For as long as humans have been able to communicate, they have been trying to figure out exactly what is going on “up there.” This has resulted in a lot of interesting, but pretty inaccurate and outmoded, theories about space throughout history. These outdated beliefs about space, which attempt to explain just how the Earth is interacting with the cosmos, are surprisingly varied, and some of the weirdest aren’t as old as you might think. In fact, some of them are still believed in remote parts of the world. We may have a much better idea of the makeup of the universe now, but some of these old-fashioned attempts at astronomy are cooler than the truth.
Hildegard von Bingen was one of the most industrious people of the Middle Ages, period. She was a Benedictine abbess who is often credited as being the founder of natural history in Germany. She was also a writer, composer, philosopher, and receiver of religious visions. For all of her innovating, Pope Benedict XVI named her a Doctor of the Catholic Church in 2012. She proposed that the cosmos were arranged into a fiery cosmic egg. It sounds pretty scary, but Hildegard saw it is a reflection of God’s vision – the egg of the cosmos followed a divine patterning. The outermost layer of the egg is fire, representing purification and judgement; the next layer is ethereal firmament, which signifies faith; the next is water, the element for baptism; and finally, there’s the Earth itself, which is made up of four elements.
The Ancient Egyptians’ view of space had something in common with Hildegard von Bingen’s fiery, cosmic egg theory: the idea that the world is surrounded by a layer of water. This “eternal water” was the habitation of the goddess Nut, and, beneath the Earth, a parallel netherworld known as Duat, home to both the good and the cursed, existed. In addition to this set up, the Egyptians attached a special significance to the dung beetle. They saw the dung balls from which young beetles emerged as representative of the always shifting and spherical sun and felt that the seemingly spontaneous birth of these scarabs was like that of the first God, Atum. But the importance of the dung beetle went beyond allegory; they also believed that Earth itself was being rolled by a giant, invisible dung beetle, which explained the changes in the sky at night. At least they got the rotation part right.
The Square Inside A Circle Concept of ‘Canopy Heaven’
Photo: By Jean-Michel Moullec [CC BY 2.0 ], via Wikimedia CommonsThere were many conflicting theories about the cosmos in Ancient China. One popular theory was known as “gaitian,” or “Canopy Heaven.” Named after the round-roofed style of chariots at the time, those who aligned themselves with this proposed theory believed that the Earth was a cube, surrounded by the spherical heavens. It is believed that this theory inspired the common Chinese iconography of a square within a circle.
The Dome That Separates The Waters Of Earth From The Waters Of Heaven
There are many references to the structure of the cosmos in the Old Testament. The Hebrews imagined the universe as a dome structure, with a metal firmament separating the waters of Heaven from the Earthly sphere. In this conception, Earth itself rests on primeval waters, held up by pillars. The idea of the cosmos as water was one that could be found all over the ancient world at the time.
Some cosmic patterns are regional, and specific cultures and places have unique ways of understanding those patterns. Many Native societies, for example, see direct linkages between cosmic patterns and natural phenomena on Earth. For their part, the Barasana people of the Amazon have named a group of stars the “Caterpillar Jaguar.” As this constellation rises in the sky, they believe that the number of caterpillars on Earth rises to meet this father caterpillar. In reality, this is a coincidence, due to the rotation of the Earth and the seasonal needs and development patterns of caterpillars.
Way back in the 8th century BCE, the pervading belief among the archaic Greeks was that the Earth was a domed island surrounded by a primordial river called “Ocean.” In this mode of thought, Ocean was like a vast outer rim that formed a shield-like structure for the Earth. The waters beyond the Ocean that they could see were, to the archaic Greeks, essentially infinite, and they feared this unknown, limitless expanse.
Ancient Greek philosophers and astronomers had many incredibly complex theories about space. Most of them dealt with the question of whether or not the universe was finite. If the universe ended, that meant that there was nothingness outside of it, a complete void. This concept of an Earth and Heavens surrounded by a void was quite popular. The Stoic philosophers, however, believed that the universe was one pulsing, cyclical being, and therefore could not have voids within it, just as humans cannot have voids within them. They believed that there was a kind of “breath” or tension holding the cosmos together, and an empty void would tear it apart.
In the late 19th century, the concept of a “Luminiferous Aether” became quite popular. At the time, scientists were unable to explain how light waves could travel through voids because of the understanding of waves at the time. Newton, in particular, found it inconceivable that bodies in space could move and act upon one another without any physical substance connecting them; that would’ve run in the face of scientific explanations for action, reaction, and moving bodies. Thus, scientists postulated that the universe was filled with some kind of invisible substance through which light, electricity, and magnetism traveled, and this infinite material channeled but did not interact with the physical universe. They called this substance “Luminiferous Aether.” This theory became less and less prevalent as scientific understanding of light waves improved and people got tired of trying to prove something that they could not see.
Some cultures see the stars as Earth-like natural structures, separating the two worlds of Heaven and Earth. The Misminay people of the Andes see the Milky Way as an actual river in the sky, feeding water between the Heavenly and Earthly spheres. Because of their location, the Milky Way crosses over the village twice in one day, quartering it, which further indicates the divine utility of the structure.
Gelug monks wear the yellow hats of their order during a formal ceremony. Jeff Hutchens / Getty Images
Gelugpa is best known in the West as the school of Tibetan Buddhism associated with His Holiness the Dalai Lama. In the 17th century, the Gelug (also spelled Geluk) school became the most powerful institution in Tibet, and it remained so until China took control of Tibet in the 1950s.
The story of Gelugpa begins with Tsongkhapa (1357-1419), a man from Amdo Province who began studying with a local Sakya lama at a very young age. At 16 he traveled to central Tibet, where the most renowned teachers and monasteries were located, to further his education.
Tsongkhapa did not study in any one place. He stayed in Kagyu monasteries learning Tibetan medicine, the practices of Mahamudra and the tantra yoga of Atisha. He studied philosophy in Sakya monasteries. He sought independent teachers with fresh ideas. He was particularly interested in the Madhyamika teachings of Nagarjuna.
In time, Tsongkhapa combined these teachings into a new approach to Buddhism. He explained his approach in two major works, Great Exposition of the Stages of the Path and Great Exposition of the Secret Mantra. Other of his teachings were collected in several volumes, 18 in all.
Through most of his adult life, Tsongkhapa traveled around Tibet, often living in camps with dozens of students. By the time Tsongkhapa had reached his 50s, the rugged lifestyle had taken a toll on his health. His admirers built him a new monastery on a mountain near Lhasa. The monastery was named “Ganden,” which means “joyful.” Tsongkhapa lived there only briefly before he died, however.
The Founding of Gelugpa
At the time of his death, Tsongkhapa and his students were considered to be part of the Sakya school. Then his disciples stepped up and built a new school of Tibetan Buddhism on Tsongkhapa’s teachings. They called the school “Gelug,” which means “the virtuous tradition.” Here are some of Tsongkhapa’s most prominent disciples:
Gyaltsab (1364-1431) is thought to have been first the abbot of Gendun after Tsongkhapa died. This made him the first Ganden Tripa, or throne-holder of Gendun. To this day the Ganden Tripa is the actual, official head of the Gelug school, not the Dalai Lama.
Jamchen Chojey (1355-1435) founded the great Sera monastery of Lhasa.
Khedrub (1385-1438) is credited with defending and promoting Tsongkhapa’s teachings throughout Tibet. He also began the tradition of high lamas of Gelug wearing yellow hats, to distinguish them from Sakya lamas, who wore red hats.
Gendun Drupa (1391-1474) founded the great monasteries of Drepung and Tashillhunpo, and during his life, he was among the most respected scholars in Tibet.
The Dalai Lama
A few years after Gendun Drupa died, a young boy of central Tibet was recognized as his tulku, or rebirth. Eventually, this boy, Gendun Gyatso (1475-1542) would serve as abbot of Drepung, Tashillhunpo, and Sera.
Sonam Gyatso (1543-1588) was recognized as the rebirth of Gendun Gyatso. This tulku became the spiritual adviser to a Mongol leader named Altan Khan. Altan Khan gave Gendun Gyatso the title “Dalai Lama,” meaning “ocean of wisdom.” Sonam Gyatso is considered to be the third Dalai Lama; his predecessors Gendun Drupa and Gendun Gyatso were named first and second Dalai Lama, posthumously.
These first Dalai Lamas had no political authority. It was Lobsang Gyatso, the “Great Fifth” Dalai Lama (1617-1682), who forged a fortuitous alliance with another Mongol leader, Gushi Khan, who conquered Tibet. Gushi Khan made Lobsang Gyatso the political and spiritual leader of the entire Tibetan people.
Under the Great Fifth a large part of another school of Tibetan Buddhism, Jonang, was absorbed into Gelugpa. The Jonang influence added Kalachakra teachings to Gelugpa. The Great Fifth also initiated the building of Potala Palace in Lhasa, which became the seat of both spiritual and political authority in Tibet.
Today many people think the Dalai Lamas held absolute power in Tibet as “god-kings,” but that is inaccurate. The Dalai Lamas who came after the Great Fifth was, for one reason or another, mostly figureheads who held little real power. For long stretches of time, various regents and military leaders were actually in charge.
Not until the 13th Dalai Lama, Thubten Gyatso (1876-1933), would another Dalai Lama function as a real head of government, and even he had limited authority to enact all the reforms he wished to bring to Tibet.
The current Dalai Lama is the 14th, His Holiness Tenzin Gyatso (born 1935). He was still an adolescent when China invaded Tibet in 1950. His Holiness has been exiled from Tibet since 1959. Recently he relinquished all political power over the Tibetan people in exile, in favor of a democratic, elected government.
The Panchen Lama
The second highest lama in Gelugpa is the Panchen Lama. The title Panchen Lama, meaning “great scholar,” was bestowed by the Fifth Dalai Lama on a tulku who was fourth in a lineage of rebirths, and so he became the 4th Panchen Lama.
The current Panchen Lama is the 11th. However, His Holiness Gedhun Choekyi Nyima (born 1989) and his family were taken into Chinese custody shortly after his recognition was made public in 1995. The Panchen Lama and his family have not been seen since. A pretender appointed by Beijing, Gyaltsen Norbu, has served as Panchen Lama in his place.
Gelugpa Today
The original Ganden monastery, Gelugpa’s spiritual home, was destroyed by Chinese troops during the 1959 Lhasa uprising. During the Cultural Revolution, the Red Guard came to finish whatever was left. Even the mummified body of Tsongkhapa was ordered burned, although a monk was able to recover a skull and some ashes. The Chinese government is rebuilding the monastery.
Meanwhile, exiled lamas re-established Ganden in Karnataka, India, and this monastery is now Gelugpa’s spiritual home. The current Ganden Tripa, the 102nd, is Thubten Nyima Lungtok Tenzin Norbu. (Ganden Tripas are not tulkus but are appointed to the position as adults.) The training of new generations of Gelugpa monks and nuns continues.
His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama has lived in Dharamsala, India since he left Tibet in 1959. He has dedicated his life to teaching and to gain greater autonomy for Tibetans still under Chinese rule.
Reference
O’Brien, Barbara. “The Gelug School of Tibetan Buddhism.” Learn Religions, Feb. 11, 2020, learnreligions.com/the-gelug-school-of-tibetan-buddhism-449627.
Have you ever wondered why there are so many Jones’ in a Welsh phonebook? In comparison to the plethora of surnames which appear in the History of England, the genealogy of Wales can prove extremely complex when trying to untangle completely unrelated individuals from a very small pool of names.
The limited range of Welsh surnames is due in large part to the ancient Welsh patronymic naming system, whereby a child took on the father’s given name as a surname. The family connection was illustrated by the prefix of ‘ap’ or ‘ab’ (a shortened version of the Welsh word for son, ‘mab’) or in the woman’s case ‘ferch’ (the Welsh for ‘daughter of’). Proving an added complication for historians this also meant that a family’s name would differ throughout the generations, although it wasn’t uncommon for an individual’s name to refer back to several generations of their family, with names such as Llewellyn ap Thomas ab Dafydd ap Evan ap Owen ap John being common place.
In the 1300s nearly 50 per cent of Welsh names were based on the patronymic naming system, in some areas 70 per cent of the population were named in accordance with this practice, although in North Wales it was also typical for place names to be incorporated, and in mid Wales nicknames were used as surnames.
It is thought that the patronymic naming system was introduced as a direct result of Welsh Law, which is alleged to have been formally introduced to the country by Hywel Dda (“Hywel the Good”), King of Wales from Prestatyn to Pembroke between 915AD and 950AD and often referred to as Cyfraith Hywel (the Law of Hywel). The law dictated that it was crucial for a person’s genealogical history to be widely known and recorded.
However, in the wake of the Protestant Reformation in Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries this was all set to change. Whilst the English Reformation resulted in part because of the religious and political movement affecting the Christian faith across most of Europe, it was largely based on government policy, namely Henry VIII’s desire for an annulment of his marriage to his first wife, Catherine of Aragon. Catherine had been unable to bear Henry a son and heir, so he feared a reprisal of the dynastic conflict suffered by England during the War of the Roses (1455-1485) in which his father, Henry VII eventually took the throne on 22 August 1485 as the first monarch of the House of Tudor.
Henry VIII and Catherine of Ar
Pope Clement VII’s refusal to annul Henry and Catherine’s marriage and leave Henry free to marry again, led to a series of events in the sixteenth century which culminated in the Church of England breaking away from the authority of the Roman Catholic Church. As a result Henry VII became Supreme Governor of the English Church and the Church of England became the established church of the nation, meaning doctrinal and legal disputes now rested with the monarch.
Although the last Welsh Prince of Wales, Llewellyn ap Gruffydd, had been killed during Edward I’s war of conquest in 1282, and Wales had faced English rule with the introduction of English-style counties and a Welsh gentry made up of Englishmen and native Welsh lords who were given English titles in exchange for loyalty to the English throne, Welsh Law still remained in force for many legal matters up until the reign of Henry VIII.
Henry VIII, whose family the Tudors were of welsh decent from the Welsh house of Tudur, had not previously seen a need to reform the Welsh Government during his time on the throne, but in 1535 and 1542, as a result of a supposed threat from the independent Welsh Marcher lords, Henry introduced the Laws in Wales Acts 1535-1542.
These laws meant that the Welsh legal system was completely absorbed into the English system under English Common Law and both the English Lords who had been granted Welsh land by Edward I and their native Welsh contemporaries became part of the English Peerage. As a result of this creation of a modern sovereign state of England, fixed surnames became hereditary amongst the Welsh gentry, a custom which was slowly to spread amongst the rest of the Welsh people, although the patronymic naming system could still be found in areas of rural Wales until the beginning of the nineteenth century.
The change from patronymic to fixed surnames meant the Welsh people had a limited stock of names to choose from, which was not helped by the decline in the number of baptismal names following the Protestant Reformation. Many of the new fixed surnames still incorporated the “ap” or ab to create new names such as Powell (taken from ap Hywel) and Bevan (taken from ab Evan). However, the most common method for creating surnames came from adding an ‘s’ to the end of a name, whereby the most common modern Welsh surnames such as Jones, Williams, Davies and Evans originated. In an effort to avoid confusion between unrelated individuals bearing the same name, the nineteenth century saw a rise in the number of double barrelled surnames in Wales, often using the mother’s maiden name as a prefix to the family name.
Whilst most Welsh surnames are now fixed family names which have been passed down through the generations there has been a resurgence of the patronymic naming system amongst those Welsh speakers keen to preserve a patriotic history of Wales. In the last decade, in a return to a more independent Wales, the Government of Wales Act 2006 saw the creation of the Welsh Assembly Government and delegation of power from Parliament to the Assembly, giving the Assembly the authority to create “Measures”, or Welsh Laws, for the first time in over 700 years. Although for the sake of the Welsh telephone book let’s hope the patronymic naming system doesn’t make a complete comeback!
The Cornish Language
This March 5th, mark St Piran’s Day, the national day of Cornwall, by wishing your neighbours “Lowen dydh sen Pyran!”.
According to the 2011 census data, there are 100 different languages spoken in England and Wales, ranging from the well known to almost forgotten. The census results show that 33 people on the Isle of Man said their main language was Manx Gaelic, a language officially recorded as extinct in 1974, and 58 people said Scottish Gaelic, spoken mainly in the Highlands and western Islands of Scotland. Over 562,000 people named Welsh as their main language.
Whilst many British people are aware of Welsh and Gaelic, few have heard of ‘Cornish’ as a separate language, despite the fact that on the census, as many as 557 people listed their main language as ‘Cornish’.
So why do the Cornish have their own language? To understand, we have to look at the history of this relatively remote, south western region of England.
Cornwall has long felt a closer affinity with the European Celtic nations than with the rest of England. Derived from the Brythonic languages, the Cornish language has common roots with both Breton and Welsh.
The words ‘Cornwall’ and ‘Cornish’ are derived from the Celtic Cornovii tribe who inhabited modern-day Cornwall prior to the Roman conquest. The Anglo-Saxon invasion of Britain in the 5th to 6th centuries pushed the Celts further to the western fringes of Great Britain. It was however the influx of Celtic Christian missionaries from Ireland and Wales in the 5th and 6th centuries that shaped the culture and faith of the early Cornish people.
These missionaries, many of whom were later venerated as saints, settled on the shores of Cornwall and began converting small groups of local people to Christianity. Their names live on today in Cornish place names, and over 200 ancient churches are dedicated to them.
The Cornish were often at war with the West Saxons, who referred to them as the Westwalas (West Welsh) or Cornwalas (the Cornish). This continued until 936, when King Athelstan of England declared the River Tamar the formal boundary between the two, effectively making Cornwall one of the last retreats of the Britons, thus encouraging the development of a distinct Cornish identity. (Pictured right: Anglo-Saxon warrior)
Throughout the Middle Ages, the Cornish were seen as a separate race or nation, distinct from their neighbours, with their own language, society and customs. The unsuccessful Cornish Rebellion of 1497 illustrates the Cornish feeling of ‘being separate’ from the rest of England.
During the early years of the new Tudor dynasty, the pretender Perkin Warbeck (who declared himself to be Richard, Duke of York, one of the Princes in the Tower), was threatening King Henry VII’s crown. With the support of the King of Scots, Warbeck invaded the north of England. The Cornish were asked to contribute to a tax to pay for the King’s campaign in the north. They refused to pay, as they considered the campaign had little to do with Cornwall. The rebels set out from Bodmin in May 1497, reaching the outskirts of London on June 16th. Some 15,000 rebels faced Henry VII’s army at the Battle of Blackheath; around 1,000 of the rebels were killed and their leaders put to death.
The Prayer Book Rebellion against the Act of Uniformity of 1549 was another example of the Cornish standing up for their culture and language. The Act of Uniformity outlawed all languages except English from Church services. The rebels declared that they wanted a return to the old religious services and practices, as some Cornishmen did not understand English. Over 4,000 people in the South West of England protested and were massacred by King Edward VI’s army at Fenny Bridges, near Honiton. This spread of English into the religious lives of the Cornish people is seen as one of the main factors in the demise of Cornish as the common language of the Cornish people.
As the Cornish language disappeared, so the people of Cornwall underwent a process of English assimilation.
However a Celtic revival which started in the early 20th century has revitalised the Cornish language and the Cornish Celtic heritage. An increasing number of people are now studying the language. Cornish is taught in many schools and there is a weekly bilingual programme on BBC Radio Cornwall. In 2002 the Cornish language was granted official recognition under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages.
The Cornish language even appears in the film and the book, Legends of the Fall by American author Jim Harrison, which depicts the lives of a Cornish American family in the early 20th century.
Here are a few examples of everyday phrases in Cornish:
Good Morning: “Metten daa”
Good Evening: “Gothewhar daa”
Hello: “You”
Goodbye: “Anowre”
Yorkshire Dialect
Did you know that August 1st is Yorkshire Day? To celebrate, we thought we’d share some great Yorkshire words and phrases with you.
Much of the Yorkshire dialect has its roots in Old English and Old Norse, and is called Broad Yorkshire or Tyke. Rather confusingly, someone born and bred in Yorkshire is also called a tyke.
Examples of the Yorkshire dialect can be found in literary works such as ‘Wuthering Heights’ by Emily Bronte and Charles Dickens’ novel ‘Nicholas Nickleby’. The reader will notice that in Broad Yorkshire, ‘ye’, ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ are used instead of ‘you’ and the word ‘the’ is shortened to t’.
Many people not from God’s Own County will consider the Yorkshire dialect as, shall we say, a little lugubrious. Indeed the words do seem to lend themselves to a Les Dawson-style of delivery.
‘Owt and Nowt
Two words used a lot in Yorkshire, meaning something and nothing. They are traditionally pronounced to rhyme with ‘oat’ rather than ‘out’, for example ‘Yah gooid fur nowt’ (you’re good for nothing). The old Yorkshire expression, “If there’s owt for nowt, I’ll be there with a barrow” would seem to bear out the impression that some people have of Yorkshire people, that they are careful, or tight, with their money. As the ‘Yorkshireman’s Motto’ goes:
‘Ear all, see all, say nowt;
Eat all, sup all, pay nowt;
And if ivver tha does owt fer nowt –
Allus do it fer thissen.
(Hear all, see all, say nothing; eat all, drink all, pay nothing, and if ever you do something for nothing, always do it for yourself).
‘Appen
This word will be very familiar to fans of Emmerdale, as a favourite utterance by most of the characters in the early days of the soap, in particular Amos Brealry and Annie Sugden. It means ‘perhaps’ or ‘possibly’ and is often preceded by ‘Aye’(yes) as in ‘Aye, ‘appen’. Other useful Yorkshire phrases include ‘Appen that’s it’ (that’s possibly true) and ‘Appen as not an maybe’ (you’re probably right).
‘Eee by gum
No, this isn’t just gibberish, it does actually mean something, although there is no direct translation. It means something like ‘Gosh!’, ‘Cor’, ‘Oh my God’ or ‘By gum’.
Nah then
This is often heard when friends greet each other and is used like a casual ‘hello’ or ‘hi’. Another way to say hello in Yorkshire would be ‘Eh up’.
Middlin’, Nobbut Middlin’, Fair t’ Middlin’
Again, these are expressions with no exact translation. Often heard in response to the question ‘Ow do’ (How are you), ‘middlin’ or ‘fair t’middlin’ would mean ’I’m ok’. ‘Nobbut middlin’ means less than middlin’, so more like ‘just alright’.
Middlin’ is not to be confused with middin which refers to a muck heap, rubbish heap or even the outside loo!
The 1930s came down hard on all of America, but the Great Plains area got it even worse with the advent of the Dust Bowl. This giant drought, a disaster for America’s breadbasket, made life unendurable for Midwesterners. Put out of farm work, people became migrant workers, trekking to California in search of jobs. At the time, photographers like Dorothea Lange began documenting American lives and struggles through the camera lens, capturing tragedies like Depression and Dust Bowl.
Collected here are photos of undernourished and sick children, homeless families, desolate farms, and storms engulfing the land in dust. As blunt and shocking they may look to you today, imagine how much they astonished those Americans living at that time.
They came to a peaceful retreat in the mountains of New Mexico, bearing emotional troubles and sexual secrets.
Some had sinned with women; some, with men. Others were depressed or angry or anxious. One monk came for treatment of a foot fetish that drove him to steal socks. A priest from Africa arrived after it was discovered that he had several wives and many children.
But hundreds of the clergymen were sent to the treatment program in Jemez Springs because they had molested minors.
The public debate over the Roman Catholic Church’s handling of sexual abuse by its clergy members has focused on men like John J. Geoghan of Boston, calculating predators who appear beyond the reach of treatment.
But the history of the program at Jemez Springs, which in its 19 years of operation treated more than 500 priests and monks for sexual problems, suggests a more complex view.
In interviews, psychologists and psychiatrists who worked there said few of the clergymen fitted the image often presented in the news media.
For one thing, they said, the vast majority were not pedophiles: most had molested adolescents, not young children. In most cases, the clergymen’s transgressions were driven by confusion, fear, immaturity or impulse, not by cold calculation, the therapists said. Some of the clergymen had themselves been abused as adolescents. Many seemed to know little about human sexuality, and most initially tried to deny or rationalize their experiences, insisting that they had done nothing wrong or that their victims had benefited.
In some cases, said Dr. Robert Goodkind, a psychologist who worked at Jemez Springs in the 1980’s and 1990’s, the priests seemed oblivious that the boys they were abusing were minors. In psychotherapy, he said, they would talk as if they themselves were junior high school students, describing how they ”fell in love” or how they felt ”burned” when the boys did not return their affections.
”There was just a real absence of the perspective that this is a 30-year-old man talking about 15-year-old boy,” Dr. Goodkind said.
And while some clergymen — no one knows exactly how many — abused minors again after leaving the program, the therapists said, follow-ups indicated that many more did not. Rather, the men altered their behavior and rebuilt lives either inside the church or out.
The program at Jemez Springs, run by a small Roman Catholic congregation known as the Servants of the Paraclete, represented one of the the church’s earliest, most innovative and ultimately most controversial efforts to deal with sexual abuse among its clergy.
It was started in 1976 by two Paraclete priests, who sought to bring psychotherapy, education in human sexuality, medication and other modern tools to bear on sexual issues in the priesthood. By directly addressing sexuality, the program laid down a path later followed by other treatment centers for priests, like the St. Luke Institute in Maryland and the Institute of Living in Hartford. Experts at those centers said their experience of working with sexual abusers closely paralleled that of the staff at Jemez Springs.
By the mid-1980’s, when the case of a Louisiana priest, the Rev. Gilbert Gauthe, brought the problem to public view, the Paracletes had already treated hundreds of clergymen who had molested minors, said Dr. Jay R. Feierman, a psychiatric consultant to the program from 1976 to 1995.
But the church ended the treatment effort in 1995, when the Paracletes became mired in lawsuits over sexual abuse by priests who had been at Jemez Springs in the 1960’s and early 1970’s, before any systematic treatment program existed there. In those earlier days, priests’ sexual problems were addressed primarily through prayer, and some clergymen molested minors while visiting parishes to say Mass. The site, still owned by the Paracletes, now serves as a retreat center and retirement home for clergymen.
The abusers who came to Jemez Springs in the 1980’s and 1990’s, the former staff members said, were highly educated and socially skilled and they had more in common with university professors and social workers than incarcerated sex offenders. Few showed sociopathic tendencies, the staff members said, and the extent of their misconduct and the motivations underlying their actions varied greatly.
Still, the therapists said, every priest and monk who came to the program struggled with the challenges posed by their vows of chastity and celibacy.
Dr. Feierman said that in many cases, the clergymen lived double lives, on the one hand repressing ”sinful” thoughts and on the other, acting out sexually.
”They thought they were sinning if they entertained an impure thought,” he said, ”but at the same time they were having sex with boys.”
Priests and monks who came to Jemez Springs for treatment of depression or other emotional ills often found that their distress covered over conflicts about sexuality, Dr. Goodkind said.
”A lot of times people had been dealing with a secret inside them that they thought was quite horrible, and they had been keeping this secret for 10, 15 or 25 years,” the psychologist said. ”And after a while they just got terribly depressed and were not functional any more.”
But for all the sexual problems they saw, the therapists said they only rarely encountered pedophilia, an exclusive sexual attraction to prepubescent children.
Dr. Sarah Brennan, a clinical psychologist in Albuquerque, said that she treated hundreds of priests and monks in the 10 years she worked at Jemez Springs but that only one was a pedophile. Dr. Feierman, who studied 238 clergymen who were treated for sexual problems at Jemez Springs from 1982 to 1991, said that only a handful had molested young children or teenage girls; more than half, he said, had abused boys 12 to 17. Though his study was accepted in 1991 for publication in the Archives of Sexual Behavior, a scientific journal, it never appeared in print. The new director of the treatment program, the Rev. Peter Lechner, asked him to withdraw the manuscript, Dr. Feierman said.
He added that he now kept the paper in a safe deposit box and did not have permission from Father Lechner to discuss the study’s findings in more detail. Reached in St. Louis, where he is now the Paraclete congregation’s leader, Father Lechner confirmed that he had not wanted the report published but said it was because the study was based on the clergymen’s confidential records.
The age of the priests’ victims corresponds to the findings of other studies and to the observations of experts who have treated priests in other settings. It is significant, scientists said, because adults who become sexually involved with adolescents are considered more amenable to treatment than pedophiles. ”There’s a lot better prognosis,” said Dr. Eli Coleman, director of the program in human sexuality University of Minnesota’s Center for Sexual Health. ”It’s much easier to help someone who is attracted to postpubescent children to adapt to attractions to adults.”
Dr. Feirman said that in his view, many of the clergymen who abused older children were fixated on teenagers and were not attracted to adults, male or female. Other former staff members said that the priests they worked with were immature and confused about their sexuality, and their problem was bad judgment and a lack of impulse control rather than sexual fixation. Some priests were trying to ignore or suppress their attraction to adult men and ended up in furtive relationships with teenage boys.
Those relationships often began as fatherly bonds with altar boys or other adolescents who came to the rectory. In some cases, the boys had lost their fathers, and their mothers encouraged them to spend time with the priests and to regard them as role models.
Very few abusive clergymen, Dr. Feierman said, ”just had sexual relationships with the kids.”
”They would pick kids that were needy and needed things both emotionally and financially,” he said. ”They would take them on vacations, buy them clothes, buy them bicycles.”
But in a typical progression, the relationships moved gradually into touching and groping, and in some cases sexual penetration.
Dr. Fred S. Berlin, an associate professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University, said complex relationships were typical between the victims of sexual abuse and their abusers.
”This is not the fox in the chicken coop,” Dr. Berlin said. ”These are often situations in which the adult has genuine affection for the child, and sadly, because they begin to feel tempted in a way that most of us don’t, they give in to temptation.”
Dr. Leslie Lothstein, the director of psychology at the Institute of Living in Hartford, confirmed that, like the men treated at Jemez Springs, most of the priests who came to Hartford after sexually abusing minors had molested older boys.
But Dr. Lothstein said that although some of the men were gay, many others were not. Some were older priests, he said, who, having entered seminary as teenagers, ”were sexually undernourished, didn’t date and never really defined their sexuality.”
Having sex with boys, he said, seemed safer to those priests than having sex with women. Other men were replaying their experience as the victims of abuse by abusing others.
”They’re a very heterogenous group,” Dr. Lothstein said.
It was the realization that clergymen often had difficulty sorting out sexual issues that led two young priests, the Rev. Michael Foley and the Rev. William Perri, to found the Paracletes’ treatment program in 1976.
”We tried to create a forum, both in the spiritual and psychological realm, not where they were acting out the sexuality but where they were talking about it,” Father Foley said.
The priests borrowed the techniques being used by sexual disorder clinics in secular settings, including focused psychotherapy, education in human sexuality, relapse prevention and, for some men, the drug Depo Provera, which reduces sexual drive.
Priests who had molested minors, Dr. Goodkind said, were sent back with the stipulation that they not be returned to unsupervised ministry with minors. They were told to remain in therapy, and follow-up visits were made by the program’s staff.
But ultimately, the decision about what happened to the men after they left Jemez Springs was made by bishops and religious superiors.
No one can say with certainty how many of the men at Jemez Springs committed offenses after leaving the program. Dr. Feierman said he knew of only 2 men who were later arrested for sexual abuse and perhaps 5 to 10 more who had been caught in suspicious circumstances. For example, he said, one priest was later seen sitting in a hot tub in his apartment complex with two teenage boys.
Father Lechner, who became director of the treatment program in 1989, said he conducted an informal study in 1992 of 89 men treated at Jemez Springs. Only one had relapsed, he said.
Still, by the early 1990’s, the number of clergymen arriving at Jemez Springs had begun to dwindle, as lawsuits over priests who had sexually abused minors made headlines in New Mexico and other states.
”The whole program became associated with ‘priest pedophiles,’ ” Father Lechner said. ”We felt that was unfair to the men who were coming there to deal with other issues like depression or anxiety.”
For his part, Father Foley, who founded the program, said he still believed in its mission.
”I believe that a lot can be resolved and healed,” he said.
Still, he worries.
”I run through the papers before I go to work in the morning,” Father Foley said, ”and hope and pray that I’m not going to recognize a name.”
History is full of famously bad days. Now, a new book pulls together 365 of the most tantalising and enlightening.
Stern reporter Gerhard Heidemann holds up the forged Hitler diaries, 25 April 1983. (AP-Photo/MS. Press Association Images)
InBad Days in History: A Gleefully Grim Chronicle of Misfortune, Mayhem, and Misery for Every Day of the Year, bestselling author Michael Farquhar revisits some of the most entertaining calamities in history – from the disastrous marriage of Henry VIII to Anne of Cleves in 1540, to the mother-in-law that soured Harry Truman’s arrival at the White House in 1945.
Here, Farquhar shares four of his favourite excerpts…
6 May 1983, The Dummkopf “Diaries”
From the diary of a madman: “On Eva’s wishes, I am thoroughly examined by my doctors. Because of the new pills I have violent flatulence, and—says Eva—bad breath.” Certainly it was a rather bland entry, but a tantalising tidbit nonetheless—part of what promised to be a historic bonanza of insight into one of the world’s most evil men.
On 22 April 1983, the German news magazineSternannounced that it had in its possession the personal diary of Adolf Hitler—a long hidden set of some 60 volumes, spanning the years 1932 to 1945, for which the magazine had paid millions. It was a staggering sum, but the prestige that would come from such a scoop was priceless.
Australian media mogul Rupert Murdoch was among those who saw huge profit potential in the diaries and wanted to serialize them in hisTimesof London. To authenticate the documents, he dispatched British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper, a specialist in the 16th and 17th centuries who could barely read German. After hearingSterneditors relate the story of how the diaries had been retrieved from a plane crash in 1945 and secretly stashed away by a high-ranking East German officer, and then reviewing the massive pile of volumes, Trevor-Roper was “satisfied that the documents are authentic.”
Even as the world waited anxiously to read the private thoughts of this inscrutable monster, sceptics had reservations. Hitler biographer Werner Maser told Reuters at the time that “everything speaks against it. It smacks of pure sensationalism.’’ The chorus of doubt grew louder whenSternpublished a lavish special issue heralding the diaries on 25 April, and held a press conference to crow about it.
Instead of the expected huzzahs, however, editors were confronted with unwelcome questions about the diaries’ authenticity. And Trevor-Roper certainly didn’t help matters with his sudden and unexpected about-face when asked to address the suspicious press: “As a historian, I regret that the, er, normal method of historical verification, er, has, perhaps necessarily, been to some extent sacrificed to the requirements of a journalistic scoop.”
It was a disaster unfolding, the crowning blow of which came on 6 May when the German Federal Archives declared the diaries to be “a crude forgery” and the “grotesquely superficial” concoction of a forger with “limited intellectual capacity.”
Sternhad been duped by a dope by the name of Konrad Kujau, a “jaunty and farcical figure,” as author Robert Harris described him, who apparently expended very little time or effort on his handiwork. The indications of forgery were obvious, from the paper, ink, and glue Kujau used—all of which were manufactured well after Hitler’s death in 1945—to the passages lifted directly, albeit often incorrectly, from a book of the führer’s speeches and proclamations. Kujau even messed up the Gothic initials embossed on each imitation leather volume, some of which read “FH,” not “AH.”
“We have every reason to be ashamed that something like this could happen to us,” announcedSternpublisher Henri Nannen in the aftermath of the diary fiasco. Indeed, they did. The magazine’s editors had allowed their reporter Gerd Heidemann to run amok with the story, without even insisting he name his source. They also ignored the numerous warning signs of fraud that preceded publication. But at least Nannen and his colleagues could take a measure of comfort in knowing that some of what was written in the “diaries” was actually true. The führer really did have what his doctor described as “colossal flatulence . . . on a scale I have seldom encountered before.” And horrendously bad breath, too.
A page of what was thought to be Hitler’s personal diary, which reads: “Henceforth, I will take note of my political thoughts and actions to leave a record for posterity as does every politician”. Stern magazine handed out a reproduction of this page when they made public their ‘discovery’ on 25 April 1983. (AP-Photo/HO Stern. HO/STERN/AP/Press Association Images)
8 May 1632, The Holy (Mis)Writ
Some readers of a 1631 edition of the King James Bible were shocked (or at least pleasantly surprised) when they came across the Seventh Commandment in the Book of Exodus: “Thoushaltcommit adultery.” Then there was the apparent blasphemy found in Deuteronomy, chapter 5: “The Lord hath shewed us his glory, and his great asse.” (The proper word was “greatnasse.”)
With these egregious errors, the 1631 version became known as the Wicked Bible or the Adulterous Bible, and on May 8, 1632, the printers were hauled before the fearsome Star Chamber for their blasphemous mistakes—with the additional charge of printing the Bible on bad paper.
“I knew the time when great care was had about printing, the Bibles especially,” declared the appalled Archbishop of Canterbury. “Good compositors and the best correctors were gotten being grave and learned men, the paper and the letter rare, and faire every way of the best, but now the paper is nought, the composers boys, and the correctors unlearned.” Worse, he said, even the dreaded Catholics took better care with their “superstitious books.”
The printers were heavily fined and banned from their profession, but were lucky enough not to have been mutilated or dealt a similarly gruesome punishment of the day. Meanwhile, history has no record of how many marital beds may have been violated with blessings from the Wicked Bible.
19 May 1884, Filet Mignonette
When young Richard Parker boarded the yachtMignonetteon 19 May 1884, it was if his fate had already been eerily determined. Nearly 50 years before, Edgar Allan Poe published his only novel,The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym– a tale of maritime adventure and disaster in which the starving survivors of a shipwreck draw straws to determine who among them would be sacrificed and eaten to nourish the others. A character by the name of Richard Parker comes up with the short one and is duly devoured by the rest.
In a remarkable echo of Poe’s story, theMignonettewas battered by storms while sailing around the Cape of Good Hope en route from Southampton, then England, to Sydney, Australia, and sank. Richard Parker survived the wreck, but not for long. The young man and his three companions drifted for weeks aboard a flimsy dinghy, fending off sharks and sustaining themselves on the two tins of turnips they had managed to salvage. Just as in Poe’s tale, the men did capture and eat a sea turtle, but starvation still loomed. Desperate for nourishment, the survivors began to eye one another. A maritime tradition known as the Custom of the Sea provided the solution for such situations: cannibalism. But not until straws were drawn to determine which man would become the meal.
The men of theMignonetteneglected this key provision because Richard Parker, dangerously ill from having consumed seawater, appeared very likely to die. Rather than wait for the inevitable, and risk eating corrupted, diseased flesh, the three other survivors instead killed the young man by stabbing him in the neck. Then they ate him.
“I can assure you,” one of the survivors recalled, “I shall never forget the sight of my two unfortunate companions over that ghastly meal. We all was like mad wolfs who should get the most and for men fathers of children to commit such a deed we could not have our right reason.”
Four or five days after this murderous act of necessity, the three survivors spotted the sails of the German shipMoctezuma. Salvation came, one of the men later said, just “as we was having our breakfast, we will call it.”
20 September 1884: a member of the crew of the Mignonette using a sea anchor in an open boat during stormy conditions at sea. Original Artwork: engraving by J Nash after sketches by Mr Stephens. (Photo by Rischgitz/Getty Images)
22 May 1856, Sumner’s Violent Schooling
In the decades before the Civil War — when sectional differences over slavery and state rights began to intensify to a dangerous degree — edgy lawmakers roamed the halls of Congress armed with pistols and daggers, practically daring any political opponent to defy them. The House of Representatives “seethed like a boiling caldron,” one observer wrote, as “belligerent Southrons glared fiercely at phlegmatic Yankees.” Lawmakers challenged one another to duels, took to the floor with scathing orations, and, in one scene reminiscent of a Wild West saloon, reacted like threatened cowboys after one member’s gun fell to the ground and accidentally discharged.
There were instantly “fully thirty or forty pistols in the air,” Representative William Holman of Indiana reported.
The tension was punctuated by one particularly violent episode in 1856, after Charles Sumner, an abolitionist senator from Massachusetts, delivered his rousing “Crime Against Kansas” speech, in which he argued vehemently against the expansion of slavery into that territory and attacked in particular Andrew Butler of South Carolina, one of the authors of the Kansas-Nebraska Act.
“The senator from South Carolina has read many books of chivalry, and believes himself a chivalrous knight with sentiments of honor and courage,” Sumner thundered. “Of course he has chosen a mistress to whom he has made his vows, and who, though ugly to others, is always lovely to him; though polluted in the sight of the world, is chaste in his sight—I mean the harlot slavery.”
Representative Preston Brooks, a nephew of Butler’s, was infuriated by Sumner’s inflammatory, sexually suggestive speech, and retaliated two days later, on 22 May. As Sumner quietly worked at his desk in the near-empty Senate chamber, Brooks approached him. “Mr. Sumner,” he said, “I have read your speech twice over carefully. It is a libel on South Carolina, and Mr. Butler, who is a relative of mine.” Without warning, Brooks then began whacking Sumner over the head with his cane. The assault didn’t stop, even after Sumner collapsed on the floor in a bloody heap, and his injuries were so grave that it would take him years to recover and return to his Senate seat.
Northern reaction to Sumner’s bludgeoning was one of horror. “The crime is not merely against liberty but civilization,” editorialised the Boston Evening Transcript. In the South, however, Brooks was hailed as a hero. “Sumner was well and elegantly whipped,” gloated the Charleston Mercury, “and he richly deserved it.” Southerners sent Brooks commemorative canes, with “HIT HIM AGAIN” inscribed on them. Meanwhile, the country careened ever closer to civil war.
The origins of the Bible are still cloaked in mystery. When was it written? Who wrote it? And how reliable is it as an historical record? BBC History Revealed magazine charts the evolution of arguably the most influential book of all time
In 2007, Time magazine asserted that the Bible “has done more to shape literature, history, entertainment and culture than any book ever written”.
It’s a bold claim, but one that’s hard to refute. What other book resides on bedside tables in countless hotel rooms across the globe? What other book has bequeathed the world such instantly recognisable catchphrases as “an eye for an eye”, “thou shalt not kill” and “eat, drink and be merry”?
Factor in the number of copies that have been sold down the centuries – somewhere in the region of five billion to date, swollen by a further 100 million every year given away for free – and there’s no denying that the Bible’s influence on Western civilisation has been monumental.
But if the Bible’s standing as a cultural behemoth is beyond doubt, its history is anything but. For centuries, some of the world’s greatest thinkers have puzzled over the origins and evolution of this remarkable document. Who wrote it? When? And why?
These are the thorniest of questions, made all the more tangled by the Bible’s great age, and the fact that some, or all of it, has become a sacred text for members of two of the world’s great religions – Judaism and Christianity – numbering more than two billion people.
An illumination from a Byzantine manuscript depicting Jesus Christ. (Photo by Werner Forman/Universal Images Group/Getty Images)
Where does the Bible originate?
Archaeology and the study of written sources have shed light on the history of both halves of the Bible: the Old Testament, the story of the Jews’ highs and lows in the millennium or so before the birth of Jesus; and the New Testament, which documents the life and teachings of Jesus. These findings may be incomplete and they may be highly contested, but they have helped historians paint a picture of how the Bible came to life.
Perhaps the best place to start the story is in Sun-baked northern Egypt, for it was here that the Bible and archaeology may, just may, first collide.
For centuries, the Old Testament has been widely interpreted as a story of disaster and rescue – of the Israelites falling from grace before picking themselves up, dusting themselves down and finding redemption. Nowhere is this theme more evident than in Exodus, the dramatic second book of the Old Testament, which chronicles the Israelites’ escape from captivity in Egypt to the promised land.
But has archaeology unearthed one of the sites of the Israelites’ captivity?
That’s the question that some historians have been asking themselves since the 1960s, when the Austrian archaeologist Manfred Bietak identified the location of the ancient city of Pi-Ramesses at the site of the modern town of Qantir in Egypt’s Nile Delta. Pi-Ramesses was the great capital built by Ramesses II, one of Egypt’s most formidable pharaohs and the biblical tormentor of the Israelites. It’s been argued that Pi-Ramesses was the biblical city of Ramesses, and that the city was built, as Exodus claims, by Jewish slaves.
It’s an intriguing theory, and one that certainly has its doubters. But if it were true, it would place the enslaved Israelites in the Nile Delta in the decades after 1279 BC, when Ramesses II became king. So what happened next?
The Bible is in little doubt. It tells us that Moses led the Israelites out of their captivity in Egypt (whose population had been laid low by ten plagues inflicted on them by God) before Joshua spearheaded a brilliant invasion of Canaan, the promised land. The historical sources, however, are far less forthcoming. As John Barton, former professor of the interpretation of holy scriptures at the University of Oxford, puts it: “There is no evidence of a great invasion by the Israelites under Joshua; the population doesn’t seem to have changed much in that period as far as we can tell by archaeological surveys.”
St Catherine’s Monastery in the shadow of Mount Sinai, where the Codex Sinaiticus came to scholars’ attention. (Image by RF CREATIVE/Getty Images)
In fact, the best corroborating evidence for the Bible’s claim that the Israelites surged into Canaan is Merneptah’s Stele.
What is Merneptah’s Stele?
Like all good autocrats, Merneptah, pharaoh of Egypt, loved to brag about his achievements. And when he led his armies on a successful war of conquest at the end of the 13th century BC, he wanted the world, and successive generations, to know all about it.
The medium on which the pharaoh chose to trumpet his martial prowess was a three-metre-high lump of carved granite, now known as the Merneptah Stele. The stele, which was discovered at the site of the ancient Egyptian city of Thebes in 1896, contains 28 lines of text, mostly detailing the Egyptians’ victory over the Libyans and their allies. But it is the final three lines of the inscription that has arguably excited most interest among historians.
“Israel has been shorn,” it declares. “Its seed no longer exists.” These few words constitute the first known written reference to the Israelites. It’s an inauspicious start, one that boasts of this people’s near destruction at the hands of one of the ancient world’s superpowers in their homeland of Canaan. But the Israelites would survive.
A replica of Merneptah’s Stele, now housed in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. The last 3 of the 28 lines deal with a separate campaign in Canaan, then part of Egypt’s imperial possessions. (Photo by Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
And the story they would go on to tell about themselves and their relationship with their God would arguably eclipse any of Merneptah’s achievements. It would spawn what is surely the most influential book of all time: the Bible.
Merneptah’s Stele may describe more Jewish pain at the hands of their perennial Egyptian persecutors, but it at least suggests that they may have been in Canaan during Merneptah’s reign (1213–1203 BC).
If the early history of the Israelites is uncertain, so is the evolution of the book that would tell their story.
Who wrote the Bible?
Until the 17th century, received opinion had it that the first five books of the Bible – Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy – were the work of one author: Moses. That theory has since been seriously challenged.
Scholars now believe that the stories that would become the Bible were disseminated by word of mouth across the centuries, in the form of oral tales and poetry – perhaps as a means of forging a collective identity among the tribes of Israel. Eventually, these stories were collated and written down. The question is by whom, and when?
A clue may lie in a limestone boulder discovered embedded in a stone wall in the town of Tel Zayit, 35 miles southwest of Jerusalem, in 2005. The boulder, now known as the Zayit Stone, contains what many historians believe to be the earliest full Hebrew alphabet ever discovered, dating to around 1000 BC. “What was found was not a random scratching of two or three letters, it was the full alphabet,” Kyle McCarter of Johns Hopkins University in Maryland has said of the stone. “Everything about it says this is the ancestor of the Hebrew script.”
The Zayit Stone does not in itself tell us when the Bible was written and collated, but it gives us our first glimpse of the language that produced it. And, by tracking the stylistic development of that language down the centuries, and cross-referencing it with biblical text, historians have been able to rule out the single-author hypotheses, concluding instead that it was written by waves of scribes during the first millennium BC.
Ask the expert: John Barton
John Barton is a former professor of holy scriptures at the University of Oxford and the author ofA History of the Bible: The Books and Its Faiths.
Q: Just how reliable is the Old Testament as an historical document?
A: Some parts, such as the early chapters of Genesis, are myth or legend, rather than history. But parts of Samuel, Kings, Ezra and Nehemiah describe events broadly known also from Assyrian or Persian sources. For example, Jehu, king of Israel in the ninth century BC, appears on an Assyrian monument, the Black Obelisk, doing obeisance to the Assyrian king. From about the eighth century BC onwards, the Old Testament contains some real historiography, even though it may not all be accurate.
Q: Does it matter if it’s not historically accurate? Are we guilty of placing too much emphasis on this question?
A: I think we are. Much of the Old Testament is about seeing God at work in human history rather than in accurately recording the detail, and sometimes we exaggerate the importance of historical accuracy. The Old Testament is not a work of fiction, but nor is it a modern piece of history-writing.
Q: How much does archaeology support the historicity of the Old Testament?
A To a limited extent. It gives us a context within which the Old Testament makes sense, but it doesn’t confirm a lot of the details. It mustn’t be forgotten that archaeology has also yielded vast numbers of documents from the ancient near-east, such as Assyrian and Babylonian annals, which illuminate the Old Testament world.
Q: How much do we know about the scribes who wrote the Old Testament?
A: The scribes are never described in detail in the Old Testament itself, but analogies with Egypt and Mesopotamia make it clear that there must have been a scribal class, probably attached as civil servants to the temple in Jerusalem or the royal court. After the exile of the Jewish people in Bablylon in the sixth century BC, scribes gradually turned into religious teachers, as we find them in the New Testament.
Q: When was the Old Testament assembled into the book it is today?
A: Probably during the first century BC, though parts of it were certainly regarded as holy scripture much earlier than that. But the collection is a work of early Judaism. It should be remembered that for a long time it was a collection of individual scrolls, not a single book between two covers.
Q: Did the Old Testament anticipate the figure of Jesus Christ?
A: There are prophecies of a coming Messiah – which means ‘anointed one’ – occasionally in the Old Testament, and Christians claimed them as foretelling Jesus. But messianic hopes were not widespread or massively important in first-century Judaism and are even less central to the Old Testament itself. Christians discovered texts they saw as messianic prophecies – for example, in Isaiah 7 – though other Jews did not read them that way.
Q: Why did the New Testament gain so much traction in the first centuries AD?
A: The New Testament was accepted because it was part of the package of the Christian message, which was massively successful in the early centuries. The message, which was that all humankind was accepted through Jesus by the God worshipped by the Jews, proved a winner.
Who was King David?
The first wave of scribes may, it’s been suggested, have started work during the reign of King David (c1000 BC). Whether that’s true or not, David is a monumental figure in the biblical story – the slayer of Goliath, the conqueror of Jerusalem. David is also a hugely important figure in the quest to establish links between the Bible and historical fact, for he appears to be the earliest biblical figure to be confirmed by archaeology.
“I killed [the] king of the house of David.” So boasts the Tel Dan Stele, an inscribed stone dating from 870–750 BC and discovered in northern Israel in the 1990s. Like the Merneptah Stele before it, it documents a warlord’s victory over the Israelites (the man doing the gloating was probably the local ruler Hazael of Aram-Damascus). But it at least indicates that David was a historical figure.
The Tel Dan Stele also suggests that,no matter how capable their rulers, the people of Israel continued to be menaced by powerful, belligerent neighbours. And, in 586 BC, one of those neighbours, the Babylonians, would inflict on the Jews one of the most devastating defeats in their history: ransacking the sacred city of Jerusalem, butchering its residents, and dragging many more back to Babylonia.
For the people of Israel, the fall of Jerusalem was a searing experience. It created, in the words of Eric M Meyers, a biblical scholar at Duke University in North Carolina, “one of the most significant theological crises in the history of the Jewish people”. And, according to many scholars, that crisis may have had a transformative impact on the writing of the Bible.
The Old Testament is far more than a formulaic story of a nation’s evolution, it’s also a chronicle of that nation’s relationship with its God. Did the sack of Jerusalem in 586 BC convince a new wave of Jewish thinkers that they hadn’t been keeping their side of the bargain? Did it spur them into revisiting all previous editions of the Jewish scriptures in order to sharpen the emphasis on the agreement or ‘covenant’ between the people and their one God?
Whether this theory holds or not, there’s little doubt that by the time they returned from their Babylonian exile, the Bible occupied a unique place in the consciousness of the Jewish people. However, it would be centuries before the book would be revered as a secret text for non-Jews. And the reason for that transformation from national to international significance was, of course, the figure of Jesus Christ. It’s the so-called New Testament, the account of Jesus’s life and teachings, that turned the Hebrew Bible into a civilisationshaping, global icon.
Who was Jesus? Did he really exist?
Most scholars agree that Jesus, a first-century religious leader and preacher, existed historically. He was born in c4 BC and died – reportedly crucified on the orders of the Roman prefect Pontius Pilate – in cAD 30–33. Then, for around 40 years, news of his teachings was spread by word of mouth until, from around AD 70, four written accounts of his life emerged that changed everything.
The gospels, or ‘good news’, of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are critically important to the Christian faith. It is their descriptions of the life of Jesus Christ that have made him arguably the most influential figure in human history.
“We can’t be sure when the gospels were written,” says Barton, “and we know little about the authors. But the guess is that Mark came first, in the 70s, followed by Matthew and Luke in the 80s and 90s, and John in the 90s or early in the second century.
“In general, Matthew, Mark and Luke tell the same story with variations, and hence are called the ‘synoptic’ gospels, whereas John has a very different style, as well as telling a markedly different version of the story of Jesus. Matthew and Luke seem to be attempts to improve on Mark, by adding more stories and sayings from sources now lost. John is a different conceptualisation of the story of Jesus, portraying a more obviously divine figure.”
Though the variations in the four gospels may have proved a source of frustration to those trying to paint a definitive picture of Jesus’s life and teachings, they offer a fascinating insight into the challenges facing the early Christian church as it spread around the Mediterranean world in the first and second centuries AD.
Mark, it’s been argued, wrote for a community deeply affected by the failure of a Jewish revolt against the Roman empire in the AD 60s, while Luke wrote for a predominately Gentile (non-Jewish) audience eager to demonstrate that Christian beliefs could flourish within the Roman empire. Both John and Matthew hint at the growing tensions between Jewish Christians and the Jewish religious authorities.
As a Jew, Jesus would have been well-versed in the Hebrew Bible and, according to the gospels, saw himself as the realisation of ancient Jewish prophecies. “Don’t think that I came to destroy the law, or the prophets,” Matthew reports him saying. “I didn’t come to destroy, but to fulfil.” But for all that, by the time the gospels were written, schisms between Judaism and nascent Christianity were clearly emerging.
How did Christianity spread around the world?
The Epistles, or letters, written by Paul the Apostle to churches dotted across the Mediterranean world – which are our best source for the initial spread of Christianity – confirm that Christianity started in Jerusalem, but spread rapidly to Syria and then to the rest of the Mediterranean world, and was mostly accepted by non-Jews, says John Barton, former professor of the interpretation of holy scriptures at the University of Oxford.
“The epistles [which make up 13 books of the New Testament] are our earliest evidence for Christianity,” says Barton. “The first date from the AD 50s, just two decades after the death of Jesus.”
As Paul’s letters to churches such as the one in the Greek city of Thessalonica reveal, the first Christian communities were often persecuted for their beliefs.
And it’s such persecution, particularly at the hands of the Romans, that may have inspired the last book of the New Testament, Revelations. With its dark descriptions of a seven-headed beast and allusions to an imminent apocalypse, Revelations is now widely believed to be a foretelling of the grisly fate that the author believed awaited the Roman oppressors of Christianity.
Despite that oppression, by the fourth century Christianity had become the dominant religion in the Mediterranean world, with the New Testament widely revered as a sacred text inspired by God. “It was around this time,” says Barton, “that the 27 books of the New Testament were copied into single books as though they formed a single work.” One example is the Codex Sinaiticus, now in the British Library. “The first person to list exactly the books we now have as the New Testament is the fourth-century bishop Athanasius of Alexandria, but it’s clear that he was only reporting what was already widely accepted.”
By the end of the early fifth century, a series of councils across the Christian world had effectively rubber-stamped the New Testament that we know today: the Bible’s journey to being the most influential book in human history was well and truly under way.
Versions of the Bible
Different editions of the Bible have appeared over the centuries, aiming to further popularise the stories and teachings within. Here are three of the most notable versions…
King James Bible
On 24 March 1603, King James VI of Scotland was also crowned King James I of England and Ireland. His reign would usher in a new royal dynasty (the Stuarts) and a new era of colonialism (most especially in North America). But arguably every bit as significant was his decision, in 1611, to introduce a new Bible.
The ‘King James Version’ (KJV) wasn’t the first to be printed in English – Henry VIII had authorised the ‘Great Bible’ in 1539 and the Bishops’ Bible had been printed during the reign of Elizabeth I in 1568 – but, in terms of impact, the KJV would dwarf its successors.
Shortly after his coronation, James was told that existing translations of the Bible were “corrupt and not answerable to the truth of the original”. What his scholars produced was a book designed to be read out aloud in church – fast-paced, easy to understand, a masterclass in storytelling.
No other version would challenge its dominance in the English-speaking world until the mid-20th century. According tob historian Adam Nicolson, the King James Bible’s “particular combination of majesty and freedom, of clarity and richness, was for centuries held, particularly by the Victorians, to be the defining terms of our national identity”.
The Gutenberg Bible
In 1454, in the Rhineland town of Mainz, three friends – inventor Johannes Gutenberg, printer Peter Schöffer and financier Johann Furst – pooled resources and brainpower to come up with what the British Library describes as “probably the most famous Bible in the world”.
The Gutenberg Bible, as the three friends’ creation would come to be known, signalled a step-change in printing techniques. Whereas earlier Bibles were produced by printing presses that employed woodblock technology, the press that churned out the Gutenberg Bible used moveable metal type, allowing more flexible, efficient and cheap printing.
Gutenberg’s Bible also had massive cultural and theological ramifications. Faster, cheaper printing meant more books and more readers – and that brought with it greater criticism, interpretation, debate and, ultimately, revolution. In short, the Gutenberg Bible was a significant step on the road to the Protestant Reformation and ultimately the Enlightenment.
In the words of Professor Justin Champion of Royal Holloway, University of London: “The printed Bible in the hands of the public posed a fundamental challenge to papal dominion. Once released from Latin into the vernacular, the word of God became a weapon.”
Dead Sea Scrolls
Sometime between November 1946 and February 1947, a Bedouin shepherd threw a stone into a cave at Wadi Qumran, near the Dead Sea. When he heard something crack he headed inside to investigate. What he found has been described by the Smithsonian Institute as “the most important religious texts in the Western world”.
What the shepherd had chanced upon were the Dead Sea Scrolls, more than 800 documents of animal skin and papyrus, stored in clay jars for safe keeping. Among the texts are fragments of every book of the Old Testament, except the Book of Esher, along with a collection of previously unknown hymns and a copy of the Ten Commandments.
But what really makes the scrolls special is their age. They were written between around 200 BC and the middle decades of the first century AD, which means they predate by at least eight centuries the oldest previously known Hebrew text of the Old Testament.
Were the scrolls left in the caves by a Jewish community living near the Dead Sea or, perhaps, by Jews fleeing Roman troops in the first century AD? We may never know for sure.
Could you imagine being a soldier riding a horse into battle wearing a pair of stilettos? As crazy as that may sound, it’s nearly historically accurate – except stilettos weren’t invented for another 1,000 years.
Though they are more commonly worn by women today, high heels were originally made for men. High heels have enjoyed a largely unisex appreciation spanning many centuries and only became female coded in the last 300 years. Throughout history, the public opinion on how these fashionable yet painful shoes should look and feel and who should wear them has vacillated.
High heels are an evocative symbol of power today. While these elements have remained consistent dating back to their early days, they also represented many more things: independence, social standing, self-importance, masculinity, and strength. Heel wearers were lauded for their fashion sense and despised for their perceived arrogance.
As frivolous as dress shoes might seem, the origin of high heels is a microcosm of Western gender relations throughout the last millennium.
900s: High Heels Are Used In Horseback-Riding Cultures To Keep Feet In Stirrups
The first known high heel was worn by Persian men in the 10th century. They were neither decorative nor stylish, but they served a utility purpose: gripping the stirrups as they rode their horses.
This provided better control and the ability to ride closer to the horse. Heels were especially useful during wartime as the added control allowed the rider to remain steady on the horse and keep his hands free to access and deploy his weaponry.
High heels were especially popular among one specific group throughout the 16th century: courtesans. The highest caste of harlots, courtesans were the predecessor to the high-end escort.
They enjoyed privileges that were not available to most other women, let alone other workers like them. They were allowed to enter libraries and keep company with high ranking men. They were known to smoke, drink, and wear high heels to appear “elevated” above other women, and also because the men enjoyed what they saw.
They were the women who commonly wore the dramatically high heel, often using male servants and noblemen as a human crutch.
1500s: Aristocratic Women Wear Heels To Indicate Status
Reconstruction of an Venitian chopine, after models dating from 1500 to 1600. On display at the Shoe Museum in Lausanne.
The chopine platform shoe popular with women throughout the 16th century took heel wearers to unbelievable heights, with some shoes clocking in at over 22 inches tall. To keep from falling over, the aristocratic women would often use their maids as a crutch.
This was, understandably, a tremendous public health hazard. Many thought the bodily damage and potential miscarriage was worth it; and while no one could see the shoes, the real marvel was in the dazzling length of the skirt. The long skirts were meant to display wealth, as onlookers were scandalized by how much the extra fabric must have cost.
Despite the finer shape of the heel, the high heel that followed the chopine was actually more balanced.
1600s: Persian Migrants Bring Heels To Europe, Where Men Wear Them To Appear More Formidable
At the turn of the 17th century, Persian Shah Abbas I sojourned to Europe to seek diplomatic assistance in defeating the Ottoman Empire. Abbas and his entourage visited Russia, Germany, and Spain, resulting in a boom of interest in Persian goods and aesthetics. Aristocratic men quickly adopted the high-heeled shoe, valuing its projection of virile masculinity.
Whereas the Persian soldiers and noblemen used heels out of necessity, they were initially considered formidable and donned for their appearance.
1700s: King Louis XIV Introduces High Heels With Red Soles To The French Court
The first half of the 18th century was the peak of the men in heels movement. Louis XIV of France, also known as the Sun King, reigned over France for 72 years. Standing at 5’4,” King Louis was rather arrogant, to say the least. The Sun King moniker came from his deeply held belief that he was the center of the universe, and that France revolved around him.
Since Louis was a statistically below-average height man, and fancied himself as monumentally important, he was all about a high heel. He was known for the emblematic red-soled heel, predating Christian Louboutin’s red-bottom heels by 200 years.
Plebeians were allowed to emulate him by wearing high heels, but only those in his court were permitted to wear the red soles. Doing so without prior authorization was grounds for punishment and being thrown out of court.
1700s: Men’s Heels Become More Broad And Sturdy, While Women’s Become More Decorative
After a few centuries of a uniformly chunky heel, the design split off into distinct gendered categories. Returning to the original utility purpose of the shoe, the men’s heel became more broad and thick. In contrast, the women’s heel became more tapered and served as a decorative garment. This shift would signal the impending end of society’s acceptance of the unisex high heel.
Mid-1700s: Heels Are Perceived As ‘Frivolous’ And Are Worn Exclusively By Women
Despite the emergent popularity of high heels at the turn of the 18th century, they were quickly dismissed as frivolous women’s footwear. The design continued to skew more and more dainty and tapered over time, more closely resembling the thin heeled shoe that is worn today.
The purpose for wearing the high heel was not for emphasizing the shape of the wearer’s legs but rather the smallness of her feet. Skirts were still too long to show the contour of the foot, and small feet were a desirable feminine trait at the time.
Late 1700s: Heels Go Out Of Style Following The French Revolution
Soon after the gendered divide that diminished the widespread appeal of the high heel, one historical event in 1789 ended public interest in the shoes entirely.
The French Revolution was a people’s movement that sought to do away with the aristocracy. Garb that emphasized social status became undesirable, and high heels became passe and undemocratic. The shoes were already widely dismissed for their “irrationality and superficiality,” so they were not missed.
Mid-1800s: Photography And Adult Entertainment Reintroduce High-Heeled Fashion
Although heels were considered irrational and superficial at the end of the 18th century, they found popularity elsewhere as men began to enjoy the effect a heel had on the shape of a woman’s posterior.
The advent of photography in the 19th century was monumental for countless reasons, but it also ushered in the renaissance of the high-heeled shoe. Adult postcards featuring women in heels became very popular in France, and the rest of Europe and America soon followed.
Effectively, the invention of print adult entertainment was directly responsible for the high heel comeback, cementing society’s correlation between sexuality and high heels.
1940s: Pin-Up Girl Posters Correlate High Heels With Female Sexuality
The progression of adult postcards led to the widely popular pin-up genre. Exceptionally tall, thin, and with sharp heels, these provocative shoes were allowed to be more visually intriguing and less structurally sound as the models only needed to pose in them for a few minutes at a time.
The pin-ups were especially popular in the men’s barracks throughout WWII, which inadvertently caused an innovative shake up that would change the shape of the heel industry forever.
1945: The Stiletto Is Invented And Becomes A Women’s Fashion Staple Following WWII
In the 1950s, high heel technology allowed for a new type of heel that was thinner, sharper, and more chic than ever before. Up until this point, heels were typically made out of wood, so they could only be carved as thin as was structurally sound. Once shoemakers began using steel to create the structure of the heel, they could be much thinner and still safely support the wearer’s weight, and thus the stiletto heel was born.
The stiletto heel was a small piece of metal attached to the inside of the shoe, allowing the heel to pivot separately from the shoe and allow flexibility for the wearer. The interior steel piece is known as the “shank,” and it is placed on the back of the heel, rather than in the middle like the original style of heel.
Late 1900s: Heels Remain Popular, But Designs Become More Casual And Comfortable
While performative cross-dressing has existed for centuries, our current understanding of drag culture quietly progressed in the shadows all throughout the 20th century. It has surged wildly in popularity throughout the early 21st century.
This newfound acceptance of female impersonation and gender fluid performers has made it fashionable once more for men to wear high heels, and this effect has spread beyond the realm of drag performance. This is not to say that the average guy on the street is wearing eight-inch stilettos, but tolerance for gender experimentation has blurred the lines of what clothing is “female” or “male.”
Time Immemorial: Stories Like ‘Cinderella’ Reinforce The Notion Of Heels As A Status Symbol
The status and desirability of heels has been primarily governed by class signaling and sociopolitical events. While there are many intricate and discrete factors throughout history, many of those dynamics can be best understood through allegorical stories about coveting the high heel.
One example, and possibly the oldest, is Cinderella. Stories using the “slipper test” plot device have been told since the first century in Egypt, and many individual cultures have their own retelling of this type of story. In the case of the present-day Cinderella, the glass slipper represents access to a higher social class. Without it, she appears normal, dowdy, and as a laborer. Due to her beauty and virtuous neighbor, however, she is rewarded by being innately worthy of wearing the shoe.
The Tichborne Dole is an ancient English tradition still very much alive today. It takes place in the village of Tichborne near Alresford in Hampshire every year on March 25th the Feast of the Annunciation (Lady’s Day) and dates back to the 13th century.
Suffering from a wasting disease which had left her crippled, on her deathbed Lady Mabella Tichborne asked her miserly husband, Sir Roger, to donate food to the needy regularly every year. Her husband was reluctant but made a bizarre agreement as to how much he would give.
Sir Roger agreed to give the corn from all the land which his dying wife could crawl around whilst holding a blazing torch in her hand, before the torch went out. Lady Mabella succeeded in crawling around a twenty-three acre field which is still called ‘The Crawls’ to this day and which is situated just north of Tichborne Park and beside the road to Alresford.
Lady Tichborne charged her husband and his heirs to give the produce value of that land to the poor in perpetuity. But aware of her husband’s miserly character, Mabella added a curse – that should the dole ever be stopped then seven sons would be born to the house, followed immediately by a generation of seven daughters, after which the Tichborne name would die out and the ancient house fall into ruin.
The Tichbourne Dole in 1671
The custom of giving the dole, in the form of bread, on 25th March, Lady Day continued for over 600 years, until 1796, when owing to abuse by vagabonds and vagrants, it was temporarily suspended by order of the Magistrates.
Local folk however, remembered the final part of the Tichborne legend and Lady Tachborne’s curse. The penalty for not giving the dole would be a generation of seven daughters, the family name would die out and the ancient house fall down. In 1803 part of the house did indeed subside and the curse seemed to have been fulfilled when Sir Henry Tichborne who succeeded to the baronetcy in 1821(one of seven brothers), produced seven daughters.
The tradition was hastily re-established and has continued to this day.
Roger, Henry’s nephew, was born before the restoration of the Dole and his younger brother Alfred afterwards. Roger was lost at sea in 1845 and was impersonated two decades later by the unsuccessful Tichborne claimant, Arthur Orton (pictured at the top of the article). Alfred was the only one to survive Lady Tichborne’s curse and thus the Tichborne name did not die out.
The Dole is held every Lady Day, March 25th. The parish priest carries out the traditional Blessing of the Tichborne Dole before the flour is distributed to the local people – only those families in Tichborne, Cheriton and Lane End are entitled to the dole. They receive one gallon of flour per adult and half a gallon per child.
Lady Day itself is celebrated in honour of the Virgin Mary as this day, nine months before Christmas, is the day of the Annunciation from the Archangel Gabriel that she would bear Christ. In the 12th century Lady Day was considered the first day of the year and persisted until the official calendar change of 1752.
The Bible has been translated into far more languages than any other book. Yet, as Harry Freedman reveals, the history of Bible translations is not only contentious but bloody, with many who dared translate it being burned at the stake…
In 1427, Pope Martin ordered that John Wycliffe’s bones be exhumed from their grave, burned and cast into the river Swift. Wycliffe had been dead for 40 years, but his offence still rankled.
John Wycliffe (c1330–1384) was 14th-century England’s outstanding thinker. A theologian by profession, he was called in to advise parliament in its negotiations with Rome. This was a world in which the church was all-powerful, and the more contact Wycliffe had with Rome, the more indignant he became. The papacy, he believed, reeked of corruption and self-interest. He was determined to do something about it.
Wycliffe began publishing pamphlets arguing that, rather than pursuing wealth and power, the church should have the poor at heart. In one tract he described the Pope as “the anti-Christ, the proud, worldly priest of Rome, and the most cursed of clippers and cut-purses”.
In 1377 the Bishop of London demanded that Wycliffe appear before his court to explain the “wonderful things which had streamed forth from his mouth”. The hearing was a farce. It began with a violent row over whether or not Wycliffe should sit down. John of Gaunt, the king’s son and an ally of Wycliffe, insisted that the accused remain seated; the bishop demanded that he stand.
When the Pope heard of the fiasco he issued a papal bull [an official papal letter or document] in which he accused Wycliffe of “vomiting out of the filthy dungeon of his heart most wicked and damnable heresies”. Wycliffe was accused of heresy and put under house arrest and was later forced to retire from his position as Master of Balliol College, Oxford.
Wycliffe firmly believed that the Bible should be available to everybody. He saw literacy as the key to the emancipation of the poor. Although parts of the Bible had previously been rendered into English there was still no complete translation. Ordinary people, who neither spoke Latin nor were able to read, could only learn from the clergy. Much of what they thought they knew – ideas like the fires of hell and purgatory – were not even part of Scripture.
With the aid of his assistants, therefore, Wycliffe produced an English Bible [over a period of 13 years from 1382]. A backlash was inevitable: in 1391, before the Bible was completed, a bill was placed before parliament to outlaw the English Bible and to imprison anyone possessing a copy. The bill failed to pass – John of Gaunt saw to that [in parliament] – and the church resumed its persecution of the now-dead Wycliffe [he died in 1384].
Shorn of alternatives, the best they could do was to burn his bones [in 1427], just to make sure his resting place was not venerated. The Archbishop of Canterbury explained that Wycliffe had been “that pestilent wretch, of damnable memory, yea, the forerunner and disciple of antichrist who, as the complement of his wickedness, invented a new translation of the scriptures into his mother-tongue”.
A page from John Wycliffe’s translation of the Bible into English, c1400. (Photo by Ann Ronan Pictures/Print Collector/Getty Images)
Jan Hus
In 1402, the newly ordained Czech priest Jan Hus was appointed to a pulpit in Prague to minister in the church. Inspired by Wycliffe’s writings, which were now circulating in Europe, Hus used his pulpit to campaign for clerical reform and against church corruption.
Like Wycliffe, Hus believed that social reform could only be achieved through literacy. Giving the people a Bible written in the Czech language, instead of Latin, was an imperative. Hus assembled a team of scholars; in 1416 the first Czech Bible appeared. It was a direct challenge to those he called “the disciples of antichrist” and the consequence was predictable: Hus was arrested for heresy.
Jan Hus’s trial, which took place in the city of Constance, has gone down as one of the most spectacular in history. It was more like a carnival – nearly every bigwig in Europe was there. One archbishop arrived with 600 horses; 700 prostitutes offered their services; 500 people drowned in the lake; and the Pope fell off his carriage into a snowdrift. The atmosphere was so exhilarating that Hus’s eventual conviction and barbaric execution must have seemed an anti-climax. But slaughtered he was, burnt at the stake. His death galvanised his supporters into revolt. Priests and churches were attacked, the authorities retaliated. Within a few short years Bohemia had erupted into civil war. All because Jan Hus had the gall to translate the Bible.
The capture of Jan Hus. Miniature of the ‘Chronicle’ of Ulrich of Richental. Prague, national library of the University. (Photo by Roger Viollet Collection/Getty Images)
William Tyndale
As far as the English Bible is concerned, the most high profile translator to be murdered was William Tyndale. It was now the 16th century and Henry VIII was on the throne. Wycliffe’s translation was still banned, and although manuscript copies were available on the black market, they were hard to find and expensive to procure. Most people still had no inkling of what the Bible really said.
But printing was becoming commonplace, and Tyndale believed the time was right for an accessible, up-to-date translation. He knew he could create one; all he needed was the funding, and the blessing of the church. It didn’t take him long to realise that nobody in London was prepared to help him. Not even his friend, the bishop of London, Cuthbert Tunstall. Church politics made sure of that.
The religious climate appeared less oppressive in Germany. Luther had already translated the Bible into German; the Protestant Reformation was gathering pace and Tyndale believed he would have a better chance of realising his project there. So he travelled to Cologne and began printing.
This, it transpired, was a mistake. Cologne was still under the control of an archbishop loyal to Rome. He was halfway through printing the book of Matthew when he heard that the print shop was about to raided. He bundled up his papers and fled. It was a story that would be repeated several times over the next few years. Tyndale spent the next few years dodging English spies and Roman agents. But he managed to complete his Bible and copies were soon flooding into England – illegally, of course. The project was complete but Tyndale was a marked man.
He wasn’t the only one. In England, Cardinal Wolsey was conducting a campaign against Tyndale’s Bible. No one with a connection to Tyndale or his translation was safe. Thomas Hitton, a priest who had met Tyndale in Europe, confessed to smuggling two copies of the Bible into the country. He was charged with heresy and burnt alive.
Thomas Bilney, a lawyer whose connection to Tyndale was tangential at the most, was also thrown into the flames. First prosecuted by the bishop of London, Bilney recanted and was eventually released in 1529. But when he withdrew his recantation in 1531 he was re-arrested and prosecuted by Thomas Pelles, chancellor of Norwich diocese, and burnt by the secular authorities just outside the city of Norwich.
Meanwhile Richard Bayfield, a monk who had been one of Tyndale’s early supporters, was tortured incessantly before being tied to the stake. And a group of students in Oxford were left to rot in a dungeon that was used for storing salt fish.
Tyndale’s end was no less tragic. He was betrayed in 1535 by Henry Phillips, a dissolute young aristocrat who had stolen his [Phillips’] father’s money and gambled it away. Tyndale was hiding out in Antwerp, under the quasi–diplomatic protection of the English merchant community. Phillips, who was as charming as he was disreputable, befriended Tyndale and invited him out for dinner. As they left the English merchant house together, Phillips beckoned to a couple of thugs loitering in a doorway. They seized Tyndale. It was the last free moment of his life. Tyndale was charged with heresy in August 1536 and burnt at the stake a few weeks later.
William Tyndale being tied to a stake before being strangled and burned to death. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
England was not the only country to murder Bible translators. In Antwerp, the city where Tyndale thought he was safe, Jacob van Liesveldt produced a Dutch Bible. Like so many 16th-century translations, his act was political as well as religious. His Bible was illustrated with woodcuts – in the fifth edition he depicted Satan in the guise of a Catholic monk, with goat’s feet and a rosary. It was a step too far. Van Liesveldt was arrested, charged with heresy and put to death.
A murderous age
The 16th century was by far the most murderous age for Bible translators. But Bible translations have always generated strong emotions, and continue to do so even today. In 1960 the United States Air Force Reserve warned recruits against using the recently published Revised Standard Version because, they claimed, 30 people on its translation committee had been “affiliated with communist fronts”. TS Eliot, meanwhile, railed against the 1961 New English Bible, writing that it “astonishes in its combination of the vulgar, the trivial, and the pedantic”.
And Bible translators are still being murdered. Not necessarily for the act of translating the Bible, but because rendering the Bible into local dialects is one of the things Christian missionaries do. In 1993 Edmund Fabian was murdered in Papua New Guinea, killed by a local man who had been helping him translate the Bible. In March 2016, four Bible translators working for an American evangelical organisation were killed by militants in an undisclosed location in the Middle East.
Bible translations, then, may appear to be a harmless activity. History shows it is anything but.
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