Now, we do not wish to question the general credibility of the Table Talk, nor the authenticity of this particular remark of Luther about his stumbling upon the Bible by accident.  But it is certainly germane to our subject to strip the incident of the dramatic features with which Catholic writers claim that most Protestants still surround the event.  Did Luther say, and did Mathesius report, that up to the year 1505 he had not known of the Bible?  Not at all.  He merely stated that up to that time he had not seen a complete copy of the Bible.  Luther himself has told scores of times that when a schoolboy at Mansfeld, and later at Magdeburg and Eisenach where he studied, he had heard portions of the Gospels and Epistles read during the regular service at church.  Some passages he had learned by heart.  Luther’s guests would have laughed at him if he had claimed such a “discovery” of the Bible as Catholic writers—­and some of their Protestant authorities—­think that Mathesius has claimed for him and modern Protestants still credit him with.

What Luther did relate we are prepared to show was not, and could not be, an unusual occurrence in those days.  “Even in the University of Paris, which was considered the mother and queen of all the rest, not a man could be found, when Luther arose, competent to dispute with him out of the Scriptures.  This was not strange.  Many of the doctors of theology in those times had never read the Bible.  Carolostadt expressly tells us this was the case with himself.  Whenever one freely read the Bible, he was cried out against, as one making innovations, as a heretic, and exposing Christianity to great danger by making the New Testament known.  Many of the monks regarded the Bible as a book which abounded in numerous error.” (Mosheim, III, 15.) The spiritual atmosphere in which Luther and all Christians of his time were brought up was unfavorable to real Bible-study.

But before we exhibit the true attitude of Rome toward the Bible, it will be necessary to examine the Catholic claim regarding the extensive dissemination and the intensive study of the Bible among the people in and before Luther’s times.  Before the age of printing one cannot speak, of course, of “editions” of the Bible.  The earliest date for the publication of a printed edition of the Bible is probably 1460—­ twenty-three years before Luther’s birth.  That was an event fully as momentous as the opening of the transatlantic cable in our time.  Before printing had been invented, the Bible was multiplied by being copied.  That was a slow process.  Even when a number of copyists wrote at the same time to dictation, it was a tedious process, requiring much time, and not very many would join in such a cooperative effort of Bible production.  Besides, few men in those early ages were qualified for this work.  A certain degree of literary proficiency was required for the task.  The centuries during which the papacy rose to the zenith of its power are notorious