Latin vulgate.... lousy?

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We had a guest speaker at our Bible study today. He was a well respected priest who seemed to be a brilliant theologian. He had studied for years in Rome at a (Jesuit?) university there. Everything he said was in line with Catholic teaching. Anyway, I was really jazzed about him, but then he said something that really stumped me. He said the Latin Vulgate was “a lousy translation” and St. Jerome did a “not so hot” job. He was expressing great relief that Catholics are no longer locked into studying the Vulgate only, but now are able to concentrate on the scriptures in the original languages. This is the first time I have ever heard a well-studied Catholic say such a thing. Is this a common school of thought among Catholic Biblical scholars?

I realize this was his own opinion, but I wanted to see if it is a common opinion or if he is just out in left field.

Thanks!
 
I know you used the word “translation”, but I just want to make sure.

Does the priest dis-like the “translation” of the book? Or does the priest dis-like the “commentaries” of Jerome.

Surely, there are some inaccuracies in Jerome’s translations. Whose translations don’t have mistakes? But I’ve not heard too many analysts claim it is lousy. Weren’t the later Catholic (as well as KJV) translations taken from the Latin Vulgate? If so, wouldn’t they be a product of “garbage in, garbage out”?

I have heard quite a few analysts claim that Jerome’s commentaries are off, though.
 
I think it was Pius XII who first allowed translations to come from sources other than the Vulgate (although St. Pius X got the ball rolling on this much earlier).
 
Prayer_Warrior said:
We had a guest speaker at our Bible study today. He was a well respected priest who seemed to be a brilliant theologian. He had studied for years in Rome at a (Jesuit?) university there. Everything he said was in line with Catholic teaching. Anyway, I was really jazzed about him, but then he said something that really stumped me. He said the Latin Vulgate was “a lousy translation” and St. Jerome did a “not so hot” job. He was expressing great relief that Catholics are no longer locked into studying the Vulgate only, but now are able to concentrate on the scriptures in the original languages. This is the first time I have ever heard a well-studied Catholic say such a thing. Is this a common school of thought among Catholic Biblical scholars?

I realize this was his own opinion, but I wanted to see if it is a common opinion or if he is just out in left field.

Thanks!
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How lowsy can it possibly be? when you compare translations based on the Vulgate compared to ones made from the Greek, there are diferences, to be sure. And perhaps there are infelicitous translations in the Vulgate.

But can anyone point to a Vulgate rendering, whether in the Vulgate itself, or one its English translations, where any essential doctrine is undermined in any way, or that creates an huge misunderstanding of the text?

The Latin Vulgate is the official Bible of the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church, and popes and councils had declared it free from error in faith and morals. the Church is infallible in matters of faith and dogma.

I think the priest is wrong.

I will go with what Pope Pius XII said in his encyclical, Divino Afflante Spiritu:

“21. And if the Tridentine Synod wished “that all should use as authentic” the Vulgate Latin version, this, as all know, applies only to the Latin Church and to the public use of the same Scriptures; nor does it, doubtless, in any way diminish the authority and value of the original texts. For there was no question then of these texts, but of the Latin versions, which were in circulation at that time, and of these the same Council rightly declared to be preferable that which “had been approved by its long-continued use for so many centuries in the Church.” Hence this special authority or as they say, authenticity of the Vulgate was not affirmed by the Council particularly for critical reasons, but rather because of its legitimate use in the Churches throughout so many centuries; by which use indeed the same is shown, in the sense in which the Church has understood and understands it, to be free from any error whatsoever in matters of faith and morals; so that, as the Church herself testifies and affirms, it may be quoted safely and without fear of error in disputations, in lectures and in preaching; and so its authenticity is not specified primarily as critical, but rather as juridical.”

Although the Pope says that the Vulgate is not above critical review, I do not see how any translation deemed free from errors in faith and morals can be called lousy.

I think too many of our priest are ashamed quite frankly, of some traditional beliefs that the church holds. That is why we are stuck with that shipwreck of a translation, the New American Bible. Catholic scholars are afraid of looking quaint and unscholarly in front of their mainline Protestant colleagues.

the bible scholarship in the mainline churches has destroyed them. Catholics need to get back to approaching the bible and our tradition with faith.
 
NotWorthy said:
I know you used the word “translation”, but I just want to make sure.

Does the priest dis-like the “translation” of the book? Or does the priest dis-like the “commentaries” of Jerome.

Surely, there are some inaccuracies in Jerome’s translations. Whose translations don’t have mistakes? But I’ve not heard too many analysts claim it is lousy. Weren’t the later Catholic (as well as KJV) translations taken from the Latin Vulgate? If so, wouldn’t they be a product of “garbage in, garbage out”?

I have heard quite a few analysts claim that Jerome’s commentaries are off, though.
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He clearly said translation and did not bring up the commentaries. And yes, I believe you are right that the later Catholic translations were taken from the Latin Vulgate (and also compared with the original languages, right?).
 
Perhaps this is to what he was referring? Uncomfortable Facts about the Douay-Rheims by Jimmy Akin. Note especially the paragraph “Douay-Rheims Onlyism”. For those who don’t want to read the entire article:
They argue that the Vulgate is superior on four grounds: (1) It is the official Bible of the Catholic Church; (2) it has been declared free of moral or theological error, (3) Jerome had access to manuscripts that we do not have today, and (4) he was a stupendous translator.
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…The first point is not true…But while the Vulgate in its latest edition—the “Neo-Vulgate” promulgated by John Paul II—has a privileged position based on its use in ecclesiastical documents, the law has changed such that there is no “official” translation of Scripture for the Latin rite…The second point is true—ecclesiastical documents have acknowleged that the Vulgate is free of doctrinal and moral error. However, not containing doctrinal and moral error is not the same thing as being a perfect translation…The third point is true—Jerome did have manuscripts that we don’t have today—but this is misleading. He also lacked manuscripts that we do have, and he lacked the critical apparatus we have for sorting through textual variants…The fourth point—that Jerome was a stupendous translator—is true, especially for his era. He also had the advantage of being much closer to the time the biblical dialects were spoken, though koina Greek (the dialect the New Testament is written in) already had evolved into a new dialect before his birth. But to his disadvantage, Jerome learned these languages in a time before dictionaries and foreign language grammars had been invented. As a result, if a translator didn’t know a rare or unusual word or grammatical form, he couldn’t look it up.
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(emphasis added)
 
NotWorthy said:
Whose translations don’t have mistakes? But I’ve not heard too many analysts claim it is lousy. Weren’t the later Catholic (as well as KJV) translations taken from the Latin Vulgate? If so, wouldn’t they be a product of “garbage in, garbage out”?
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Actually, the KJV was translated from the original languages. The DR was translated from the Vulgate.
 
Nazianzen said:
Actually, the KJV was translated from the original languages. The DR was translated from the Vulgate.
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I have a Church of Christ friend that once told me that. He’s pretty much a Bible expert. I’ll try and verify that with him.
 
kell0618 said:
Perhaps this is to what he was referring? Uncomfortable Facts about the Douay-Rheims by Jimmy Akin. Note especially the paragraph “Douay-Rheims Onlyism”. For those who don’t want to read the entire article:

(emphasis added)
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I do not buy that Jerome did not understand the languages. He knew Hebrew and Greek well. Also, what manuscripts were he missing that were so critical? The Codex Vaticanicus, Codex Sinaiticus? They contradict each other very often, and Alexandricus features excessive ommisions.

Yes, being free from moral and doctrinal error does not mean the text is perfect with no mistakes whatsoever, but if it is indeed free from moral and doctrinal error, again, how bad can it be?

Akin is right about not wanting Catholics to adopt a Douay Rheims onlyism, analogous to some Protestant fundamentalists have a King James onlyism. But that does not mean the Vulgate and DRV are not good bibles.

There also much better versions of the Bible available for Catholics than the NAB, besides the Douay Rheims: The Catholic RSV, both original and second editions; the Jerusalem and New Jerusalem Bible, the Confraternity New Testament, the Knox New Testament.

To call the Vulgate a lousy translation is flatly wrong, and I am tired of priests and theologians bashing tradition.
 
lanceg said:
Akin is right about not wanting Catholics to adopt a Douay Rheims onlyism, analogous to some Protestant fundamentalists have a King James onlyism. But that does not mean the Vulgate and DRV are not good bibles.
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Actually, Akin says as much.
 
Excuse me…I’m an engineer, not a language major. But this just doesn’t make sense to me.

We’re sitting here 2000 years after the fact in a world where things change very quickly. Nobody speaks idomatic Greek, or Latin, or Aramaic, or Hebrew of the year 33AD.

I use common expressions and references from my childhood (that everybody understood at the time) but my kids have absolutely no clue what they mean. [Any of you over 50 with kids should have encountered this by now].

So a scholar of 2007 is going to sit down with the Greek originals and come up with a better translation than somebody who did it in the late 300’s?

I just don’t buy it.
 
Hi All,

To qualify the Vulgate as a “lousy” translation is at at the very least disrespectful. Throughout the centuries, it has been recognized as a masterpiece of translation and even of Latinism.

But St. Jerome did not work in a vacuum. He was part of a Latin Catholic community, which had used other Latin texts for three centuries. These biblical texts had been done piecemeal. Some by experts, some by amateurs. Some indeed were “lousy”. To get an idea of what St. Jerome had to deal with, let us read a couple of excerpts from his letter to Pope Damasus on the New Testament :
You urge me to make a new work from the old, and that I might sit as a kind of judge over the versions of Scripture dispersed throughout the whole world, and that I might resolve which among such vary, and which of these they may be which truly agree with the Greek. Pious work, yet perilous presumption, to change the old and aging language of the world , to carry it back to infancy, for to judge others is to invite judging by all of them. Is there indeed any learned or unlearned man, who when he picks up the volume in his hand, and takes a single taste of it, and sees what he will have read to differ, might not instantly raise his voice, calling me a forger, proclaiming me now to be a sacrilegious man, that I might dare to add, to change, or to correct anything in the old books?
…

Therefore, this present little preface promises only the four Gospels, the order of which is Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, revised in comparison with only old Greek books. They do not disagree with many familiar Latin readings, as we have kept our pen in control, but only those in which the sense will have been seen to have changed (from the Greek) are corrected; the rest remain as they have been.
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For full text see
tertullian.net/fathers/jerome_preface_gospels.htm

As is evident from the above, St. Jerome was sort of forced to keep some of the old with the new. This also applies to the Old Testament, especially to the Psalms, which were so familiar to all.

There was a rather bitter exchange between St. Augustine and St. Jerome (bitter at least on St. Jerome’s part) on the new translation, which St. Augustine had objections to. You can read it by clicking

bible-researcher.com/vulgate2.html

No translation will ever satifsfy everyone. That is in the very nature of a translation. As the Italians say : Traduttore, traditore (trranslator equals traitor).

Verbum
 
I have an copy of the Jerome Vulgate, the newer Vatican Vulgate and just about every Douay-Rheims, RSVCE, and NAB out there. There is nothing wrong with the Vulgate. Yes, there are differences between the vulgates and modern translations.

I think you’ll see more whinning about the Vulgates just because: 1) they’re making a comeback (note, for instance, the success of the Tweedale Vulgate which Baronius Press has decided to print in a beautiful edition!), 2) the return of the Latin Mass to perhaps millions of Catholics makes modernists nervous as all heck, and 3) the recent resurgence in interest in Latin among Catholics and non-Catholics alike.

I recommend the Jerome Vulgate over the current Vatican. It’s more tradition. Sadly it is harder to get - at least until Baronius finishes its edition sometime this year or next.
 
vladimir998 said:
Sadly it is harder to get - at least until Baronius finishes its edition sometime this year or next.
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If anyone can’t wait, an edition of the *Vulgata Clementina *is currently available through the [post=1691933]American Classical League[/post]. (Which edition includes cross-referencing footnotes, maps, et cetera)

tee
 
I concur with what everyone has said and it would appear that although some priests are ‘whiny’ about the Vulgate, it seems out of the ordinary that one would call it lousy. I guess I’m a little surprised at these words coming from the lips of this particular priest. He was at least in his mid-seventies and, as I said earlier, had done a great deal of study in Rome. I suppose I expected him to be a bit more traditional. Oh well. I will chalk it up to his personal opinion (misguided as it may be) and I will continue to study the various translations on my own.
 
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