The Vulgate has a compound text that is not entirely the work of Jerome.[2] Its components include: ##Jeromes independent translation from the Hebrew: the books of the Hebrew Bible, usually not including his translation of the Psalms. This was completed in 405. ##Translation from the Greek of Theodotion by Jerome: The three additions to the Book of Daniel; Song of the Three Children, Story of Susanna, and The Idol Bel and the Dragon. The Song of the Three Children was retained within the narrative of Daniel, the other two additions Jerome moved to the end of the book. ##Translation from the Septuagint by Jerome: the Rest of Esther. Jerome gathered all these additions together at the end of the book of Esther. ##Translation from the Hexaplar Septuagint by Jerome: his Gallican version of the Book of Psalms. Jeromes Hexaplaric revisions of other books of Old Testament continued to circulate in Italy for several centuries, but only Job and fragments of other books survive. ##Free translation by Jerome from a secondary Aramaic version: Tobias and Judith. ##Revision by Jerome of the Old Latin, corrected with reference to the oldest Greek manuscripts available: the Gospels.[3] ##Old Latin, more or less revised by a person or persons unknown: Baruch, Letter of Jeremiah, 3 Esdras,[4] Acts, Epistles, and the Apocalypse. ##Old Latin, wholly unrevised: Epistle to the Laodiceans, Prayer of Manasses, 4 Esdras, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, and 1 and 2 Maccabees. Translation[edit] Saint Jerome in his study, by Domenico Ghirlandaio Jerome did not embark on the work with the intention of creating a new version of the whole Bible, but the changing nature of his program can be tracked in his voluminous correspondence. He had been commissioned by Damasus I in 382 to revise the Old Latin text of the four Gospels from the best Greek texts, and by the time of Damasus death in 384 he had thoroughly completed this task, together with a more cursory revision from the Greek Septuagint of the Old Latin text of the Psalms in the Roman Psalter which is now lost. How much of the rest of the New Testament he then revised is difficult to judge today, but little of his work survived in the Vulgate text. In 385, Jerome was forced out of Rome, and eventually settled in Bethlehem, where he was able to use a surviving manuscript of the Hexapla, likely from the nearby Theological Library of Caesarea Maritima, a columnar comparison of the variant versions of the Old Testament undertaken 150 years before by Origen. Jerome first embarked on a revision of the Psalms, translated from the revised Septuagint Greek column of the Hexapla, which later came to be called the Gallican version. He also appears to have undertaken further new translations into Latin from the Hexaplar Septuagint column for other books. But from 390 to 405, Jerome translated anew from the Hebrew all 39 books in the Hebrew Bible, including a further version of the Psalms. This new translation of the Psalms was labelled by him as iuxta Hebraeos (i.e. close to the Hebrews, immediately following the Hebrews), and was commonly found in the Vulgate, until it was widely replaced by his Gallican psalms beginning in the 9th century. The Vulgate is usually credited as being the first translation of the Old Testament into Latin directly from the Hebrew Tanakh, rather than the Greek Septuagint. Jeromes extensive use of exegetical material written in Greek, on the other hand, as well as his use of the Aquiline and Theodotiontic columns of the Hexapla, along with the somewhat paraphrastic style in which he translated makes it difficult to determine exactly how direct the conversion of Hebrew to Latin was.[5][6][7] As Jerome completed his translations of each book of the Bible, he recorded his observations and comments in an extensive correspondence with other scholars; and these letters were subsequently collected and appended as prologues to the Vulgate text for those books where they survived. In these letters, Jerome described those books or portions of books in the Septuagint that were not found in the Hebrew as being non-canonical: he called them apocrypha.[8] Jeromes views did not, however, prevail; and all complete manuscripts and editions of the Vulgate include some or all these books. Of the Old Testament texts not found in the Hebrew, Jerome translated Tobit and Judith anew from the Aramaic; and from the Greek, the additions to Esther from the Septuagint, and the additions to Daniel from Theodotion. Other books; Baruch, Letter of Jeremiah, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, 1 and 2 Maccabees[9] are variously found in Vulgate manuscripts with texts derived from the Old Latin; sometimes together with Latin versions of other texts found neither in the Hebrew Bible, nor in the Septuagint, 4 Esdras, the Prayer of Manasses and Laodiceans. Their style is still markedly distinguishable from Jeromes. In the Vulgate text, Jeromes translations from the Greek of the additions to Esther and Daniel are combined with his separate translations of these books from the Hebrew. Critical value[edit] In translating the 39 books of the Hebrew Bible, Jerome was relatively free in rendering their text into Latin, but it is possible to determine that the oldest surviving complete manuscripts of the Masoretic Text, which date from nearly 600 years after Jerome, nevertheless transmit a consonantal Hebrew text very close to that used by Jerome.[10] Consequently, these books of the Vulgate – though of high literary quality – have little independent interest in text critical debate.[citation needed] Jerome translated the books of Judith and Tobit under sufferance, engaging a Jewish intermediary to render the Aramaic into oral Hebrew, for him then to paraphrase into Latin. Their textual value is small.[citation needed] The Vulgate Old Testament texts that were translated from the Greek – whether by Jerome himself, or preserving revised or unrevised Old Latin versions – are however early and important secondary witnesses to the Septuagint. Damasus had instructed Jerome to be conservative in his revision of the Old Latin Gospels, and it is possible to see Jeromes obedience to this injunction in the preservation in the Vulgate of variant Latin vocabulary for the same Greek terms. Hence, high priest is rendered princeps sacerdotum in Vulgate Matthew; as summus sacerdos in Vulgate Mark; and as pontifex in Vulgate John. Comparison of Jeromes Gospel texts with those in Old Latin witnesses, suggests that his revision was substantially concerned with redacting the expanded phraseology characteristic of the Western text-type, in accordance with Alexandrian, or possibly early Byzantine, witnesses. Given Jeromes conservative methods, and that manuscript evidence from outside Egypt at this early date is very rare; these Vulgate readings have considerable critical interest. More interesting still – because effectively untouched by Jerome – are the Vulgate books of the rest of the New Testament; which demonstrate rather more of supposed Western expansions, and otherwise transmit a very early Old Latin text. Most valuable of all from a text-critical perspective is the Vulgate text of the Apocalypse, a book where there is no clear majority text in the surviving Greek witnesses. Prologues[edit] In addition to the biblical text the Vulgate contains 17 prologues, 16 of which were written by Jerome. Jeromes prologues were written not so much as prologues than as cover letters to specific individuals to accompany copies of his translations. Because they were not intended for a general audience, some of his comments in them are quite cryptic. These prologues are to the Pentateuch,[11] to Joshua,[12] and to Kings, which is also called the Prologus Galeatus.[13] Following these are prologues to Chronicles,[14] Ezra,[15] Tobias,[16] Judith,[17] Esther,[18] Job,[19] the Gallican Psalms,[20] Song of Songs,[21] Isaiah,[22] Jeremiah,[23] Ezekiel,[24] Daniel,[25] the minor prophets,[26] the gospels,[27] and the final prologue which is to the Pauline epistles and is better known as Primum quaeritur.[28] Related to these are Jeromes Notes on the Rest of Esther[29] and his Prologue to the Hebrew Psalms.[30] In addition to Jeromes prologue to the Gallican version of the Psalms, which is commonly found in Vulgate manuscripts, his prologues also survive for the translations from the Hexaplar Septuagint of the books of Job, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs and Chronicles. A recurring theme of the Old Testament prologues is Jeromes preference for the Hebraica veritas (i.e., Hebrew truth) to the Septuagint, a preference which he defended from his detractors. He stated that the Hebrew text more clearly prefigures Christ than the Greek. Among the most remarkable of these prologues is the Prologus Galeatus, in which Jerome described an Old Testament canon of 22 books, which he found represented in the 22-letter Hebrew alphabet. Alternatively, he numbered the books as 24, which he described as the 24 elders in the Book of Revelation casting their crowns before the Lamb. Also of note is the Primum quaeritur, which defended the Pauline authorship of the Epistle to the Hebrews, and compared Pauls ten letters to the churches with the ten commandments. The author of the Primum quaeritur is unknown. The editors of the Stuttgart Vulgate remark that this version of the epistles first became popular among the Pelagians. In addition to Primum quaeritur, many manuscripts contain brief notes to each of the epistles indicating where they were written, with notes about where the recipients dwelt. Adolf von Harnack,[31] citing De Bruyne, argued that these notes were written by Marcion of Sinope or one of his followers.[32]
Posted on: Sun, 29 Jun 2014 20:40:47 +0000
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