Latin Vulgate Translations

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I’m a college student in third semester Latin. We are currently reading St. Augustine’s Confessions in class. I’m ready to start working with the Vulgate, but I’m not sure which version to buy. There seem to be many Latin versions, most of which are out of print. I can’t seem to find anything from the Catholic publishers I’m familiar with. Amazon has a few listed, but doesn’t give enough information about them.

In English, I have the RSV-CE, NAB, and Douay-Rheims. At first, I was surprised at the differences in translation between them. Are Latin versions the same way? Which should I buy? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
 
Caesar517 said:
I’m a college student in third semester Latin. We are currently reading St. Augustine’s Confessions in class. I’m ready to start working with the Vulgate, but I’m not sure which version to buy. There seem to be many Latin versions, most of which are out of print. I can’t seem to find anything from the Catholic publishers I’m familiar with. Amazon has a few listed, but doesn’t give enough information about them.

In English, I have the RSV-CE, NAB, and Douay-Rheims. At first, I was surprised at the differences in translation between them. Are Latin versions the same way? Which should I buy? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
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Don’t let “Out of Print” deter you. Get an old Sixto-Clementine Vulgate at a used book store for $cheap, or look for it online (I don’t mean a website that has the text represented electronically on a webpage; I mean a website through which you can buy old books, such as ebay, half.com, amazon, abebooks, Loome, etc.) because that recension is the basis for the Douay-Rheims.

The German Bible Society’s critical edition as well as the Vatican’s own Biblia Sacra Nova Vulgata Editio should also be floating around out there in cyberspace for less than what you would pay new.

Keep in mind the RSV and NAB are translations of the Greek and differ accordingly.
 
There’s the Clementine Vulgate project.

Or here’s a side by side Clementine/Douay version.

The price on the first one I might add appears quite good. The second too truly, though it is higher, when you consider the quality.

There’re a quite a few variations used and on auction sites too… and not expensive at all for such old heirloom type books… well… I’m hope you’ll get better informed suggestions but this is a start…

For my part I like the side-by-side of the second one especially. But then one can just open up two Bibles at once too.
 
The New Vulgate is kind of pointless (to me anyway). Traditionalists love Latin but will use the Clementine Vulgate, which is the basis for the DR, and also (with variations) the basis for the traditional liturgy.

Less traditional folks strongly tend to use the vernacular anyway, and so the “Nova Vulgata” is pretty much used for (as far as I know) things like Biblical citations for Church documents, etc. I wouldn’t devote much time to studying it in and of itself.

Another idea might be to supplement your study by learning the Latin of the liturgy and the reading in the Missal.

God bless you for learning our sacred language.
 
I would, second the recommendation against using the Nova Vulgata. The whole point of using the Vulgate, as I see it (and, interestingly, as the authors of Liturgiam Authenticam saw it, though not realizing their failure to achieve it), is to put oneself in touch with the translation that informed so much of Latin theology throughout the centuries. There were different editions of ‘the Vulgate’ throughout the Middle Ages, and it can be hard to pin down precisely what sort of text a theologian is working with, so you’re never going to get the exact Bible used by Aquinas (who doesn’t seem to have confined himself to one Latin translation at any rate). So since the (Sixto-)Clementine Vulgate standardized things from the late 16th-century on, that’s the text to go with; you get a high probability of any given verse matching a historical theologian’s text, anyway.
 
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