Vulgate

The Vulgate Bible is an early 5th century translation of the Bible into Latin made by St. Jerome on the orders of Pope Damasus I. It takes its name from the phrase versio vulgata, "the common (i.e., popular) version" (cf. Vulgar Latin), and was written in an everyday Latin used in conscious distinction to the elegant Ciceronian Latin of which Jerome was a master. The Vulgate was designed to be both more accurate and easier to understand than its predecessors. It was the first, and for many centuries the only, Christian Bible translation that translated the Old Testament directly from the Hebrew original rather than indirectly from the Greek Septuagint.

The Stuttgart Vulgate

A final mention must also be made of an edition of the Vulgate published by the German Bible Society (Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft), based in Stuttgart. This edition, Biblia Sacra Vulgata ( ISBN 3438053039 ), seeks to reproduce the original, pure Vulgate text that Jerome himself would have produced 1,600 years ago. The Stuttgart Vulgate is mainly a scholarly work, as it provides variant readings from the diverse manuscripts and printed editions of the Vulgate and comparison of different wordings in its footnotes.It attempts, through critical comparison of important, historical editions of the Vulgate, to achieve the original text, cleansed of the errors of a millennium and a half's time. The main critical source for the Stuttgart Vulgate is Codex Amiatinus, the highly-esteemed 8th century, one-volume manuscript of the whole Latin Bible produced in England, regarded as the best medieval witness to Jerome's original text. An important feature in the Stuttgart edition for those studying the Vulgate is the inclusion of all of Jerome's prologues to the Bible, the Testaments, and the major books and sections (Pentateuch, Gospels, Minor Prophets, etc.) of the Bible. This again mimics the style of medieval editions of the Vulgate, which were never without Jerome's prologues (revered as much a part of the Bible as the sacred text itself). In its spelling, the Stuttgart also retains a more medieval Latin orthography than the Clementine, using oe rather than ae, and having more proper nouns beginning with H (i.e., Helimelech instead of Elimelech). Though closer than the New Vulgate to the Clementine edition, the Stuttgart Vulgate still has enough divergence from the Clementine text to render it unfamiliar to accustomed Catholics. In addition, its sparse, unpunctuated text can be difficult to read, especially in verses with multiple clauses. Still, this edition's importance rests in the fact that it is the one most disseminated on the Internet, usually presented with Jerome's third version of the Psalms translated from the Hebrew, and often containing only the first three chapters of Daniel (stopping at the point where the deuterocanonical Song of the Three Holy Children would begin.)

Related Topics:
Codex Amiatinus - 8th century - Vulgate

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