In 1384 John Wycliffe translated the Bible into English.
The Archbishop of Canterbury persuaded Henry IV it was heresy.
Not merely a crime punishable by imprisonment.
Not merely a crime punishable by hanging.
But a crime punishable by being publicly, slowly, burned alive at the stake.
What was the Church so terrified of?
Well, up until that point the Bible had been in Latin.
And ordinary people couldn’t read Latin.
So they had to go to the Church to hear the priest read it to the congregation.
Then the priest would tell them all what it meant.
Without the priest they had no access to the Bible.
Which was the word of God.
So without the priest they had no access to God.
So as long as the Bible was in Latin the priests were essential and the Church was safe.
To underline the point in 1415, thirty years after John Wycliffe died, his body was dug up and it was tried for heresy.
He was found guilty and his rotting body was burned at the stake.
But it didn’t stop people wanting to read the Bible for themselves.
In 1526 William Tyndale translated it into English.
The printing press had recently been invented in Germany.
So Tyndale went there to get lots of copies printed.
But the Church found him.
In 1536 William Tyndale was publicly burned at the stake.
The Church was desperate to keep the Bible in a language no one else could understand.
It worked, until Henry VIII broke with Rome and became head of a new English religion.
Then Henry VIII decided he needed an English Bible for an English Church.
Eventually, in 1611 the King James’ version we know today appeared.
Taken almost entirely from William Tyndale’s Bible.
The Bible Tyndale was burned at the stake for translating.
Today there are over a billion copies of it in circulation worldwide.
So ultimately the Church failed to stop the translation.
But they were right to be afraid, it was the beginning of the end of the Church’s domination of ordinary people.
They failed in the need to maintain a secret language.
The Church behaved like bad marketing people.
They tried to keep things in a private impenetrable code because this gave them power over ordinary people.
It made them members of the cognoscenti.
Anytime anyone can’t or won’t explain things in plain, simple language it’s because they don’t want anyone to know what they do.
They’re scared it would mean anyone could do it.
So they need to make it appear complicated, in a language only they can understand.
A language they can hide behind.
The truth is what Einstein said:
“If you can’t explain it to an eleven year old, you haven’t really understood it yourself”.
I remember somebody telling me that to connect with children you’ve got to get down to their level. And they didn’t mean physically. At least I don’t think so. Dave, you seem to keep coming back to the same old problem. Could it be that there is just too many academics calling the shots in the Ad game these days? All them brains and not enough street smarts? Perhaps the time is right for another ‘punk’ agency’ again?
We used to have an expression at BMP – “Bullshit Baffles Brains”
Basically it’s the same pattern all through history
Dave,
HMS Onyx was a submarine whose motto was “Taurus excreta cerebrum vincit”.
I would have thought a better motto for submarine would be “videremus adventum di tibi”
(Didn’t see that coming did you)
Okay, less controversial than you’re expecting perhaps. But my reaction was that, where you began as usual with a distinctive and well-planned allusion, you finished off with blog-bollocks – and you’re better than that.
Your Einstein quote makes no sense. It contradicts your post.
At the start, you kick off with a lengthy pitch about obfuscating the masses, right? Valid pun, by the way. You’re right: at the time, only the learned – most of whom were priests – could understand Jerome’s Vulgate. The Church wanted to maintain their power and ensure a hierarchical omnipotence.
The alternative to the status quo? Salvation through faith rather than works or donations to the Church, which, let’s face it, would have been a bit of a gamechanger at the time. Phase in the new edition, phase out the priests. Oh shit, et cetera.
I’m with you so far. Loving it, in fact – you’re bang on about those bad, bad marketing people. Grrr. They do take to their pulpits in exactly the same way: speaking in tongues, day in, day out. Neurobollocks, most of it.
Complex sermons, hiding vulnerability behind a façade of perceived venerability – precisely so they can elicit a sense of awe (and more dosh in the collection plate) from their congregation. I’m the first (in that vein) to say, “bring it on, Darwin”.
However, where you kicked off by clarifying the clergy’s prediliction for suppressing enlightenment, ‘the priest would tell them all what it meant’, you finished with a quote that infers the priests *couldn’t* explain it and didn’t understand.
You wrote: ‘The truth is what Einstein said: “If you can’t explain it to an eleven year old, you haven’t really understood it yourself”.’ Am I wrong about this? Always possible.
With Albert chiming in at the end, telling us they couldn’t explain the sciptures, it felt as though your allegory got muddled – that was all.
If you’d quoted Nietzche instead, and said “remember, ‘faith means not wanting to know what is true’” — I’d have said bravo. Thought-provoking point. Or if you’d reminded us, as Hemingway did, that bad marketing people have to deal with intelligent clients sometimes – all thinking men are atheists — I’d have wandered off into my own bit of happy oblivion.
You can ignore me now.
I’m done. 🙂
(Incidentally, it’s worth pointing out that Jerome translated the Old Testament from Hebrew and the New Testament from Greek for his final standard Latin text: before we had bad marketeers, there were also some REALLY bad ad men.)
Pingback: SocialRank Daily: The genius of Apple’s iPhone 6 ads | Geeks @SocialRank
I don’t disagree with any of that Rentaquil, except for the word bollocks.
The dictionary says bollocks is old-English for nonsense, poor quality, or useless.
I think that’s emotional language, and a subjective value judgement.
I think more accurate would have been ‘non sequitur’ which the dictonary says is Latin for ‘it does not follow’.
Other than that, fair enough.
… I’ll take that bollocking, happily, as it’s a fair point … and head off back to m’shed.
🙂
True story, almost people tell that it’s difficult because they want to hide it from us!