Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Bill Rea <bill.rea AT canterbury.ac.nz>]

George wrote:

> 7.  Christian numbers eclipsed Jewish numbers at an early point, and
> Christians generally read the NT documents far more than the OT. So not as
> many OT documents were around.

But also within the church those that did read the Hebrew scriptures did not
read them in Hebrew, they read them in translation, primarily Latin. In the
link below there is some relevant information, one important point is that
at the Council of Trent in 1546 the Vulgate was declared to be the only
recognised Bible for the church. This was just a statement of the situation
which prevailed at the time. So there was no tradition of copying and
studying of the Hebrew texts by the Christian Church.
 
http://europeanhistory.about.com/od/religionandthought/p/prvulgate.htm


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