LATIN BIBLE TRANSLATIONS IN THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION: HISTORICAL CONTEXTS, PHILOLOGICAL JUSTIFICATION, AND THE IMPACT OF CLASSICAL RHETORIC ON THE CONCEPTION OF TRANSLATION METHODS

Josef Eskhult

Introduction

In the history of Bible translation, the sixteenth century clearly marks a breakthrough in the efffort to make the sacred texts, the Word of God, avail- able to common people in their own language, in the form of translations made directly from the biblical source languages. This was an important point of the Reformation. Accordingly, the sixteenth century is commonly associated with the great development of Bible versions in European vernaculars. None- theless – as is usually forgotten – it also witnessed a comprehensive efffort to translate the Bible into Latin from the Greek and Hebrew originals. As a result, the New Testament was provided in Latin in four diffferent new translations, while the Old Testament was made available to the users of Latin in fijive entirely new versions. This circumstance has, however, not attracted the attention of many scholars in modern times, and conse- quently needs to be explored more closely.

Aim and Scope

In this paper, I aim to elucidate some aspects of the theory and practice of Latin Bible translation in the sixteenth century. To begin with, I will describe the historical background in broad outlines, concentrating on the preconditions of this genre and on the functions of a Latin version of the Bible. I will continue to discuss the question of how the Latin Bible trans- lators themselves justifijied their undertakings with regard to their transla- tion method and demonstrate the influence of the classical rhetorical qualities of proprietas, latinitas, and perspicuitas on the humanist con- cepts of translation. The questions to be addressed may be worded as follows: (1) What mainstream currents prompted the need for new Latin translations of the 168 josef eskhult

Bible? (2) What aim and function did a Latin Bible version serve? (3) How do Latin Bible translators in the sixteenth century value the classical and humanist concepts of proprietas, latinitas, and perspicuitas? And, fijinally, (4) What position do they take towards the Vulgate?

The Prestigious Position of the Field of Latin Bible Translation

At the time of the Reformation, the practice of Latin Bible translation seems to have enjoyed exceptional importance, dignity, and reputation, because it combined two areas of learning of very high prestige: the Latin language and the Bible. It is no overstatement to say that Latin was the foundation and mainstay of European society and culture. Serving as the means of communication in the learned world, Latin was an integral part of the academic culture. By transmitting and mediating all ancient and medieval learning, Latin had become the carrier of all knowledge accumu- lated from classical antiquity through the Middle Ages. In that way, Latin was the synchronous as well as diachronic intermediary of knowledge. Finally, Latin was considered to be one of the most ancient languages in the world, clearly surpassed only by Hebrew and Greek, and perhaps by Aramaic and Arabic. In the explicit opinion of Theodore Bibliander (1506– 1564), a prominent orientalist and theoretician of language relationships in the mid sixteenth century, Latin was the unifying factor in a world of linguistic multiplicity; by its wide difffusion among many nations it reme- dies the Babelic confusion of tongues; by its semantic precision and its lexical richness it prevents an epistemic confusion of all disciplines. Latin must be seen as the closest thing to a common language of mankind, Bibliander concludes.1 As for the signifijicance of the Bible to Western culture, I wish to evoke some sense of the high level of veneration of Bible translation at that time. Lawrence Humphrey (1527–1580), prominent English humanist in the mid sixteenth century, perceived it as follows in his Interpretatio linguarum: “What matter more excellent and more magnifijicent might be found or be conceived than the translation of the Bible? What matter more elevated than to act as the interpreter of God? What matter more divine than to talk with God, or rather to make God speak, or in some way to attribute new speech to God, and almost to be the creator of the Creator?”2

1 De communi ratione omnium linguarum et litterarum commentarius, 1548, p. 30 f. 2 Interpretatio linguarum seu de ratione convertendi et explicandi autores tam sacros quam prophanos libri tres, Basel 1559, preface, p. 3.