Talk:Vulgate/Archive 1

Spelling
I'm still awaiting an example of where the Nova's spelling deviates from the Clementina's. I believe that the comment in the article regarding the Nova's spelling reform is false, and I plan to delete it soon unless someone convinces me I'm wrong. In my experience, the spelling in these two translation differs only where their source documents differ (e.g. Thobis for Tobias, which has nothing to do with Classical versus renaissance spelling).

Rob, 11 Mar 2006

Versions
Re different versions of the Vulgate produced by Jerome, I believe that this actually refers to different versions of the Psalter, and not the Vulgate as a whole. The text misleadingly infers that the whole of the Old Testament was thus translated. Can anyone give me a reference for the startling assertion that there were Romana, Gallicana, Hispana translations made by Jerome?

-Rob, 27 Jan 2006

I went ahead and made the change 8 March 2006.

Apocrypha
Somebody said that something should be said about the way some books or portions of books were marked doubtful and put in separate sections because they were only found in the Greek, and how this later paved the way for Protestants to see them as Apocrypha and completely excise them from the Bible.

They were "excised" because, simply, they never belonged there in the first place. Jerome knew that the Jewish scribes had never considered these books to be part of their canon of Scripture, and for that reason he put them in separate sections. So did the Jewish historian Josephus. Frankly, in many cases all you have to do is to read them and it's clear they're not of the same calibre as the canonical books. Read the additions to Daniel, for example, or the additions to Esther. The canonical book of Esther is a beautiful, if enigmatic, story. The fact that God's name is never mentioned is significant and shows that even though we can't always see Him, He's always working in the affairs of His people.

The apocryphal additions to Esther, on the other hand, start right out by mentioning God and explaining exactly how He was at work. Now, I'm not denying that this information can be useful; nor do any other Protestants I've talked to. It may even be worthy of being considered a commentary on the books. But it's clearly not in the same class.


 * Uh, no. Before the rise of Christianity, the Septuagint was not only in wide use among the Jews, but many believed the stories about the Septuagint's translation being divinely inspired. It of course was a Greek translation of the Old Testament; historically, it was obviously the Bible of the early church. It's the version the early Christians used to prove that Jesus was the Messiah; consequently, it fell out of favor among the Jews, who returned to the Masoretic Text and also tried to promote some alternate Greek translations that altered the substance of the Messianic prophecies. Apparently Jerome was persuaded in his research that their scholarship was more reliable than the church's.


 * As for the 'caliber' of the books, that argument really doesn't stand up. The Song of the Three Youths in Daniel 3 fits in perfectly with the rest of the story. Wisdom and Sirach read just like Proverbs; most Protestants would probably think they were hearing Proverbs if you read a couple verses at random from either of them. There's nothing wrong with the additions to Esther. But arguing based on caliber or content opens the door to reopening the canon, and getting rid of any books you find inconvenient, as Martin Luther did when he tried to brand the book of James an "epistle of straw". The full Bible is the Bible that was given to us by the Church, not just a collection of old books that a lot of Christians think are neat or inspiring, or that happen to receive mass market success by the big publishing houses. Wesley 12:44 Apr 22, 2003 (UTC)

The latin Vulgate contains books of the Old Testament that Martin Luther would change during the reformation period. Saint Jerome was a translator and was in no position to canonize the books of the bible. His opinion of what books are considered more important than others is just an opinion. Besides he included them as OT and the canon was fixed before the Vulgate at the III Council of Carthage. He can't and couldn't canonize the bible. The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Septuagint contain the books that Luther rejected. Only post-crucifiction Jewish reform resembles Luther's Old Testament. This is a different Old Testament to that used by the early Christian/Jews and the Apostles who quote from the Septuagint in the NT. [Cpt|Kirk 11:30, 23 March 2006 (UTC)]


 * It might be pointed out that the following quotes might be offensive to religious Roman Catholics and even Eastern Orthodox. "They were "excised" because, simply, they never belonged there in the first place...in many cases all you have to do is to read them and it's clear they're not of the same calibre as the canonical books. Read the additions to Daniel, for example, or the additions to Esther." We are talking specifically about religious scriptures of Roman Catholics here and not just literary works or only Protestant theological interpretation.  Keep this encyclopedic please! Cuvtixo (talk) 00:01, 27 January 2008 (UTC)


 * It might be worth mentioning, then, that prior to the first council of Trent, and Protestant Reformation in general, though varying at times, Catholicism itself traditionally regarded these books as noncanonical: the reverse case is a very interesting historical curiosity! tooMuchData 08:36, 31 December 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by TheResearchPersona (talk • contribs)

Stuttgart Vulgate
The article states that "The main critical source for the Stuttgart Vulgate is Codex Amiatinus[...]" This puzzles me, as the Stuttgart critical apparatus refers to dozens of manuscripts as well as to several editions, with no one single source, it seems to me, clearly standing apart from the others. Perhaps I am missing something. GBWallenstein 01:15, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Well, the Codex Amiatinus is listed first among the manuscipts consulted among the critical apparatus, and righly so as it is the most complete and one of the oldest witnesses to the original Vulgate text.

Nova Vulgata
Can anyone give me an example of how the Nova Vulgata's spelling is more classical than the Clementina's?

-Rob, 27 Jan 2006

etymology question
Are we sure that the name Vulgate suggests that it was written in simplified Latin closer to everyday speech? I was under the impression that it simply meant that here was a bible written not in the educated languages of Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek &mdash; but in Latin, the language of the people. (Then, of course, this became ironically fossilized until the 20th century in the Catholic church.) Doops 04:55, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)


 * It's hard to give a definitive answer to a question about literary style, because judgements about style are always subjective to some degree. However, I do think that Jerome translated the Bible in a style which was meant to be accessible to a relatively broad audience. In my opinion, if you compare the style of Jerome's prologues, or some of his letters, with that of his Bible passages, you will find that the latter are, indeed, much simpler, clearer and easier to comprehend. Which is not say that they are stylistically inferior, not at all. They're just different. There's also the question of how much Jerome's style in the Vulgate reflects his intentions regarding a wide readership, and how much it simply reflects the style of the texts he was translating. I don't read Greek or Hebrew well enough to answer this question. However, from his prologues one gets the clear impression that Jerome very much wanted to preserve the style of the original texts, which were to him the word of God. GBWallenstein 01:42, 20 January 2006 (UTC)


 * "Vulgate"/"vulgar" just means "common". The "Vulgate" in the name signifies the intended audience, not the Latin being used. The language of Jerome's translation is clearly not Vulgar Latin. Indeed, it is essentially Classical Latin, except (primarily) for issues of vocabulary and style. Rocinante9 2006-08-16


 * Vulgatus is the perfect passive participle of the verb vulgare which means to make public (cognate to divulge in English). Biblia Sacra Vulgata means the Holy Bible made public, i.e., published by some sponsoring institution such as the Latin church for the Latin Vulgate, and the Greek church for the Greek Vulgate. I don't believe it is a reference to any particular style. Rwflammang 14:29, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Vulgate vs Septuagint
As a Jew, I was barely aware before of greatly different versions in the Christian Bible. I'm curious which one is closest to the true, original, Hebrew... Especially when you have a difference like whether or not Methuselah survived the flood. I mean, I don't care how it was translated, into Latin or Greek - read the Hebrew, according to that version, surely it's relatively clear whether he lived or died...

(not a comment on this article, as if it needed changing or anything, just a comment in general)


 * Generally speaking, newer Christian Old Testament versions tend to be closer to the original Hebrew than older ones. Note also that the Septuagint was actually originally written by Jews. Tradition says that seventy-two Jewish scholars translated the Pentateuch (or Torah) from Hebrew into Greek for Ptolemy II Philadelphus, 285–246 BCE. Further books were translated over the next two centuries. It is not altogether clear which was translated when, or where; some may even have been translated twice, into different versions, and then revised. Note also that the Septuagint includes some books that are not in the Hebrew Bible and a complete version of the original Hebrew has never been found. Many Protestant Bibles follow the Jewish canon and exclude these books. Eastern Orthodox Christians use the Septuagint itself. The early Christians spoke and read all their scripture in koine Greek. Some of the most heated arguments about accuracy and legitimacy are over how canonical the English King James Version!  Many Christians don't consider the older Hebrew versions definitive, even if it would seem to solve certain problems.  Cuvtixo (talk) 23:44, 26 January 2008 (UTC)


 * To the Jewish fellow; when Cuvtixol says "tradition" he means "Jewish Tradition"; it is Jewish tradition that preserves the tale of the 72 that translated the Torah: what's not clear is how much of the "Septuagint" was actually translated, since "Torah" can be used either of the Law in the Pentateuch, the Five Books of Moses, the whole OT, etc., depending on era, context, writer, and so on. What's clearly known is that the Septuagint, among Jews, and the early Christians (Jew and Gentile alike), was very much reverred. Regarding Canon: early Christians were on the Jewish side: the extra books in the Septuagint called "apocrypha" are so-called by the Jews themselves, actually, which Jerome as a translator explained was a name they applied to books they held in great esteem, but not as holy writ; people forget, because some today claim they are Scripture, that they are likely Jewish (whether Hellenistic or otherwise), just not considered (then) Scripture. It seems an accident of history that they became included in anyone's cannon: probably from the respect afforded the Septuagint, but early Christians seemed to describe the extra books not as Scripture, but kept as "boundary stones" (a very fanciful application of that Jewish concept!) passed-down from their fathers; they are, however, considered by many to be important for insight into the hellenistic age. To the Catholics, Orthodox, etc., that may be offended, forgive me, but I call them as I see them; this was not meant to offend, but to recount the facts as we have them. tooMuchData 05:12, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Jerome the stylist
"...the elegant Ciceronian Latin of which Jerome was a master." Even at my level I know that this is not a discriminating Latinist who is writing this. Jerome's flights of purple writing! are they even "Silver age"? Can someone characterize Jerome's Latin more informatively than this blurb? BtW, the influence of the Vulgate, everywhere read aloud in churches, in coarsening Late Latin is an aspect of the Vulgate that hasn't been touched upon here. Or will the Wikipedia nuns crack our knuckles with the ruler for daring? --Wetman 20:18, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * Jerome wrote in a variety of different styles. The reason the Vulgate is called the "Vulgate" is that Jerome deliberately wrote it in the common Latin style of the late 4th century.  He was also a master of Ciceronian Latin, as proven by the times he deliberately wrote in that style.  And when he was angry his letters were "purple" as you say.   The sentence should probably be rephrased to make this clear. Lawrence King 15:58, 15 July 2005 (UTC)


 * The effect of the Vulgate at the start of medieval Latin might well be characterized as well as praised in this article. For "Ciceronian" style, the instructive comparison is with Augustine, who had a pagan training. Jerome at full flight is no Erasmus. --Wetman 16:25, 15 July 2005 (UTC)


 * I doubt that is the reason it is called the 'Vulgate' because in Jerome's time that was a title applied to the LXX; but in later years became applied to the Anthology called the "Latin Bible", parts of which were revised/translated by Jerome. The idea that it was called "Vulgate" because it is in the common Latin is likely a very late fable, making the connection between the version called 'common' and the speech in which it was written; neverthless it is still a fable. tooMuchData 05:12, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

King James closest to the Vulgate?
I was under the impression that the Douay-Rheims Bible is the closest English translation to the Vulgate? Am I wrong?

You are correct. The Douay-Rheims is an english translation of the Vulgate. The KJV translators used the Textus Receptus to avoid translating from the Vulgate but it turned out that even Textus Receptus used the Vulgate so lots of Vulgate translations entered the KJV that way, but also the KJV translators referenced the Douay-Rheims. [Cpt|Kirk 22:21, 23 March 2006 (UTC)]

Yes, KJV is closest equivalent

The comparison between the KJV and Vulgate, and whether the Douay Rheims (made from the Vulgate) is closer should not be confused. In terms of influence on their respective languages and the people who spoke them (not to mention religious life), yes the KJV and Vulgate are highly comparable. I agree that the Douay Version (and its revision by Challoner, which I may mention drew heavily from the KJV) is the closest translational equivalent of the Latin Vulgate in English. However, in terms of sheer influence and even reverance by its readers, only the KJV measures up to the Vulgate's original paradigm. Even a Catholic (which I was raised) knows what version or at least has heard the version of Psalm 23 which begins "The LORD is my shepherd: I shall not want..." The same cannot be said of the Douay's "The Lord ruleth me: and I shall want nothing..." a literal rendering of the Vulgate's "Dominus regit me: nihil mihi deerit..." posted by User:Simonapro


 * It was during the preparation of the Douai translation that some problems with the Vulgate, introduced by using copies of copies, were noticed. The translation of the Douai was suspended until the Vulgate was revised. ClemMcGann 15:11, 1 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Vulgate was written in the "common" people's Latin when the Roman Empire had fallen, Latin was in decline and differentiating into countless dialects, literacy was low and ritual and mystery were emphasized in the Catholic Mass. The KJV was written when the English language and the British Empire was in ascendency, the printing press was cranking books out, and Protestants were de-emphasizing ritual in religion. I don't believe the KJV and the Vulgate are comparable in their respective languages at all. Cuvtixo (talk) 00:19, 27 January 2008 (UTC)


 * The Vulgate and the KJV are directly comparable in that they both exercised a tremendous influence over their respective languages and are both classics of literature. You cannot say that about any other Bible in the English and Latin languages respectively. They both occupy a high place in the canons of Western literature. As for the myth that the Vulgate was written in common Latin, see the talk sections below. Rwflammang (talk) 00:22, 28 May 2008 (UTC)


 * RwFlammang, in the sense he's clarifying, is correct. The statement of them being comparable in regards language, as well, the KJV does draw from words in the (Clementine) Vulgate, as we musn't forget that the literary, ecclesiastical, scientific, and philosophical language of those times (until recently!) was predominately Latin (though in various fields, Latin, German, and later English, could give it a run for its money). Latin was also considered more precise by those more familiar with its use for rigor (though those more accustomed to English could argue otherwise in other particulars), at least in terms of terms and their denotations. That's one thing that troubles modern readers of the KJV, that certain words are used latinately, not as English (either then, or now); but those that do/n't musn't be confused. Other than that, either Bible, in whatever revision (whether earlier, later, mixed, whatever Vulgate, or whichever edition/revision of the KJV) was tremendously important to the society that used it. tooMuchData 05:17, 1 January 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by TheResearchPersona (talk • contribs)

Nova Vulgata Psalter
There is an inconsistancy in the Nova Vulgata section. It says Paul VI appointed a commission in 1965 to do for the Vulgate what had been done for the psalter. It later says the psalter was published in 1969. What's the story here? Rwflammang 14:53, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

The source for these inconsistent data seems to be, which is a polemical essay directed against the Nova Vulgata. Perusing the essay does not make me confident that it is an accurate source. I think perhaps that removing one or both of the inconsistent statements should be our short term fix. Rwflammang 15:58, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Canonical is not a synonym for Biblical
The following independent clause has been bugging me for a while, and I just now removed it. It's not so much that I think it is wrong, just besides the point. Jerome never showed any inclination for the notion, so widespread today, that the Bible should omit the Apocrypha. In his prologues, he called the Apocrypha non-canonical. But he also called them scriptures, in the very same prologues. He did not consider canonical to be a synonym for scriptural. I'm removing the clause for now because I can't think of good way to make the original editor's point:
 * However, Augustine of Hippo argued for their inclusion in the Bible, and Pope Damasus insisted on it, so the Old Testament content of the Vulgate was similar to that of the Septuagint, which was at that time the translation most widely used by Greek-speaking Christians.

The clause implied that Jerome was in favor of removing the Apocrypha from the Vulgate. Rwflammang 15:32, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Stuttgart Vulgate
I have an issue with the wording "cleansed of the errors..." This presumes that only Jerome's original is "correct", and that any changes made to the text are necessarily corruptions to that purity of correctness. I think this is patently absurd. Don't get me wrong &mdash; it's fine to talk about attempting to reconstruct Jerome's original. But it's out of place to imply that it was perfect in any sense. Rocinante9 2006-08-17

I agree. I also think that the S.V. cannot be described as an attempted reconstruction of Jerome's text. In the second preface (which I do not have before me, unfortunately) the editors defend at least one of their readings by saying that the correct reconstruction of a particular verse, concerning which they had been criticized, could hardly be described as a reading at all, since almost no one had ever read it. I'm not sure what the editors were attempting to reconstruct, a majority 6th century Italian text? A collection of readings showing the least Vetus Latina influence? I just can't tell what they were after. Rwflammang 14:03, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Merge
It seems like an article about the identical content exists and should be merged and redirected here. Anyone agree and/or want to take that task on? Biblia Vulgata--Andrew c 01:41, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

There wasn't much in Biblia Vulgata that was lacking in Vulgate. What little I found, I put in just now. Rwflammang 19:12, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Translated from the Hebrew
I have removed the bizarre misstatement that the Vulgate was the first Christian Bible to use an Old Testament text translated from the Hebrew. The various Syrian Bibles always used a Hebrew-based text (although there was a Syro-Hexaplar version produced in the 7th Century CE). And of course, the Old Testment of the Greek Church has always been the LXX - itself directly translated from the Hebrew before the Christian era. TomHennell 02:32, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

I am puzzled by the para below; especially the firtst and last last sentances, which appear to contradict one another:


 * "Thirty-eight of the thirty-nine protocanonical books of the Vulgate's Old Testament (all except for the Psalms) were translated anew by Jerome from Hebrew. He also translated Judith and Tobias from the Aramaic. The rest of the Vulgate was a revision of earlier Latin translations from Greek. Jerome thoroughly revised the psalms and the four Gospels; how much the rest of the New Testament was revised is difficult to judge today. The rest of the Old Testament was perhaps revised only slightly, or not at all."

I had thought that Jerome undertook a "revision" of selected books of the Old Latin OT (which do not survive) before he left Rome; but that his "translation" of the OT - undertaken in Betlehem, was a totally new project (source Encyclopedia Judaica). I have altered rest of the Old Testament to the rest of the deutrocanonical books, as that is what I think is meant. TomHennell 15:50, 23 January 2007 (UTC)


 * There are two problems with the phrase deuterocanonical books:


 * 1. Not everyone considers these books canonical. Jerome said they were not in the canon, for instance. The word deuterocanonical was not coined till the 16th century, so this statement is anachronistic at best, and potentially POV at worst. Keep in mind that deuterocanonical does not mean "not really canonical", or "second class canonical"; it means fully canonical. I'd just as soon not make that claim at the top of the article, since it really requires some qualifiers to make it NPOV.
 * 2. The phrase leaves out those apocrypha, e.g., 4 Esdras, which are in the Vulgate, but are not deuterocanonical. These were found in the Old Testament section before Clement moved them into a appendix in the 16th century. Of course, we could say "deuterocanonical books and apocrypha", but that would still involve us in an anachronism.
 * Regards. Rwflammang 17:12, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Many thanks for the clarification of the terminology - though I would hope that most of that could be put off into another Wiki article, in the belief that point should not be at issue here. Whether or not particular books are regarded as canonical in different Christian traditions, they are certainly regarded as Canonical within the Vulgate as officially promulgated (e.g. in the Council of Trent - albeit that Jerome himself would no doubt have some pretty harsh words in response). I would have thought it was not POV that the Clementine Vulgate presents a protocanon, a deutrocanon, and a residual apocrypha - and that the wider ecclesiastical status of these books should not be an issue for an article about the Vulgate. If the article were discussing the Ethiopic Bible, then the list of protocanon, deuterocanon  and apocrypha would look very different - but it isn't.

My question was more concerned with the issue of what we are saying Jerome did (or perhaps claims he had done, as telling the unvarnished truth was not one of his dominant qualities). I think that the revision I proposed of this para corresponds to what I understand as being stated by contributors to this article; but if so, it would appear to duplicate much that is said in the next para - so perhaps they could be conflated. Maybe we should simply list the books that are in the OT of Vulgate manuscripts, but which Jerome did not revise?

regards TomHennell 18:32, 23 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Considering that here it seems what is being designated is the Vulgate important to Western society/history, and that there are various "vulgates", such that the Clementine, for instance, isn't quite Jerome's, we ought be more specific; particularly I think that Rwflammang is correct that in the current form, this article is anachronistic; historically the Vulgate, and the Catholic Church at large for over a thousand years, minus a pope here and there (always reversed), did not consider the apocrypha deuterrocanonical; that was established finally as official at Trent, and it was prior to Trent that the importance of the Vulgate to Western society at large fell into heavy decline if not obscurity with the rise in popularity of the vernacular translations; even prior to the Protestant Reformation, many people who might be called early reformers were already producing vernaculars, and the latin mass, nor literature, was not understood by the society at large, even by many priests themselves (Wycliffe, himself a Catholic though a "pre-reformer", if you will, bears evidence of this in his writings). Though being sensitive to others' sensitivities, we also ought not bring anachronisms into Wikipedia: it's not encyclopedic. tooMuchData 05:25, 1 January 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by TheResearchPersona (talk • contribs)

Influence on Western Culture
I have redrafted this para.


 * a. it is not true that early vernacular versions were invariably transalted from the Vulgate - a considerable number used an Old Latin version of the diatessarone.g. Heliand.
 * b. while Luther, as he grew older, tended increasingly to write in German, the Reformed Genevan tradition was firmly Latinate - a feature that gave it a big advantage in the competition for primacy of place in the Protestant world, as Latin remained the international language of scholarship. Hence Stephanus (whose Vulgate edition was the basis of the abortive Sistine Vulgate) was himself a covert Calvinist; and his Geneva Vulgate of 1555 was probably the most widely circulated critical edition of all in academic circles, through its invariable use in Reformed theology.
 * c. the influence of the Vulgate on the Authorised Version was profound, but in influencing the translators into a more technical vocabulary, not into a "homely" one. James VI had instructed the companies working on the new translation that explanatory notes would not be acceptable, and this led the divines away from the everyday terms favoured by Tyndale, towards a more precise Latinate vocabulary. TomHennell 01:47, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Order and grouping of editions
Last week, the order of the editions was changed from a roughly chronological one to one that was split primariy into Catholic editions and critical editions. Since then, the lists of editions have been leaking back towards their original chronological order. The Aland edition is now in the catholic section. So is the benedictine edition dispite the fact that it was never "official" (whatever that means) and was most definitely a critical edition. I propose abolishing the whole Catholic vs. critical distinction, I do not see how it is useful, and returning to the chronological order. Rwflammang 17:25, 24 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I moved Novum testamentum latine under Nova Vulgata, because Aland's text is simply the Nova Vulgata. It reprints without any alteration the Vatican's 20th-century attempt at Latin prose composition.  It is certainly not an attempt at a critical text of the Vulgate; it's a Nova Vulgata New Testament, with some information about other texts in an apparatus.  (It is confusing, because, in the Novum testamentum graece et latine, it's printed in facing-page format across from a critical edition of the Greek text.)  As for the Benedictine edition, the article as I found it mentioned its significance only as a precursor to the writing of the Nova Vulgata translation, which is why I moved it.  I think some additional text is needed if the article is to say anything about its significance in its own right as a critical edition.
 * All this is just by way of explaining my attempts to clarify the article's arrangement. The way you've changed it is mostly fine with me.  My one concern is that a casual reader of the article will think that the Nova Vulgata is more closely related to the Vulgate than it is.  It is a "revised edition of the Vulgate" only in the same sense as "Jones's thoroughly revised edition of the late Prof. Smith's calculus textbook."  It is most definitely not an "edition of the Vulgate" in the relevant sense as used by textual critics & editors of ancient and medieval texts!  Do you have a suggestion as to how this confusion might be more clearly avoided?  (My suggestion would be to break off the Nova Vulgata entirely in a section called "Later Bible versions in Latin," vel sim.)  Wareh 20:26, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

I disagree with your characterization of the Nova Vulgata Editio as a new version. It is a minor revision of 70 of the 76 books of the Clementine vulgate, following the Benedictine critical edition (which is also the basis for most of the Stuttgart Old Testament). It is a major departure in only three ways, all of which are noted in the article: 1) It follows the Vetus Latina rather than the Vulgate in Thobi and Iudith. 2) The psalms are rather more extensively changed than most of the rest of the text, but are still quite similar to the psalters of older editions. (Just compare the 2nd and 4th columns on of the psalter comparison here.) 3) The three apocrypha are omitted. It is hardly "the Vatican's 20th-century attempt at Latin prose composition". It is a vulgate in much the same sense that earlier revisions were, including Ximenes' and Hentenius' and Sixtus' and Clement's; they all corrected the text to a greater or lesser extent to better accord with the Greek. I'd say its most extreme departure in most of the text is its divergence from the punctuation of the Clementine, which is not something that most people care much about, and at any rate earlier editions also diverged in punctuation.

The term revision has been much abused in English versions of the Bible. Challoner's "revision" was practically a re-write of the Douay bible, as was the confraternity's "revision" of Challoner. The RSV is more than a revision of the KJV, despite its name. But that is most emphatically not the case here.

Rwflammang 16:25, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Without prejudice to the discussions above, I have proposed an introductory text that clarifies for the uninformed user the need to be aware that three texts circulate widely with the ascription of "Vulgate" Please amend, move or delete if you think this does not help. TomHennell 11:12, 29 January 2007 (UTC)


 * My reservations are that (1) quite beyond the fact that I obviously have problems with calling the NV simply "the Vulgate," I'm not so sure that it's true that anyone else widely refers to it that way either; (2) the example differences (Eve spellings) are misleading to the extent that they don't give a hint of the NV's more extensive rewriting to accord with Hebrew and Greek texts, as in the example from Isaiah I quote below. I'm really not on a crusade against the NV; I just want to make sure it's accurately characterized&mdash;as a Latin version of the Bible that takes the original texts (and not the work of Jerome's Vulgate or any other Latin author) as the ultimate arbiter for the readings printed (many of them never seen in Latin prior to their being written for the NV).  Wareh 16:51, 29 January 2007 (UTC)


 * The official Nova Vulgata site does come up if you Google "Vulgate" (as do Stuttgart and various Clementina sites). I agree with you though, that it is only a "Vulgate" in a fairly restricted sense; but I presume that one such sense would be if the Vatican maintain that the NV is indeed now the "Vulgate" as defined by the decrees of the Council of Trent - just as the Clementina was between 1592 and 1979, and the Sistine was from 1590 to 1592. It is an advance at least that no one is any longer making fraudulent statements on the title page, or accusing a predecessor of crypto-Judaism (perhaps I should link in here to The Gospel of Barnabas, but I think that would be excluded as original research). I do not think though, that we can justify a separate article for "Nova Vulgata" as its context is scarcely comprehensible without the explanations in this article. Do you agree? The renderings of "Eve" are not there to say anything about the diffferences in the various versions (which is a matter for the body of the article), but are included simply as a handy way of determining which of the three texts is being read. I will happily delete if you think them misleading. Perhaps if I changed the order round to put the NV third (which accords with the order in the article), and noted that it is a "New Vulgate" for non Latin readers?  TomHennell 18:02, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Aland Edition
Wareh says above:
 * I moved Novum testamentum latine under Nova Vulgata, because Aland's text is simply the Nova Vulgata. It reprints without any alteration the Vatican's 20th-century attempt at Latin prose composition.  It is certainly not an attempt at a critical text of the Vulgate; it's a Nova Vulgata New Testament, with some information about other texts in an apparatus.

I don't have a problem with your moving of the text at all, in fact, I approve of it. But I do object to your characterization of the NTL as non-critical. Kurt Aland is a very well known critical scholar, and in his preface to NTL, he describes his apparatus as a criticus apparatus. The Nova Vulgata New Testament is a minor revision of earlier critical editions, namely the Benedictine which in turn is dependent on Wordworth and White. A quick glance at the critical apparatus will show you that the text rarely deviates from W&W or from the Stuttgart (spelling and punctuation excepted, obviously). I propose restoring the adjective "critical" to the noun "apparatus", which is a word that hardly makes sense without it. Rwflammang 16:45, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Relation of Nova Vulgata (and Novum testamentum latine) to Vulgate
The article says correctly of the NTL (and I didn't put it in there), "The text is a reprinting of the New Testament of the Nova Vulgata." A "critical edition," in my line of work (Classics professor) and also for Biblical scholars, is an editor's attempt to consistently reconstruct some old text. The Nova Vulgata is written in Latin, but it is not an attempt to reconstruct any old Latin text. Rather, it is a Latin version that chooses to follow an old Latin text (the Vulgate, apart from a few exceptions you mention) only when its editors believe that the Vulgate is in agreement with the (critically edited and interpreted) original (Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek) text of the Bible. This is why, in principle, it is not a critical edition of anything. Take its New Testament: open the Novum testamentum graece et latine. On the left, you have a critical edition of an ancient Greek text. The fact that what you see on the right is not a critical edition of an old Latin text is proven by the fact that there is no difference between its meaning and the meaning of the Greek text on the left! Everywhere the old Latin texts disagreed with the results of modern scholarship on the Greek text, the NV "editors" became authors and wrote a Latin translation of the Nestle-Aland text. But a critical edition of a Latin text would not "correct" the old Latin texts in this way. Real critical editions (for example, every one of the hundreds of critical editions of Greek and Latin texts in my office) are revised only when an editor thinks he's printing something closer to the original than what had been printed. The Nova Vulgata's revisions are not of this kind, but (by intentional policy) in every single case (except for passages where the Vetus Latina is followed, which is another issue) are further departures from the reading of any known or knowable Latin original.

There is obviously a larger disagreement here, in that you believe that the Nova Vulgata is an edition of Jerome's Vulgate in any of its books ("a minor revision of 70 of the 76 books of the Clementine vulgate... a major departure in only three ways"). No one who has compared the Nova Vulgata of the prophets, for example, to the Vulgate could make this statement. I have just now literally opened my Stuttgart Vulgate at random. It fell open to Isaiah 64:1/2 (alternate numerations). So here are the two versions: 1 Sicut ignis succendit sarmenta, aquam ebullire facit ignis, ut notum facias nomen tuum inimicis tuis, a facie tua gentes turbentur, 2 sicut exustio ignis tabescerent aquae arderent igni ut notum fieret nomen tuum inimicis tuis a facie tua gentes turbarentur. The only variant in the Stuttgart's apparatus is atque for aquae. The Stuttgart's apparatus is reliable, and this means that there is no variant in any known source for the Vulgate's text to justify any of the variant readings in the Nova Vulgata. This verse is a good specimen of what I called 20th-century Latin prose composition: the NV editors have used their modern understanding of a non-Latin (Hebrew) original to produce a totally new Latin translation. I picked this example at random, and I don't have time to produce more, but I can guarantee you many more results if you look at texts whose Hebrew originals were as difficult for Jerome as Isaiah. In short, the Nova Vulgata authors did include large bits from the Vulgate, but I am sure they would never claim they were offering up the Vulgate. I'm sure the people who wrote the 20th-century Latin I've just quoted are under no illusion that they're printing Latin words authored by Jerome or anyone else from the pre-20th-century history of Latin literature. The fact that it's a Latin translation of a critical Hebrew text does not make it a critical text, unless you want to say that the NRSV is a "critical edition" of the Bible too.

The article is in manifest error when it says, "Kurt and Barbara Aland published the New Testament of the Vulgate as Novum Testamentum Latine." And any description of any edition (NTL included) of any part of the Nova Vulgata as either a critical edition of a Latin text or as "the Vulgate" is also in manifest error. The Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft may have sown some of this confusion when they printed little rows of variants at the bottom of pages. But these are simply collations to keep track of the variants between the Nova Vulgata (a modern pastiche of old Latin texts and newly authored Latin texts) and other versions. A perfect equivalent would be a copy of the NRSV that collates against the RSV in an apparatus; by the logic you have offered here, such a text would be "a revised, critical edition of the RSV." But no, it's the NRSV, not the RSV. And the Nova Vulgata is a 20th-century pastiche & does not pretend to reconstruct anything earlier in its words (as opposed to in its meanings where it, like all other 20th-c. translations, claims to represent the Hebrew & Greek original with accuracy). Wareh 00:48, 26 January 2007 (UTC)


 * P.S. I'm no expert on the Clementine, but I'd be surprised if you can open it up at random and find the kind of license and discrepancy (say, from the Stuttgart) I just used as an example.  If I'm wrong about this, I'd be interested in some good examples.  I'm trying to test the assertion (which I doubt) that the NV is "a vulgate in much the same sense that earlier revisions were."  Of course, no one would dream of saying that the Clementine was a critical edition.  My rough impression is that it gives a "modernized" (if I can use that paradoxical term for the "classicized" spellings) and normalized edition of Jerome's Vulgate, more or less.  More like a modern-spelling edition of the 1611 English Bible, which doesn't bother you with "the cities which ye shal giue, shalbe ..." but gives you "the cities which ye shall give shall be."  Wareh 02:01, 26 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I do not think that the deliberate novelties in the Clementine are nearly as numerous as those in the Nova. Unfortunately, I cannot recall where I read about Clement's emendations. I'll keep my eyes open and post here when I find it.


 * I have no good examples to show you, because I do not read Greek, and so cannot tell you whether any given discrepancy is due to a deliberate correction or not. In the preface to the Stuttgart edition, the editor states that readings from the Clementine that are not found in any manuscript are denoted with a gothic c followed by a dot. He also states that sometimes Clement introduced novelties into the text for "stylistic" or "theological" reasons; he did not specifically mention accordance with the Greek as a reason, but such a reason might just fall under one of the two headings he did mention.


 * I spent about 3 minutes looking for "c." discrepancies in Acts yesterday and found three. One was a word order change; the other two were spelling changes (idololatria for idolatria, and something else I can't recall). I would guess that these would fall under the "stylistic" category. Beyond these, I'm afraid you are on your own to peruse the Stuttgart's apparatus criticus and compare them with your Greek bible's. I'm afraid that I cannot be of any more help to you. IIRC, my dimly remembered source describing the Clementine's novelties did not go into specifics. Rwflammang 18:18, 29 January 2007 (UTC)


 * With the concerns here (and elsewhere) of people mistaking the Nova Vulgata for being a critical edition, I think we ought have this explicitly clarified in the article; the Nova Vulgata was not created to be a critical edition, but perhaps being next to a critical edition of the Greek creates confusion; the Nova Vulgata was created to be promulgated as the standard and official bible of the Roman Catholic Church, and conforms itself to present text-critical scholarship as a result, as well as certain dogmatic demands (i.e. no careful scholar ought dare to rely on the thing for biblical scholarship in general, because of these, as they're not arguably scholarly, nor even in actual accordance with the texts translated, but dictated in order to receive the approval of the pope so that the version is in accordance with the current catholic catechism; nevertheless, I don't know they're so numerous as to make the translation something we'd all poo at; but these details do interest me...learning latin). tooMuchData 05:32, 1 January 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by TheResearchPersona (talk • contribs)

Benedictines?

 * Now that I'm getting into this, I also would like to probe a bit the statement, "It was the fruit of this labor that led to the creation of the Nova Vulgata." The purpose of the Benedictine edition was to recover Jerome's text as faithfully as possible (thus it was titled, what would never be said of the NV, Textus ex interpretatione Sancti Hieronymi).  The purpose of the NV, as I've said, was different, and it is difficult to see why the Benedictine edition would be that crucial to the realization of the NV's different aims.  Wareh 19:12, 26 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I don't know how crucial it wound up being in the end. The original purpose of the Benedictine edition was to provide a baseline for a revision of the Clementine. See the reference from the article for details. After Pius XII's Divino Afflante Spiritu, the focus slowly shifted to emending the Vulgate in light of the texts of the original languages. Work on the Benedictine edition continued, but was not completed before the NV was released. I do not know what text the NV used as a basis for Maccabees, which was not completed until 1994. I think that Wordsworth-White was used for the New Testament, but I have no reference for this. But according to this reference in the article, "Prior to the conclusion of the Council, Pope Paul VI in 1965 appointed a commission for the Nova Vulgata to do for the entire Vulgate what the Council (in Sacrosanctum Concilium, no. 91) had decreed to be done for the Psalter--revise the existing Vulgate in accord with modern textual and linguistic studies, while preserving or refining its Christian Latin style. The textual basis of the Nova Vulgata was the critical edition of St. Jerome's Vulgate done by the monks of the Benedictine Abbey of St. Jerome in Rome.(5)" Rwflammang 18:18, 29 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the references and additional comments. These will be a useful source to draw on for further improvements towards a more informative article!  Wareh 18:45, 29 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Re-reading the praenotanda of the Nova Vulgata, I came across this quote, Textus Latinus invenitur in Bibliis Sacris iuxta Vulgatam Versionem (= Vg) a Societate Biblica Virtembergensi, Stutgardiae 1969 editis, quam R. Weber recensuit adiuvantibus B. Fischer, I. Gribomont, H. F. D. Sparks, W. Thiele (= ed. critica). This would seem to imply that the Stuttgart edition was used as the Latin baseline. My source quoted above would seem to be indirectly accurate insofar as the Benedictine edition was the baseline for most of the Stuttgart O.T. Rwflammang 00:34, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Issues of Translation
''I've removed the following text from the article. The information in it did not cite sources, and frankly smells like original research. In addition, it was simply too wonkish and slowed down the article while contributing little to it. But because someone obviously spent some serious effort on it, and for the sheer quantity (if not quality) of info it contains, I decided to preserve it here on the talk page for further discussion.'' Rwflammang 18:07, 8 February 2007 (UTC)


 * The New Testament was written in Greek. The Old Testament, originally written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, was used by Christians in a Greek translation called the Septuagint made by Jews during the three centuries before Christ. The linguistic separation between Hebrew and Latin is nearly as vast as the linguistic separation between Latin and Greek is narrow, and the Vulgate New Testament, in particular, sometimes follows the Greek model word for word. Latin and Greek are both highly inflected languages with very flexible word-order, but the attempt to render such things as the richer array of Greek participles sometimes resulted in clumsy Latin that was preserved in the English of the King James Bible. We can see this in Luke 2:15, for example:


 * Greek: καὶ ἐγένετο ὡς ἀπῆλθον ἀπ᾽ αὐτῶν εἰς τὸν οὐρανὸν οἱ ἄγγελοι, οἱ ποιμένες ἐλάλουν πρὸς ἀλλήλους, Διέλθωμεν δὴ ἕως Βηθλέεμ καὶ ἴδωμεν τὸ ῥῆμα τοῦτο τὸ γεγονὸς ὃ ὁ κύριος ἐγνώρισεν ἡμῖν.


 * (Literal translation: And it-happened that they-withdrew from them into the heaven the angels, and the shepherds spoke to each-other: let-us-go-over then to Bethlehem and let-us-see the thing that [demonstrative pronoun] the happened which the Lord has-declared to-us.)


 * Latin: Et factum est ut discesserunt ab eis angeli in caelum, pastores loquebantur ad invicem: Transeamus usque Bethleem et videamus hoc verbum quod factum est quod fecit Dominus et ostendit nobis.


 * (Literal translation: And happened it-has that they-withdrew from them angels into heaven, shepherds spoke to each-other: Let-us-go over-to Bethlehem, and let-us-see this word which has-become, which has-done the Lord, and has-manifested to-us.)


 * English (King James version): And it came to pass, as the angels were gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds said one to another, Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us.


 * I know this is old, but good job catching this wacky portion of text; especially about the OT, which was not written in Greek; perhaps they're referring to the apocryphal books, but historically those weren't considered OT anyways; as to their origins, we have either Greek or Latin manuscripts, though we know some of the Latin ones we have were originally Greek: which makes sense for books that originate in the hellenistic period. tooMuchData 05:35, 1 January 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by TheResearchPersona (talk • contribs)

Copy editing
Kudos to editor 203.152.122.129, who contributed much to the readability of this article in one fell swoop. Many thanks! Rwflammang 20:14, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

etymology question (redux)
The question on what "versio vulgata" actually refers to which was asked above didn't seem to get a definitive answer. The contributors danced around the question but didn't clearly answer it or say that the answer is unknown. One of the responders answered that the question of whether the translation can be considered simpler or not cannot be answered definitively, but this wasn't the question that was asked. The question was whether "versio vulgata" refers to language or style. Resources I have read generally say it was because the language was "not Greek" which had been considered the ecclesiastical language at the time. Does anybody know of credible sources that say otherwise?

If not this is a point worth bringing out. Historically it is is interesting that during much of the Roman history the Latin language often took a back seat to Greek for many things in Roman society. The publication of the Vulgate was, in fact, a sign that Latin was making a comeback. --Mcorazao 21:21, 9 May 2007 (UTC)


 * It certainly did not refer to the language. In Jerome's day, the term versio vulgata meant the Septuagint, which was written in Greek. As I wrote above, the word vulgata is the perfect passive participle of the verb vulgare, which means to make public. It is cognate to the adjective vulgaris, which means common, but is by no means synonymous with it. It is also cognate with divulgare, to divulge, to make widely public, and is very nearly synonymous with that word. I see no reason to assume the participle vulgata refers to style; the version is most definitely never called versio vulgaris. The new Latin translation did not come to be called versio vulgata until it became widely distributed as the official version of Charlemagne's court. By that time, it had long since ceased being vulgaris or "common" in either language or style, if indeed it ever had been. Rwflammang 04:27, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

ISBN Issues
Eccl1212 has changed the ISBN of the Stuttgart vulgate from (ISBN 3-438-05303-9) to (ISBN 1598561782). What is the qualitative difference between these two editions? They are both described as 4th editions, but Amazon says that the new edition is 39 pages shorter and is issued by Hendrickson Publishers rather than the ABS. See here for [ http://www.amazon.com/Biblia-Sacra-Vulgata-R-Gryson/dp/1598561782/ref=sr_11_1/104-0262503-3642309?ie=UTF8&qid=1182787422&sr=11-1 new] and [ http://www.amazon.com/Biblia-Sacra-Vulgata-R-Weber/dp/3438053039/ref=sr_11_1/104-0262503-3642309?ie=UTF8&qid=1182787530&sr=11-1 old]. The old edition from the ABS is searchable, the new Hendrickson is not. Rwflammang 16:51, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
 * The new one, with (ISBN 9781598561784) is the 5th corrected edition. The amazon page appears to be incorrect on its edition, compare to the publishers website  and the fact that I have one sitting in front of me.  It notes inside that it is the 5th edition (in Latin on the title page, in German under the copyright information).  They both come from the German Bible Society, it would just seem that Hendrickson has gained the North American distribution rights.  Bear in mind also that the inside of the book still uses the old ISBN, this is because the book is identical to the original German edition of the Stuttgart Vulgate (5th edition, not the old 4th edition as is listed under that ISBN on amazon) and this new ISBN merely deals with distribution.  Here is the original publishers site:  and note the details except the ISBN are identical to the details at the American distributors site.  As an aside, I highly recommend purchasing one, it is a beautiful book and my favorite Bible, well produced and elegant with wonderful textual apparatus.

Iarann (talk) 07:01, 25 January 2008 (UTC)