Crowd-Sourcing Project: Latin Bible by Tremellio, Junius, and Beza

[Ackbeet]

As most of you know, the Latin Vulgate is easily accessible, you can buy very nice versions of it for not a lot of money, and it's very Catholic. I am a Protestant, and I am intensely interested in Latin. I would like to have a Latin translation of the Bible that does not translate Matthew 4:17 with, "Do penance." The Tremellio, Junius, Beza translation fits the bill. You can buy a copy of it on Amazon, but it's obviously just a scan of a copy (not a terribly great scan). I found a pdf online that's not bad - it's much better than the Amazon book. You can download it here, it's pretty large - 345MB.

I would like to propose a project, and I want to get feelers out to see if anyone's interested in participating. Here's a list of what I want to accomplish.

1. I want to get this Latin translation fully digitized, like in Microsoft Word or LibreOffice Writer or Google Docs, not a scan. Typed up, so that reproduction is lossless.

2. I want to leave out the Apocrypha. Not sure why Tremellio and Junius (OT translators, whereas Beza did the NT) bothered to do the Apocrypha. This is to be a Latin Bible for Protestants.

3. I want the Latin to be fully macroned, so as to allow it to be used more easily for learning Latin.

4. The Tremellio/Junius/Beza translation uses medieval Latin spelling, with j's. That's fine, but every edition I've seen uses those elongated f's for s's. I want to fix that.

5. I want to use modern typesetting - Times New Roman is great, and also very common.

6. Double-check versification with standard English Bibles like the KJV to make sure it matches.

7. Eventually (had to geek out on this one!), I'd love to have this published: hardcover, bound in signatures.

8. I want the result to be either in the public domain, or with some copyleft scheme like Creative Commons.

So, I would love to see if there are enough people interested to make this project feasible. You should be comfortable parsing all grammatical forms, checking forms on wiktionary (has macrons!), and making educated guesses based firstly on what the pdf has, secondly on what the Vulgate has, and thirdly what either the English has or (if you know Greek and/.or Hebrew) what the original languages said. You should be a detail-oriented person, wanting to GET THINGS RIGHT.

I have some details in mind concerning technology, but that can wait until I get a feel for interest.

Thank you!

 

[NaphtaliPress]

I don't know what the level of interest is here in simply compiling a Latin text. But you also in this instance have to be careful to choose the last revision by Junius. I do not know how much the revisions affected the notes but if you go with the last revision you don't need to worry. See my note from Bownd's True Doctrine of the Sabbath who used this work heavily (p. 43-44) which I paste in below.

22. Tremellius, Junius. [On Exodus 16:30. Immanuel Tremellius, Testamenti Veteris Biblia Sacra, Sive, Libri Canonici (1593) 1.71; cf. Biblia sacra: Vet. Testamenti sive libri canonici (1602) 83. Junius, Opera, “Libri II. Mosis, qui Exodus,” v. 1 (1607; 1613) 300. This first work is the Latin Bible produced by Tremellius and Junius, of whom the latter subsequently oversaw three revisions. Bownd makes heavy use of both authors in his second edition, and is clearly aware of the revisions through at least that of 1596 (see the note on page 160). “The first edition of the Old Testament was published by Andreas Wechel in Frankfurt am Main in five volumes, which appeared between 1575 and 1579…. The Old Testament was almost immediately reprinted in London in 1579 to 1580, with Tremellius’ Latin rendering of the New Testament constituting a sixth part. Thereafter, Tremellius’ and Junius’ Old Testament went through a significant number of reprintings in locations throughout Europe, including Frankfurt, London, Geneva, Hanau and Amsterdam. Following Tremellius’ death, Junius made sufficient revisions to the text and additions to the annotations to merit releasing them as revised editions. Thus a ‘second version’ appeared in 1590, a ‘third’ in 1596 and a ‘fourth’ in 1603. With the exception of the original Frankfurt edition, every edition included a version of the New Testament. The first London edition, which used Tremellius’ translation from Syriac, was exceptional; every subsequent edition had Beza’s translation from the Greek and Tremellius’ translation from the Syriac printed together in parallel columns, or else joined Tremellius’ Old Testament with Beza’s New Testament.” Kenneth Austin, From Judaism to Calvinism: the life and writings of Immanuel Tremellius (c. 1510–1580). St. Andrews Studies in Reformation History (Aldershot, Hants, England ; Burlington, VT: Ashgate Pub, 2007) 147, 179.]​

 

[greenbaggins]

Chris, what edition is the one that my brother linked to, then? It says it is Hanover, dated 1712.

 

[Ackbeet]

Why doesn't it surprise me that you know all that? ;-)]

 

[NaphtaliPress]

I don't know per the 1712 (for some reason I was thinking you were interested in the notes, but I see that is not the case, so the fact the 1712 doesn't have them is I guess not an issue). I couldn't see any reference to 1603 in Rivet's preface so not sure. It says it is corrected and amended so one would presume it followed the last edition Junius had a hand in, but one shouldn't presume but make sure. One would think the scriptures would not be too affected as much as the note revisions across the editions so what I wrote may be more than is needed to worry about in this case. I would check and see if EEBO TCP did any of the text and that would give you a leg up on some typing, but on the other side, you have to proof read it carefully.

 

[greenbaggins]

Unfortunately, there is no TCP in either Phase I or Phase II of the Biblia Sacra.

 

[Guido's Brother]

To do this properly, you need expert Latinists who are also familiar with the Reformation/post-Reformation context. If it's done with Latin amateurs (like me), you'll have an amateur product. I'm thinking that if this is done properly, it should look something like what's being done with the Acts of the Synod of Dort.

 

[greenbaggins]

Wes, I can definitely see that Latin experts need to be involved. However, don't you think the greatest skill needed would be simple attention to detail, and the ability to decipher pdf's? A knowledge of the biblical text would seem to me more important than knowing the Reformation/post-Reformation context.

 

[Ackbeet]

I think that even the typing requires some Latin knowledge, as I mentioned in the OP. You've got to be comfortable looking things up, and you've got to be comfortable with the full range of the Latin Grammar. I really, really want the macrons, and that could easily require knowledge of Latin grammar to rule out this option versus that option. In other words, I think an intermediate Latinist is called for to do the main grunt work. I am what I would call an intermediate Latinist - I've seen the full range of Latin grammar, but that doesn't mean I am adept at it. I'm not an expert. And I would feel very comfortable doing what I've outlined above, if it weren't for the enormous amount of time required. Hence the crowd-sourcing. But, Wes, you are right in that an expert would be needed to edit the final result, no question there.

 

[Ask Mr. Religion]

While I am sure you likely have the usual tools for Latin work, a small suggestion from someone who translates ecclesial and Medieval Latin manuscripts:
http://blitzlatin.com/ (also, http://archives.nd.edu/blitz.htm)

 

[Guido's Brother]

Wes, I can definitely see that Latin experts need to be involved. However, don't you think the greatest skill needed would be simple attention to detail, and the ability to decipher pdf's? A knowledge of the biblical text would seem to me more important than knowing the Reformation/post-Reformation context.

One of the reasons I say that is because a familiarity with the world of the translation might have a bearing on some of the choices made. For example, the OP states that the original Tremellius translation included the apocrypha, but the author (of the OP) says this is baffling. Having done a little study on the use of the apocrypha in the Reformation and post-Reformation, I don't find it surprising. When the Synod of Dort commissioned the Statenvertaling, they included the apocrypha in the commission (with certain caveats). If those who are working on this know these things and the background, they might be more inclined to have a modern edition which follows the original and includes the apocrypha.

 

[Ackbeet]

Very well, I see your point about the Apocrypha. However, I definitely think there is a market for a well-made Latin Bible, not the Vulgate, and which does not contain the extra weight of the Apocrypha: me, for one! Maybe we could convince publishers to have two versions: one with, and one without.

 

[NaphtaliPress]

Given the significance, and the numerous use the notes are made of by writers of the time, why not just issue a modern edition of the Tremllius/Junius Bible? Then you have added yet another market of interest, though the work is more.

 

[Ackbeet]

Found a fantastic resource for the NT: a pristine pdf, along with a (somewhat poorly done) OCR. So, with this part of the project, all that's needed is to make the txt file match the pdf. Little to no Latin skill required. Any takers?

 

[Ackbeet]

Given the significance, and the numerous use the notes are made of by writers of the time, why not just issue a modern edition of the Tremllius/Junius Bible? Then you have added yet another market of interest, though the work is more.

You're right. We could maybe offer two versions: one with the Apocrypha, and one without.

 

[Ask Mr. Religion]

Found a fantastic resource for the NT: a pristine pdf, along with a (somewhat poorly done) OCR. So, with this part of the project, all that's needed is to make the txt file match the pdf. Little to no Latin skill required. Any takers?

An epub version is avilable at the same site, so someone could start with the text and make the corrections necessary to match the book. Copy and paste from the epub is simple, chapter by chapter, to make the work easier to handle. Corrections can be made globally with the text files using the usual text only editors available, e.g., TextPad, or EditPad Pro, which include advanced search and replace functions, including regex capabilities.

FYI:
https://vuntblog.blogspot.com/2012/11/bezas-new-testament-editions-online.html

Alternatively, I have attached an Microsoft Word version of the work cited above that preserves pagination and hyphenation. It contains highlighted word portions wherein the OCR (using ABBY Finereader 14) was questionable. Should make it easier to make global corrections. Note: Ignore the page headers as they are incorrectly tagged by the OCR process. Again something that can be corrected using doc editors.