Who compiled the first Bible? (Part 2)

[souldiver]

Some people already told me the known earliest Bibles in my old topic. forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=954362&highlight=bible

So far, the known earliest Christian Bible is the 50 Bibles that is commissioned by Constantine in AD331. According to one of the posts in my old topic. Along with them are the Codex Vaticanus(AD300–325) and Codex Sinaiticus(330–360)

I revived this because what I ask now is; what is the first single volume of Bible that contained all the final list of Biblical canon books that is decided in Synods of Hippo till it finished?

Was it the Vulgate by St. Jerome? What do you know?

 

[jas84173]

Well some early church fathers such as St. Iraneus and St. Justin Martyr make references to scripture in the mid to late second century. The issue with the church before the Council of Nicaea is that regional Bibles existed, as in certain New Testaments were different than others. For instance some New Testaments contained books not in our Bible now, but omitted books that are in our Bibles. For instance many books called “The Apostolic Fathers” which were written by followers of the disciples traditionally were in some early manuscripts of the New Testament, such as the epistles of Clement, Barnabas, the Didache, and The Shepard of Hermas. Some New Testaments did not include Revelation, James, 2 Peter, Hebrews, and Jude. These books were disputed for some time. As for the Old Testament it was pretty much fixed depending on the language you spoke, The Greek Septuagint was compiled in Alexandria by Greek speaking Jews in the 1st century and the Hebrew Bible came to have it’s final Canon a little after. Jerome used both the Hebrew and Greek while translating the Latin Vulgate. He did make distinctions between the two and made note of the books in the Septuagint which were not in the Hebrew. This is why Catholic and Orthodox Bibles have more books than Jews and Protestants in their Old Testamnts( Protestants only use books accepted in the Hebrew Bible). The interesting thing to me is that Jerome had a copy of the Septuagint yet did not translate 3 or 4 Maccabees. Makes me wonder if he had a copy that just didn’t have them, Both are in the Septuagint. As for the New Testament several councils basically clarified which books were inspired and which ones weren’t. So although the Shepard was a hugely read book in the second and third centuries, it didn’t end up being included, most likely because of it’s later date and definitely takes allusions from several New Testament books, especially Revelation and 2 Timothy. With that said the authenticity of 2 Peter and Revelation to John were disputed for a very long time. Ironically the Didache could be the oldest book outside of the letters of Paul and is not included in the Bible. Scholars say it can be dated anywhere from 50-110 A.D.

 

[patrick457]

Some people already told me the known earliest Bibles in my old topic. forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=954362&highlight=bible

So far, the known earliest Christian Bible is the 50 Bibles that is commissioned by Constantine in AD331. According to one of the posts in my old topic. Along with them are the Codex Vaticanus(AD300–325) and Codex Sinaiticus(330–360)

I revived this because what I ask now is; what is the first single volume of Bible that contained all the final list of Biblical canon books that is decided in Synods of Hippo till it finished?

Was it the Vulgate by St. Jerome? What do you know?

Well, Jerome didn’t make the Vulgate per se. What he did was, first he made revisions of the local Latin translation of the gospels and Psalms used in the diocese of Rome in his day under orders of Pope Damasus. Then Damasus died, Jerome got out of Rome and ended up in Bethlehem where he lived a life of asceticism and books. At this point some friends of Jerome apparently kept sending him requests to give them Latin translations of various books of the Old Testament made from the Hebrew (as opposed to Greek). This was just a private project on Jerome’s part: he wasn’t out to make an ‘official’ Latin translation of the Old Testament, but was satisfying the curiosity of his various friends, who wanted to know what the Hebrew version (something which most Christians at the time were ignorant of) said.

Not too long after Jerome died, someone compiled the NT books he revised under Damasus and his later OT translations from the Hebrew, adding in translations of books that Jerome did not work on at all, into a single collection. This is what would become known as the Vulgate, though it wasn’t really called that until well into the Middle Ages.

The earliest manuscripts of ‘the Vulgate’ varied in their content. Some manuscripts for example contained just 72 books (lacking the book of Baruch); others contained more than 73 books. Heck, even the official version of the Sixto-Clementine Vulgate technically has more than 73 books; it has the 73 canonical books plus 3 Esdras, 2/4/Latin Esdras and the Prayer of Manasseh, which though not considered canonical, are placed in an appendix ne prorsus interirent “lest they perish entirely.”