Los Angeles herald., 1907-02-18
BISHOP breaches
LENTEN SERMON
HISTORY OF BIBLE IS HIS
THEME
Takes Hearers Back to Beginning Of
Holy Writ and Leads Them
Through It's Many
Translations

Bishop Conaty preached the first Of a
series of Lenten sermons yesterday
morning at the high mass at the Ca
thedral of st. Vibiana, at which Rev.
Francis J. Conaty was the celebrant.
The bishop took for his topic, The
Bible-Its History and Character" He
said In part
"Some of the books were written in
Hebrew, some i'm Chaldaic, and some
In Greek. Thirty-siX or more different
authors figure in it and the collection
which is now known as the Bible was
not arranged in its present form until
many years after the establishment of
Christianity The word Bible, or book,
came from 'biblos, which was the inner
layer of the papyrus plant of Egypt,
from which the ancients made the ma
terial on which they wrote. ST. John
Chrysostom is said to have been the
first to apply the word to the scrip
tures and 1t was soon known as the
Holy Bible because of the sacredness
of its contents.
"There are two great divisions of the
Bible, the Old Testament and the New
Testament The Old Testament, which
our divine Saviour referred to as the
scriptures and which the apostles speak
of as the testament or the covenant,
contains the economy of the old law
relative to the covenant between God
and his people as revealed by God
through Moses and the prophets. The
New Testament contains the economy
of the new law or the covenant of God
as revealed through Jesus Christ.
"The Holy Bible, as the Catholic
church teaches us, may therefore be
defined as the collection of sacred books
containing the revealed truths and doc
frit vi hn If
the Holy Ghost and acknowledged by
the church as the word of God.
Authority of Bible
"The Bible has a two-fold authority:
first, a divine authority, having been
inspired by God, and secondly, a hui
man and historical authority, undeni-
able because of perfect authenticity and
veracity.
THE original manuscripts of the
Bible are lost, so that all we have are
copies which were made by hand until
the discovery of printing. From these
copies all transations were made and
thus our present Bible has come to us.
The Old Testament writings were al
most wholly in the original Hebrew,
with the exceptions of Tobias, Judith
Daniel and First Esdras, which were
written in Syro- -Chaldaic. and the book
of Wisdom and the First Macabees
which were written in Greek. The Jew
ish Canon or Catalogue was made by
Esdras and the synagogue in 435 b c.,
and contained thirty-seven books, to
which have been added eight others.
making in all forty-five books as de-
clared by the Council of Trent. These
books were divided by the Jews into
legal, historical moral and prophetical
books. The New Testament. which con-
tains the four gospels of Christ, the
Acts of the Apostles, the Epistles and
the Apocalypse, was originally written
in Greek, with the exception of the
gospel of st. Matthew and the Epistle
to the Hebrews, which were written in
Syro- -Chaldaic. The New Testament
canon, as appears in the Council of
Carthage, A. d. 397, contains twenty
books received from the beginning, and
seven others which We're afterward
added, and as it appears in the canon
of the Council of Trent these are the
twenty-seven books found in the Vul-
gate and Douay version. These are di-
vided into historical, moral and pro-
phetical books.
Translation of Bible
"The first translation of the Bible.
or at least of the Pentateuch or the first
five books of Moses, was made into
Greek about 300 b. c., by the septuagint
or the seventy-flve Hebrew elders, who,
as Greek soldiers In the time of Ptolemy
of Egypt, translated the testament for
the benefit of the Jews in Egypt The
first Latin translation, called ITALIA, was
made from the Greek The most fam
Gus of the Latin translations is that
called the Nulgate, which was made
by the great st. jerome. This was
largely a revision of the ITALIA, but he
also used the version of the Hebrew
and Greek. st. Ephraim in the fourth
century made a translation in Syriac.
TRANSACTIONS We're also made into all
the eastern languages for the use of
the churches in those early ages, so
that we find not only the Syriac, Latin
and Greek, but also Armenian, Persian,
Ethiopian Coptlc, Chaldiac, Arabian
and Egyptian The monasteries trans
lated the copies and thus preserved
them, and i'm later years the Irish,
German, French, Flemish and English
had their transations. The Latin Vul-
gate was declared authentic and be-
came to a great extent the guide of
nearly all the TRANSACTIONS, with it's
seventeen centuries Of tradition, having
done for the west what Origen i'm the
Greek had done for the east. IT made
Latin cosmopolitan language and
gave ii as the characteristic Of the
western church. 1t is found today i'm
our missals, rituals and breviaries. and
is the Bible language used by the west
ern church. St Jerome, who made the
translation, was born i'm Dalmatia i'm
$40 and died in Palestine in 400. He
was one of the greatest of the worlds
Bible scholars and made the Bible, as
has been said, the Had and the Odyssey
of the middle ages to which he gave