Thread 18098627

I was thinking about it the other day, and it occurred to me that, before the advent of the printing press, almost no one in medieval society would've known what the Bible said.
To me, this is kind of... incredible. Especially since, many of the books that were incorporated *into* the Bible (such as the Gospels, Paul's letters, even the Torah centuries earlier) had been written with the intention that they would be read to the masses during religious services. As far as I know, medieval clergy didn't do that.
I asked ChatGPT, and it said that medieval Catholic laypeople would've known the basics (Adam and Eve, Noah, the trials of Jesus), but would've learned most of this through church art, and rough retellings. Is this true?

>>18098627 (OP)
They would have know about king David and Solomon. Their world was boring as shit and this was like their Marvel.

They would literally know more than the average person today. The fact that most people couldnt read didnt matter because it was orally known by everyone through tradition and liturgy. Christianity just permeated *everything* in society so it was impossible not to know about the stories

>>18098627 (OP)
>As far as I know, medieval clergy didn't do that
¿Qué?
That doesn't sound right, though I don't really know about it. What about sermons?

>>18098764
Expository preaching wasn't restored until the Reformation.

>>18098627 (OP)
The fact that Jesus/God was (intentionally or not) so reliant on human institutions to correctly form worship practices and doctrine makes me seriously doubt that Christianity is of divine origin.

>>18098627 (OP)
The Mass used a one-year lectionary that repeated a small portion of Scripture mostly the Gospels and Epistles. A peasant wouldn’t hear Genesis or Kings read aloud, but he’d still know the broad salvation story through sermons, plays, art, and the liturgical year. Scholars estimate only about 5–7 % of the Bible appeared in the medieval lectionary.

Church walls, stained glass, mystery plays, and hymns retold the key narratives Creation, Flood, Exodus, Christ’s Passion, the Last Judgment, the lives of the saints. So religion permeated daily life, but as story and symbol rather than chapter-and-verse literacy. Saying they “knew more than the average person today” is an exaggeration: they had denser exposure to Christian imagery, but far less textual detail.

>>18098792
Parish priests did preach, especially on Sundays and feast days, but their sermons were moral or allegorical rather than systematic line-by-line commentary. True “expository” preaching explaining a passage verse by verse became widespread only in the Reformation era. Medieval sermons drew heavily on pre-written collections (homiliaries, florilegia) rather than on continuous Bible exposition.

They used glossed Bibles and patristic commentaries like the Glossa Ordinaria to link readings to other biblical passages. A homily on the Good Samaritan might interpret the wounded man as Adam, the robbers as demons, the Samaritan as Christ cross-referencing Genesis and the Prophets through allegory, not direct reading in church.

>>18098813
That’s actually the opposite of how Christians traditionally understood it. The idea isn’t that God outsourced revelation to human institutions, but that He always worked through them. From Noah and Abraham to Moses and the prophets, revelation was relayed through real human communities, rituals, and covenants that’s the whole pattern of salvation history.

The Church in the New Covenant continues that same pattern: Christ didn’t leave a book, He founded a body. The promise that “the gates of hell will not prevail” and that the Spirit would “lead you into all truth” (Matt 16:18, John 16:13) is exactly what Christians take as assurance that the Church won’t fall into total error.

That’s why tradition isn’t a flaw but a feature it’s the medium through which the divine works. The universality of Christian worship, creeds, and sacraments across cultures isn’t proof of institutional dependence since it’s what believers see as evidence of something mystical and enduring guiding it all.

Pic related is the ecumenical council of Roman Catholcism in Vatican 2. The promise of scripture is that through these councils, from the first ecumenical council in Acts 15 to now, the Holy Spirit guides the universal doctrine and tradition.

>>18098817
>that repeated a small portion of Scripture
Yeah, in Latin.

>>18098831
And remember, priests did translate and paraphrase in homilies and catechesis. By the 13th–15th centuries, you find vernacular sermon collections all over Europe (Old English, Middle High German, Old French). So while the readings were in Latin, the explanations were not.

>>18098817
>True “expository” preaching explaining a passage verse by verse became widespread only in the Reformation era.
It was also widespread in the patristic era.

>>18098729
>They would literally know more than the average person today
This is a spectacularly low bar, most Christians today don't even know for sure if God exists when asked and how Jesus relates to him if so

>>18098729
>Christianity just permeated *everything* in society
Society was incredibly nominally Christian*
In Kingdom Come 1 there's a part where Henry is bartering with some bandit thugs for money in exchange for helping them murder a witness and as part of his smooth talk he says "we're all Christians here" which is representative of how "Christian" Christendom was.

>>18098845
> Using videogames made by modern people as some sort of standard of how the past was
Lmao

>>18098627 (OP)
>DEUS VULT