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> The Catholic Church secured this monopoly by encoding the bible in Latin

The original documents were Koine and Aramaic with translations into Coptic and Latin, but you do realize that for most of history, this was taught to primarily illiterate people, most of whom spoke languages derived from Latin, right?

So it's not like the Vulgate was some grand conspiracy here. It was one of the oldest translations and they simply didn't keep translating it further because the idea was that people should be taught before going around instructing others. Given some of the tortured interpretations from people who founded doomsday cults and whatnot, it's not like they didn't have a point.

It may or may not have been a deliberate grand conspiracy. But the medieval Church clearly enjoyed - and to some extent still enjoys - centralised power over all of Europe. There was a Party Line, and while there were plenty of internal power struggles, the Party Line was easily recognisable, persistently (some would say cynically) expedient, and had huge political influence.

The fact that people were speaking languages related to Latin is irrelevant, because most people weren't allowed to read either the Vulgate or the original texts. So the Church had a monopoly on interpretation for a millennium or so, and this was the foundation of its political influence at every level.

So your argument is undermined by the fact that this power dynamic started to fall apart as soon as translations into other languages became available.

It started to fray during the Renaissance when contact with Classical and Islamic ideas began to dilute the narrative. But political power remained centralised until the original texts were translated into German.

The fact that it was Martin Luther who translated them just makes the point more obvious.

I'm not disputing that the Church was powerful, just that there was some grand conspiracy from "encoding" it in Latin. The Vulgate came about in the 4th century simply because the people then still spoke Latin and Gutenberg himself published copies of it, etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulgate

> From the article:

>> Americans still have a profound faith that our individual destinies are in our own hands. That’s why many people who have only the remotest prospect of ever making their way into the top income-tax bracket nonetheless favor keeping that tax rate low, and why people who have no chance of inheriting money from a taxable estate passionately oppose “death taxes.”

Wouldn't you say it's a bit one-sided to attribute all support for lower income/inheritance tax rates to naïve/aspirational optimism? I'd say most people in this group are well aware that their odds of making it into the top income brackets are slim; but even so they still feel that it's fundamentally wrong to steal from people, even ones who are currently better off than they are, in hopes of slightly improving their own circumstances. I also think they understand (far better than certain political economists, at any rate) that the existence of others who are wealthier than themselves is no threat to their own well-being, and that we're all better off helping each other to improve rather than dragging down anyone who dares to get ahead.

Cool. But that argument wasn't presented in the article.

Yes, they only mention pre-destination, as if the reader will know what that entailed and how it worked, and how protestantism evolved towards individual expression, thought, and control from there.

In our case here now, this is an example of the liberation of information and thought continuing to progress right up to the invention of the internet, and then HN, and now this thread.

> The Catholic Church secured this monopoly by encoding the bible in Latin, and requiring priests to know Latin before they could participate in religious dissemination, the source of which was the Vatican.

Interestingly, most of the requirements around latin from the Church came about during the counter reformation. Before that, it was the humanists pushing to standardize around latin as a common language.

Even to the point of discouraging Catholics from reading the bible lest they find something out of line with the Catholic Church's take on things.

When you see the loopier parts of American Protestant theology (Dominionism and Dispensationalism, anyone?) the Catholic bishops may have had a point. As I understand it, in Judaism you are discouraged from studying the Bible without a study partner, because without one you might easily leave the confines of reason and orthodoxy. So it's not just the Catholics who think you shouldn't make stuff up out out thin air in the name of religion.

Dominionism is simply a return to the Puritan ethic that the teachings of the Bible should influence every aspect of the world.

I’d agree about dispensationalism, but it’s a stretch to say that people shouldn’t study the Bible by themselves just because an errant doctrine may enter their head. I mean, look at all the errant doctrines of Rome, it hasn’t helped them any.

To outsiders they're no more loopy than anything you'll find in Catholicism, or in any of the tens of thousands of other mainstream and fringe denominations.

The Bible has always been more of a political powerplay than a coherent text. It can literally be interpreted convincingly to support any moral position, from slavery and genocide of unbelievers to soup kitchens for the poor.

It's the ultimate meta-text - a patchwork of absolute inconsistency, which makes it possible for anyone with a yearning for political power to cherry pick from it for an effective Proof by Authority gambit.

And so all Christians invariably believe their own personal interpretation is the correct one and all other interpretations are more or less obviously wrong.

And some will literally fight each other violently over this.

A moment's thought should suggest there's something a bit strange and unconvincing about this.

Before the printing press there were just not a lot of bibles, nor much literacy. Hard to have the Bible widely read in that situation.