Bibliotheca
Sacra 150 (January-March 1993): 35-49
Copyright © 1993 Dallas
Theological Seminary; cited with permission.
IMPORTANT EARLY
TRANSLATIONS OF THE BIBLE*
Bruce M.
Metzger
It is commonly known, the Bible has
been translated
into
more languages than any other piece of literature. What is
not
generally appreciated, however, is the great increase in the
number
of different translations that have been produced rela-
tively
recently, that is, during the 19th and 20th centuries. Before
this
period the church was slow in providing renderings of the
Scriptures
in other languages.
According to a recent calculation,
there are 6,170 living lan-
guages in the world.1 However, by the year
A.D. 600 the four
Gospels
had been translated into only eight of these languages.
These
were Latin and Gothic in the West, and Syriac, Coptic,
Armenian,
Georgian, Ethiopic, and Sogdian in the East. One
might
have expected that Augustine and other Christian leaders
in
in
Berber or Punic, or that Irenaeus and his successors would
have
made a translation into the Celtic dialect used in
there
is no evidence of the existence of such versions in antiquity,
despite
the presence of Christian communities in these areas.
Bruce
M. Metzger is Professor of New Testament Language and Literature, Emeri-
tus, Princeton Theological Seminary,
*
This is article one in the four-part series, "Translating the Bible: An
Ongoing
Task,"
delivered by the author as the W. H. Griffith Thomas Lectures at
Theological
Seminary,
1
The
most recent information is provided by Barbara F. Grimes, Ethnologues,
Languages of the World, 11th ed. (
1988), 741. Estimates of the number of languages
differ because judgments differ as
to whether a particular form of speech should be
called a separate language or even
a distinct dialect. In certain instances, local
government decree has given language
status to a dialect. In other instances, what are
really distinct languages have been
regarded as mere dialects, as is the case of many
of the so-called dialects of Chi-
nese. Linguistically they are quite distinct
languages, but because of their ortho-
graphic dependence on Mandarin Chinese, they
have generally been considered
dialects.
36
BIBLIOTHECA SACRA / January-March
1993
When printing with movable type was invented by
Johannes
Gutenberg
in 1456, only 33 languages had any part of the Bible.
Even
when the Bible society movement began some two centuries
ago,
parts of the Scriptures had been rendered into only 67 lan-
guages.
During the 19th century, however, more than 400 lan-
guages
received some part of the Scriptures, and within the first
half
of the 20th century some part of the Bible was published in
more
than 500 languages. This rapid increase in the preparation
of
many versions of the Bible is due to the role played by the Bible
societies,
by Wycliffe Bible Translators, and similar organiza-
tions.
At the close of 1991, the entire Bible had been made avail-
able
in 318 languages and dialects, and portions of the Bible in
1,946
languages and dialects. Because many of these languages
are
used by great numbers of people, it is estimated that today four
out
of five people in the world, or 80 percent, have at least one book
of the Bible in their mother tongue.2
The history of the translation of the Bible can
be divided into
four
major periods. The first period includes the efforts to trans-
late
the Scriptures into the dominant languages of the ancient
world.
The second important period of Bible translating was re-
lated
to the Reformation, when renderings were no longer made
from
the Latin Vulgate but from the original Hebrew and Greek
into
the vernaculars of
great
"missionary endeavor," when pioneer translators under-
took
the preparation of renderings into the hundreds of languages
in
which there was often not even an alphabet before these men
and
women undertook to reduce such languages to written form.
Such
work is still going on, while a fourth period has already be-
gun.
This is characterized primarily by translations being pro-
duced
in the newly developing nations, not by missionaries but by,
trained
nationals of these countries. Properly trained people can
always
translate much more effectively into their own mother
tongue
than into a foreign language.
This article traces the early history of the
process of translat-
ing
the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures into other languages.
ANCIENT VERSIONS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
MADE FOR THE USE OF JEWS
THE
SEPTUAGINT
The first translation of the Scriptures
into another language
is
the Greek Septuagint, dating from the third and second cen-
2 The Book of a Thousand Tongues, 2d ed. (
1972), viii.
Important Early Translations of the Bible 37
turies B.C. Not only is it the oldest, but it is also
one of the most
valuable
of the translations from antiquity. Whether one consid-
ers
its fidelity to the original, its influence over the Jews for
whom
it was prepared, its relationship to the New Testament
Greek,
or its place in the Christian church, it stands preeminent
in
the light it casts on the study of the Scriptures.
The story of the origin of this version is given
in a document
of uncertain date called the Letter of Aristeas.3 This letter pur-
ports
to be a contemporary record by a certain Aristeas, an official
at
the court of Ptolemy II Philadelphus (285-246 B.C.), who claims
to
have personal knowledge as an eyewitness of the following
details.
Ptolemy wished to include in the royal library at
Alexandria
copies of all the books known to the world. On the
suggestion
of his librarian, Demetrius of Phalerum, that the laws
of
the Jews (presumably, the Pentateuch) deserved a place in the
library,
the king ordered that a letter be written to Eleazar, the
Jewish
high priest in
ders
from each of the 12 tribes who were well versed in the Jewish
Law
and able to translate it into Greek (§§ 9-11 and 28-34).
Arriving in
a
restful spot on the
made
for their needs in well-appointed quarters. So they set to
work;
as they completed their several tasks, they would reach an
agreement
on each by comparing versions. Whatever was
agreed
upon was suitably copied out under the direction of
Demetrius
(§ 302). By happy coincidence the task of translation
was
completed in 72 days (§ 307). The work was done in such a
way
that the entire Jewish community of
translation
as an accurate rendering (§ 310). A curse was in-
voked
on any who would alter the rendering by any addition,
transposition,
or deletion (§ 311).
Most scholars who have analyzed the letter have
concluded
that
the author of this story cannot have been the man he repre-
sented
himself to be, but was a Jew who wrote a fictitious account
in
order to enhance the importance of the Hebrew Scriptures by
suggesting
that a pagan king had recognized their significance
and
therefore arranged for their translation into Greek. The real
reason
for undertaking the work, it is now generally agreed,
3 This letter has
survived in 23 manuscripts, which have been collated by Andr6
Pelletier, S.J., for the series "Sources
chr6tien.nes" (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1962).
The
most recent English translation is by R. J. H. Shutt in The Old Testament
Pseudepigrapha, vol. 2, ed. J. H.
Charlesworth (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1985),
7-34.
For a full discussion of problems connected with the
letter, see Moses Hadas,
Aristeas to Philocrates (Letter of Aristeas)
(New York: Harper, 1951) and
Jellicoe,
The Septuagint and Modern Study (
1968).
38
BIBLIOTHECA SACRA /
January-March 1993
arose
from the liturgical and educational needs of the large Jew-
ish
community in
Hebrew
or let it grow rusty and spoke only the common Greek of
the
Mediterranean world. But they remained Jews and wanted to
understand
the ancient Scriptures, on which their faith and life
depended.
This, then, was the real reason for making the Greek
Septuagint,
the first translation of the Hebrew Scriptures.
From internal considerations the date of the
letter may be as-
signed
to about 150-100 B.C. It was known to Josephus, who para-
phrased
portions in his Antiquities of the Jews
(12.12-118).
Philo's
account of the origin of the Septuagint (On
Moses, 2.25-44)
reproduces
certain features of Aristeas, but there are also diver-
gences.
For example Aristeas (§ 302) represents the translators
as
comparing their work as they wrote it and producing an
agreed-on
version, whereas according to Philo each of the trans-
lators,
working under divine inspiration, arrived at identical
phraseology
as though dictated by an invisible prompter.
In the following centuries Christian authors
further embel-
lished
the narrative of Aristeas. The scope of the translators'
work
embraced not just the Law but the entire Old Testament, ac-
cording
to Justin Martyr, at the middle of the second Christian
century.4 Later that century
Irenaeus, bishop of
Ptolemy,
fearing that the Jewish translators might conspire to
conceal
the truth found in their sacred books, put each one in a
separate
cubicle and commanded them each to write a transla-
tion.
They did so, and when their translations were read before
the
king, they were found to give the same words and the same
names
from beginning to end "so that even the pagans who were
present
recognized that the scriptures had been translated through
the inspiration of God."5
Underneath the accretions and behind the story
as told by
Aristeas,
modern scholars are generally in agreement on the fol-
lowing points.6 (1) The Pentateuch was
translated first as a
whole,
and it has a unity of style that distinguishes it from the
later
translations of the Prophets and the Writings. (2) The ho-
4
In Justin Martyr's Dialogue with Trypho (68. 7) the mention
of the "translation
of the 70 elders" relates not to a
Pentateuchal passage but to Isaiah.
5 Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.21.2 (apud Eusebius,
Ecclesiastical History
5.8.11-15).
For an account of still further elaborations in the
third and fourth cen-
turies, see Sidney Jellicoe, The Septuagint and Modern Study, 44-47, and Hadas,
Aristeas to Philocrates, 73-80.
6 For these several
points on which there is general agreement among scholars,
see W. F. Howard's succinct account in The Bible in Its Ancient and English Ver-
sions (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1954), 43-44.
Important Early Translations of the
Bible 39
mogeneity of the translation makes it improbable
that so large a
number
as 70 were at work on the Pentateuch. A rabbinic version
of the story mentions five as the number of
translators.7 (3) The
Hebrew
scrolls were possibly imported from
language
of the version is similar to the Greek used in vernacu-
lar
papyri found in
suggests
that the translators were Alexandrian and not Pales-
tinian
Jews.
The Septuagint differs from the Hebrew Bible
both in the or-
der
of the biblical books and in the fact that it includes more
books.
The threefold division into the Law, the Prophets, and the
Writings
is abandoned, and the books are grouped in the se-
quence
of law, history, wisdom literature, and prophets. Some of
the
books not included in the Hebrew Scriptures are Greek trans-
lations
of Hebrew originals (Tobit, 1 Maccabees, and Ecclesiasti-
cus,
also known as the Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach), and
others
are of Greek composition (Wisdom of Solomon; 2, 3, and 4
Maccabees;
and others). Apart from these additional books, the
Septuagint
also differs from the Hebrew Bible in the supplemental
matter
contained in certain books that are common to both. The
Greek
form of the Book of Esther, which in Hebrew contains 163
verses,
is increased by the insertion of six sections embracing an
additional
107 verses. The Book of Daniel receives three supple-
ments;
in the English Apocrypha of the King James Version these
are
called the History of Susanna, Bel and the Dragon, and the
Song
of the Three Holy Children. On the other hand, in the Septu-
agint
the Book of Job is about one-sixth shorter than the Hebrew
text,
and the Book of Jeremiah lacks about one-eighth of the mate-
rial
in the Hebrew text. In both of these cases it may well be that
the
translators were working with a sharply different Hebrew text
from
what later became the traditional Masoretic text. The trans-
lation
of the Book of Daniel was so deficient that it was wholly re-
jected
by the Christian church, and a translation made in the sec-
ond
century A.D. by Theodotion was used from the fourth century
onward
in its place.
The importance of the Septuagint as a
translation is obvious.
Besides
being the first translation ever made of the Hebrew Scrip-
tures,
it was the medium through which the religious ideas of the
Hebrews
were brought to the attention of the world. It was the Bible
of
the early Christian church, and the New Testament writers
usually
quoted the Septuagint. Its subsequent influence was im-
mense.
In the third century Origen incorporated the Septuagint
7 Masechet Soferim, ed. Joel Miller (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1878), i. 8.
40
BIBLIOTHECA SACRA /
January-March 1993
text
into his Hexapla, an elaborate scholarly edition of the Old
Testament
prepared with great care and industry. This huge
work
presented in six narrow columns the Hebrew text, the He-
brew
text transliterated into Greek characters, the Septuagint text,
and
the text of three other Greek versions prepared in the second
century
A.D. by
Christian
recensions of the fourth century, attributed to Lucian
and
Hesychius, were primarily stylistic in character.
Over the centuries the Septuagint has had a wide
influence. It
became
the basis for daughter versions of the Old Testament in
many
languages, including Old Latin, Coptic, Gothic, Arme-
nian,
Georgian, Ethiopic, Christian Palestinian Aramaic, Syr-
iac
(in Paul of Tella's translation around 616 of Origen's
Hexaplaric
text), Arabic, and Slavonic. Finally the importance
of
the Septuagint can be judged from the circumstance that it re-
mains
to this day the authoritative biblical text of the Old Testa-
ment
for the Greek Orthodox Church.
THE JEWISH TARGUMS
The Targums are interpretive renderings of the
books of the
Hebrew
Scriptures (with the exception of Ezra, Nehemiah, and
Daniel)
into Aramaic. Such versions were needed when Hebrew
ceased
to be the normal medium of communication among the
Jews.
In synagogue services the reading of the Scriptures was
followed
by a translation into the Aramaic vernacular of the pop-
ulace.
For a reading from the Pentateuch the Aramaic transla-
tion
followed each verse of the Hebrew; for a reading from the
Prophets
three verses were followed by the Aramaic translation.
At first the oral Targum was a simple paraphrase
in Ara-
maic,
but eventually it became more elaborate and incorporated
explanatory
details inserted here and there into the translation of
the
Hebrew text. To make the rendering more authoritative as an
interpretation,
it was finally reduced to writing. Two officially
sanctioned
Targums, produced first in
vised in
teuch
and the Targum of Jonathan on the Prophets, both of which
were
in use in the third century of the Christian era.
During the same period the Targum tradition
continued to
flourish
in
have
been collected, the Palestinian Targum to the Pentateuch is
found,
primarily, in three forms. The two that have been the most
studied
are the Pseudo-Jonathan Targum and the Fragmentary
8 Though the name Onkelus
corresponds to
this Targum to the
Scriptures in the second century.
Important Early Translations of the Bible 41
Targum,
which contains renderings of only approximately 850
biblical
verses, phrases, or words. In the mid-20th century a ne-
glected
manuscript in the
was
discovered to be a nearly complete copy of the Palestinian
Targum
to the Pentateuch. Though copied in the 16th century, its
text
has the distinction of being the earliest form of the Pales-
tinian
Targum. It is somewhat less paraphrastic than Pseudo-
Jonathan
in that its explanatory additions are fewer in number
and
more terse in expression. The wide divergences among
these
Targums clearly indicate that, they are "unofficial," in that
their
text was never fixed. There aree no reliable data as to who the
authors
and compilers were, under what circumstances and for
what
specific purposes they labored, and how literary transmis-
sion
was achieved.
Though the several Targums display certain
common fea-
tures,
there are also many differences of rendering among them,
ranging
from literalistic to paraphrastic, incorporating a variety
of
kinds of explanatory comments. Sometimes an anthropomor-
phic
expression in the Hebrew concerning God is softened or
eliminated
in the Targum. In speaking of the relationship of God
to
the world, reverence for the God of Israel led the Targumist to
employ
surrogates for the Deity, such as "Word" (Memra),
"Glory"
(Yeqara, 'Iqar), or
"Presence" (Shekinah,
Aramaic
Shekinta). Thus in Genesis
1:16-17 Targum Neofiti reads, "The
Word of the Lord created the two large
luminaries . . . and the
Glory of the Lord set them in the
firmament," and in Genesis 2:2-
3
it reads, "On the seventh day the Word
of the Lord completed the
work
which he had created . . . and the Glory
of the Lord blessed
the
seventh day."
As was mentioned earlier, besides providing an
Aramaic
rendering
of the Scripture text, the Targumist also sometimes
provided
interpretive expansions. Typical of such interpolations
are
the following:
"And
whatever Adam called in the language of
the sanctuary
a
living creature, that was its name" (Palestinian Targum, Gen.
"Behold, I have granted them a hundred
and twenty years in
case they might repent,
but they failed to do so" (Palestinian Tar-
gum,
Gen. 6:3).
"And
he [Moses] reached the mount over which
the glory of the
Shekinah of the Lord was
revealed
Horeb" (Targum Neofiti,
Exod.
3:1).
"Let
Reuben live in this world and not die in
the second
death, in which death
the wicked die in the world to come"
(Palestinian
Targum, Deut. 33:6).
42 BIBLIOTHECA SACRA / January-March 1993
Despite their self-professed purpose to be a
translation and/or
explanatory
paraphrase of Scripture, here and there the Targums
also present instances of what is termed converse
translation,9 in
which
the Aramaic text contradicts what is said in the Hebrew.
This
modification is accomplished through a variety of devices,
including
the addition or deletion of the negative particle, or the
replacement
of the original biblical verb with another of opposite
meaning.
Neofiti on Exodus 33:3 reads, "I will not remove my
presence
from among you," whereas the Hebrew text reads, "I
will
not go up among you." Cain's cry in the Hebrew text,
"Behold,
you have driven me this day from the land, and from
your
face I shall be hidden" (Gen. 4:14), is changed to read,
"Behold,
you have driven me this day from upon the land, but it is
not
possible to be hidden from you" (Targums Onkelos and Ne-
ofiti).
In both these instances the Targumist was unwilling to ac-
cept
the implication that God's presence and power could be cir-
cumscribed
or limited. In the Targum on Genesis
boasted,
"I have slain a man for wounding me, a young man on
account
of which my progeny would be destroyed." Here the Tar-
gumist
changed a bloodthirsty song of triumph into an affirma-
tion
of divine justice.
In passing through the territory of the
descendants of Esau,
the
Israelites were instructed in Deuteronomy 2:6, "You shall buy
water
from them, so that you may drink." Since this verse is fol-
lowed
by the observation that "these forty years the Lord your God
has
been with you; you have lacked nothing," the buying of food
and
water appeared to be inappropriate to the Targumist. So he
contradicted
the biblical text and the Targum reads, "You need
not
buy food from them for money, since manna from heaven de-
scends
for you; neither need you buy water from them, since the
well
of water ascends with you, up to the mountain tops and down
into
the valleys" (Targum Neofiti).
All translations of the Bible are necessarily
interpretive to
some
extent, but the Targums differ in that they are interpretive
as
a matter of policy, and often to an extent that far exceeds the
bounds
of translation or even paraphrase. It is perhaps against
such
license that Rabbi Judah (2nd century A.D.) declared with
paradoxical
vehemence, "He who translates a biblical verse lit-
erally is a liar, but he who elaborates on it is a
blasphemer."10
9 See Michael Klein,
"Converse Translation: A Targumic Technique," Biblica 57
(1976),
515-37, and Etan Levine, The Aramaic
Version of the Bible (
Gruyter, 1988), 33-36 and 151-66.
10
Tosephta, Megillah
Wahrmann, 1937), 228.
Important Early Translations of the Bible 43
ANCIENT
TRANSLATIONS OF PART OR ALL OF THE BIBLE,
INTENDED CHIEFLY FOR
CHRISTIANS
Of the several ancient translations of both Old
and New
Testaments,
the Syriac versions and the Latin versions are gen-
erally
considered the most important, both for their own sake and
for
their having become the basis of many daughter transla-
tions.11 It has been disputed
whether the Scriptures were first
translated
into Syriac or into Latin.
SYRIAC VERSIONS
At Antioch of Syria, the third largest city of
the Roman Em-
pire,
the followers of Jesus were first called Christians (Acts
quainted
with Greek, when the new faith spread elsewhere in
felt
for a rendering of the Scriptures into the mother tongue of the
populace.
So Syrian Christians, whose language was akin to He-
brew
and Aramaic, though using a different script, soon began to
put
the New Testament, or most of it, into their own language.
Early
evidence is not very plentiful and the material is limited,
but
more has survived than perhaps one might have expected.
The first part of the New Testament to be
translated, as would
be
expected, was the four Gospels. Two ancient manuscripts,
copied
in the fourth or fifth century and preserving forms of this
rendering,
have been identified, the Curetonian and the Sinaitic
Syriac
manuscripts. These are valuable witnesses to the Old Syr-
iac
version. There was also current at the close of the second cen-
tury
a harmony of the Gospels, the work of a Christian scholar
named
Tatian, who wove into one narrative the material of all
four
Gospels. Whether his work was first published in Greek at
determined
with finality. In any case for the next several cen-
turies
Christian congregations throughout the
use
of this harmony, known by its Greek name, the Diatessaron
(Greek
for "through the Four"). Unfortunately the witnesses to
the
Diatessaron that are extant today are, with the exception of one
imperfect
leaf of Greek text, secondary and tertiary witnesses.
The form of the Syriac Bible that came to
prevail in Eastern
churches
is called the Peshitta, meaning "simple" or "common."
It
is not known whether the term refers to the simple, nonarchaic
language
the version uses, or to its unifying of different existing
11 For information
concerning other ancient translations, reference may be made
to the present writer's volume, The Ancient Versions of the New Testament:
Their
Origin, Transmission,
and Limitations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977).
44 BIBLIOTHECA SACRA / JANUARY-March 1993
translations.
The Old Testament translation, it appears, was
made
directly from the Hebrew, probably in the second or third
century.
At a later date it was revised by comparison with the
Greek
Septuagint, and the additional books present in Septuagint
manuscripts
were translated into Syriac.
The process of producing the New Testament in
Syriac from
the
Old Syriac version probably began before the end of the fourth
century
and seems to have been completed by Rabbula, bishop of
accept
as canonical the four lesser Catholic Epistles (2 Peter, 2
and
3 John, and Jude) and the Book of Revelation, the Peshitta
New
Testament contains only 22 books.
Subsequently two other Syriac versions of the
New Testament
were
made. At the beginning of the sixth century Philoxenus, the
Jacobite
bishop of
Polycarp,
a chorepiscopus, to revise the Peshitta version on the ba-
sis
of Greek manuscripts. Now, seemingly for the first time in
Syriac,
to the 22 books included in the Peshitta New Testament the
other
five books were added. This work was completed in 507-
508.
Since the Philoxenian version had been sponsored by Jaco-
bite
ecclesiastics, it was used only by the Monophysite branch of
Syriac-speaking
Christendom.
In 616 the Philoxenian version of the New
Testament was
drastically
revised throughout by Thomas of Harkel. The chief
characteristic
of the Harclean version is its slavish adaptation to
the
Greek, to such an extent that here and there even clarity is
sacrificed.
Occasionally, instead of a native Syriac word the
Harclean
uses a Greek loan-word, transliterated into Syriac.
About the same time (616-617) Paul, the Jacobite
bishop of
Tella
in
Septuagint
as contained in Origen's Hexapla. It was produced
with
great care and accuracy, and is an important witness to the
Old
Testament.
Finally, to round out this account of Syriac
versions, refer-
ence
should be made to yet another Syriac version, the Christian-
Palestinian-Aramaic
version. This was used by Melchite
Christians
in
following
centuries.
From the foregoing sketch of half a dozen
ancient Syriac
translations,
one recognizes the vitality and scholarship of Syr-
ian
church leaders in antiquity. The significance of these Syriac
versions
can be appreciated from the circumstance that they be-
came
the basis, at least in part, of translations in other lan-
guages.
The early Armenian rendering of the Gospels, made in
the fifth century, shows influence from the Old
Syriac text, while
Important Early Translations of the Bible 45
the
Old Testament, as would be expected, generally follows the
Hexaplaric
recension of the Septuagint. The Georgian Bible,
completed,
it seems, by the end of the sixth century, had an Arme-
nian-Syriac
foundation. The Peshitta Syriac version was also
the
basis of the Sogdian, Persian, and Arabic versions.
The Peshitta version remains today the
authoritative Bible
text
of the Syrian Churches (Syrian Orthodox, Jacobite, Church of
the
East).
LATIN VERSIONS
It would be difficult to overestimate the
importance of the in-
fluence
exerted by the Latin versions of the Bible, and particu-
larly
by Jerome's Latin Vulgate. Whether one considers the
Vulgate
from a purely secular point of view, with its pervasive in-
fluence on the development of Latin into Romance
languages,12
or
whether one has in view only the specifically religious influ-
ence,
the extent of its penetration into all areas of Western culture
is
almost beyond calculation. The theology and the devotional
language
typical of the Roman Catholic Church were either cre-
ated
or transmitted by the Vulgate. Both Protestants and Roman
Catholics
are heirs of terminology that Jerome either coined anew
or
baptized with fresh significance-words such as salvation, re-
generation,
justification, sanctification, propitiation, reconcilia-
tion,
inspiration, Scripture, sacrament, and many others.
The historian of the Latin versions
of the Bible is confronted
with
difficult and disputed problems, not least of which are the
questions
when, where, and by whom the earliest Latin rendering
was
made. Because the language used by the church at
Greek
until the mid-third century, the Old Latin versions would
not
have originated there, but within those early Christian com-
munities
that used Latin. Probably by the end of the second cen-
tury
A.D. Old Latin versions of the Scriptures were in circulation
in
north Africa. In
Cyprian
(ca. 200-258) quoted long sections of both Testaments in
Latin.
Since one finds numerous and far-reaching differences
between
quotations of the same passages, it is obvious that there
was
not one uniform rendering; some books were apparently
translated
a number of times, and no single translator worked on
all
27 books. The Old Testament was not translated from the He-
12 One example of the
influence of the Vulgate on the development of vernacular
languages among the Romance peoples is the
suppression of everyday derivatives
from the common Latin word verbum, meaning "word." The forms do indeed occur
in the religious, technical sense, meaning
"the Word," but in the popular speech of
the people they are replaced by derivatives from
the late Latin word parabola; for
example, French, parole; Spanish, palabra; Portugese, palavra; Italian, paroles.
46
BIBLEOTHECA SACRA / January-March
1993
brew,
but was based, it appears, on a pre-Hexaplaric form of the
Greek
Septuagint. In this way Western churches became famil-
iar
with the deuterocanonical books of the Old Testament.
The New Testament books in Old Latin manuscripts
rest on
a
fluid Greek text commonly known today as the 'Western'text.
The
roots of the Old Latin versions are doubtless to be found in the
practice
of the double reading of Holy Scripture during divine
services,
first in the Greek text and then in the vernacular
tongue.
In the written form, the translation would at times have
been
interlinear; later on, manuscripts were prepared with two
columns
of text, sometimes arranged in cola and commata for
ease
of phrasing during the public reading of the lessons. All in
all,
it appears that the process of preparing Latin renderings of the
Scriptures
was gradual and to some extent haphazard, condi-
tioned
by local needs.
The pre-Jerome translations in general lack
polish and are
painfully
literal. The Gospels stand in the sequence of Matthew,
John, Luke, and Mark (mss. a, b, d, e, ff2, q, r). Here and there
one
finds noteworthy additions to the text. For example in
Matthew
was baptized "a tremendous light flashed forth
from the water,13
so
that all who were present feared." The Old Latin manuscripts
give
various names to the two robbers who were crucified with Je-
sus,14 and Mark's account of Jesus'
resurrection is expanded in
Old
Latin manuscript k at 16:4 with the following: "But suddenly
at
the third hour of thee day there was darkness over the whole cir-
cle
of the earth, and angels descended from the heavens, and as
he
[the Lord] was rising in the glory of the living God, at the same
time
they ascended with him; and immediately it was light."
By the close of the fourth century there was
such a confusing
diversity
among Old Latin manuscripts of the New Testament
that
Augustine lamented, "Those who translated the Scriptures
from
Hebrew into Greek can be counted, but the Latin translators
are
out of all number. For in the early days of the faith, everyone
who
chanced upon a Greek codex [of the New Testament] and
thought
he had a little aptitude in both languages attempted to
make
a translation. it.15
As a consequence there grew up a welter of
diverse Latin
13 Perhaps this is meant
to suggest that when "the heavens were opened" God's re-
plendent light was reflected from the water of
the
14 For these diverse names
see the chapter, "Names for the Nameless in the New
Testament,"
in the present writer's volume, New
Testament Studies: Philological,
Versional, and Patristic (Leiden: Brill, 1980),
33-38.
15 De doctrines
Christiana,
2.16.
Important Early Translations of the Bible 47
translations.
Among them three types or families of texts gradu-
ally
developed; Cyprian represents the African text, Irenaeus (ca.
130-ca.
200) of southern
gustine
the Italian. Characteristic of each family are certain
renderings; for example as a translation of the
Greek word fw?j
the African family prefers lumen, the European lux;
for doca<zein
the African prefers clarificare, the European glorificare.
In these circumstances the stage was set for the
most decisive
series
of events in the whole history of the Latin Bible. In the year
383
Pope Damasus urged Jerome (ca. 340-420), the most learned
Christian
scholar of his day, to produce a uniform and depend-
able
text of the Latin Scriptures; he was not to make a totally new
version,
but to revise the texts that were in circulation, using for
this
purpose the Hebrew and Greek originals. Jerome's first in-
clination
was to say "No, thank you" to the Pope's invitation. He wrote:
You
urge me to revise the Old Latin version, and, as it were, to
sit in judgment on copies of the Scriptures that are now
scattered
throughout the world; and, inasmuch as they differ from one
an-
other, you would have me decide which of them agrees with
the
original. The labor is one of love, but at the same time it
is both
perilous and presumptuous-for in judging others I must be
con-
tent to be judged by all. Is there anyone learned or
unlearned,
who, when he takes the volume in his hands and perceives
that
what he reads does not suit his settled tastes, will not
break out
immediately into violent language and call me a forger and
pro-
fane person for having the audacity to add anything to the
an-
cient books, or to make any
changes or corrections in them?16
Two factors, however, prompted Jerome to incur
such an
amount
of opprobrium. The first factor, as he proceeded to tell in a
dedicatory
epistle to Damasus setting forth the occasion and scope
of
the undertaking, was the command laid upon him by the
supreme
pontiff. The second was the shocking diversity among
the
Old Latin manuscripts, there being, as he wrote, "almost as
many
forms of texts as there are manuscripts."
Jerome was a rapid and thorough worker. Within a
year he
finished
his version of the Gospels. There is still some doubt as to
whether
he worked alone or with helpers. In a letter to the Pope he
explained
his procedure. He used, he said, a good Old Latin text,
compared
it with some Greek manuscripts in order to correct
gross
errors, perhaps wisely not making too many changes in the
existing
translation. His work on the rest of the New Testament
was
not quite so thorough; several scholars, in fact, have supposed
that
it was done by someone else.
16 Epistula ad Damasum.
48 BIBLIOTHECA SACRA / January-March 1993
Among the Old Testament books, Jerome turned his
attention
first
to the Psalter. He made two versions of the Old Latin version
of
the Psalms by comparing it with the Greek Septuagint. These
are
known as the Roman (384) and Gallican (387-390) Psalters,
because they were introduced into
Jerome's
final revision of the Psalter was made from the Hebrew,
but
it never attained general use or popularity. About the time
Jerome
produced his Gallican Psalter, he also revised the Latin
text
of some of the other books of the Old Testament with reference
to
the Septuagint text as provided in Origen's Hexapla. This
work,
however, did not satisfy Jerome's scholarly standards, and
he
resolved to undertake a more thorough revision on the basis of
the
Hebrew original. This great work occupied him from about
the
year 390 to 404, and separate books or groups of books were pub-
lished
as they were completed. Whether he managed to complete
the
entire Old Testament is not clear; at any rate, what is known
as
the Vulgate translation is far from being a uniform piece of
work
throughout.
Of course the Old Latin rendering, made from the
Septuagint,
contained
the additional books that had been over the years incor-
porated
in the Greek version of the Old Testament. Jerome's high
regard,
however, for the Hebraica veritas led
him to set the books
that
found a place in the Hebrew canon on a higher level than
those
that did not. In this way he anticipated the Reformers' dis-
tinction
between "canonical" and "apocryphal." Jerome's work
on
the latter books was by no means as thorough as on the others.
Tobit
he translated in one day, Judith in one night, both of which
Jerome
dictated to a scribe in Latin. Other deuterocanonical
books
remain "untranslated," that is, without revision of the Old
Latin
text.
The apprehension Jerome expressed to Pope
Damasus that he
would
be castigated for tampering with Holy Writ was not un-
founded.
His revision of the Latin Bible provoked both criticism
and
anger, sometimes with extraordinary vehemence. Augus-
tine,
who was himself not too happy with Jerome's preference for
the
Hebrew original of the Old Testament rather than the Greek
Septuagint
(which Augustine regarded as an inspired version),
reports
(Epist. 71) an account of tumult that
erupted in a North
African
congregation at Oea (modern Tripoli) during the read-
ing
of a Scripture lesson from the Book of Jonah in Jerome's un-
17 Jerome's Roman Psalter
is still in use in services at St. Peter's Basilica in
printed editions of the Latin Vulgate Bible-this
in spite of the superior accuracy
of Jerome's subsequent revision of the Psalter on
the basis of the Hebrew text.
Important Early Translations of the Bible 49
familiar
rendering. When they heard that Jonah took shelter
from
the sun under some ivy (hedera), with
one accord they
shouted,
"Gourd, gourd" (cucurbita),
until the reader reinstated
the
old word lest there be a general exodus of the congregation!
Because of its general excellence, however,
eventually
Jerome's
Vulgate text replaced the variety of Old Latin transla-
tions
and for nearly a thousand years was used as the recognized
text
of Scripture throughout western Europe. It also became the ba-
sis
of pre-Reformation vernacular Scriptures, such as Wycliffe's
English
translation in the 14th century, as well as the first
printed
Bibles in German (1466), Italian (1471), Catalan (1478),
Czech
(1488), and French (1530).
This
material is cited with gracious permission from:
www.dts.edu
Please
report any errors to Ted Hildebrandt at: