're going to do. Right? And that's, that, obviously, that's not how it should be, but that's how it happens sometimes. Right? And, and look at, Ecclesiastes, chapter 8, Ecclesiastes, chapter 8. I mean, sometimes someone just needs to step in and make a decision. Don't we know that? Don't you wish someone will go to Congress sometime and say, okay, you guys get it together, or you're all out. I, I mean, I have a new, I have a new thing. I'm voting against every incumbent from now on. Every single one of them. I don't care. I'll work, I'll vote for a purple hair against any incumbent.

They, they all get in there. They all get rich. They all get corrupt. I'm not doing that, but I threaten every year. Then they scare me by telling me that the, the, the other candidates are going to bring in black helicopters, put us all in concentration camp. So I go back and vote for the lesser of two evils, and it happens every time, and around and around we go. You know? And, anyways, Ecclesiastes, chapter 8, look at verse 4. Where the word of a what? Where the word of a king is, there is what? Power. And who may say unto him, what doest thou? Sometimes, the king just says, okay, this is what we're doing.

Okay? You knock it off, and you knock it off, and this is what we're doing. Right? And that, we don't understand this as much as Americans, but there are some parts of the world where you have to have someone like that. You just have to have someone like that who says, this is what's going on. And now, even in the history of the Bible, and we'll talk about this, but as, as, with all of the Viking and the barbarian incursions, what happened was, is that a lot of times people, the truth kind of survived at the edges of the world, right? And so, Ireland and Britain, right, and places far removed from the mess carried on with copying the scriptures and with, some sort of order.

And then what happened is, is believe it or not, a lot of, of Europe was, was evangelized backwards. In other words, like a man named Columba established a monastery on Iona, and he sent out missionaries all over the British Isles. And actually, Irish missionaries and British slash Scottish type missionaries actually, in the next few centuries, brought their Latin Bibles and brought their manuscripts and brought, many times, the gospel back to Europe. So they, they, they fled here. They were pushed here by the Romans, right? They were pushed here early. They've been there from the earliest times. They were, and then they, they were safe here when the rest of the world was, rest of Europe was falling apart and in chaos.

And they went down and they evangelized Germany and they evangelized France. And just one of the ways that God preserved his word. And I say that these guys were sequestered at the end of the earth. This is Iona right here. This little rock island right here in Scotland. And this was a missionary training school that was started by a guy named Columba, Columba, excuse me, Columba, in the 6th century. And this guy was a hard case. This guy was a hard case. And he lived in a hard world, you know. And his, his, his guys lived off fishing and growing cabbage and turnips. But it was a missionary training school where you came to and, and you were serious or you were kicked out.

And he was the real deal. And, and there were several, it's also, it was the Irish Scottish world, right? There's several records of him punching people in the nose as well. But, I think that was a little more normal back then. But, this is Iona Abbey in Scotland. It was found in 563. It had a missionary training school, a scriptorium. And these guys at the ends of the world before the Vikings came in, they, they, they copied your Latin scriptures. I, Ireland had a lot of them. This is the Saul Monastery in Dublin, Ireland. It dates back to the time of Patrick, about 432 A.D. And these guys were copying a Bible, from before Jerome even updated the Latin Bible, right?

They were, Britain and, and Ireland had an old Latin Bible that was there from very early times. It's also very interesting to know that when you read the writings of these guys, like Patrick, they never talk about Mary. They never talk about, the supremacy of the Pope. They never send any report back to Rome. It's absent from their writings, right? There's a very independent nature and character to the Christianity in Britain and Ireland. And it's always been so, right? and so at, there was a time when the, when the Anglo-Saxon kings brought them into communion with Rome. And then it was very Catholic. Then it became super Catholic. And then, of course, you had the Reformation, Henry VIII, and all that kind of stuff.

But very old. And these, and, and, and so, sequestered at the ends of the earth, there's Lindisfarne. And this was the famous abbey in Northumberland, England. So that would be up in, that would, that would be up in here, right? Right here. And, this was sacked by the Vikings, I think, in the eighth, ninth century. but it, some manuscripts can be, can be traced to this abbey right here. It was started in 634 A.D., then the Vikings tore it up. This is called the Lindisfarne Gospels. They were actually, produced here. And, I think I showed this last week. But when we talk about the word of the Lord being precious, most of these abbeys were, were raided and burned by the, by the Danes.

But some of the guys made it out with some of the manuscripts. And, were able to, some of them were brought to Europe. Some of them were brought to Charlemagne's kingdom, actually, in France. And made it, so sometimes the Bible went backward to areas that it had already been. Right? And I think I talked about this. And I'll tell you something neat about this, is that, in a, in a dark age, I guess, in an age where it doesn't seem, and they're learning more now, but it doesn't seem like science really advanced, that people were kind of, living in darkness. And yet, to see the care that these guys took with these Bibles is quite interesting.

To see how much they cared about what they were doing. and I always like seeing someone that cares about what they're doing. this is, this is that, this is that purple dyed, they dye it purple, and then they use silver and gold lettering there, which is, I mean, obviously that's not something a, a, a common man would, would be able to use, you know. now, what did we say? We said, where the word of the king is, there is power. And I'll tell you what the Lord did here in an era that was a mess. Right? You had some, several kings that he used to, to establish schools, establish scriptoriums, and, and keep copying the scriptures.

Now, you see pictures like this of Charlemagne, right? And he probably wore that for a ceremony. Right? He was the first Holy Roman Emperor. He was, he was, he was, but he was from Gaul. He was from, or, he was a, he was a Teuton from this region right here. This is where he was from. And, you can see, the extent of his empire. So this is that barbarian, illiterate world. And this guy, he couldn't write. He, when he got older and he was done fighting, he practiced writing every day, because he hated that he couldn't write. And he, but he could, he could speak the old Germanic Teuton. He could speak and understand Latin.

He understood Greek, but he couldn't, he couldn't write it. But he had, Charlemagne had native genius. Now, he's pictured like this, and then you'll see this, where the Pope crowned him Holy Roman Empire. But really, Charlemagne looked, was nothing like this. He was, he was, he was six foot four. Most of the time, he had linen breeches and a leather or linen tunic or a wool tunic. Wore furs in the winter. he led fifth, when he became king, he led 53 raids himself, or 53 campaigns against the barbarians in his world. He was, really, he was just a killer, was what he was. And he swam, he hunted, and spent hours and days on horseback, and, and, and was, was a very vigorous man.

He reigned for 47 years. He died when he was like 72, which is old, old in those days. But they didn't really, I mean, really, that was how he dressed. This is an old, this is old art. But this is, this is, that, those, linen and leather, right? They, they, simply, that's more how he dressed. That's him talking to his boy. But, you get all that Renaissance artwork, and they, make it all faggy, you know. But that wasn't what he was, that wasn't what he was like. He was a, he was a stinking killer, is what he was. Yeah. So, Charlemagne ruled. Now, I just want to say a few things about this guy, and there's a lot to say about him.

But, where the word of the king is, where the word of the king is, there's power. And, he was very bothered by the illiteracy, by the illiteracy in, in his kingdom. Now, don't get me wrong. I don't, I'm not saying he was a righteous man. Okay. I mean, his, his, his, his, his, his, this is what he said to the Saxons. He said, well, you can be baptized, or I'll kill you, because he was sick of them burning churches. So, he, he beheaded 4,500 Saxons in one day. So, let's, make no mistake, this guy's a, he's an animal. Okay. But he was bothered by the illiteracy, of his day. And so, he imported scholars and manuscripts from Britain, Britain, Ireland, and Italy.

And he ordered education for all the subjects of his kingdom. He oversaw the copying and distribution, of Bibles. He said, I want to make sure every church has a Bible. Now, beyond that, he ordered all of the churchmen to educate the people in their parish and not charge for it. It was the first, first free public education in Europe. Right? And he said, you can't charge for it. You're not allowed to charge for it. You're going to, I want you to teach them reading, writing, and arithmetic. Right? And, and music. He made him teach him music as well. And, and, he actually, and, because the stinking church was so rich, he taxed them.

He taxed them to pay for the educational programs. And, he was a great leader. He was a great organizer. He ordered churches to teach the young people how to, how to, how to read. And he sent all over, to get, men to, bring Bibles and bring literature to his people. He established a lot of schools that eventually became, universities. And, ordered the copying of Latin scriptures. Now, here's another one. And then we'll be done here. Well, I would just, these are these Bibles of the, of the Middle Ages. You can see how much they cared about them. Right? I'm going to go, what, we're going to have to go back to these because I want you to see this.

Closing

Right? Yeah, I want you to see all that, but we're going to go back. I'm going to finish right here. Here's another one. Alfred the Great. He was an Anglo-Saxon king, 871 to 899. he witnessed the devastation of, of Britain by the Vikings. And he said, when I was a boy, I remember going to churches and they were full of, of, of, of, of books. And they almost all got wiped out. And illiteracy dropped to an all-time low in the Anglo-Saxon world. And so this guy, after he was done fighting the Vikings, he set about to, reestablish, reading and writing in his kingdom. And he pushed the church. He pushed the church to translate into old English or Anglo-Saxon.

He pushed them. And it bothered him that the only people that could read were the clergy. It bothered him. Charlemagne and Alfred the Great. And Alfred the Great was greatly influenced by Charlemagne. But both of these men, it came at a time where, look, look, you want to know the Bible? Come to church. Oh, you don't know Latin? That's okay. Right? Just trust me. That, that, that was how it was. And it bothered these kings that it was that way. That there was so much knowledge and it was only tied up with a few that then took advantage of it. Right? Hey, knowledge is power. Right? And so the Alfred and Charlemagne, right, were the two outstanding figures of the Middle Ages that, that, that sent abroad to bring educated and manuscripts to their people.

And, and set about, Alfred actually set about starting to translate the Latin Bible into the vulgar tongues. And they ended up, just after he was dead, you had the Wessex Gospels and you had the Hexatuk, which is Genesis through, through Joshua. And, and just to give you an idea of the illiterate world, this is the Hexatuk, this is the Hexatuk here, the Old English Hexatuk. And these, these are paraphrases. These are paraphrases. Right? From creation. Right? And I think there's some other, here's the story of Lot and Sodom and Gomorrah. And they're not word-for-word translations, but they're close. But actually, what they are? They're comic books. They're kind of comic books.

And the reason they are is because people were illiterate. They couldn't read. This was the early attempts to get Bible truth to a world that couldn't read and write. Right? And, but it was, it was started by kings poking the stinking Christians in the butt and saying, what are you doing? Your churches are full of gold and your people can't read. Right? Where the word of the king is, there's power. Right? There's, there's the old, there's seven copies of the Wessex Gospels. Those are from 990 A.D. But those reforms were started by, by Alfred. And that's one of the reasons they call him the great. The great. By the way, Catholic churchmen called this dangerous.

I'm going to read this and we'll be done. No. Okay. I'm going to, I got a copy of this here. The, this is, Elfrick was the man that oversaw the translation of these, the Wessex Gospels and the old English, Hexatuck. Right? And, this, I'm just going to read you. He said, this will give you an idea of the word of the Lord is precious. You asked me, friend, that I should translate the book of Genesis from Latin into English for you. Skip a little. Now, it seems to me, friend, that the work of translation is very dangerous to me or anyone to undertake because I fear that if someone foolish reads this book or hears it read that someone might wish to think that one might now live under the new law just as the old fathers lived when in the old time before the law was established just as people lived under the law of Moses.

For instance, Jacob had four wives. Right? You also see in the book of Genesis that a brother took his sister, his wife, sometimes a child, his own daughter. Many men also had more wives from the people and he says if we translate the Bible into these languages maybe the people will think that they're allowed to do that. Right? In other words, you can't trust them with the Bible. That's what he's saying. If anyone wishes to live now after the coming of Christ just as people lived before the law of Moses or under the law of Moses that one is not a Christian or even deserving that any Christian might eat with them.

This is the same reason Euphilus didn't translate kings into Gothic. He figured it would encourage their warlike tendencies. Right? So this was the attitude of the churchmen toward giving the people the Bible in their language and he didn't believe that they could be trusted with. In fact, he says this. He not only says that, he says this. He says, Unlearned priests, if they understand only a little of Latin books, then it seems to them that they might quickly be great teachers although they do not know the spiritual meaning of them. Who's that? Who are we reminded of? We're reminded of origin. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Going into all the world and preach to God, stop, stop, stop, stop.

You don't get it. You don't get the spiritual meaning. And then he just goes on to say, for instance, this actually means this, this actually means this, this actually means this. And so the church, when I say this, the established church in areas of different Catholic stripes, there was a lot of pushback to translating the Bible into the language of the people because they flat out said the people can't be trusted with that knowledge. Right? And that is why for centuries, most of your Bibles look like this. Right? They're huge and no one can afford them. Right? They take a year to copy. Right? And what started to happen with these reforms is that you started getting smaller Bibles, Bibles you could carry around or pieces of the Gospels or Paul's Epistles that would be translated and copied into handmade form that you're, that's, or hand-sized form that your average Joe could carry around.

Right? And this, this started with these guys pushing to educate the people. And so you have like this, you have like the Paris Bible. See the size of that? Right? Now compare that to, Brixianus and Amiens that are just this big. Right? What are you going to do with that? You're going to go tell someone about Jesus? Hey, you read John 3.16? Right? That's, all right? The word of the Lord was precious. What you had is you had movement to get the Bible into the hands of the people and that's really what brought us out of the dark ages. Okay, we got to take a break there. Father, thank you for your word.

Thank you for moving in ways that we don't understand. In the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.