10. THE QUESTION WAS: For the first 1,400 years after Christ, the vast majority of Christians did not own Bibles. Why not?

(This is a fill-in-the-blank question)

 

 

THE ANSWER IS…….Christians did not have Bibles because……….. Johann Gutenberg had not yet invented the printing press.

 

The invention came in the mid-1400s, and the Catholic Church immediately began printing Bibles at a furious pace.

 

Of course, the mass printing of Bibles prior to the Reformation wouldn’t have done much good anyway, since the vast majority of the common people were illiterate. The common way to receive the Word of God was at Mass through the preaching of the clergy of the Catholic Church.

 

Web sites on the Bible

http://www.catholic-defense.com/bible.htm

http://matt1618.freeyellow.com/unity3.html (Unwritten Tradition)

http://www.canapologetics.net/html/origin_of_the_church.html (Origin of the Church & Bible)

 

One highly recommended book on the subject is “Where We Got the Bible” by Henry G. Graham.

 

 

 

 

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Quick Links on the Early Church: Church Fathers, Life of St. Augustine, St. Irenaeus (Bishop of Lyons), Clement of Rome, Clement of Alexandria, St. Ignatius of Antioch, Pelagianism, The Confessions by St. Augustine, The City of God by St. Augustine, the Martyrdom of Polycarp, Epistle to St. Polycarp, St. Basil the Great, St. Cyril of Jerusalem, St. Cyprian of Carthage, St. Jerome, St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Barnabas, St. John Chrysostom, St. Ambrose, Eusebius, The Faith of the Early Church Fathers book, Did the Church Fathers Believe in Sola Scriptura? Foundations of Protestantism, Still Catholic