John 5 : 39
Evangelical scholar sings praises of the Vulgate
English Scholar William Smith traces the monumental work of Jerome
While some Roman Catholics (like Lorenzo Valla) had nothing but contempt for this important translation
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The Vulgate is the Latin version of the Bible. The influence which it has exercised upon western Christianity is scarcely less than that of the LXX upon the Greek churches. Both the Greek and the Latin Vulgate have long been neglected; yet the Vulgate should have a very deep interest for all western churches. For many centuries it was the only Bible generally used; and directly or indirectly, it is the real parent of all vernacular version of western Europe. The Gothic version of Ulphilas alone is independent of it. The name is equivalent to Vulgata editio (the current text of Holy Scripture). This translation was made by Jerome -- Eusebius Hieronymus -- who was born in 329 A.D. at Stridon in Dalmatia, and died at Bethlehem in 420 A.D. This scholar probably alone for 1500 years possessed the qualifications necessary for producing an original version of the Scriptures for the use of the Latin churches. Going to Rome, Jerome was requested by Pope Damasus, A.D. 383, to make a revision of the old Latin version of the New Testament, whose history is lost in obscurity. In middle life, Jerome began the study of the Hebrew, and made a new version of the Old Testament from the original Hebrew, which was completed A.D. 404. The critical labors of Jerome were received with a loud outcry of reproach. He was accused of disturbing the repose of the Church and shaking the foundations of faith. But clamor based upon ignorance soon dies away ; and the New translation gradually came into use equally with the Old, and at length supplanted it. The vast power which the Vulgate has had in determining the theological terms of western Christendom can hardly be overstated. By far the greater part of the accepted doctrinal terminology is based on the Vulgate. [King James Stuart is perhaps more than anyone else the party most responsible for this fact of history. He had a personal antipathy to the Geneva Bible's attempt to Anglo-Saxonize, and Calvinize, ideas and concepts that James felt should not be tampered with.] Predestination, justification, supererogation (supererogo), sanctification, salvation, mediation, regeneration, revelation, visitation (met.), propitiation, first appeared in the Old Vulgate. Grace, redemption, election, reconciliation, satisfaction, inspiration, scripture, were devoted there to a new and holy use. Sacrament and communion are from the same source ; and though baptism, angel, evangel, hymn, priest, martyr, idol, prophet and Psalms are all Greek, they come to us from the Latin. Then words like `amen` were Hebrew in origin, then entered the Greek scriptures, then the Latin Bible, and finally the King James English. It would be easy to extend the list by the addition of numerous other examples. And then there's the continent. The German language likewise has seen an almost staggering impact from the Vulgate, not simply from Gutenberg of Mainz, but the translation of Luther (himself a scholar of the Vulgate). It can be seen that the Vulgate has left its mark both upon our language and upon our thoughts. It was the version which alone they knew who handed down to the reformers the rich stores of mediaeval wisdom ; the version with which the greatest of the reformers were most familiar, and from which they had drawn their earliest knowledge of divine truth. |
Fly in the ointment? Saint Jerome was without question a formidable scholar of the most ancient tongues of our Holy Bible -- of Latin, of Greek, and of Hebrew. But as a man, he was beset with conflicts. Friedrich Heer, an Austrian Catholic, peers into Jerome's inmost being for answers to his misogyny, sexism, anti-Semitism, his fear and hatred of his own sexual yearnings. One wonders: were his personal neuroses the price exacted for the scholarly excellence of this saint whose heirs we of today are?
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Contrary to popular belief, the Catholic Church's socalled `Rediscovery of the Bible` was WELL before Vatican II. The early Church had no problem acknowledging the Bible as the source of authority, the fount of revelation. At first there were no Christian "scriptures" as such. There were only (in Hebrew only, initially) the Law and Prophets and Writings, preserved by Jewish scribes through the centuries. Aboriginal Christianity was wholly Jewish. After the Protestant Reformation, the Church counter-attacked. Fearing democratization, horrified of loss of control, a fortress mentality came to envelope the ecclesiastical centrists, and the Catholic Church embarked on a course of defining an authoritarian, almost totalitarian retrenchment. The Council of Trent seemed to want to take the Bible out of the hands of the common people. At the same time, it attempted to make the "tradition" of the Church, as defined by itself, equal to Scripture as a source of revelation. Indeed, Saint Paul enjoins (2 Thessalonians 2. 14) "Therefore, brethren, stand fast; and hold the traditions which you have learned, whether by word, or by our epistle." Neither side of the scripture-versus-tradition argument is without merit. Nevertheless, the process begun with Trent was to culminate at length in such doctrines as the first Vatican Council’s promulgation of papal infallibility. With the papacy of John XXIII , a transformation process was begun which is altering, and has already altered, the entire outlook of the Church. What wisdom this simple Pope seemed to display, time and again. His "Mater et magistra" and "Pacem in terris" encyclicals have had impact far beyond the "walls" of the Catholic Church -- profound impact for good. And Vatican II truly opened the windows, and threw open the doors, of the Church. Out of Vatican II came this statement by Achille Cardinal Lienart: "There are not, and never have been, two sources of revelation. There is only one . . . the Word of God, the good news announced by the prophets and revealed by Christ. The word of God is the unique source of revelation." Many people do not realize that the Catholic `Rediscovery of the Bible` (if that is an accurate term for it) was WELL before Vatican II. After all, Saint Athanasius himself had written: "The holy and divinely-inspired Scriptures are of themselves sufficient for the enunciation of truth." But in modern times, there were two sources of major impetus deep within the Church. Among the Benedictines the Maria Laach cloister in the Rhineland deserves primary credit. Among Dominicans credit goes to the Pere Lagrange School of Jerusalem. In fact, the irony is that for all the protestant evangelical enthusiasm for biblical literacy, there would be no scriptural texts extant for any branch of Christianity to study were it not for the faithful transcription from generation to generation of the copyists and scribes tucked away those many centuries in the monasteries of Europe prior to Gutenberg. The Church of Rome has always based itself on its own old and rooted tradition which was built, or at least founded upon, holy scripture. The New Catholic Encyclopedia states: All theology, if it is true to itself, is Biblical, for it is defined as a discourse about God. This God, who "dwells in light inaccessible" (2 Tm 6.16), has revealed Himself; and the Bible is the record of this revelation. [NCE vol 2, page 545] Sacred Scripture is God's word to man; theology is man's word about God. To understand God's word -- to expound its meaning, elucidate its content, and interpret its message -- has been the task of the Church from its inception. [NCE vol 2, page 545] It has been the constant belief of the people of God both before and after the time of Christ that their Sacred Scriptures have been divinely inspired. Testimony to this fact, together with information concerning the nature of the inspired character of the Scriptures, is found in the Old Testament, in Jewish writers, in the New Testament, as well as in the tradition of the Church. [NCE vol 2, pages 381-382] ***** Whence cometh authority for the church, and for believers? Christianity is called a revealed religion......... The Aquinian outline, says Martin Marty, Lutheran historian of Christianity , was one that most churchmen of the medieval times would have found acceptable. Aquinas had a three tiered framework, ranking canonical scriptures (inspired by God) paramount, the patristic (apolstolic and primitive) writnings secondary, and the philosophers third. Utterly missing from St. Thomas outline of authority was any reference to papal infallibility. The pope simply was not mentioned.The following material I gleaned from Martin Marty's church history. "Divine revelation was handed over or handed down by authorities (auctoritates)." Foremost and above all else were the canonical Scriptures, and Aquinas called the reasoning or logic therein to be "intrinsically and of necessity correct" (proprie et ex necessitate). Secondly, Aquinas regarded the fathers of the Church of high authority. The reasoning and logic of the early fathers was also "intrinsic" but the truth therein was "only probable." Third, the philosophers argued "extranea" -- that is, not intrinsically and therefore also only probably. Martin Marty comments : "What was missing from this list of authorities was the one most concrete or the one most graphic to the men of the Middle Ages: papal authority in the church which could never err." 
Protestants came along in later years objecting not to the historic ranking which placed scriptures at the top, but to once again champion them (calling for a return to holy writ). But the irony is that Protestants would have had no scripture to "return to" but for the faithful copying, the careful transcription of generation after generation of unknown monks and scribes through the centuries. Protestants made much of the Council of Trent, which spelled out doctrines of papal infallibility (a recent innovation) and seemed to put a damper on scriptural inquiry by the common folk. But the core teaching of the Church has ALWAYS affirmed the primacy of scripture, as interpreted through its own acknowledged authorities. Etienne Gilson in our own century wrote: "Theology undertakes to say what we can know about God, not by beginning with the philosophies of Heidegger, of Bergson, of Descartes, or even of Aristotle, but by beginning with the word of God, which does not pass away." |
