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VULGATE

The Latin version of the Bible prepared by Jerome (ca. 347-420). In view of proliferating variations in the Old Latin text, Pope Damasus asked Jerome, the outstanding biblical scholar of the day, to prepare a new Latin text, standardizing it by the “true Greek text.” He accepted the assignment reluctantly, anticipating that people in the churches would not like the change — and they did not. Two years later, in 384, Jerome had finished the Gospels, making changes only where he felt necessary. He altered the Western order of the Gospels to that known today and restored texts peculiar to each Evangelist which had been harmonized in the Old Latin. Whether Jerome or someone else completed the revision is not known.

The Vulgate was adopted in Rome, but even in Pope Gregory’s time (6th century) both the Vulgate and Old Latin were widely used. In fact, the supremacy of the Vulgate was not assured until the 9th century, and not until the Council of Trent (1546) did the Vulgate become the standard for the Catholic Church.

Vulgate manuscripts were constantly being corrected to the Old Latin and altered over the centuries. In an effort at standardization, Pope Sixtus V published an edition of the Vulgate in 1590, declaring that it “must be received and held as true, legitimate, authentic, and undoubted, in all public and private disputations, lectures, sermons, and explanations.” Unfortunately, it was soon discovered that the edition was flawed and needed to be replaced. A new edition appeared in 1592 under Clement VIII, introducing more than 5000 changes in the text, although the “Sixtine” edition had threatened excommunication for changes. Although more careful than the Sixtine, neither the edition of 1590 or 1592 succeeded in representing Jerome’s original text or its Greek base with any accuracy. Ca. 8000 Vulgate manuscripts are extant. The recovery of the original text of the Vulgate is the aim of John Wordsworth, H. J. White, and H. F. D. Sparks, Novum Testamentum Domini nostri Iesu Christi latine (3 vols.; Oxford, 1889), and Robert Weber, Biblia Sacra (3rd ed., 1975).

Carroll D. Osburn

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

VULGATE

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)