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medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture



[log in to unmask] wrote:medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
----- Original Message ----- From: Catherine Gunn

<<since I came to medieval studies by a rather circuitous route, and am largely self-taught, some things remain a mystery to me - including what scholars mean when they refer to 'the Vulgate'.>>


I have this archived on my machine, something I wrote for an Irish e-mail group.  Forgive all the extraneous material but it is too busy a day (Good Friday for us Orthodox) to edit it.
Fr Ambrose


Saint Jerome began his work of translating the Bible into Latin around 380
AD while still in Rome.

Respondeo: Fr Ambrose provides us with an admirable history of the Vulgate, but I think more should be said about Jerome's part in it. He mentions that Jerome translated the psalms directly from the Hebrew. So he did, eventually, in the 'Hebraica' a version that never really caught on in popular use. The version usually found in the Vulgate is the Gallican, though if my memory serves me, Amiatinus has the Hebraica.

It may be helpful to quote from Plater and White's 'A Grammar of the Vulgate' p. 5:

"The modern Vulgate is a composite work, only some parts of which are due to Jerome. It may be arranged in six divisions, giving his share in an ascending scale.

(1) OLD LATIN, wholly untouched by Jerome, as merely 'ecclesiastical', not 'canonical': Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, I and II Maccabees, Baruch.

(2) OLD LATIN, slightly revised, but to an extent hard to determine: Acts, Epistles, Apocalypse. Here Jerome left a good deal uncorrected; and in later MSS the Vulgate and the Old Latin texts were often mixed, so that the traces of his recision were still further obscured.

(3) Free and rapid translation from the CHALDEE, as Jerome calls it: Tobias (i.e. Tobit) and Judith. The former book was finished in one day, the latter in a single sitting (lucubatiuncula).

(4) Translation from the SEPTUAGINT: the Psalter. The Psalter included in the Bible is the earlier of 'Gallican'; not the later translation made by Jerome direct from the Hebrew.

(5) Revision and partial correction of the Old Latin from the most ancient Greek MSS available: the Gospels.

(6) Jerome's independent translation from the HEBREW, the first ever made: the Canonical Books of the Old Testament, with the exception of the Psalter.

It will be seen that Jerome's particular contribution was his new and original translation of the Hebrew Scriptures; for the rest of the Bible he was at most a reviser of earlier versions.

I would recommend to our original enquirer the book by Plater and White (Oxford University Press 1926, reprinted 1997); also the Cambridge History of the Bible, vol. 2, especially chapters 4 (on Jerome) and 5 (on the Medieval History of the Latin Vulgate).

Bill.









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