plural in the Greek) was made up of separate volumes, and pandects (Bible in a single
volume) were a later development.
The varying forms of translation and difficulties in the Latin text persuaded Jerome, at
the behest of Pope Damasus I, to undertake a new translation, this time from the original
languages. This Vulgate text (vulgata ‘popular’) became the standard Bible in the Latin
West from about the 6th century to the Reformation. However, although he is responsible
for the majority of the text, Jerome is not the sole author, nor did he accord each book the
same attention. Since the text of the Old Latin Old Testament was a translation of a
translation, Jerome concentrated his energies here. Most of the Vulgate Old Testament is
his work, with the exception of the Psalter (which is a corrected Old Latin text) and the
five books that were included in the canon by Greek-speaking Jews but were not in the
Hebrew canon: Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, 1 and 2 Maccabees. These retain the Old
Latin text.
The text of the Psalter, with its varying traditions, involved more than one attempt at a
solution. It is possible that the text of the Roman Psalter (that one commonly used by all
the churches in Rome) is Jerome’s first, hur-ried, attempt at a translation. His first
definite attempt is the Gallican Psalter, based on the Hexapla text of manuscripts
collected by Origen at Caesarea (known as Hexapla from its six-column format for
comparing Hebrew and Greek texts). This was the version preferred by Alcuin, and, since
it was, broadly, the text of the 13th-century Paris Bible and the basis of the first printed
Bibles, it was the normal text for centuries. Jerome’s final attempt at a Psalter translation,
the “Hebrew,” is so called because Jerome made it afresh, from the original Hebrew. This
never (except for a time in Spain) achieved the popularity of the Gallican Psalter
translation.
For the New Testament, Jerome himself seems merely to have revised the Gospels,
perfunctorily at times, with the Greek text in hand. The rest of the books were revised by
other scholars whose identities remain unknown, although the earliest references to the
revised text are found in Pelagius. As well, Jerome wrote a series of prologues to the
books or groups of books of the entire Bible, and these were commonly circulated with
the text itself, becoming almost an integral part of it. The order of the books is variable.
Jerome seems to have begun the project with the simplest task, the revision of the
Gospels, ca. 382. The Gallican Psalter was completed ca. 392, and the Hebrew Psalter
and the rest of the Old Testament were done by ca. 407. The new version was not an
immediate success, although by the late 6th century it seems to have become the standard
text, a position that it retained until the Reformation. It was declared the authentic biblical
text by the Council of Trent in the 16th century.
Lesley J.Smith
[See also: BIBLE, CHRISTIAN INTERPRETATION OF; BIBLE, JEWISH
INTERPRETATION OF]
Berger, Samuel. Histoire de la Vulgate pendant les premiers siècles du moyen âge. Paris: Hachette,
1893.
Fischer, Bonifatius. Lateinische Bibelhandschriften im frühen Mittelalters. Freiburg: Herder, 1985.
——. Beiträge zur Geschichte der lateinischen Bibeltexte. Freiburg: Herder, 1986.
——. Novae concordantiae Bibliorum Sacrorum iuxta Vulgatam versionem critice editam. 5 vols.
Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog, 1977.
——, with Herman J.Frede, Jean Gribomont, H.F.D.Sparks, Walter Thiele, eds. Biblia Sacra iuxta
Vulgatam versionem. 2 vols. 3rd ed. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1985.
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