Censorship of the Bible includes restrictions and prohibition of possessing, reading, or using the Bible in general or any particular editions or translations of it.
Violators of Bible prohibitions have at times been punished by imprisonment, forced labor, banishment and execution, as well as by the burning or confiscating the Bible or Bibles used or distributed. The censorship may be because of explicit religious reasons, but also for reasons of public policy or state control, especially in authoritarian states or following violent riots.
Censorship of the Bible occurred in the past and is still going on today. In the 20th century, Christian resistance to the Soviet Union's policy of state atheism occurred through Bible-smuggling.[1] The People's Republic of China, officially an atheist state, engages in Bible burning as a part of antireligious campaigns there.[2]
The extent and nature of past censorship of the Bible in Western Europe is controversial. Historically Catholic writers have portrayed restrictions on vernacular translations as temporary prudential responses to regional outbreaks of organized violence and heresy with a policing rather than theological basis;[3] Protestant writers have portrayed it in terms of churchmen suppressing the truth in order to maintain power.
In most cases, the bans on pious lay people possessing or publicly reading certain Bibles were related to unauthorized vernacular Scripture editions not derived from the Latin Vulgate, or from orthodox translations also containing heretical or confusing material. Clerics were never forbidden to possess the Vulgate Bible translation in the Latin language. The Index Librorum Prohibitorum[a] of the Catholic Church included various translations or editions of the Bible.
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
Purs2013was invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ Cite error: The named reference
Bodeen2019was invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ Ludwig Friedrich Otto Baumgarten-Crusius: Lehrbuch der christlichen Dogmengeschichte. Zweite Abtheilung. Verlage der Crökerschen Buchhandlung, Jena 1832; Zweiter Theil: Spezielle Dogmengeschichte. 21: Angelegenheit des Schriftgebrauchs. pp. 901–911 (Online-Version)
Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or {{efn}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or {{notelist}} template (see the help page).