NP. I’m just now taking Arabic as probably the last of the semitic languages I will probably study, so we are just flipped in that regard.You are correct. As much as I’ve been immersed in sister language Arabic, you would have thought that I would have gotten at least that right
DaveBj
What hebrew version are you using? Here is the problem that alot of people to not understand is that there are different versions of hebrew and greek bibles. You have to pay attention to that. If you are pulling your comments from the Masoretic text, which most probably you are, you have to understand that this is a revised Jewish text and would not be the Hebrew text that Jerome was translating from. Jerome would have been translating from older manuscripts than the Masoretic text.
In terms of Hebrew texts, there’s really very little to pick from. One can either use the Masoretic Text, the Dead Sea Scrolls (very incomplete) or the Samaritan Pentateuch (only the Torah). The Dead Sea Scrolls (the oldest Hebrew texts we have and very likely older than the manuscripts used to translate the Vulgate) at times follow a textual tradition that’s extremely close to the Masoretic Text and at times follow a textual tradition that is close to the Hebrew textual traditions which underlie the Septuagint. So it’s a mixed bag. (Just because Jerome’s manuscripts were older than the Masoretic Text, doesn’t necessarily make them “better”–though they were certainly different. And in turn, the Dead Sea Scrolls aren’t “better” than Jerome’s manuscripts just because they are older, but they are different.) As for “picking and choosing,” (eclectic translation) this is true of the New Testament but not of the Old Testament. Translations of the Old Testament are by-and-large “diplomatic” translations, i.e., they pick one manuscript and prepare their translation using only that, though there may be isolated cases where an alternative manuscript is used.
As I have pointed out is that there are basically three traditions of the OT that have made heavy impacts on the development of Judeo-Christian thought in recent history (last 1500 years). The Masoretic, Septuigint, and Vulgate. So in my opinion these three traditions are the most important traditions to evaluate. Most modern translations use as a foundation the Masoretic text, but there are problems with that for Christians since the Jewish revision had Christianity negatively in mind.
The basic problem with this comment is that you can’t possibly know that. Unless you have the manuscript(s) used by Jerome for comparison you cannot state that his translation was bad.
The problems in the Vulgate are pretty apparent to anyone who takes some time to look at it, which was one of the reasons for the push to re-translate the Bible around the Reformation and also, incidentally, one of the reasons that Divino Afflante Spiritu was promulgated in 1943. (Actually, Pope Pius XII does point out that Jerome did the best he could under the circumstances–see paragraph 16–it’s just that we know more a great deal more about Hebrew now than Jerome did then. Basically, Pius XII argues that Catholic scholars at the time of Augustine/Jerome had lost a great deal of their knowledge of Hebrew and Greek and later, the Doctors of the Church has lost this knowledge almost entirely; see also paragraphs 14 and 15.)
Yes, I showed you an example of a translation error above. It’s not that the manuscript the Vulgate translator was using was different, it’s just that they didn’t understand how to do the translation. (This discussion has nothing to do with Modern Hebrew per se.)
Here is what I have learned myself. We both can agree that there is no such thing as a perfect translation. But I go even a step further. I do not believe that there is a perfect manuscript either. In fact I would say that if we did find a perfect manuscript we most probably wouldn’t even know it.
Not just that the ancients were knowledgeable or the brightest of their era, but were also among the holiest.
Today we place absolutely zero importance on the Faith and Holiness of the translator. Yet without an intimate, and thorough understanding of the Divine Revelations, in the holiness of its words, meaning and doctrine, even the biggest braniac that ever lived would muddle and cloud the translations if not making horrendous errors, while remaining “technically” correct. 
I think this has to do with canon, not translation.
So, where does this leave poor Pius XII? Then what is the rationale behind the Catholic Church’s abandoning the Vulgate as the basis for its public proclamation of scripture? (An honest question–I’m asking as a non-Catholic here.)
I certainly haven’t read the entire Vulgate by a long shot. However, the passages that I have read (primarily from the Pentateuch and the Psalms) contained so many problems as well as out-and-out errors, that at the time I figured it really wasn’t worth putting a lot more effort into it–just as I’m not going to spend a lot of time analyzing and critiquing the Living Bible or the TNIV. As an ancient witness, the Vulgate can be useful at times for text criticism, but as the basis for a study Bible (the OP I think), no, personally, I wouldn’t use it. But people can and will do whatever they want.
I think what Pius XII says in his encyclical is that the Vulgate hasn’t really been vetted because Catholic scholars didn’t (and I would argue, still don’t to a great extent) understand Greek or Hebrew very well–if at all–remember Augustine’s famous Latin essay on his hatred of Greek class?
Yeah your understanding of Koine Greek and Biblical Hebrew was better than the guy who was fluent and actually conversed in it with contemporaries. Seriously? Are you naive or arrogant? Probably both. The whole reason protestants nit pick certain parts of the bible that the Catholic Church canonized in the first place, is so they can try to justify their own preferences and their own thoughts on how things should be via bringing into question certain passages and questioning if the guys who had been living in the presence of Christ, passing it down to the early church fathers, and handing it down through the church through the years actually understood what the scriptures actually meant, because some liberal ‘bible scholar’ thinks it actually meant something else nearly 2000 years after the fact. This cant be stupidity alone, more like complicity. Well then again people believe the mainstream media, and those guys are a bunch of clueless, unethical, biased, incompetent ‘people’.I think this has to do with canon, not translation.
So, where does this leave poor Pius XII? Then what is the rationale behind the Catholic Church’s abandoning the Vulgate as the basis for its public proclamation of scripture? (An honest question–I’m asking as a non-Catholic here.)
I certainly haven’t read the entire Vulgate by a long shot. However, the passages that I have read (primarily from the Pentateuch and the Psalms) contained so many problems as well as out-and-out errors, that at the time I figured it really wasn’t worth putting a lot more effort into it–just as I’m not going to spend a lot of time analyzing and critiquing the Living Bible or the TNIV. As an ancient witness, the Vulgate can be useful at times for text criticism, but as the basis for a study Bible (the OP I think), no, personally, I wouldn’t use it. But people can and will do whatever they want.
I think what Pius XII says in his encyclical is that the Vulgate hasn’t really been vetted because Catholic scholars didn’t (and I would argue, still don’t to a great extent) understand Greek or Hebrew very well–if at all–remember Augustine’s famous Latin essay on his hatred of Greek class?
Catholics can believe whatever they want about the Vulgate–all I’m doing is challenging people to do an investigation of the facts for themselves. Maybe someone will take me up on it–it would be an interesting discussion. Ron, would you like to go verse-by-verse on some passage in particular? Might be fun… I promise to keep an open mind; maybe you will convince me that Jerome was a better translator than I think he is!
But honestly, this is EXACTLY the reason why I cannot be Catholic-- imo there’s way too much reliance on what other people say or on something someone has heard or read somewhere without anyone ever bothering to investigate the facts for themselves.
I love the Douay-Rheims. Remember, the DR is a word for word translation of the Latin Vulgate, the official translation of the church. St. Jerome translated the Latin Vulgate and he had all the original documents or, at least, more than anyone else. When 1 Cor 15:51 says, “…but we shall not all be changed”, it means that Christ raises all up to their bodies but not as to their souls. (Summa, On the Ressurrection, Q56, A2, Reply to Obj 3)
The canon, absent from the Bible, decided upon by the Catholic Church?
There were many more manuscript discoveries by his day. So translators didn’t need to rely on the Vulgate, not that it was a poor translation. The Original Douay Rheims from 1582 translators noted that if they had access to better manuscripts they would have used them. So they used Latin manuscripts and compared with the best available Hebrew and Greek.
Evidence???I think what Pius XII says in his encyclical is that the Vulgate hasn’t really been vetted because Catholic scholars didn’t (and I would argue, still don’t to a great extent) understand Greek or Hebrew very well–if at all–remember Augustine’s famous Latin essay on his hatred of Greek class?
The Catholic faith, guided by the Holy Spirit, is founded by Christ upon the rock of St Peter and his successor, holding onto the tradtions handed down, wether by word or epistle, from Christ and his apostles. Other Christians are reliant on their private interpretation of the Scriputres, something scripture condemns.
I’m sorry to be bumping this back to the top after so long a hiatus, but I finally found my Septuagint and looked up Gen. 3:15. The Greek has the masculine “he” (autos) crushing the serpent’s head. This is very interesting, because it decidedly does not agree grammatically with “sperma/seed,” which is neuter in Greek, unlike the Hebrew, where the masculine “hu” does agree with the masculine word for “seed.” Your mileage may vary, but this tells me that the rebbes who translated the Septuagint (using Hebrew texts that were probably half a millenium closer to the sources that the texts used by St. Jerome) understood that “her seed” was going to be a man, and that it would be he that would be doing the crushing. Therefore they went for what they saw as the intended meaning of the text, not pure grammatical agreement in the language into which they were translating.
I don’t know Hebrew, Dave but from a little searching around, it seems to me that this is not really an error but just a Hebraism. Apparently Greek and Latin translators used a variety of ways to translate the infinitive absolute construction, and using a noun was one of these. See this chapter.
I understand the αὐτός refers to an implied ἄνθρωπος, mankind in general.
Grammatically that could be, but historically it appears to me that mankind has done a poor job of crushing the serpent’s head.
