The Tanak was a publicly owned and consumed document, read aloud. In this, it is like the Catholic Bible, particularly before the Reformation. The significance of private reading will be discussed later in the quarter.

Another term to know is "Masoretic." The Masoretes were a group of Jewish scribes in the 9th & 10th c. AD. The copies they made of the Jewish Bible were the earliest ones we had until the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in 1947.

The Masoretes were responsible for adding vowels, as the original Hebrew and Aramaic used only consonants.

The Tanak plus the New Testament

The NT coalesced very quickly, beginning with the letters of St. Paul, in the 50s (AD).

Then came the gospels and Acts of the Apostles, 70-100 AD.

In the early centuries of the church, there were many apocryphal gospels that have now been relegated to the role of scholarly curiosities. Many of them were rollicking, even ribald, such as the Gospel of the Baby Jesus, the Gospel of Nicodemus, and the Gospel of Mary Magdalene.

The current shape of the NT was set by the 4th c. AD.

It was passed around in the form of anthologies, partly due to the underground nature of Christianity.

The Emperor Constantine declared Christianity legal in 310 and strongly encouraged its adoption, but despite common understanding, it didn't become the official religion of the Roman Empire until 380, under the Emperor Theodosius.

Rome wasn't the first Christian kingdom; that was Armenia, which converted in 301 and was a separate church until the 19th c.

The chapter divisions in the Bible date from about 1200, when the theologian Stephen Langton added them to his lectures at the Univ. of Paris. Langton later became Archbishop of Canterbury.

The numbering of verses was first done in the Jewish Bible, by Rabbi Isaac Nathan in 1440

Protestant religions arose from the Reformation, a massive schism in the Roman Catholic church that grew out of increasing conflict between the clergy and the laity.

In the Middle Ages, there was a three-part division of society: laypeople, monks, and priests who ministered to congregations. Monks and priests were frequently at odds and took turns appealing to the lay power structure to support them. By the Renaissance, however, society was divided in two: clergy and non-clergy.

The late Middle Ages saw many heresies arise, as laypeople got their hands on and minds around the Bible. Lollards in England, Albigensians & Cathars in France; Hussites in Germany; etc.

When Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses (complaining about the way the church was run) to the door of Wittenburg Cathedral in 1517, it was the first trumpet of the Reformation.

The Reformation is linked to the history of printing, as well as the history of Bible translation -- they worked together to put the Bible in the hands of laypeople, which led to an efflorescence of interpretations.

If it's got a New Testament, it's either Catholic or Protestant.

If it's called "Douay-Rheims" or "Rheims-Douay," it's a Catholic bible (if it's in English). Named after the English College at Rheims, where the Latin Vulgate Bible was translated into English in the 16th century. The only English bible accepted by the church.

There are dozens of Protestant translations. Some well known ones are the King James Version (aka the KJV -- translated in 1611 and named after King James I of England), the Revised Standard Version (RSV -- translated in the US in 1952), and the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV -- 1980s). The Church of England continues to use the KJV.