{"id":42650,"date":"2014-08-19T07:00:10","date_gmt":"2014-08-19T14:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/?p=42650"},"modified":"2015-03-19T22:16:59","modified_gmt":"2015-03-20T05:16:59","slug":"chained-bibles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/2014\/08\/19\/chained-bibles\/","title":{"rendered":"Quick Apology: Chained Bibles"},"content":{"rendered":"

In today’s Quick Apology<\/a> post I wanted to turn to\u00a0the subject of history…<\/p>\n

Objection<\/h2>\n

When speaking about the Catholic approach to Scripture, some Protestants will make the following accusation:<\/p>\n

“The Catholic Church used to chain up Bibles!”<\/em><\/p>\n

Response<\/h2>\n

The statement is absolutely true; it was not uncommon prior to the Reformation for Bibles to be chained up. When I am told this in a discussion I concede the point, but I then ask\u00a0the person speaking if they know\u00a0why<\/strong> this was done…<\/p>\n

It is not uncommon to receive as a response, “They chained them up to stop people reading the Bible!”<\/em>. While the initial statement was true, this explanation as to why Bibles were chained is completely incorrect. In fact, Bibles were chained for completely the opposite reason. Bibles were chained up so that\u00a0more<\/strong> people had access to the Scriptures!*<\/p>\n

You see, prior to the Fifteen Century and the invention\u00a0of the movable type printing press, Bibles were hand-written. This was an colossal undertaking and therefore extremely costly. This meant that Bibles were\u00a0expensive items liable to be stolen by thieves. Therefore, in an attempt to provide people with access<\/strong> to the Scriptures, it was common\u00a0for a Bible to be made available in or around a church building, but to prevent\u00a0theft<\/strong>, it\u00a0was chained to a\u00a0heavy object.\u00a0If you had a Bible worth tens of\u00a0thousands of dollars, would you want to leave it unsecured and unattended in a public building?!<\/p>\n

If you visit a post office or a bank, you will often see pens chained to immovable services. Do these institutions chain these pens\u00a0because they don’t want you to use them? Of course not! They\u00a0want<\/strong> you to use the pens, but they want to make sure nobody\u00a0steals<\/b> them! Why? Because if they are stolen then\u00a0other people<\/strong>\u00a0won’t have the opportunity to use the pens<\/strong>. It is the same logic at work concerning the chaining of Bibles.<\/p>\n

\"Chained<\/p>\n

* It is probably worth pointing out that literacy rates were also extremely low even until the 19th Century. It is for this reason that the most common way of learning the Bible\u00a0throughout Christian history has been the\u00a0hearing\u00a0the Scriptures proclaimed at the Eucharistic liturgy<\/strong>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In today’s Quick Apology post I wanted to turn to\u00a0the subject of history… Objection When speaking about the Catholic approach to Scripture, some Protestants will make the following accusation: “The Catholic Church used to chain up Bibles!” Response The statement is absolutely true; it was not uncommon prior to the Reformation for Bibles to be chained up. When I am<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,17],"tags":[302,2759,2969,2758],"class_list":["post-42650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-apologetics","category-faith","tag-bible","tag-chain","tag-featured","tag-quick-apology"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42650"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42650\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43381,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42650\/revisions\/43381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}