Was Jeromes Vulgate inferior to the African latin bible already in use?

[Chris_McAvoy]

For some time I have thought that there was an inferiority to the latin vulgate bible, whether the errors to it are in the edition originally made by Jerome or are the result of some later editing of his original I do not know. The reason I believe that the vulgate is inferior to the greek septuagint is because Mr Anthony Dragani has led me to believe that the latin church mistranslates the greek book of Romans 5:12 to mean “in whom all have sinned.” instead what it originally ment which is “because of which (death) all have sinned.” see east2west.org/doctrine.htm#Sin

I believe that this mistranslation transforms ancestral sin into original sin and creates half the conflicts seen today between eastern and western theology. (I should mention that Mr Dragani appears to see no conflict in translation and sees both as equal which I disagree with)

This brings me to the question I have for other brothers and sisters of this forum. Were the original Proconsular African anti-Jeromian Latin Gospels better translations of the greek septuagint than either Jeromes original or later Jerome vulgate revisions or were they worse? To what degree did the different uses of the bible have on the Western Church? When it was still in greek compared to the various early latin translations, which helped bring the west iinto it’s own unique theology the most, and whuch brought a break with greek theology the most?

Proconsular African anti-Jeromian Latin Gospel book

Even earliest translations of the Bible in Latin are African
It would also be interesting to hear the experts on the question of the language, especially on the Vetus Latina. It is said in fact that Africa possessed the earliest Latin versions of a certain number of books of the Bible before Jerome gives the Latin world his celebrated translation, that was to become the point of reference for everybody in the Latin world up to the liturgical reform of Vatican II.
Again here I shall leave to the proper people the task of explaining in greater detail, but for quite some time the specialists have been attributing a determining role to Christian Africa in the first translations of the Bible from Greek to Latin. Pierre Maurice Bogaert (La Bible latine des origines au Moyen-Âge in Revue Theologique de Louvain, 19 [1988], p. 137) writes: « When the need began to be felt – certainly from the mid 2nd century in Roman Africa – the Bible was translated from Greek into Latin… Till the opposite is proved I am for the African origin [of the translations] rather than Roman or Italian». It is also thought that all these early translations were made for the Jewish community in North Africa, for the needs of its own faithful.
** It’s true that those early translations will often have been later replaced by Jerome’s, but their traces were to remain important in many books of the Bible, such for example as the book of Psalms.
The Latin West, I repeat, owes Roman Africa some of its earliest biblical translations**.

Goulven Madec recently (Lectures augustiniennes, Paris 2001, pp. 99-109) proposed a study on the Christian influences that worked on Augustine, and noted the importance of the Latin references, more numerous than those of the Greek Fathers. Hilary of Poitiers, at a certain point an exile in the East, and Ambrose are very much more indebted to their Greek sources than was Augustine. Augustine wanted to be fully faithful to the tradition of the great Church, but he rooted his theology mainly in his personal reading of Scripture and in his own experience.
Even his reference to the sources of Greek philosophy is mediated by the testimony of two Latins, Simplicianus and Victorinus, rather than by that of the Greek Fathers. With Augustine the Latin West had achieved its theological freedom and with that its own Christian individuality also.

from: 30giorni.it/us/articolo.asp?id=3553

 

[jj2011]

To me it’s not even close; the Vulgate is more accurate than the Old Latin where I have had the chance to make a comparison.

 

[spbonner]

The reason I believe that the vulgate is inferior to the greek septuagint is because Mr Anthony Dragani has led me to believe that the latin church mistranslates the greek book of Romans 5:12

The Septuagint does not include the St Paul’s Letter to the Romans, or any other book of the New Testament for that matter. The Septuagint is the Greek translation of Jewish Scripture that was completed c. 100 BC. The Septuagint was in common use at the time of Christ, and was the version primarily quoted in the New Testament.

For more information about the Septuagint, go here.