A Thought on Sola Scriptura

It struck me today, as I was reading an article about the St. John's Bible that many Christians today suffer from severe myopia.  As in a complete lack of understanding about the history of their own beliefs.  There was Christ, the Bible divinely appeared in whole, the church became "pagan", then Martin Luther and his buds appeared, and viola!  We have today's "TRUE" Christianity.  In the discussions I've had, that truly is as far as this understanding goes.  Among other inaccurate accusations, I've heard time and again how the church "hoarded" the Bible, keeping it from the masses, so they wouldn't understand it.  Kept it chained in the church, so that the "normal folk" HAD to go to the Church to have access to the scriptures.  And it wasn't until Martin Luther came around that anyone even let the scriptures be written in the vernacular!! 

The above article on the St. John's Bible drove home a point that many forget about.  The printing press was invented only a few years before the world met Martin Luther.  Prior to that time, Bibles were painstakingly printed on vellum by HAND - a process that would take years and years for a single edition to be created.  The St. John's Bible today cost $8 million to create.  Each and every edition of the Bible before the printing press was invaluable and rare.  Where would it be safe, protected, and available for all to see?  Individuals did not own them, just as you or I cannot own the $8 million St. John's Bible.  The Church was the protector of the book.  Not to keep it FROM  the people, but to allow it FOR the people.  The Church was the only means that every day folk could access the scriptures at all for the first 1500 years of Christianity.  The Church was the steward, the protector, and the transcribers of the Bible.  There could be no "sola scriptura" prior to the invention of the printing press. 

Oh, and the whole "vernacular" thing?  The Latin "Vulgate" in itself was a translation from the Greek and Hebrew into the "vernacular" of the people - Latin,  In 382 AD, 1200 years or so before Martin Luther. By the end of late antiquity (the eighth century or so) the Bible was available and used in all the major written languages then spoken by Christians.