Early History of the Bible

http://www.cathtruth.com/catholicbible/earlyhis.htm

on censor: http://smu.edu/bridwell_tools/specialcollections/Heresy&Error/Heresy.22.htm

concerning Tyndale: http://www.veritasbible.com/resources/articles/Tyndale%E2%80%99s_Condemnation_Vindicated

concerning reading of the Bible by the lay people: http://catholicbridge.com/catholic/did_the_catholic_church_forbid_bible_reading.php

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible_translations_in_the_Middle_Ages


also here in comment  120 http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2013/03/jason-stellman-tells-his-conversion-story/

From Henry Graham’s book Where We Got the Bible, Ch.11:
http://www.catholicapologetics.info/apologetics/protestantism/wbible.htm#CHAPTER XI

The translators of the Authorised Version, in their ‘Preface’, referring to previous translations of the Scriptures into the language of the people, make the following important statements. After speaking of the Greek and Latin Versions, they proceed:

‘The godly-learned were not content to have the Scriptures in the language which themselves understood, Greek and Latin … but also for the behoof and edifying of the unlearned which hungered and thirsted after righteousness, and had souls to be saved as well as they, they provided translations into the Vulgar for their countrymen, insomuch that most nations under Heaven did shortly after their conversion hear Christ speaking unto them in their Mother tongue, not by the voice of their minister only but also by the written word translated.’
Now, as all these nations were certainly converted by the Roman Catholic Church, for there was then no other to send missionaries to convert anybody, this is really a valuable admission. The Translators of 1611, then, after enumerating many converted nations that had the Vernacular Scriptures, come to the case of England, and include it among the others.
…
Much about that time,’ they say (1360), even in our King Richard the Second’s days, John Trevisa translated them into English, and many English Bibles in written hand are yet to be seen that divers translated, as it is very probable, in that age . … So that, to have the Scriptures in the mother tongue is not a quaint conceit lately taken up, either by the Lord Cromwell in England [or others] … but hath been thought upon, and put in practice of old, even from the first times of the conversion of any nation.’

…people who could read at all in the Middle Ages could read Latin: hence there was little need for the Church to issue the Scriptures in any other language. But as a matter of fact she did in many countries put the Scriptures in the hands of her children in their own tongue. (I) We know from history that there were popular translations of the Bible and Gospels in Spanish, Italian, Danish, French, Norwegian, Polish, Bohemian and Hungarian for the Catholics of those lands before the days of printing, but we shall confine ourselves to England, so as to refute once more the common fallacy that John Wycliff was the first to place an English translation of the Scriptures in the hands of the English people in 1382.
…
Thomas More, Lord Chancellor of England under Henry VIII who says: ‘The whole Bible long before Wycliff’s day was by virtuous and well-learned men translated into the English tongue, and by good and godly people with devotion and soberness well and reverently read’ (Dialogues III). Again, ‘The clergy keep no Bibles from the laity but such translations as be either not yet approved for good, or such as be already reproved for naught (i.e., bad, naughty) as Wycliff’s was. For, as for old ones that were before Wycliff’s days, they remain lawful and be in some folks’ hand. I myself have seen, and can show you, Bibles, fair and old which have been known and seen by the Bishop of the Diocese, and left in laymen’s hands and women’s too, such as he knew for good and Catholic folk, that used them with soberness and devotion.’

Combine the above facts with the facts that ANY book in the pre printing press era was worth months of wages, and that literacy was low, and the idea the Catholic Church kept the bible from the people is really strange. In fact, even when I was Reformed, I was defending Christendom on this point against KJV only fundamentalists.

from comment 122:
What we disagree about is not the importance of the Bible or the study thereof, but about three other questions: (1) Why should the Bible be considered divinely inspired and thus inerrant, and (2) How should it be authoritatively interpreted? (3) Whatever the answer to (2), why should we accept it? As a Catholic, I can and do answer those questions. So far at least, you have not even attempted to do so.