麻豆社

That the wider public is relatively well-acquainted with the Bible is largely thanks to translations from Greek and Latin into English, and other languages, that were done centuries ago.

The historian, Harry Freedman, shows in his new book The Murderous History Of Bible Translations how bloody the history of translating that book is. The first man to produce an English version of the Bible in print, William Tyndale, was burnt on the stake in 1536. And that wasn't the first instance of extreme violence against a Bible translator.

Weekend's Paul Henley asked Harry Freedman if keeping the bible in Latin basically helped the authorities of the 16th century keep the church's subjects out of the loop?
(Picture: Free bibles handed out at St.Peter's at the Vatican, 2014. Credit: Tiziana Fabi/AFP/Getty Images)