Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

LATIN

The language of the Romans in biblical times (John 19:20). Latin is significant for biblical studies in several ways: Early Latin translations provide textual witnesses for sections of some apocryphal works; textual critics use Latin translations in their study of the Greek OT and NT and of the Hebrew OT; Latin is also the language of biblical commentary in the Latin West up to and including Reformation times.

Some of the very earliest translations of the Bible were done into Latin. These versions in Old Latin (Vetus Latina) are valued as evidence for the existence of Greek manuscript readings now lost. Likewise, the subsequent revising work of Jerome to produce the Latin Vulgate can be used to provide information on versions of the Hebrew text which no longer survive. The renewed interest in the history of exegesis gives new prominence to the commentary tradition in Latin. Some Greek commentaries have survived only in Latin translation (e.g., some of Origen’s work).

At present, work continues on editing the mostly fragmentary texts of the Old Latin Bible. The convenient two-volume Stuttgart Biblia Sacra (ed. Robert Weber, 3rd ed., 1985) represents an abridgement (with minor revisions) of the full editions of the Vulgate OT and NT. The Nova Vulgata (Rome, 1979), which is used in the Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece et Latine (Stuttgart, 1984), is to be distinguished from Jerome’s Vulgate; it is designed to provide a standard modern Latin translation for ecclesiastical use.

Michael Cahill

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

LATIN

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)