Is it okay if I only want to read the Bible in Latin?

[RolandThompsonGunner]

I will just have to try harder to learn Latin.

It’s fine if you just like learning the language, but you do need to understand that being in Latin doesn’t somehow make your Bible better. Why would this idea even occur to you? I don’t understand the train of thought.

 

[StudentMI]

It’s fine if you only want to read it in Latin.

 

[Maximian]

I don’t understand why various commentators here, have been so negative about choosing to read the Bible in Latin.
[/quote

Hear Hear.

St Jerome had an ability to translate brilliantly from the Greek, aidedby the fact that Latin translates better frim Greek than other languages do.

The Greek translation of the OT (the Septuagint) was used by Our Lord himself, as he often quotes it and this is detectable from the Gospel.

The Vulgate is sanctified by continuous use from the time it was finished by St Jerome to our own day. If you are fortunate enough to know Latin, Im sure you will agree that there is an amazing amount of meaning which you can unpack which is faithful to the Greek but is diminished when translated to modern languages.

 

[RolandThompsonGunner]

Hear Hear.

But no one is being negative or saying that reading the Bible in Latin is bad. I’m so confused by this reaction. It comes up all the time. Absolutely no one is criticizing the OP for having an interest in Latin.

 

[HomeschoolDad]

I don’t understand why various commentators here, have been so negative about choosing to read the Bible in Latin.
[/quote

Hear Hear.

St Jerome had an ability to translate brilliantly from the Greek, aidedby the fact that Latin translates better frim Greek than other languages do.

The Greek translation of the OT (the Septuagint) was used by Our Lord himself, as he often quotes it and this is detectable from the Gospel.

The Vulgate is sanctified by continuous use from the time it was finished by St Jerome to our own day. If you are fortunate enough to know Latin, Im sure you will agree that there is an amazing amount of meaning which you can unpack which is faithful to the Greek but is diminished when translated to modern languages.

Thanks for the vote of confidence. This is really a 20th and 21st century conversation. “Back in the day”, people as well-educated as many readers of these forums are, would have been sufficiently conversant in Latin, to read the Vulgate pretty much seamlessly. For many people, Greek was also accessible. We need to get back to that, to have more classically-educated people in society.

I direct this first of all to myself, lazy slackbird in college who only made one half-hearted attempt to enroll in Latin class, and as for Greek, wasn’t even on my radar screen. I had friends who did (some did both), and this was at a second-tier state university in a largely rural state. Classical and liberal education is a perennial. It never goes out of style. Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia was able to cite Roman history at great length in the Senate, whatever objections I might have to his politics, that was indeed inspiring. We need more of that.

 

[Bithynian]

classically-educated people

I did my undergraduate in Classics, and I have relatively advanced fluency in Latin and Greek (sufficient, at least, to write original prose compositions in the style of particular authors), along with functional fluency in Classical Hebrew and Classical Syriac.

I think it’s great that the OP wants to read the Vulgate in Latin, and I would encourage anyone with the time, patience and self-discipline to learn Latin and/or Greek. At the same time, I’ve witnessed many instances where an overly-fetishised and overly-romanticised image of Urbs Aeterna (i.e. Rome) or τὸ κλεινὸν ἄστυ to kleinon astu (‘the glorious city’, i.e. Athens) leads to fantastical perceptions of the language and overly-ambitious expectations of the language learning process. Many times people simply burn out when they realise that fluency isn’t attained in one year of reading one text (i.e. the Vulgate), but over a decade or two reading anything and everything.

In the case of the OP, he noted that he’s at the stage of memorising declensions and conjugations, which indicates that he’s very much a beginner (I was expected by my university to have memorised morphology in the first month or two of study). Fluency is still years away, and his (over-)enthusiasm ought to be tamed, corrected and focussed into something more sustainable.

 

[HomeschoolDad]

HomeschoolDad:

classically-educated people

I did my undergraduate in Classics, and I have relatively advanced fluency in Latin and Greek (sufficient, at least, to write original prose compositions in the style of particular authors), along with functional fluency in Classical Hebrew and Classical Syriac.

I think it’s great that the OP wants to read the Vulgate in Latin, and I would encourage anyone with the time, patience and self-discipline to learn Latin and/or Greek. At the same time, I’ve witnessed many instances where an overly-fetishised and overly-romanticised image of Urbs Aeterna (i.e. Rome) or τὸ κλεινὸν ἄστυ to kleinon astu (‘the glorious city’, i.e. Athens) leads to fantastical perceptions of the language and overly-ambitious expectations of the language learning process. Many times people simply burn out when they realise that fluency isn’t attained in one year of reading one text (i.e. the Vulgate), but over a decade or two reading anything and everything.

In the case of the OP, he noted that he’s at the stage of memorising declensions and conjugations, which indicates that he’s very much a beginner (I was expected by my university to have memorised morphology in the first month or two of study). Fluency is still years away, and his (over-)enthusiasm ought to be tamed, corrected and focussed into something more sustainable.

You are a Renaissance man if I’ve ever seen such a thing. This is amazing.

There needs to be a very large place in the social order for classically and liberally educated people, rather than technocrats and plutocrats. A society run by Catholic philosopher-kings should be the ideal.

 

[ThomasMT]

So to assume the Latin translation is better than the original texts is wrong.

Some of those original texts may be gone, so…