NightWing
Clearer!
DoctorArcanus: Thank-you for helping to clarify my words. Yes, of course I was referring to very limited access and interest in the Hebrew version of what Christians call the Old Testament. Christians naturally knew, and even revelled in, the various stories of the OT, but sourced from the Greek and even more so in the west, the Latin versions. For what was a rather monolithic Catholicism, the Vulgate was THE version, used in churches, seminaries, etc. for many centuries, to the exclusion of all others. Even to this very day, the Catholic church officially recognises only a small handful of translations as valid, like the Douay-Rheims in English. The Authorised King James and other Protestant versions are not among them, lacking as they do a number of "books" seen as canonical by Catholicism.
It is worth noting that the most complete form of the OT existed in Greek from before the time of Jesus, and NOT in Hebrew. This was the Septuagint from 3rd century BCE Alexandria in Hellenic Egypt. Given how few people in Palestine knew Hebrew by the 1st century BCE, and how many knew Greek(and Aramaic), some have speculated that even the Torah and the Prophets that Jesus heard and read in the synagogues of his day were in Greek, and not Hebrew at all.
Apparently, the canon of a Hebrew biblical text for the Jews was still being determined in Rabbinical schools some five hundred years later, well after the NT writings were composed. Lamentations, Esther, and many psalms(among others) were considered of questionable canonicity by the Jews, and would not necessarily have been available through Jewish sources, such as a local synagogue. If Langton had them(in Hebrew), I wonder where he got them. Some of those books and parts are still excluded by most Protestants.
I will have to check my sources on Langton. Thanks.
DoctorArcanus: Thank-you for helping to clarify my words. Yes, of course I was referring to very limited access and interest in the Hebrew version of what Christians call the Old Testament. Christians naturally knew, and even revelled in, the various stories of the OT, but sourced from the Greek and even more so in the west, the Latin versions. For what was a rather monolithic Catholicism, the Vulgate was THE version, used in churches, seminaries, etc. for many centuries, to the exclusion of all others. Even to this very day, the Catholic church officially recognises only a small handful of translations as valid, like the Douay-Rheims in English. The Authorised King James and other Protestant versions are not among them, lacking as they do a number of "books" seen as canonical by Catholicism.
It is worth noting that the most complete form of the OT existed in Greek from before the time of Jesus, and NOT in Hebrew. This was the Septuagint from 3rd century BCE Alexandria in Hellenic Egypt. Given how few people in Palestine knew Hebrew by the 1st century BCE, and how many knew Greek(and Aramaic), some have speculated that even the Torah and the Prophets that Jesus heard and read in the synagogues of his day were in Greek, and not Hebrew at all.
Apparently, the canon of a Hebrew biblical text for the Jews was still being determined in Rabbinical schools some five hundred years later, well after the NT writings were composed. Lamentations, Esther, and many psalms(among others) were considered of questionable canonicity by the Jews, and would not necessarily have been available through Jewish sources, such as a local synagogue. If Langton had them(in Hebrew), I wonder where he got them. Some of those books and parts are still excluded by most Protestants.
I will have to check my sources on Langton. Thanks.
