# Jerome's Latin Vulgate



## cupotea (May 23, 2003)

I have a question about the Latin Vulgate.

Was Jerome's version of the Scriptures more accurate because he translated from the original Hebrew and not the Septuagint?
There is so much controversy that sorrrounds our English Bible.
What is the most accurate translation we should be using and why?


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## Guest (May 23, 2003)

That all depends on what you think of the Masoretic and the LXX. Christ and the Apostles quote both. 

70 hebrew scholars that knew hebrew and greek better than any of us here translated one to the other through providential guidance.

As to Jerome and the Vulgate, well, although I find it valuable it seems most individuals in the Reformed tradition believe it to be compromising to the original manuscripts, by virtue of the vernacular he used.

It is still God's word.


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## C. Matthew McMahon (May 29, 2003)

The Vulgate is as much as God's Word as the ESV or NJKV.


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## MARK PEMBERTON (May 30, 2003)

Why dont you all read the KJV. Tis my belief, perhaps I&quot;m wrong, that all English translations since 1880 are corrupt and the Vatican holds the copyright
There is no copyright on the KJV as it is owned by God to be freely copied and distributed.
I would give my life upholding the KJV as the word of God. I would not do that for the niv NKJV NASB rsv etc etc.
I am a working class peasant so please dont come at me with all that Greek and Hebrew stuff. British reformers did that for me 400 years ago and the Lord speaks to me through the KJV. 
Although I am not a kjvonlyist,there is not a man alive who can show me better(in English)


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## Guest (May 30, 2003)

The KJV is most eloquently delicious to thine ear.

However, I still read the other ones, as many as I can get my hands on. Sometimes a different translation or version can shed a little light on a familiar truth and thus guide thee unto a greater understanding.


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## LawrenceU (May 30, 2003)

As one who holds to Reformed theology it would be more consistent to stake your claim pertaining to archaic translations for the Geneva Bible rather than the KJV. It is an even better translation and was done by those who held to good theology. Most reformed folk resisted the KJV with some passion.

Having said that, although I respect and use the KJV at times it is not my translation of choice. There has been some very good textual work done since then and it has improved our knowledge, understanding, and accuracy of the original text(s).

Lawrence

[Edited on 5-30-2003 by LawrenceU]


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## MARK PEMBERTON (May 30, 2003)

Robert Dick Wilson (1856-1930) co-founder of the Westminster Seminary in Philidelphia was fluent in the forty odd languages you MUST master if you are to even begin looking &quot;ancient manuscripts&quot;. Needless to say Wilson was a King James man before and after his monumental task.
When you have done that I might try another version.


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## LawrenceU (May 30, 2003)

Dr. Wilson was a brilliant man and did much great work prior to the DSS discovery to confirm the veracity of the OT manuscripts.

It is a bit of an overstatment to say that one must master over forty languages in order to even begin to investigate ancient biblical manuscripts.

Have you studied original languages? (No sarcasm intended, just curious.)

Lawrence


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## Guest (May 30, 2003)

[quote:a6b8deb779]
forty odd languages you MUST master if you are to even begin looking &quot;ancient manuscripts&quot;. 
[/quote:a6b8deb779]

That is not true. We would all be heading down the path of Wittgenstein and deconstructionism if it were.


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## CT292 (May 30, 2003)

To Mark,

One of Dr. Wilson's successors at Westminster Seminary was J.H. Skilton.

He wrote in defense of the KJV in his article, [i:0b33f2e884]The King James Version Today[/i:0b33f2e884] published in the book, [i:0b33f2e884]The Law and the Prophets[/i:0b33f2e884]. Skilton wrote:

&quot;&quot;[The A.V.] is a conscientiously close translation. While not a literal, word-for-word rendering which is insensitive to English idiom and style, it is faithful to its text and is remarkably successful in conveying the sense of that text into good English&quot;.

But you are better off citing Westminster Seminary post graduate textual Scholar, [u:0b33f2e884]Dr. Edward F Hills[/u:0b33f2e884], than citing the famed OT scholar, R.D. Wilson on the veracity of the KJV. 

See also, [u:0b33f2e884]The Excellence of The Authorized Version[/u:0b33f2e884]. 

But its wrong to say that all translations since 1880 are &quot;corrupt&quot; or that the Vatican holds the &quot;copyright&quot; to them.

It sounds to me like you've been reading too much Jack Chick comics.

And God does not &quot;own&quot; the KJV except in a providential sense in which He owns everything.

BTW have you seen the [u:0b33f2e884]21st century King James Version[/u:0b33f2e884]?

But remember that the KJV is only a human [i:0b33f2e884]translation[/i:0b33f2e884]. It is not inspired at all and should not be treated as if it were. Only the original autographs are Divinly inspired. And the greek [i:0b33f2e884]apographs[/i:0b33f2e884] or manuscripts which underline the Byzantine TR and Majority Text are only providentally preserved, but are not inspired.

Colin


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## MARK PEMBERTON (May 30, 2003)

The kj translators all hoped for a better version to come as they said in &quot;The Translators to the Reader&quot;1611.
400 years later cannot we say the same thing ?- in all honesty ?
No Lawrence I dont study original languages. I am far more interested in the Spirit of the word rather than in the letter of a tongue that is alien to my soul.
My older brother is a Doctor of Linquistics in English ( not american) and he is very familiar with Ancient Norse. Any idea how old the English language is ? 
Point taken Vis. Pleased to be told.


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## LawrenceU (May 31, 2003)

Mark,
Ancient Norse: I'd love to know your brother. Linguistics are 'fun' to me. My father is quite conversant in ancient English and its development, and yes its roots run fairly deep. As we know it, it is relatively young. It is intriguing to talk with him on its evolution.

Anyone else out there captivated by Beowolf?

Lawrence


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## DTK (Oct 23, 2004)

> _Originally posted by PraiseTheKing_
> I have a question about the Latin Vulgate.
> 
> Was Jerome's version of the Scriptures more accurate because he translated from the original Hebrew and not the Septuagint?
> ...



I was browsing this thread, and thought that I might comment with respect to your question concerning Jerome. Though it is often insisted by Roman apologists that pope Damasus officially commissioned Jerome to produce a new translation of the Bible (Old and New Testaments), the historical facts get somewhat muddled in the process. What pope Damasus asked Jerome to do was 1) more of a request than a commission, and 2) aimed more at establishing a uniform text than a new translation because there were so many Latin texts floating around in that Day, some of which were translations of the LXX such as Augustine and others used in the North African Church. In his biography of Jerome, J. N. D. Kelly explains:


> J. N. D. Kelly: We have Jerome´s word that it was Damasus who requested him to sort out the multitudes of discrepancies and general disorder and provide a uniform text. It was not a completely fresh translation that the pope wanted, but a revision based on that original. Although Jerome´s language does not make it clear, it is likely that his commission envisaged the whole Bible, at all events the whole New Testament, but for the moment he took the four Gospels in hand. As he braced himself for the task, he had no illusions about either its difficulty or the odium he was bound to incur. Among all the competing versions he, and he alone, was to determine the text which agreed most closely with the Greek; and after all his efforts he would be branded as a sacrilegious forger by conservative readers who detected an unfamiliar taste in his revisions. To obviate this, though checking them by "˜ancient´ Greek manuscripts, he was careful to restrain his pen and introduce corrections only where the sense demanded them.
> In the event his revision was a distinctly conservative one; and since he always worked in a hurry and could be extremely careless, it was very far from being consistent, and tended to be more thorough at its earlier than later stages. He naturally emended what struck him as corrupt or inaccurate, altered finite verbs in the Old Latin to participles in the Greek (although more fitfully towards the end of the work than at the beginning), and made intermittent efforts to harmonize the style. But he sometimes deliberately retained expressions for which he knew there were more suitable alternatives in his eagerness to respect tradition. He did, however, substitute the order of the Gospels with which we are familiar, and which he found in the Greek MSS, for the one favoured by the Old Latin (Matthew-John-Luke-Mark), and he was also more radical in his treatment of the actual text. Textual criticism is, of course, a modern science, and he was largely ignorant of its principles; he naturally relied on "˜old codices´ which he found to hand. These led him to prefer a text which very often, but not invariably, resembles the type presented by the famous fourth-century codices Vaticanus and Sinaiticus. They also caused him to steer clear, in general, of what modern scholars call the "˜western text´, with its tendency to paraphrase and assimilate. On occasion, however, one has to admit that his choice of a reading was not governed by any scientific principle at all; it appealed to him, for example, because it was to his taste doctrinally. J. N. D. Kelly, _Jerome: His Life, Writings, and Controversies_ (Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 2000), pp. 86-87.


By the time of the Reformers, Jerome's original _Vulgate_ suffered from many more corruptions not wrought by his hand, and his translating work was not devoid of his own person biases, as Kelly indicates above.

I hope this helps.

Blessings,
DTK

[Edited on 23-10-2004 by DTK]

[Edited on 23-10-2004 by DTK]


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## Sense (Oct 23, 2004)

Because there is absolutely no possible way for anyone to approach scripture from "the stance of neutrality", then there will always be flaws in translation of Scripture, unless of course you think that translaters all receive divine guidance.

Did God divinely guide the translation of all of these different translations, or not, and thus we much watch carefully the text that is presented before us?


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## DTK (Oct 23, 2004)

You wrote:


> _Originally posted by Sense_
> Because there is absolutely no possible way for anyone to approach scripture from "the stance of neutrality", then there will always be flaws in translation of Scripture, unless of course you think that translaters all receive divine guidance.



Yes, that is a general fact, but some of these mistranslations are blatant, though admittedly they do not threaten the overall profitability of a translation. I'll offer two examples of Jerome's blatant blunders, one from the OT and one from the NT. An overt example of textual corruption that has subsequently been transmitted by the Vulgate into the English (Roman Catholic) translation of the Douay"“Rheims Bible can be seem in the example of Psalm 2:12 with the translation of the Hebrew "Kiss, do homage, or adore the Son." The Latin Vulgate misses the Hebrew sense completely with _adprehendite disciplinam_ which is subsequently translated by the Douay"“Rheims version as "˜embrace discipline.´ As a side note, the Douay"“Rheims is a translation of a translation, i.e. it is an English translation based on the latin Vulgate.
The other example can be seen in the Vulgate translation of Matthew 4:17, which tended to sever, as McGrath suggests, "˜the semantic link between the mental attitude of repentance and the sacrament of penance.´ The translation in the Vulgate read: _Exinde coepit Jesus praedicare et dicere paenitentiam agite adpropinquavit enim regnum caelorum._ McGrath comments:


> This had been taken to imply the need to "˜do penance´, in preparation for the coming of the Kingdom of God. (The ambiguity of the Latin word _poenitentia_, which could be translated as the mental state of "˜repentance´, or the sacrament of "˜penance´, should be noted.) This link was initially weakened, and subsequently eliminated, through the rise of the new philology. Thus Erasmus initially translated the Greek verb as _poeniteat vos_ ("˜be penitent´), and subsequently as _resipiscite_ ("˜come to your senses´). See Alister McGrath, _The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation_ (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987), pp. 133"“134.



You wrote:


> Did God divinely guide the translation of all of these different translations, or not, and thus we much watch carefully the text that is presented before us?


No, God did not divinely guide the translation of these different translations. But I do agree with F. F. Bruce that "By the "˜singular care and providence´ of God, the text of Scripture has come down to us in such substantial purity that even the most uncritical edition of the Hebrew and Greek, or the most incompetent (or even the most tendentious) translation of such an edition, cannot effectively obscure its essential message or neutralize its saving power." See F.F. Bruce´s remarks in the forward to Dewey M. Beegle, _Scripture, Tradition and Infallibility_ (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1973). See also the comments of Gerhard Maier, Biblical Hermeneutics, trans. Robert W. Yarbrough, (Wheaton: Crossway, 1994), p. 185.

Blessings,
DTK


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