Contrary to popular belief, the Vulgate wasn’t the first time there had been a Latin Bible — at the time of Jerome, in the fourth century, there was a version already widely in use called the “Vetus Latina” (“Old Latin”), which was itself a roughly second-century A.D. translation of the Greek Septuagint. In addition, the Vetus Latina contained the translation from the Greek original of all the books of the New Testament. All the books of the New Testament were written in Greek originally, but the Old Testament — save for a handful of books — was first written in Hebrew.
Rico described the Vetus Latina as a “good translation, but not perfect.” In 382, St. Damasus I tasked Jerome, who was working as his secretary at the time, with revising the Vetus Latina translation of the New Testament.
Jerome did so, taking several years to painstakingly revise and improve the Latin translation of the New Testament from the best Greek manuscripts available. Rico said throughout the process, Jerome corrected certain passages and expounded on the deep meanings of many of the Greek words that had been lost in earlier translations.
For example, the Greek word “epiousios,” which was likely coined by the Gospel writers, appears in the Lord’s Prayer in Luke and Matthew and is often translated in English as “daily.” In the Gospel of Matthew, however, Jerome translated the word into Latin as “supersubstantialem,” or “supersubstantial” — an allusion, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church points out, to the Body of Christ in the Eucharist.
All of Jerome’s work resulted in a “brilliant improvement” over the Vetus Latina, Rico said.
What Jerome did next was even more ambitious. He set about translating the entire Old Testament as well, from its original Hebrew. Jerome knew Hebrew very well, Rico noted, since he had lived in the Holy Land for 30 years at that point and kept in close contact with Jewish rabbis. Jerome also had access to the Hexapla of Origen, a kind of “Rosetta Stone” for the Bible that displayed the Bible text in six versions side by side. (The Hebrew text, a transliteration in Greek letters of the Hebrew text, the Greek Septuagint translation, and three other Greek translations that had been made in a Jewish milieu.)
In an effort that would ultimately take 15 years, Jerome succeeded in translating the entire Old Testament from the original Hebrew, which was no mean feat given the fact that Hebrew was originally written without the use of short vowels.
Upon its completion, the Vulgate not only superseded the Vetus Latina in becoming the predominant Bible translation used in the Middle Ages, but it was also declared the official Bible of the Catholic Church at the Council of Trent (1545–1563).
The Vulgate has been revised a handful of times over the years, most notably in 1592 by Pope Clementine VIII (the “Clementine Vulgate”), and the most recent revision, the Nova Vulgata, promulgated by St. John Paul II in 1979.
In addition to its use today in the Traditional Latin Mass, the Vulgate has endured as the basis for the popular English translation of the Bible, the Douay–Rheims.
While again cautioning that no translation is ever perfect, Rico was quick to praise Jerome’s Vulgate for its accuracy and its importance in the history of the Church.
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“For the New Testament, I have not been able to find any mistakes … The whole thing is incredible,” he said.
For his part, Jerome is today recognized as a doctor of the Church. He lived out his last days in study, prayer, and asceticism at the monastery he founded in Bethlehem, where he died in 420.
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