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Vulgate

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For the Arthurian Vulgate Cycle, see Lancelot-Grail Cycle.

The Vulgate Bible is an early 5th century version of the Bible into Latin partly revised and partly translated by Jerome on the orders of Pope Damasus I in 382. It takes its name from the phrase versio vulgata, "the common (i.e., popular) version" (cf. Vulgar Latin), and was written in an everyday Latin used in conscious distinction to the elegant Ciceronian Latin of which Jerome was a master. The Vulgate was designed to be a definitive translation of the Bible, improving upon several divergent translations then in use. It was the first, and for many centuries the only, Christian Bible with an Old Testament translated directly from the Hebrew rather than from the Greek Septuagint. In 405 A.D., Jerome completed the protocanonical books of the Old Testament from the Hebrew, and the deuterocanonical books of Tobias and Judith from the Aramaic. The remainder of the version was translated from Greek. Among the various Christian churches, the Vulgate has been most commonly used by Roman Catholics. There are 73 books in the Vulgate Bible (not counting 3 in the Apocrypha), 46 in the Old Testament and 27 in the New.

Relation with the Old Latin Bible

In Jerome's day, the word Vulgata was applied to the Greek Septuagint. The Latin Bible used before the Vulgate is usually referred to as the Vetus Latina, or "Old Latin Bible", or occasionally the "Old Latin Vulgate".

This text was not translated by a single person or institution, nor even uniformly edited. The individual books varied in quality of translation and style -- modern scholars often refer to the Old Latin as being in "translationese" rather than standard Latin. Its Old Testament books were translated from the Greek Septuagint, not from the Hebrew.

The Old Latin version remained in use in some circles even after Jerome's Vulgate became the accepted standard throughout the Western Church. Some Gauls continued to prefer the Old Latin version for centuries. It has been asserted that heretical groups such as the Waldensians and Albigensians preferred this version as well, as they associated the Vulgate with the Catholic Church.

Jerome's Translation

Jerome did not completely re-translate the New Testament from the original Greek and exactly how much revision he did is unclear. He certainly translated the Tanakh from the Hebrew and revised the Gospels from the Greek. To what extent he revised or translated other parts of the Bible is not known with certainty.

Jerome considered those books of the Old Testament which were not found in the Hebrew to be non-canonical; he called them apocrypha. Nevertheless the Old Testament of the Vulgate contained them, similar to that of the Septuagint, which was at that time the translation most widely used by Greek-speaking Christians. Of these books, Jerome translated only Tobit and Judith anew. The others retained the less than polished Old Latin renderings which are present in the earliest surviving manuscripts of the whole Vulgate. Their style can still be markedly distinguished from Jerome's.

Psalters

Jerome was responsible for at least three different versions of the psalter. The Psalterium Romanum in 384 was his first. It was a revision of the Vetus Latina psalter, corrected to bring it more in line with the Septuagint. It was soon replaced by later versions except in Britain, where it continued to be used until the Norman Conquest in 1066, and in Rome where it is still used today.

Next was the Gallicanum, which Jerome revised anew from the Greek of the Hexapla ca. 386-391. This became the standard psalter in nearly all Vulgates (outside of Spain) after the recension of Alcuin until modern times.

Last was the Psalterium juxta Hebraicum which Jerome translated from the Hebrew ca. 398-405. This psalter was widely used in Spain long after the Gallicanum supplanted it elsewhere.

All three of Jerome's psalters follow the numbering found today in the Greek Septuagint, rather than that in the Masoretic Text. The discrepancies in the numbering are described here. It is important to keep these descrepancies in mind when referring to psalm chapters in the Vulgate. Psalm 23 of the King James Bible corresponds to Psalm 22 in the Vulgate.

Manuscripts and Early Editions

A number of early manuscripts witnessing to the early Vulgate still survive today. Dating to the 8th century, the Codex Amiatinus is the earliest surviving complete manuscript of the Vulgate. The Codex Fuldensis, from around 545, is an earlier surviving manuscript that is based on the Vulgate, however the gospels are an edited version of the Diatessaron.

Over the course of the Middle Ages, the Vulgate had succumbed to the inevitable changes wrought by human error in the countless copying of the text in monasteries across Europe. From its earliest days, readings from the Vetus Latina were introduced. Marginal notes were erroneously interpolated into the text. No one copy was the same as the other as scribes added, removed, misspelled, or mis-corrected verses in the Latin Bible.

About 550, Cassiodorus made an attempt at restoring the Vulgate to its original purity. Alcuin of York oversaw efforts to make a corrected Vulgate, which he presented to Charlemagne in 801. Similar attempts were repeated by Theodulphus Bishop of Orleans (787?- 821), Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury (1070-1089), Stephen Harding, Abbot of Cîteaux (1109-1134), and Deacon Nicolaus Maniacoria (about the beginning of the thirteenth century).

At this time the University of Paris created a uniform Bible for the use of its faculty and students. It standardized the order of the books and content of their texts. This Paris Bible (Biblia Parisiensis) became the basis of the early printed editions of the Vulgate. Though the advent of printing greatly reduced the potential of human error and increased the consistency and uniformity of the text, even the Vulgate as produced by Gutenberg was not entirely without mistakes as the several editions of the first printed work varied one from the other.

The Clementine Vulgate

Prologue of the gospel of John, Clementine Vulgate, 1922 edition

This edition of the Vulgate is the one most familiar to Catholics who have lived prior to the reforms of Vatican II (in reaction to which the use of Latin in the liturgy became rare).

After the Reformation, when the Church of Rome strove to counter the attacks and refute the doctrines of Protestantism, the Vulgate was reaffirmed in the Council of Trent as the sole, authorized Latin text of the Bible. To reinforce this declaration, the council commissioned the pope to make a standard text of the Vulgate out of the countless editions produced during the renaissance and manuscripts produced during the Middle Ages. The actual first manifestation of this authorized text was hurried into print. Sponsored by Pope Sixtus V (1585-90), it was known as the Sistine Vulgate. It was soon replaced by a new edition with the advent of the next pope, Clement VIII (1592-1605) who immediately ordered corrections to be made. This new corrected version was called the Sixto-Clementine Vulgate, or simply the Clementine.

The Clementine differed from the manuscripts on which it was based in that it grouped the various prefaces of St. Jerome together at the beginning, and it removed 3 and 4 Esdras and the Prayer of Manasses to an appendix.

The psalter of the Clementine Vulgate is the Gallicanum.

In 1907 Pope Pius X commissioned the monks of the Benedictine Abbey of St. Jerome in Rome to prepare a critical edition of Jerome's Vulgate as a basis for a revision of the Clementine.

The Clementine Vulgate of 1592 became the standard Bible text of the Roman Rite of Catholic Church until 1979, when the Nova Vulgata was promulgated.

New Psalters

In the twentieth century, two new psalters were translated into Latin and associated with the Vulgate, although neither have anything to do with Jerome. Under Pius XII in 1945, a new translation, the Versio Piana, from the Masoretic text was made into Latin which adopted a classical style. Although acclaimed by some classicists, this neo-classical translation was disliked by many who prayed the psalms in Latin.

In 1969, a new psalter was published which translated the Masoretic text while keeping much of the poetry and style of the Gallican psalter. It has proved to be a popular alternative to Jerome's Gallicanum. The 1969 psalter follows the Masoretic numbering of the psalms, so Psalm 23 begins "Dominus pascit me."

Nova Vulgata

The Nova Vulgata (Nova Vulgata Bibliorum Sacrorum editio) is currently the official Latin version published and approved by the Roman Catholic Church. In 1965, towards the close of the Second Vatican Council, Pope Paul VI appointed a commission to revise the existing Vulgate in accord with modern textual and linguistic studies, while preserving or refining its Christian Latin style. The Commission published its work in eight annotated sections, inviting criticism from Catholic scholars as the sections were published. The Latin Psalter was published in 1969 and the entire Nova Vulgata in 1979 [1].

The foundational text of most of the Nova Vulgata is the critical edition done by the monks of the Benedictine Abbey of St. Jerome under Pius X. The foundational text of the books of Tobit and Judith are from manuscripts of the Vetus Latina rather than the Vulgate. All of these base texts were revised to accord with the modern critical editions in Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic. There are also a number of changes where the modern scholars felt that Jerome had failed to grasp the meaning of the original languages.

The Nova Vulgata does not contain those books, found in the Clementine and some other editions, that are considered apocryphal by the Roman Catholic Church, namely the Prayer of Manasses and 3rd and 4th Book of Esdras.

In 1979, after decades of preparation, the Nova Vulgata was published and declared the Catholic Church´s current official Latin version in the Apostolic Constitution Scripturarum Thesaurus, promulgated by the late Pope John Paul II.

The Nova Vulgata has not been widely embraced by conservative Catholics, many of whom see it as being in some verses of the Old Testament a new translation rather than a revision of Jerome's work. Also, some of its readings sound unfamiliar to those who are accustomed to the Clementine.

In 2001, the Vatican released the instruction Liturgiam Authenicam, constituting the Nova Vulgata as a point of reference for all translations of the liturgy into English.

The Stuttgart Vulgate

A final mention must also be made of an edition of the Vulgate published by the German Bible Society (Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft), based in Stuttgart. This edition, Biblia Sacra Vulgata (ISBN 3438053039), seeks to reproduce the original, pure Vulgate text that Jerome himself would have produced 1,600 years ago. It is based on earlier critical editions of Vulgate, namely the Benedictine edition and the Latin New Testament produced by Wordsworth and White, which provided variant readings from the diverse manuscripts and printed editions of the Vulgate and comparison of different wordings in their footnotes. The Stuttgart Vulgate attempts, through critical comparison of important, historical manuscripts of the Vulgate, to achieve the original text, cleansed of the errors of a millennium and a half's time. One of the most important critical sources for the Stuttgart Vulgate is Codex Amiatinus, the highly-esteemed 8th century, one-volume manuscript of the whole Latin Bible produced in England, regarded as the best medieval witness to Jerome's original text. An important feature in the Stuttgart edition for those studying the Vulgate is the inclusion of all of Jerome's prologues to the Bible, the Testaments, and the major books and sections (Pentateuch, Gospels, Minor Prophets, etc.) of the Bible. This again mimics the style of medieval editions of the Vulgate, which were never without Jerome's prologues (revered as much a part of the Bible as the sacred text itself). In its spelling, the Stuttgart also retains a more medieval Latin orthography than the Clementine, using oe rather than ae, and having more proper nouns beginning with H (i.e., Helimelech instead of Elimelech). It contains two psalters, both the Gallicanum and the juxta Hebraicum, which are printed on facing pages to allow easy comparison and contrast between the two versions. In has an expanded Apocrypha, containing Psalm 151 and the Epistle to the Laodiceans in addition to 3 and 4 Esdras and the Prayer of Manasses.

In addition, its modern prefaces are a source of valuable information about the history of the Vulgate.

Though closer than the New Vulgate to the Clementine edition, the Stuttgart Vulgate still has enough divergence from the Clementine text to render it unfamiliar to accustomed Catholics. In addition, its sparse, unpunctuated text and unusual spellings can be difficult to read, especially in verses with multiple clauses.

Electronic Vulgate

One reason for the Stuttgart edition's importance rests in the fact that it is the one most disseminated on the Internet. This electronic version is usually mutilated, lacking all formatting, notes, prefaces and apparatus, and lacking the Gallican Psalter, Apocrypha, and Deuterocanonical books, and often containing only the first three chapters of Daniel (stopping at the point where the deuterocanonical Song of the Three Holy Children would begin.)

Issues of translation

The Vulgate translated from a Greek source for the New Testament and for Psalms, most of the deuterocanonical books, and the apocrypha[1] in the Old Testament. The New Testament was written in Greek. The Old Testament, originally written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, was used by Christians in a Greek translation called the Septuagint made by Jews during the three centuries before Christ. The linguistic separation between Hebrew and Latin is nearly as vast as the linguistic separation between Latin and Greek is narrow, and the Vulgate New Testament, in particular, sometimes follows the Greek model word for word. Latin and Greek are both highly inflected languages with very flexible word-order, but the attempt to render such things as the richer array of Greek participles sometimes resulted in clumsy Latin that was preserved in the English of the King James Bible. We can see this in Luke 2:15, for example:

Greek: Template:Polytonic
(Literal translation: And it-happened that they-withdrew from them into the heaven the angels, and the shepherds spoke to each-other: let-us-go-over then to Bethlehem and let-us-see the thing that [demonstrative pronoun] the happened which the Lord has-declared to-us.)
Latin: Et factum est ut discesserunt ab eis angeli in caelum, pastores loquebantur ad invicem: Transeamus usque Bethleem et videamus hoc verbum quod factum est quod fecit Dominus et ostendit nobis.
(Literal translation: And happened it-has that they-withdrew from them angels into heaven, shepherds spoke to each-other: Let-us-go over-to Bethlehem, and let-us-see this word which has-become, which has-done the Lord, and has-manifested to-us.)
English (King James version): And it came to pass, as the angels were gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds said one to another, Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us.

Influence on Western Culture

In terms of its importance to the culture, art, and life of the Middle Ages, the Vulgate stands supreme. Through the Dark Ages and onto the Renaissance and Reformation, St. Jerome's monumental work stood as a last pillar of Roman glory and the bedrock of the Western church as it strove to unite a fractured Europe through the Catholic faith. As the version of the Bible familiar to and read by the faithful for over a thousand years (c. AD 400–1530), the Vulgate exerted a powerful influence, especially in art and music as it served as inspiration for countless paintings and hymns. Early attempts to render translations into vernacular tongues were invariably made from the Vulgate, as it was highly regarded as an infallible, divinely inspired text. Even the translations produced by Protestants, that sought to replace the Vulgate for good with vernacular versions translated from the original languages, could not avoid the enormous influence of Jerome's translation in its dignified style and flowing prose. The closest equivalent in English, the King James Version, or Authorised Version, shows a marked influence from the Vulgate in its homely, yet dignified prose and vigorous poetic rhythm.

Translations Based on the Vulgate

Before the publication of Pius XII's Divino Afflante Spiritu, the Vulgate was the source text used for many translations of the Bible into vernacular languages. In English, the interlinear translation of the Lindisfarne Gospels as well as other Old English Bible translations, the translation of John Wycliffe, the Douay Rheims Bible, the Confraternity Bible, and Ronald Knox's translation were all made from the Vulgate.

Influence on the English Language

The Vulgate had a large influence on the development of the English language, especially in matters of religion and the Bible. Many Latin words were taken from the Vulgate into English nearly unchanged in meaning or spelling: creatio (e.g. Gn 1:1, Heb 9:11), salvatio (e.g. Is 37:32, Eph 2:5), justificatio (e.g. Rom 4:25, Heb 9:1), testamentum (e.g. Mt 26:28), sanctificatio (1 Ptr 1:2, 1 Cor 1:30), regeneratio (Mt 19:28), and raptura (from a noun form of the verb rapiemur in 1 Thes 4:17). The word "publican" comes from the Latin publicanus (e.g., Mt 10:3), and the phrase "far be it" is a translation of the Latin expression absit (e.g., Mt 16:22 in the King James Bible). Other examples include apostolus, ecclesia, evangelium, Pascha, and angelus.

Text

(from Wikisource)

References

  1. ^ Prefaces of Biblia Sacra Vulgata, American Bible Society, ISBN 3438053039
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