Hebrew, Greek or Latin?

[john_aurelius]

Which does the Magisterium see as the authoritative text?

The Hebrew and Aramaic OT and Greek NT as the original languages?

Or the Latin as the church text (I think Trent took this view)

Or the vernacular language in a particular translation?

Thanks…

 

[DianaCC]

Which does the Magisterium see as the authoritative text? The Hebrew and Aramaic OT and Greek NT as the original languages? Or the Latin as the church text (I think Trent took this view) Or the vernacular language in a particular translation? Thanks…

The CC don’t think that way.

• The “official” text for the western Church as of 1979 is the Nova Vulgata, available on the Vatican website. Trent judged the Latin text, the one from Jerome, to be “authentic”, meaning it was relatively unbiased, given the fact that any old scholar who knew enough Latin, heretic or not, was publishing their own personal Latin versions in the middle of a Protestant Rebellion.
• The Greek Orthodox Church has an “official” Greek text, also available online.
• The Jews have an “official” text too, in Hebrew.
• But neither the western nor the eastern Churches think about the written Word of God the way Protestants do.
• Since the CC has an infallible Magisterium, they kinda don’t care about the text of the Bible the way Protestants do, because the integrity of the text is and has always been a matter of of archaeology, and God never promised that the *written text *of the Bible would be preserved.
• Therefore the CC approves any translation that reasonably reproduces what archaeology says is “The Bible”, such as the Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition, the Jerusalem Bible, the New American Bible, the New American Bible Revised Edition, and so on.
• In general, any Bible that has a Catholic bishop’s imprimatur or a Catholic censor librorum’s *nihil obstat *on the copyright page, can be taken as a sample of what the CC considers an authoritative text, in whatever language.

 

[john_aurelius]

The CC don’t think that way.

• The “official” text for the western Church as of 1979 is the Nova Vulgata, available on the Vatican website. Trent judged the Latin text, the one from Jerome, to be “authentic”, meaning it was relatively unbiased, given the fact that any old scholar who knew enough Latin, heretic or not, was publishing their own personal Latin versions in the middle of a Protestant Rebellion.
• The Greek Orthodox Church has an “official” Greek text, also available online.
• The Jews have an “official” text too, in Hebrew.
• But neither the western nor the eastern Churches think about the written Word of God the way Protestants do.
• Since the CC has an infallible Magisterium, they kinda don’t care about the text of the Bible the way Protestants do, because the integrity of the text is and has always been a matter of of archaeology, and God never promised that the *written text *of the Bible would be preserved.
• Therefore the CC approves any translation that reasonably reproduces what archaeology says is “The Bible”, such as the Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition, the Jerusalem Bible, the New American Bible, the New American Bible Revised Edition, and so on.
• In general, any Bible that has a Catholic bishop’s imprimatur or a Catholic censor librorum’s *nihil obstat *on the copyright page, can be taken as a sample of what the CC considers an authoritative text, in whatever language.

Thanks for answering my poorly worded question. My reason for asking is if there is a “conflict” for any reason due to difficulties of any translation, would the Greek and Hebrew be the text the magisterium uses in a scolarly analysis?

I’m assuming this as the new Catholic Bibles are a translation of the Hebrew and Greek rather than the Latin.

 

[DianaCC]

Right, in general the Hebrew for the OT and the Greek for the NT. But for special cases such as Esther or Tobit, it would be based either on a scholarly consensus or on some already-approved version.

 

[Skeptic92]

Thanks for answering my poorly worded question. My reason for asking is if there is a “conflict” for any reason due to difficulties of any translation, would the Greek and Hebrew be the text the magisterium uses in a scolarly analysis?

I’m assuming this as the new Catholic Bibles are a translation of the Hebrew and Greek rather than the Latin.

The Theologians within the Magisterium will most likely use the Greek NT and Hebrew OT (with the Deutero-canonical books in Greek, unless their Hebrew originals have been found), but with reference to the Latin Vulgate (as St. Jerome had access to manuscripts that have since been lost), as this would been seen as more “scholarly” and give them a closer reading then those in their native tounges, as very few of our modern languages will be able to translate effectively Koine Greek and Ancient Hebrew (apart from Greek and Hebrew, which will still have difficulties).

 

[ProVobis]

The Theologians within the Magisterium will most likely use the Greek NT and Hebrew OT (with the Deutero-canonical books in Greek, unless their Hebrew originals have been found), but with reference to the Latin Vulgate (as St. Jerome had access to manuscripts that have since been lost), as this would been seen as more “scholarly” and give them a closer reading then those in their native tounges, as very few of our modern languages will be able to translate effectively Koine Greek and Ancient Hebrew (apart from Greek and Hebrew, which will still have difficulties).

This is my understanding as well.

There was an older Latin version before St. Jerome, the Vetus Latina. (Archaelogy has shown that Christianity had spread amongst the Romans only a few years after Christ.) The work was very poor quality, however, and Jerome tried to make some sense out of it, in addition to the Greek, which itself had been translated from the Hebrew and other original writings and word of mouth, and Hebrew, which was an accumulation of still older Hebrew writings. The older manuscripts had been written on papyrus which was expensive and writers would generally fill up the entire “page” with shorthand or other such tactics to preserve space. Parchment would enable preservation of the texts much longer, but even so, when the monks would be in charge of copying this text of St. Jerome through the centuries, it was not always copied legibly and without mistakes. (Ever try writing even one page from a book?) It wasn’t until the typeset of the printing press would enable almost permanent preservation of the text. Thus the Clementine Vulgate, which was a “consolidation” of all the monk’s works by scholars, came about and has been preserved till today.

One thing to be kept in mind is this. Every translation into modern languages (imprimatur or not) makes it that much more removed from the originals, and when one English version, rather than the Latin or Greek or Hebrew, is used as a basis for further versions, (imprimatur or not,) it is even more removed from the truth.

 

[DianaCC]

One thing to be kept in mind is this. Every translation into modern languages (imprimatur or not) makes it that much more removed from the originals, and when one English version, rather than the Latin or Greek or Hebrew, is used as a basis for further versions, (imprimatur or not,) it is even more removed from the truth.

Avoid making too much of that principle.

 

[steve53]

The CC probably had no choice in this. If they adopted a single “authorized” version, no matter what it was, there would be an endless amount of debate about the minutia of translation details.

The CC has bigger fish to fry than enter the fray over whether, to take a random controversial NT passage, Jesus meant to say “bottles” or “wine skins.”

 

[patrick457]

There was an older Latin version before St. Jerome, the Vetus Latina. (Archaelogy has shown that Christianity had spread amongst the Romans only a few years after Christ.) The work was very poor quality, however, and Jerome tried to make some sense out of it, in addition to the Greek, which itself had been translated from the Hebrew and other original writings and word of mouth, and Hebrew, which was an accumulation of still older Hebrew writings.

It’s versions, actually, since there was no single Vetus Latina Bible. Instead, what we have is a collection of manuscripts that bear witness to Latin translations of Biblical passages that preceded Jerome’s, as well as of Biblical passages that appear in the works of the Latin Fathers, some of which share readings with certain groups of manuscripts. These Latin translations were more like individual efforts prepared on an ad hoc basis for the local use of Christian communities, to illuminate another Christian discourse or sermon, or as the Latin half of a diglot manuscript. In short, these translations were more like local affairs instead of something that was universally promulgated to Latin-speaking Churches.

And yes, because they were made by different individuals and different groups, the language of the translations are uneven in quality (something that St. Augustine lamented). For instance, there were quite an abundance of grammatical solecisms and overly-literal attempts to reproduce Semitic idiom as they appear in the Greek text, which was the base for these translations. Many grammatical idiosyncrasies come from the use of Vulgar Latin grammatical forms in the text.

Likewise, the various translations reflect the various versions of the Septuagint and the Greek New Testament circulating, with the African manuscripts preserving readings of the Western text-type, while readings in the European manuscripts are closer to the Byzantine text-type.

 

[patrick457]

Originally, St. Jerome did not intend to make a new version of the whole Bible. In 382, Jerome had been commissioned by Pope Damasus to revise the Old Latin text of the four Gospels from the best Greek texts, and by the time of Damasus’ death in 384 he had thoroughly completed this task, together with a more cursory revision from the Septuagint of the Old Latin text of the Psalms in the Roman Psalter. Jerome was soon forced to leave his position at Rome after an inquiry by the Roman clergy (with whom he was not exactly on friendly terms with) into allegations that he had an improper relationship with the widow Paula, as well as what the people saw as his cruel treatment of Paula’s daughter Blaesilla.

In August 385, he returned to Antioch, accompanied by his brother Paulinianus and several friends, and followed a little later by Paula and her other daughter Eustochium, who had resolved to end their days in the Holy Land. In the winter of 385, Jerome acted as their spiritual adviser. The pilgrims, joined by Bishop Paulinus of Antioch, visited Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and the holy places of Galilee, and then went to Egypt, the home of the great heroes of the ascetic life, where he met with Didymus the Blind. Late in the summer of 388 he was back in Israel, and spent the remainder of his life in a hermit’s cell near Bethlehem, surrounded by a few friends, both men and women (including Paula and Eustochium), to whom he acted as priestly guide and teacher.

Financially supported by Paula, he led a modest life of incessant activity in literary production. There he was able to procure a surviving manuscript of the Hexapla, a columnar comparison of the variant versions of the Old Testament, in both Greek and Hebrew, undertaken 150 years before by Origen, from the library at Caesarea. He first embarked on a revision of the Psalms, translated from the revised Septuagint column of the Hexapla, which later came to be called the Gallican Psalter. He also appears to have undertaken further new translations into Latin from the Hexaplar Septuagint column for other books. The preface to Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Canticles and Chronicles is extant to show he had revised these books. Job and Psalms are the only books of this revision from the Septuagint extant, as well as fragments of other books.

Having in the course of these labors discovered the unsatisfactory condition of the Septuagint text and his friends pleading the need of a translation direct from the Hebrew, Jerome translated anew from the Hebrew all 39 books in the Hebrew Bible, including a further version of the Psalms in the period between 390 to 405. He learned Hebrew from a local teacher named Bar-Anina, but not without controversy - some Christians felt queasy about Jerome learning from a Jew (that they corrupted Bar-Anina’s name to Barabbas!), and some Jews were not too happy with a rabbi teaching a Christian. Hence, the two had no other recourse but to hold their lessons at night, for which Jerome paid Bar-Anina handsomely. Jerome’s knowledge of the language was admittedly not too perfect, but it was apparently much greater than Origen, Ephrem the Syrian, and Epiphanius, the only recorded Church Fathers who actually knew Hebrew at all.

The Vulgate is usually credited as being the first translation of the Old Testament into Latin directly from the Hebrew text (as opposed to the Greek). Jerome’s extensive use of Greek exegetical material, on the other hand, as well as his use of later Greek translations by Aquila of Sinope and Theodotion (as found in the Hexapla), along with the somewhat paraphrastic style in which he translated makes it difficult to determine exactly how direct the conversion of Hebrew to Latin was.

 

[patrick457]

He began with the books of Samuel and Kings, followed by the Psalms (ca. 392), Job and the Prophets (393), 1 and 2 Esdras (i.e. Ezra and Nehemiah, ca. 394; 3 and 4 being omitted), and the books of Chronicles (396). A severe illness temporarily put a halt in his work; he would resume in 398, translating Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Canticles. He then started on the Octateuch: the Torah being first translated in 401, Joshua, Judges, and Ruth along with Esther following soon after.

Jerome could not find a Hebrew version of Tobit and Judith, and had to recourse to secondary Aramaic versions (ca. 405). It makes for an interesting anecdote: despite Jerome’s knowledge of Hebrew and his observation that “the language of the Chaldeans is related to the Hebrew tongue,” he surprisingly could not read Aramaic Tobit and had it translated in Hebrew first before translating it into Latin. Some scholars also surmise from traces in his finished work that aside from this Hebrew translation of an Aramaic version, he also had a Latin translation of Tobit at his side, so that his translation at the same time became a revision of this older version.

Shortly after finishing he translated the Deuterocanonical sections of Daniel (from Theodotion) and Esther (from the Septuagint). He never translated Baruch; Wisdom and Sirach, and possibly the books of Maccabees, were left unrevised.

This translation from the Hebrew was largely undertaken at the request of friends and at no official request (as his revision of the Vetus Latina Gospels and Psalms was). Indeed Jerome did not pretend to be working for publicity; he actually asked one friend not to show his translation. Still, his work leaked into public view, causing massive controversy. Jerome complained in a letter that his new version was initially disliked by Christians who were familiar with the phrasing of the old translations. He was even accused of slighting the Septuagint, which in the eyes of Augustine and other Christians was equally inspired with the Hebrew original.

So, to sum:

1. *]Revision of Vetus Latina text, compared with Greek manuscripts (382-384): Gospels (or the whole New Testament?), Roman Psalter (?)
   *]Translation from the Hexaplar Septuagint (ca. 387): Gallican Psalter, other Old Testament books (of which only Job survives)
   *]Translation from the Hebrew (390-405): Hebrew Old Testament (including Hebrew Psalter)
   *]Translation from (Hebrew translations of) Aramaic (ca. 405): Tobit, Judith
   *]Translation from Theodotion (ca. 405?): Deuterocanonical sections of Daniel
   *]Translation from Septuagint (ca. 405?): Deuterocanonical sections of Esther
   
   *]Vetus Latina, revised (by someone other than Jerome?): Baruch including Letter of Jeremiah, the rest of the New Testament (?), 3 Esdras
   *]Vetus Latina, unrevised: Wisdom, Sirach, 1-2 Maccabees (?), Epistle to the Laodiceans, Prayer of Manasses, 4 Esdras

 

[john_aurelius]

So in teh sense that Jerome was translating to the vulgar tongue (vulgate) I should use my language skills in study for the Greek and Hebrew.

Its easy to say just study all of them (and I have) but to do very well it requires sustained effort and time.

I’m glad that the CC still honours the originals, after all, they are what the Holy Spirit caused to make his word known by.

 

[patrick457]

So in teh sense that Jerome was translating to the vulgar tongue (vulgate) I should use my language skills in study for the Greek and Hebrew.

Oh, about that: St. Jerome never tagged his work(s) with a name. In his day, the phrase editio vulgata, a calque from the Greek koine ekdosis, ‘common edition’, meant only one thing: the Greek Septuagint - or to be more precise, that edition of the Septuagint and Theodotion in common use among Christians. Despite common misconception, the word vulgata here is not used to mean the ‘vulgar’ tongue (i.e. common speech) but means the ‘common’, ‘current’ or ‘ordinarily used’ text.

St. Jerome himself used the phrase in this way: “Hoc iuxta Septuaginta interpretes diximus, quorum editio toto orbe vulgata est” (Comm. in Isa. 65:20; ibid. 30:22) Elsewhere he actually gives the Greek words (of the Septuagint) as found in editione vulgata (Comm. in Osee 7:13). This is also the sense that his contemporary St. Augustine understood and used the phrase (De doctrina Christiana, xvi. 10): “Secundum vulgatam editionem, hoc est interpretum Septuaginta.”

The term was next extended to the form in which the Septuagint was at first known to the West—the Vetus Latina versions, although there does not appear to be any instance in the age of Jerome of the application of the term to the Latin version of the Old Testament without regard to its derivation from the Greek Septuagint or to that of the New Testament, so that Jerome usually intended the Septuagint though he quoted it in Latin.

Vulgata editio, having acquired the meaning of the current or ordinarily used text of Septuagint, was once again extended to mean a corrupt or uncorrected text as opposed to the standard emended Septuagint version of Origen’s Hexapla, and in this sense is used by Jerome as synonymous with antiqua or vetus editio (‘old edition’).

It was only very slowly that the work acquired this name, the phrase editio vulgata being reserved for the Septuagint or the Old Latin versions of the Septuagint sometimes down to the Middle Ages, while Jerome’s translation was known in rather general and vague terms such as “our edition” (editio nostra) or “our books” (codices nostri), ‘our’ of course being a reference to the Latin Churches which used the translation.

Friar Roger Bacon (c. 1220-1292) was apparently the first, in the 13th century, to apply the term vulgata with the similar meaning that we do today - though he also used it to refer to the Septuagint/Vetus Latina, as per traditional usage - and this became classic through its acceptance by the Council of Trent (“vetus et vulgata editio”). Only then did the Vulgate become known as editio vulgata.

 

[john_aurelius]

hence my wariness with studying Latin further… would it be of any real benefit?

I don’t really need it for Mass, OF and all that so it seems better for me to continue with my study of Koine and Ancient/ Classical Hebrew and leave the Latin for those who prefer it.

 

[patrick457]

hence my wariness with studying Latin further… would it be of any real benefit?

I don’t really need it for Mass, OF and all that so it seems better for me to continue with my study of Koine and Ancient/ Classical Hebrew and leave the Latin for those who prefer it.

Well, just my personal opinion: if you want to delve into something like the Latin Fathers or later liturgical and theological works and other Church documents (and a good number of scholarlyyou’re going to need some knowledge of it. After all, Ecclesiastical Latin remains the main official language of the Latin Church.

For the record, not to make your burden more heavier but you might want to throw Aramaic into the mix, if you’re trying to study Scripture.

 

[john_aurelius]

Well, just my personal opinion: if you want to delve into something like the Latin Fathers or later liturgical and theological works and other Church documents (and a good number of scholarlyyou’re going to need some knowledge of it. After all, Ecclesiastical Latin remains the main official language of the Latin Church.

For the record, not to make your burden more heavier but you might want to throw Aramaic into the mix, if you’re trying to study Scripture.

Yes, but there are few decent resources. When I did Daniel in Hebrew exegesis we were only required to do the hebrew sections. I did a fair bit of Aramaic then but seeing as there are only a couple of passages in Aramaic in the entire OT, it also doesn’t seem worthwhile.

Also the Massoretic notes in the margins and stuff are in Aramaic. but of course they are not part of the Word and most of the time irrelevant.

 

[john_aurelius]

Well, just my personal opinion: if you want to delve into something like the Latin Fathers or later liturgical and theological works and other Church documents (and a good number of scholarlyyou’re going to need some knowledge of it. After all, Ecclesiastical Latin remains the main official language of the Latin Church.

:

just so you dont think Im just being lazy, I did a year of Latin at the Catholic Institute and got an High Distinction for survey and a Distinction for translating Augustine’s

• Confessions*. My Latin is good enough to read short excerpts from Classical writers such as Cicero, Vergil, Livy and Tactitus etc.

But Ive done 7 years of formal koine study and 4 of Hebrew and they are my better languages.

I did a few years of japanese as well. a couple of my favourite subjects there were translating greek and Hebrew into Japanese. This was done at the Kobe Lutheran Theological Seminary. My prize lexicon is still a Hebrew - Japanese version.

 

[patrick457]

just so you dont think Im just being lazy, I did a year of Latin at the Catholic Institute and got an High Distinction for survey and a Distinction for translating Augustine’s

• Confessions*. My Latin is good enough to read short excerpts from Classical writers such as Cicero, Vergil, Livy and Tactitus etc.

But Ive done 7 years of formal koine study and 4 of Hebrew and they are my better languages.

I did a few years of japanese as well. a couple of my favourite subjects there were translating greek and Hebrew into Japanese. This was done at the Kobe Lutheran Theological Seminary. My prize lexicon is still a Hebrew - Japanese version.

And you leave me, a 3rd year high school student with no money, just average grades, and with no claim to fame aside from being terrible at P.E., speaking very fast, and a near-unnatural interest (obsession?) with history - and who is only self-taught in a bit of Greek, Latin, Hebrew and Aramaic as well as a few other languages (I can read - as long as its in the Greek or the Latin alphabet - but I can’t do grammar or translation without an aid!), gaping. Wow!

 

[john_aurelius]

And you leave me, a 3rd year high school student with no money, just average grades, and with no claim to fame aside from being terrible at P.E., speaking very fast, and a near-unnatural interest (obsession?) with history - and who is only self-taught in a bit of Greek, Latin, Hebrew and Aramaic as well as a few other languages (I can read - as long as its in the Greek or the Latin alphabet - but I can’t do grammar or translation without an aid!), gaping. Wow!

Well, I’m sure you’ll go far. You seem to have a really good aptitude God bless!