The first converts in ancient Britain held their ground when the pagan Anglo-Saxons descended over the land like locusts. In A.D. 596, when the Pope sent Augustine (not the Bishop of Hippo, see page 1) to convert England, he treated these early Christian Britons with contempt and even connived with the Anglo-Saxons in their extermination of those devout folk.2 Indeed, British Christianity did not come from Rome.
At the forefront of early evangelism was the little island of Iona, located off the northwest coast of Scotland. Its most historic citizen was Columba, an Irish churchman of royal lineage. Columba (521-597) founded a theological school upon that island rock, utilizing manuscripts from Asia Minor. From Iona, the Gospel was carried to the Picts on the mainland, to the Netherlands, France, Switzerland, Germany, and even Italy. When Rome began to send out missionaries to extend her power, she found Great Britain and northern Europe already professing a Christianity which could trace its origin back through Iona to Asia Minor.3 About 600 A.D., Rome sent missionaries to England and Germany to bring these simple Bible believing Christians under her dominion as much as to subdue the pagans.4
When the Gallic Christians of southern France were massacred by the heathen (177 A.D.) a record of their agony was prepared by the survivors and sent to their true brothers in Asia Minor - not to the Pope of Rome.5 Christianity came to France from Asia Minor, not Rome, and the same may be said for England, albeit possibly not directly but through France and then on to Briton.6 As Italy, France and Great Britain were provinces of the old Roman Empire, the first translations of the Bible in those areas were into Latin.7 Rome did not begin to send missionaries westward before 250 A.D. The old Latin versions, well established among these early disciples before they came into conflict with Rome, would later bring into sharp focus the depraved nature of the text of Jerome's Vulgate and the version of Constantine. Great bloody conflict eventually ensued as Rome moved to replace these ancient versions with her own Eusebio-Origen type of "bible". The struggle between these two text types continues unabated through their descendants today.
The old Italic version, written in the rude Low Latin (thus verifying its antiquity) of the second century, held its own as long as Latin continued to be the language of the people. Jerome's version was only able to replace it when Latin ceased to be a living (changing) language and became the language of the learned. The first Latin translations maintained themselves against Jerome's Vulgate for nine hundred years.8 The Gothic version N.T. was translated from the Traditional Text c.350 A.D. by Ulfilas, missionary bishop to the Goths; this proves that the T.T. existed prior to that
2 Ibid., p. 26.
3 Ibid., p. 29.
4 Isabel Hill Elder, Celt, Druid, and Culdee, (London: Covenant Pub. House, 1947), pp. 90-96. Elder declares that England and Ireland resisted because they already had the pure Gospel. She cites: Gildas as speaking of England's having heard the Gospel by A.D. 37, even before the N.T. was written (p. 90); Origen as mentioning Christians being in Briton in A.D. 200 (p. 91); that the Druids were converted and that Christianity became the national religion of the British Isles in A.D. 156 (p. 93); and that St. Patrick (A.D. 389-461) completed his work resulting in 100,000+ Celtic converts over 100 years before Rome's interest in the Isles.
5 Wilkinson, Our Authorized Bible Vindicated, op. cit., p. 30.
6 Johann August Wilhelm Neander, General History of the Christian Religion and Church, Vol. I, trans. by J. Torrey, (Boston: Crocker & Brewster, 1848), pp. 85-86.
7 Wilkinson, Our Authorized Bible Vindicated, op. cit., pp. 26-27.
8 ISBE, op. cit., (1979), Vol. IV, p. 973.
