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QUARTERLY RECORD - Issue Number 579 - April to June 2007 The Magazine of the Trinitarian

in general use, though not nec- THE essarily with every book now included in the . , of , martyred in 258, quotes abun- dantly from a Latin text which must have been a complete Bible, considering the range of the quotes. versions began to circulate through North , , Gaul and ulgate Spain—most of them quite V distinct and divergent from by C.P. Hallihan each other, leading later to This material is intended to supply a gen- ’s much quoted remark eral historical background, and not to to the effect that there were as many ver- A at work in a scriptorium enter into the realm of evaluation, textual sion was not evident in Rome, or in Italy sions as there were of the 2 criticism, or discussion of the Canon. generally. Old Latin. Not so in Italy, where the ‘provincial’ In the various regions there would be a awkwardness of the version was Greek First popular Latin version of the Bible, or inevitably more apparent and offensive. he Latin , though pre- Africa and Old Latin The Italian were also familiar It was in Africa, not Rome, that Latin was more particularly of the and dominant in the Western , current from the begin- with the Greek texts, and saw the need Churches from mid-3rd century the primary literary language of for revision of the Latin for more accept- . This Roman province cov- ning of the 3rd century. From that a to the , was not so distinctive of the Latin Scriptures also able use in their congregations. By this Tbefore about AD 250. The was ered what we now know as Tunisia, time Latin was in general, though not begins to appear: words which are either first proclaimed through the Roman Algeria and Morocco, and Latin was the exclusive, use in Christian writings, and official, but never indigenous, language.1 plain of Greek words or Empire by preachers whose language was gratingly literal of Greek in the 4th century a definite revision of Greek, and who continued to use Greek Augustine gives the impression that the the Old Latin appears to have been made Gospel was relatively late in coming to forms are scattered throughout. The pic- in their writings. At ture for the Latin is even in North Italy, with needs in view, (c. AD 130-200) preached in Latin and in North Africa, but certainly by the end of using Greek manuscripts. This attracted the 2nd century were found less clear, and the one plain fact would be some local Celtic vernacular, but he that all such efforts had been derived the Itala. Augustine recommended argued about in Greek, and the throughout that region and throughout it strongly as being accurate and clear, that society. from the , the Greek transla- Letter of the Church of Lyons about its tion of the Old Testament. No surprise but other revisions were made for indi- is in Greek. When Clement The history of the earliest Latin then that the Latin contained the vidual and local use, and more changes wrote from Rome to the Corinthians version of the Bible is lost in Apocryphal books usually found in were introduced. Perhaps this was what (AD 95), he did so in Greek. The obscurity, but Carthage, caught the Septuagint, and added to these was caused Augustine to say, ‘any one in the of Hermas was written in up in Roman Latin culture, was 2 . In the New Testament it seems first ages of Christianity who gained pos- Greek. Justin and wrote in Greek perhaps where the first crude certain that the to the , session of a Greek , and fan- at Rome in the 3rd century. Greek is the renderings of the Gospels James, and 2 Peter did not form part of cied that he had a fair of language of Roman Christian inscrip- into a stilted Latin were the original African (Latin) version. Greek and Latin, ventured to translate tions down to the 3rd century—even made. of it’.3 Scribes also inserted additional details the original epitaphs of the bishops! Carthage, the first of the in the narrative from parallel passages, The few remains of the early Christian Latin fathers, distinctly Italy and changed forms of expression back to literature of Rome are in Greek, and for recognises a Latin ver- The early Latin version continued in use those with which they had first been two centuries the need for a Latin ver- sion of the New Testament generally unchanged in North Africa. familiar. Next came the mingling of these

8 9 QUARTERLY RECORD - Issue Number 579 - April to June 2007 The Magazine of the Trinitarian various revisions, with further was held to be almost unforgivable. Even deterioration of the text. At the close of Jerome’s Latin Bible Augustine struggled to come to terms the 4th century the Latin Scriptures, Inevitably the work was begun in the with this, but, as the younger man, he Gospels particularly, were in such a state Gospels, and between 382–4 Jerome pro- conducted himself with humility under as to call for serious attention to this duced a new Latin version of the four the scorching and abusive reproofs of the version of the Scripture. Gospels,5 and also a revision of the older scholar. Nevertheless Augustine, styled the ‘Roman ’ and whilst acknowledging and commending Jerome reputedly still in use in St. Peter’s, Rome. the value of the new work (as did When Damasus died in 384 Jerome left !), seems to have kept to the Italic In 382 the bishop of Rome, already Rome for good, but not the charge that Text. Jerome himself admitted haste, styled , was Damasus, and his secre- he had received. After two years’ pilgrim even errors in his work, and in later writ- tary was Sofronis Hieronymus, wanderings he founded a monastery in ings quoted portions differently. usually referred to as Jerome. This name , and settled there for the rest This was to be the Bible of Western more than any other is associated with of his life. Planning to go on revising the Christianity for almost 1,000 years, and the Latin Bible, and particularly the title Jerome in his study Old Testament he produced another ver- most attempts to produce versions in Latin . The word vulgate is simply sion of the Psalms, using the Septuagint other were derived from this the Latin word vulgatus, meaning com- ing, and committed himself to a rigor- and ’s . This ‘Gallican uneven version, making them at best ‘a mon or generally known, and in reference ously ascetic life. Damasus, distressed at Psalter’ is still used in the Vulgate of version of a version’. In itself though, it to the Scriptures always referred to the the confused and uncertain state of the today. In doing this Jerome became con- was a rendering from the original, and generally received or accepted text. The Latin Scriptures, commissioned Jerome vinced that he must turn aside from the affords a glimpse, for careful and princi- phrase Latin Vulgate is locked in historic to the task of revising and editing the Septuagint version and work from the pled use, into the witness of textual and usage, but I find it ironic that whenever manuscripts. It was always going to be a Hebrew texts. He may have been the first canonical history. Jerome used the word vulgate he referred thankless task, with much opposition, to use the expression ‘Hebrew Verity’ for to the Greek Old Testament, the some informed, more not so. In some this return to the original language. Septuagint, and that it was the Council of ways Jerome with his learning and dedi- From Jerome to Trent 1,200 years later which, mistaking cation might seem the ideal man for the Jerome’s complete Hebrew- and Greek- Jerome’s usage, attached the word inextri- work; his abrasive and virulent nature, his based Latin Bible was completed in 405, Printing cably to the Latin Bible. hostility to all that was not of Rome,4 his including another Psalter, this one always Acceptance of Jerome’s work was very referred to as the ‘Hebrew Psalter’. His Opinions of and attitudes to Jerome were zeal for and ardent promulgation of slow, and the old and the new Latin were enlargement of his Hebrew fluency with as different and difficult for those in his monasticism, mariolatry, relics and together in the Western Churches for 300 the help of Jewish scholars aroused an own days as for all later writers. He was departed , give a different view. years. In the east other things were hap- unease, amounting at to downright born in Dalmatia of a Christian family in pening. Jerome’s work was adopted in hostility and accusation of being a 347 (some say 329) and educated at Gaul by the 5th century, but the Old Judaizer, and his turning from the Greek Rome. Extensive travelling and dili- Latin prevailed in Britain and Africa. By Septuagint as the Old Testament source gent classical learning followed, prob- the 6th century only Africa held plainly ably the beginnings of a knowledge The Ashburnham Pentateuch: A fine example of an illumintated Latin manuscript dating from around the of Hebrew and , too. early 7th century. It originally contained all the Pentateuch, but Deuteronomy is now missing. When he returned to Rome he received their , turned resolutely from all classical learn-

A monastery set into the mountains near the Valley provides a setting akin to that in which Jerome would have pursued his work on the Vulgate.

10 11 QUARTERLY RECORD - Issue Number 579 - April to June 2007 The Magazine of the Trinitarian Bible Society by the Old Latin. The most important the outstanding fruit of the towards the settling and proper use of a made, as many as remaining manuscript of Jerome’s Latin Bible tradi- true Greek text, and will not be followed three thousand by text, Amiatinus in Florence, was tion is the use that Wycliffe now. ‘But by the yellow Tiber, Was some counts. actually copied either at Wearmouth or made of it to produce an tumult and affright…’:7 the challenge of Sixtus died a few Jarrow in the north-east of England very the Reformers to the Church of Rome months later, and Gutenberg’s early in the 8th century, and refers to Bible, still a Press involved clear appeal to the Scriptures, everything ground Jerome’s Bible as the familiar one in 731. version of an and the confusion of differences in text to a halt. But the text-stream of the Latin Bible was uneven version, and interpretation of the Vulgate called In the reign of the again in rapid decline. The simultaneous but hastening for some remedy. An authorised Latin next pope but one, use of the old and new versions led to the Reformation edition became a necessity for the Clement VIII, a Clement VIII. This was the and its outstand- same pope who refused to Roman Church. drastic revision of grant Henry VIII a divorce ing Bible work in The first session of the , the Sixtine text was from Catherine of Aragon England. the instrument of Counter-Reformation, effected and pub- The first great work was held on December 13, 1545. The lished, printed by , from the process of Nicene was formally set forth as grandson of the famous founder of the printing was, of course, the foundation of the Christian on Aldine Press. This Sixto-Clementine the Latin Bible of 1455—the Gutenberg February 4, 1546, and then the council Vulgate became the standard Bible of the Bible from the printer’s name, or the proceeded to the question of the author- Roman Church. Cardinal Mazarin Bible from the famous copy in ity, text, and interpretation of Holy Bellarmine in the 1592 suggests the library of Cardinal Mazarin. It took Scripture. There was considerable variety that the Sixtus edition had needed such six years to do the typesetting of 1,300 of opinion as to the relative value of the extensive correction because of printers’ pages of type, issued in two volumes and original languages and the Latin texts. errors; in fact there were very few, less two impressions. It was almost a replica The unique authority of the ancient and than in the Clement issue! of the two-column per page manuscript vulgate (Latin) version was affirmed, but The Rheims New Testament, the English Facsimile of Gutenberg’s 1455 bible style that had been honed in handwritten no ground for its authority given, and no language version of the Genesis 1 from an copies over past centuries. Would the clear text was provided. There was, how- Vulgate for the Roman early Douai Bible great corruptions of both, and various printed text bring stability? ever, provision for a clear, revised edition Catholic ‘merged’ texts were formed according to of the Vulgate to be printed. the taste or judgment of scribes; and the Forty years passed and the difficulties of rent was made worse! Textual instability The Printed Latin such a revision had not been overcome. is a great hindrance. By the mid 8th cen- At that point , a man tury the Latin Bible called the Vulgate was Text acknowledged by all to be no mean in use in handwritten copies through Cardinal Ximenes (1502–17) was the Western ; Jerome’s they called it, first to present a seriously revised Latin scholar, took matters into his own hands, but few if any copies would agree with text, giving it the middle place of honour and issued his own the 405 Bethlehem copy. Some attempts in his Complutensian6 , between true, lawful, authorita- to tidy the text did stand out— the Hebrew and Greek text (a strange tive edition of the in 6th century south Italy, ‘honour’ to place a version between the Vulgate in 1590. His of York with ’s !). This Complutensian scholarship seems to patronage in 800, Theodolph of Orleans text is said to be more correct than most have been abandoned, about the same time. A group of Paris before it, but still very far from being and the most arbi- scholars effected a revision in the 13th pure. Many familiar now became trary and unskillful century—the one which first divided the involved with Latin editions—, alterations had been Bible into chapters—which was to be the Stephens, Coverdale, Beza and so on. basis of the early printed editions. For us, Theirs is a different path, and tending Aldus Manutius

12 13 QUARTERLY RECORD - Issue Number 579 - April to June 2007 The Magazine of the Trinitarian Bible Society

Church, was published in 1582, well sometimes afford a glimpse into some before the Sixtus-Clement text. The Old unlikely corners of textual history to An ailing Jerome still diligently at work Testament of that version was printed at which we have no other access; and glad Douai in 1609, and may have used the we are of it. Overall, for instance, the 1592 Aldus printing as a source. This Bethlehem Bible gives us a reassuring Bible was altered and modernised by ‘mirror-look’ at the 4th-century Hebrew Bishop Challoner in 1749, and the text text, but is not an authority for it nor for properly conformed to that of the the correct of it. But just as Clementine edition. This was the English the mechanic will not be at ease until he translation of the Vulgate in use for the has the car in a well-equipped workshop, next two hundred years. so will we always look for more and bet- ter help, such as we believe the to have granted in the bringing to light of Review the Masoretic and Received texts of the There can be no doubt nor denying of Old and New Testaments to seal the the massive influence of the Latin Reformation. As we saw in the last para- Scriptures in the Western World, where graph, even the printing era brought no most familiar, and from which they had antem interpretes nullo, modo, Ut enim for over a thousand years it was ‘The short-term stability to the Latin text! drawn their earliest knowledge of divine cuivii primis fidei temporibus in manus Bible’. But it was only ever a version; the Beyond the matters of text and canon, truth. Directly or indirectly, it was the venit codex Grecus et aliquantulum fac- Latin language has no standing over however, we can never close our minds source of all the vernacular versions of ultatis sibi utriusque linguve habers vide- against the Hebrew and Greek, so that all to the fact that the Latin versions made Western Europe until the Reformation. batur, aunsus est interpretari’. Quoted in translations made from it are doubly at their mark both upon our language and The Latin Scriptures, despite their ‘Vulgate’, McClintock and Strong (AGES fault. It is true that all Bible texts before upon our thoughts and the way we obscure past and obvious problems, were Library, MSE_1008.pdf). the general use of the printing presses are those into words. It was these versions used by in the preservation of the subject to the problems of hand-copying, with which the greatest of the Word of God and even the transmission 4. East and West were clearly dividing by but the Latin texts more so by their very Reformers were of , until He provided for us this time, and in remote parts of the popularity. Textbooks talk of the Old some better thing. waning Western Empire there were still Latin, the Itala, the Hieronymian ‘independent’ Christian communities. (Jerome’s 405) and the Jerome had no time for them and was Vulgate as if there were Endnotes not slow to condemn. only a single text of each, 1. F.F. Bruce has an interesting aside: but none of these were in there was never a vernacular Bible in the 5. He is thought to have used a popular any way stable, always beg- Berber tongues of North Africa—was European ‘Western Text,’ with ging the question, ‘Which this a factor in the almost complete dis- ‘Alexandrian’ corrections. Discussion of particular one?’ appearance of the Gospel there? See F.F. this is for another time and place. Sometimes, attending a road- Bruce, The Books and the Parchments, 3rd side breakdown, a car ed. (Old Tappan, NJ, USA: Fleming H. 6. From Complutum in Spain. mechanic will put a mirror on Revell Co., 1984), p. 202. a rod and with that and a torch 7. Thomas Babbington Macaulay, can sometimes find an obscure 2. Jerome, Preface to the Four Gospels, ‘Horatius’, Lays of , XIII problem underneath. At that addressed to Damasus, AD 383. (Englishverse.com, level the whole stream of Latin www.englishverse.com/poems/horatius, texts, judiciously used, can 3. De Doctr. . 2, 16 [11], ‘Qui scrip- accessed 19 February 2007). turas ex Hebraea lingua in Graecam 1 John 1 from a Vulgate Bible verterunt numerari possunt, Latini

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