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Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Tues, Dec 11, 2012 - Litany Lane Blog: Doctrine, Isaiah 40:1-11, Psalms 96, Matthew 18:12-14, St Damasus, Vulgate


Tuesday, December 11, 2012 - Litany Lane Blog:

Doctrine, Isaiah 40:1-11, Psalms 96, Matthew 18:12-14, St Damasus, Vulgate

Good Day Bloggers!  Happy Advent!
Wishing everyone a Blessed Week!
Year of Faith - October 11, 2012 - November 24, 2013

P.U.S.H. (Pray Until Serenity Happens). It has a remarkable way of producing solace, peace, patience and tranquility and of course resolution...God's always available 24/7.

The world begins and ends everyday for someone. The "Armageddon" is a pagan belief inspired by the evil one to create chaos and doubt in God. Trust in God, for He creates, He does not destroy and only God knows the hour of His beloved Son, Jesus Christ's second Coming, another chance at eternal salvation.  Think about how merciful God truly is as he keeps offering us second chances. He even gives the evil one a multitude of chances to atone. Simply be prepared by living everyday as a gift: Trust in God; Honor Jesus Mercy through the sacraments of Reconciliation and Eucharist; and Utilize the Gifts of the Holy Spirit: We are all human. We all experience birth, life and death. We all have flaws but we also all have the gift knowledge and free will as well, make the most of it. Life on earth is a stepping to our eternal home in Heaven. Its your choice whether to rise towards eternal light or lost to eternal darkness. Material items, though needed for sustenance and survival on earth are of earthly value only. The only thing that passes from this earth to Purgatory and/or Heaven is our Soul, our Spirit...it's God's perpetual gift to us...Embrace it, treasure it, nurture it, protect it...

"Raise not a hand to another unless it is to offer in peace and goodwill." ~ Zarya Parx 2012


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December 2, 2012 Message From Our Lady of Medjugorje to World:

Dear children, with motherly love and motherly patience anew I call you to live according to my Son, to spread His peace and His love, so that, as my apostles, you may accept God's truth with all your heart and pray for the Holy Spirit to guide you. Then you will be able to faithfully serve my Son, and show His love to others with your life. According to the love of my Son and my love, as a mother, I strive to bring all of my strayed children into my motherly embrace and to show them the way of faith. My children, help me in my motherly battle and pray with me that sinners may become aware of their sins and repent sincerely. Pray also for those whom my Son has chosen and consecrated in His name. Thank you." 


November 25, 2012 Message From Our Lady of Medjugorje to World:

“Dear children! In this time of grace, I call all of you to renew prayer. Open yourselves to Holy Confession so that each of you may accept my call with the whole heart. I am with you and I protect you from the ruin of sin, but you must open yourselves to the way of conversion and holiness, that your heart may burn out of love for God. Give Him time and He will give Himself to you and thus, in the will of God you will discover the love and the joy of living. Thank you for having responded to my call.” ~ Blessed Virgin Mary


November 02, 2012 Message From Our Lady of Medjugorje to World:

"Dear children, as a mother I implore you to persevere as my apostles. I am praying to my Son to give you Divine wisdom and strength. I am praying that you may discern everything around you according to God’s truth and to strongly resist everything that wants to distance you from my Son. I am praying that you may witness the love of the Heavenly Father according to my Son. My children, great grace has been given to you to be witnesses of God’s love. Do not take the given responsibility lightly. Do not sadden my motherly heart. As a mother I desire to rely on my children, on my apostles. Through fasting and prayer you are opening the way for me to pray to my Son for Him to be beside you and for His name to be holy through you. Pray for the shepherds because none of this would be possible without them. Thank you." ~ Blessed Virgin Mary


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Today's Word:  doctrine  do·trine  [dok-trin]


Origin:  1350–1400; Middle English  < Anglo-French  < Latin doctrīna  teaching, equivalent to doct ( o ) r doctor + -īna -ine2

noun
1. a particular principle, position, or policy taught or advocated, as of a religion or government: Catholic doctrines; the Monroe Doctrine.
2. something that is taught; teachings collectively: religious doctrine.
3. a body or system of teachings relating to a particular subject: the doctrine of the Catholic Church.
 
 


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Today's Old Testament Reading -  Psalms 96:1-3, 10, 11-13

1 Sing a new song to Yahweh! Sing to Yahweh, all the earth!
2 Sing to Yahweh, bless his name! Proclaim his salvation day after day,
3 declare his glory among the nations, his marvels to every people!
10 Say among the nations, 'Yahweh is king.' The world is set firm, it cannot be moved. He will judge the nations with justice.
11 Let the heavens rejoice and earth be glad! Let the sea thunder, and all it holds!
12 Let the countryside exult, and all that is in it, and all the trees of the forest cry out for joy,
13 at Yahweh's approach, for he is coming, coming to judge the earth; he will judge the world with saving justice, and the nations with constancy.


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Today's Epistle -   Isaiah 40:1-11

1 'Console my people, console them,' says your God.
2 'Speak to the heart of Jerusalem and cry to her that her period of service is ended, that her guilt has been atoned for, that, from the hand of Yahweh, she has received double punishment for all her sins.'
3 A voice cries, 'Prepare in the desert a way for Yahweh. Make a straight highway for our God across the wastelands.
4 Let every valley be filled in, every mountain and hill be levelled, every cliff become a plateau, every escarpment a plain;
5 then the glory of Yahweh will be revealed and all humanity will see it together, for the mouth of Yahweh has spoken.'
6 A voice said, 'Cry aloud!' and I said, 'What shall I cry?' -'All humanity is grass and all its beauty like the wild flower's.
7 The grass withers, the flower fades when the breath of Yahweh blows on them. (The grass is surely the people.)
8 The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God remains for ever.'
9 Go up on a high mountain, messenger of Zion. Shout as loud as you can, messenger of Jerusalem! Shout fearlessly, say to the towns of Judah, 'Here is your God.'
10 Here is Lord Yahweh coming with power, his arm maintains his authority, his reward is with him and his prize precedes him.
11 He is like a shepherd feeding his flock, gathering lambs in his arms, holding them against his breast and leading to their rest the mother ewes.



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Today's Gospel Reading - Matthew 18:12-14 

 
'Tell me. Suppose a man has a hundred sheep and one of them strays; will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hillside and go in search of the stray? In truth I tell you, if he finds it, it gives him more joy than do the ninety-nine that did not stray at all. Similarly, it is never the will of your Father in heaven that one of these little ones should be lost.
  
 
Reflection
• A parable is not a teaching to be received in a passive way or just to keep in the memory, rather it is an invitation to participate in the discovery of truth. Jesus begins by asking: “What do you think?” A parable is a question with a response which is not defined. The response depends on the reaction and participation of the listeners. Let us then, seek, the answer to this parable of the lost sheep.

• Jesus tells a very brief story and in a very simple way: a shepherd had 100 sheep, he lost one, and leaves the 99 on the mountain and goes to look for the lost sheep. And Jesus asks: “What do you think?” That is: “Would you do the same?” Which would have been the response of the shepherds and of the other persons who were listening to Jesus tell this story? Would they do the same thing? Which is my answer to Jesus’ question? Let us think well before answering.

• If you had 100 sheep and you lost one, what would you do? We should not forget that mountains are places which are very difficult to climb, with deep precipices, where dangerous animals live and where robbers hide. And you cannot forget that you have lost only one sheep, and therefore, you still have 99! You have lost very little. Would you abandon the other 99 on those mountains? Perhaps, would not only a person with little common sense do what the shepherd of the parable of Jesus did? Think well!

• The shepherds who heard Jesus’ story, perhaps thought and commented: “Only a shepherd without judgment would act that way!” Surely, they would have asked Jesus: “Jesus, excuse us, but who is that shepherd whom you are speaking about? To do that which he has done, is foolish!”

• Jesus answers: “This Shepherd is God, our Father, and the lost sheep is you!” In other words, the one who does this action is God moved by the great love for the little ones, for the poor, the excluded! Only a very great love is capable to do something so foolish. The love with which God loves us exceeds prudence and good human sense. The love of God commits foolish things. Thank God! If it were not like this, we would be lost!
 
 
Personal questions
• Place yourself in the place of the little lost sheep and enliven your faith and your hope. You are that sheep!
• Take the place of the shepherd and verify, if your love for the little ones is true.
   
Reference: Courtesy of Order of Carmelites, www.ocarm.org.



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Featured Item of the Day from Litany Lane





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Saint of the Day:  Pope Saint Damasus I


Feast Day:  December 11
Patron Saint:  


Pope Saint Damasus I
Pope Saint Damasus I was the Bishop of Rome from 366 to 384. He was born around 305, probably near the city of Egitania, Lusitania, in what is the present-day village of Idanha-a-Velha, Portugal, then part of the Western Roman Empire. His life coincided with the rise of Emperor Constantine I and the reunion and re-division of the Western and Eastern Roman Empires, which is associated with the legitimization of Christianity and its later adoption as the official religion of the Roman state in 380.

Damasus is known to have been raised in the service of the Basilica of Saint Lawrence outside the Walls in Rome, and following the death of Pope Liberius, he succeeded to the papacy amidst factional violence. A group of Damasus' supporters, previously loyal to his opponent Felix, attacked and killed rivals loyal to Liberius' deacon Ursinus in a riot that required the intervention of Emperor Valentinian I to quell.

Damasus faced accusations of murder and adultery (despite having not been married[2]) in his early years as pope. The neutrality of these claims has come into question with some suggesting that the accusations were motivated by the schismatic conflict with the supporters of Arianism. His personal problems were contrasted with his religious accomplishments, which included restoring Saint Lawrence outside the Walls, encouraging his personal secretary Saint Jerome in his Vulgate translation of the Bible, and presiding over the Council of Rome in 382, which may have set down the canon of Scripture (based upon the Decretum Gelasianum, which some consider a sixth century work[3]). He also did much to encourage the veneration of the Christian martyrs.[4]

Early life

Damasus' parents were Antonius, a priest at the Church of St. Lawrence (San Lorenzo) in Rome, and Laurentia. During Damasus' early years, Constantine I rose to rule the Western Roman Empire. As emperor, he issued the Edict of Milan (313), which granted religious freedom to Christians in all parts of the Roman Empire. A crisis precipitated by the rejection of religious freedom by Licinius, Emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire, in favor of paganism resulted in a civil war in 324 that placed Constantine firmly in control of a reunited Empire. This led to the establishment of Christian religious supremacy in Constantinople and gradually led to a See in that city which sought to rival the authority of the Roman See. Damasus would have been in his twenties at the time.

Rise in the Church

When Pope Liberius was banished by Emperor Constantius II to Berea in 354, Damasus was archdeacon of the Roman church and followed Liberius into exile, though he immediately returned to Rome. During the period before Liberius' return, Damasus had a great share in the government of the church.[5]


The succession crisis

In the early Church, new Bishops of Rome were elected or chosen by the clergy and the people of the diocese in the presence of the other bishops in the province, which was the manner customarily used in other dioceses. While this simple method worked well in a small community of Christians unified by persecution, as the congregation grew in size, the acclamation of a new bishop was fraught with division, and rival claimants and a certain class hostility between patrician and plebeian candidates unsettled some episcopal elections. At the same time, 4th-century emperors expected each new pope-elect to be presented to them for approval, which sometimes led to state domination of the Church's internal affairs.

On the death of Liberius on 24 September 366, one faction supported Ursinus (or Ursicinus), who had served as deacon to Liberius, while another faction, previously loyal to the Antipope Felix II, supported Damasus. The upper-class partisans of Felix supported the election of Damasus, but the opposing supporters of Liberius, the deacons and laity, supported Ursinus. The two were elected simultaneously (Damasus' election was held in San Lorenzo in Lucina) in an atmosphere of rioting. Supporters already clashed at the beginning of October. Such was the violence and bloodshed that the two prefects of the city were called in to restore order, and after a first setback, when they were driven to the suburbs and a massacre of 137 was perpetrated in the basilica of Sicininus (the modern Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore), the prefects banished Ursinus to Gaul.[6] There was further violence when he returned, which continued after Ursinus was exiled again.

Church historians such as St. Jerome and Rufinus, championed Damasus. At a synod in 378, Ursinus was condemned and Damasus exonerated and declared the true pope. The former antipope continued to intrigue against Damasus for the next few years and unsuccessfully attempted to revive his claim on Damasus's death. Ursinus was among the Arian party in Milan, according to Ambrose.[7]

This dissension climaxed with a riot which led to a three-day massacre and to the rare intervention of Emperor Valentinian I to uphold public order. Damasus prevailed, but only with the support of the city prefect. Once he was securely consecrated Bishop of Rome, his men attacked Ursinus and his remaining supporters who were seeking refuge in the Liberian basilica, resulting in a massacre of 137 supporters of Ursinus. Damasus was also accused of murder before a later prefect, but his friends secured the personal intervention of the emperor to rescue him from this humiliation. The reputations of both Damasus and the Roman church in general suffered greatly due to these two unseemly incidents.  Edward Gibbon writes, "The enemies of Damasus styled him Auriscalpius Matronarum, the ladies' ear-scratcher."[8]


Association with Jerome, defense of the Church against schism


St. Jerome, by Peter Paul Rubens, 1625–1630
Damasus I was active in defending the Catholic Church against the threat of schisms. In two Roman synods (368 and 369) he condemned Apollinarianism and Macedonianism, and sent legates to the First Council of Constantinople that was convoked in 381 to address these heresies.

Pope Damasus appointed St Jerome as his confidential secretary. Writing in 409, Jerome remarked, "A great many years ago when I was helping Damasus, bishop of Rome with his ecclesiastical correspondence, and writing his answers to the questions referred to him by the councils of the east and west..."[9] If "east and west" do not betray the passage as an interpolation, Jerome spent three years (382–385) in Rome in close intercourse with Pope Damasus and the leading Christians. Invited there originally to a synod of 382 convened to end the schism of Antioch, he made himself indispensable to the pope, and took a prominent place in his councils.

In order to put an end to the marked divergences in the western texts of that period, Damasus encouraged the highly respected scholar to revise the available Old Latin versions of the Bible into a more accurate Latin on the basis of the Greek New Testament and the Septuagint, resulting in the Vulgate. Jerome devoted a very brief notice to Damasus in his De Viris Illustribus, written after Damasus' death: "he had a fine talent for making verses and published many brief works in heroic metre. He died in the reign of the emperor Theodosius at the age of almost eighty".[10] St. Damasus sat in the Chair of St. Peter for eighteen years and two months. His feast day is 11 December.

Emperor Gratian

The reign of Gratian, during Damasus' papacy, forms an important epoch in ecclesiastical history, since during that period (359–383), Catholic Christianity for the first time became dominant throughout the empire. Under the influence of Ambrose, Gratian prohibited pagan worship at Rome; refused to wear the insignia of the pontifex maximus as unbefitting a Christian; removed the Altar of Victory from the Senate at Rome and confiscated its revenues, despite protests from the pagan members of the Senate; forbade legacies of real property to the Vestals; and abolished other privileges belonging to them and to the pontiffs.


Relations with other churches

The Eastern Church, in the person of St. Basil of Caesarea, earnestly sought the aid and encouragement of Damasus against an apparently triumphant Arianism. Damasus, however, harbored some degree of suspicion against the great Cappadocian Doctor of the Church. In the matter of the Meletian Schism at Antioch, Damasus—together with Pope St. Athanasius of Alexandria and his successor, Peter II of Alexandria—sympathized with the party of Paulinus as more sincerely representative of Nicene orthodoxy. On the death of Meletius he sought to secure the succession for Paulinus and to exclude Flavian.[11] He supported the appeal of the Christian senators to Emperor Gratian for the removal of the altar of Victory from the Senate House,[12] and lived to welcome the famous edict of Theodosius I, "De fide Catholica" (27 February 380),[13] which proclaimed as the religion of the Roman State that doctrine which Saint Peter had preached to the Romans and of which Damasus was head.[14]

During his papacy, Peter II of Alexandria was obliged for a while to seek refuge in Rome from the persecuting Arians. He was received by Damasus, who sympathised with him and gave him support against the Arians.[14] This reconciled the relations between the Church of Rome and the Church of Antioch, which both supported the Church of Alexandria.

Devotion to Saint Laurence

Damasus rebuilt or repaired a church named for Saint Laurence, known as San Lorenzo fuori le Mura ("St Lawrence outside the walls"), which by the 7th century was a station on the itineraries of the graves of the Roman martyrs.
Damasus' devotion for the Roman martyr is attested also by the tradition according to which the pope built a church devoted to Laurence in his own house, San Lorenzo in Damaso.

Letters of Jerome to Damasus

Further information: Letter of Jerome to Pope Damasus
The alleged letters from Jerome to Damasus have sometimes been adduced as examples of the primacy of the seat of Peter:
…Yet, though your greatness terrifies me, your kindness attracts me. From the priest I demand the safe-keeping of the victim, from the shepherd the protection due to the sheep. Away with all that is overweening; let the state of Roman majesty withdraw. My words are spoken to the successor of the fisherman, to the disciple of the cross. As I follow no leader save Christ, so I communicate with none but your blessedness, that is with the chair of Peter. For this, I know, is the rock on which the church is built! This is the house where alone the paschal lamb can be rightly eaten. This is the ark of Noah, and he who is not found in it shall perish when the flood prevails. But since by reason of my sins I have betaken myself to this desert which lies between Syria and the uncivilized waste, I cannot, owing to the great distance between us, always ask of your sanctity the holy thing of the Lord. Consequently I here follow the Egyptian confessors who share your faith, and anchor my frail craft under the shadow of their great argosies. I know nothing of Vitalis; I reject Meletius; I have nothing to do with Paulinus. He that gathers not with you scatters; he that is not of Christ is of Antichrist.[15]

References

      1. ^ The Liturgy of the Hours, Vol. I, 11 December.
      2. ^ M. Walsh, Butler's Lives of the Saints (HarperCollins Publishers: New York, 1991), 413.
      3. ^ Bruce, F. F. (1988). The Canon of Scripture. Intervarsity Press. pp. 234
      4. ^ M. Walsh, Butler's Lives, 414.
      5. ^ ST DAMASUS, POPE, CONFESSOR (A.D. 305–384) from Eternal Word Television Network
      6. ^ Ammianus Marcellinus, 27.3.12; 27.9.9. Translated by J.C. Rolfe, Ammianus Marcellinus (Cambridge: Loeb Classical Library, 1939), pp. 19, 61ff
      7. ^ Ambrose, Epistles iv
      8. ^ Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire chapter 25, n. 83
      9. ^ Epistle cxx.10
      10. ^ De Viris Illustribus, ch. 103
      11. ^ Socrates, Historia Ecclesiastica 5.15
      12. ^ Ambrose, Epistles xvii, n. 10
      13. ^ Codex Theodosianus XVI, 1, 2
      14. ^ a b  "Pope St. Damasus I". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. 1913.
      15. ^ Letter of Jerome to Pope Damasus, 376, 2


           
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          Today's  Snippet  I:  Vulgate

          The Vulgate is a late 4th-century Latin translation of the Bible. It was largely the work of St. Jerome, who was commissioned by Pope Damasus I in 382 to make a revision of the old Latin translations. By the 13th century this revision had come to be called the versio vulgata, that is, the "commonly used translation",[1] and ultimately it became the definitive and officially promulgated Latin version of the Bible in the Roman Catholic Church. Its widespread adoption led to the eclipse of earlier Latin translations, which are collectively referred to as the Vetus Latina.

          Authorship

          The Vulgate has a compound text that is not entirely the work of Jerome. Its components include:
          • Jerome's independent translation from the Hebrew: the books of the Hebrew Bible, usually not including his translation of the Psalms. This was completed in 405.
          • Translation from the Greek of Theodotion by Jerome: The three additions to the Book of Daniel; Song of the Three Children, Story of Susanna, and The Idol Bel and the Dragon. The Song of the Three Children was retained within the narrative of Daniel, the other two additions Jerome moved to the end of the book.
          • Translation from the Septuagint by Jerome: the Rest of Esther. Jerome gathered all these additions together at the end of the book of Esther.
          • Translation from the Hexaplar Septuagint by Jerome: his Gallican version of the Book of Psalms. Jerome's Hexaplaric revisions of other books of Old Testament continued to circulate in Italy for several centuries, but only Job and fragments of other books survive.
          • Free translation by Jerome from a secondary Aramaic version: Tobias and Judith.
          • Revision by Jerome of the Old Latin, corrected with reference to the oldest Greek manuscripts available: the Gospels.
          • Old Latin, more or less revised by a person or persons unknown: Baruch, Letter of Jeremiah, 3 Esdras, Acts, Epistles, and the Apocalypse.
          • Old Latin, wholly unrevised: Epistle to the Laodiceans, Prayer of Manasses, 4 Esdras, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, and 1 and 2 Maccabees.

          Translation

          Jerome did not embark on the work with the intention of creating a new version of the whole Bible, but the changing nature of his program can be tracked in his voluminous correspondence. He had been commissioned by Damasus I in 382 to revise the Old Latin text of the four Gospels from the best Greek texts, and by the time of Damasus' death in 384 he had thoroughly completed this task, together with a more cursory revision from the Greek Septuagint of the Old Latin text of the Psalms in the Roman Psalter which is now lost. How much of the rest of the New Testament he then revised is difficult to judge today, but little of his work survived in the Vulgate text.

          In 385, Jerome was forced out of Rome, and eventually settled in Bethlehem, where he was able to use a surviving manuscript of the Hexapla, likely from the nearby Theological Library of Caesarea Maritima, a columnar comparison of the variant versions of the Old Testament undertaken 150 years before by Origen. Jerome first embarked on a revision of the Psalms, translated from the revised Septuagint Greek column of the Hexapla, which later came to be called the Gallican version. He also appears to have undertaken further new translations into Latin from the Hexaplar Septuagint column for other books. But from 390 to 405, Jerome translated anew from the Hebrew all 39 books in the Hebrew Bible, including a further version of the Psalms. This new translation of the Psalms was labelled by him as "iuxta Hebraeos" (i.e. "close to the Hebrews", "immediately following the Hebrews"), and was commonly found in the Vulgate, until it was widely replaced by his Gallican psalms beginning in the 9th century.

          The Vulgate is usually credited as being the first translation of the Old Testament into Latin directly from the Hebrew Tanakh, rather than the Greek Septuagint. Jerome's extensive use of exegetical material written in Greek, on the other hand, as well as his use of the Aquiline and Theodotiontic columns of the Hexapla, along with the somewhat paraphrastic style in which he translated makes it difficult to determine exactly how direct the conversion of Hebrew to Latin was.

          As Jerome completed his translations of each book of the Bible, he recorded his observations and comments in an extensive correspondence with other scholars; and these letters were subsequently collected and appended as prologues to the Vulgate text for those books where they survived. In these letters, Jerome described those books or portions of books in the Septuagint that were not found in the Hebrew as being non-canonical: he called them apocrypha. Jerome's views did not, however, prevail; and all complete manuscripts and editions of the Vulgate include some or all these books. Of the Old Testament texts not found in the Hebrew, Jerome translated Tobit and Judith anew from the Aramaic; and from the Greek, the additions to Esther from the Septuagint, and the additions to Daniel from Theodotion. Other books; Baruch, Letter of Jeremiah, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, 1 and 2 Maccabees are variously found in Vulgate manuscripts with texts derived from the Old Latin; sometimes together with Latin versions of other texts found neither in the Hebrew Bible, nor in the Septuagint, 4 Esdras, the Prayer of Manasses and Laodiceans. Their style is still markedly distinguishable from Jerome's. In the Vulgate text, Jerome's translations from the Greek of the additions to Esther and Daniel are combined with his separate translations of these books from the Hebrew.

          Critical value

          In translating the 39 books of the Hebrew Bible, Jerome was relatively free in rendering their text into Latin, but it is possible to determine that the oldest surviving complete manuscripts of the Masoretic Text, which date from nearly 600 years after Jerome, nevertheless transmit a consonantal Hebrew text very close to that used by Jerome. Consequently, these books of the Vulgate – though of high literary quality – have little independent interest in text critical debate. Jerome translated the books of Judith and Tobit under sufferance, engaging a Jewish intermediary to render the Aramaic into oral Hebrew, for him then to paraphrase into Latin. Their textual value is small. The Vulgate Old Testament texts that were translated from the Greek – whether by Jerome himself, or preserving revised or unrevised Old Latin versions – are however early and important secondary witnesses to the Septuagint.

          Damasus had instructed Jerome to be conservative in his revision of the Old Latin Gospels, and it is possible to see Jerome's obedience to this injunction in the preservation in the Vulgate of variant Latin vocabulary for the same Greek terms. Hence, "high priest" is rendered "princeps sacerdotum" in Vulgate Matthew; as "summus sacerdos" in Vulgate Mark; and as "pontifex" in Vulgate John. Comparison of Jerome's Gospel texts with those in Old Latin witnesses, suggests that his revision was substantially concerned with redacting the expanded phraseology characteristic of the Western text-type, in accordance with Alexandrian, or possibly early Byzantine, witnesses. Given Jerome's conservative methods, and that manuscript evidence from outside Egypt at this early date is very rare; these Vulgate readings have considerable critical interest. More interesting still – because effectively untouched by Jerome – are the Vulgate books of the rest of the New Testament; which demonstrate rather more of supposed "Western" expansions, and otherwise transmit a very early Old Latin text. Most valuable of all from a text-critical perspective is the Vulgate text of the Apocalypse, a book where there is no clear majority text in the surviving Greek witnesses.

          Prologues

          In addition to the biblical text the Vulgate contains 17 prologues, 16 of which were written by Jerome. Jerome's prologues are in a sense misnamed, as they were written not so much as prologues than as cover letters to specific individuals to accompany copies of his translations. Because they were not intended for a general audience, some of his comments in them are quite cryptic. These prologues are to the Pentateuch, to Joshua, and to Kings, which is also called the Prologus Galeatus. Following these are prologues to Chronicles, Esdras, Tobias, Judith,Esther, Job, The Gallican Psalms, Solomon, Isaias, Jeremias, Ezechiel, Daniel, Minor prophets, the Gospels, and the final prologue which is to the Pauline Epistles and is better known as Primum quaeritur. Related to these are Jerome's Notes on the Rest of Esther and his Prologue to the Hebrew Psalms. In addition to the Jerome's prologue to the Gallican version of the Psalms, which is commonly found in Vulgate manuscripts, his prologues also survive for the translations from the Hexaplar Septuagint of the books of Job, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs and Chronicles.

          A recurring theme of the Old Testament prologues is Jerome's preference for the Hebraica veritas (i.e., Hebrew truth) to the Septuagint, a preference which he defended from his detractors. He stated that the Hebrew text more clearly prefigures Christ than the Greek. Among the most remarkable of these prologues is the Prologus Galeatus, in which Jerome described an Old Testament canon of 22 books, which he found represented in the 22-letter Hebrew alphabet. Alternatively, he numbered the books as 24, which he described as the 24 elders in the Book of Revelation casting their crowns before the Lamb.

          Also of note is the Primum quaeritur, which defended the Pauline authorship of the Epistle to the Hebrews, and compared Paul's ten letters to the churches with the ten commandments. The author of the Primum quaeritur is unknown. The editors of the Stuttgart Vulgate remark that this version of the epistles first became popular among the Pelagians.

          In addition to Primum quaeritur, many manuscripts contain brief notes to each of the epistles indicating where they were written, with notes about where the recipients dwelt. Adolf von Harnack, citing De Bruyne, argued that these notes were written by Marcion of Sinope or one of his followers.

          Relation with the Old Latin Bible

          The Latin Biblical texts in use before the Latin Vulgate are usually referred to collectively as the Vetus Latina, or "Old Latin Bible", or occasionally the "Old Latin Vulgate". (Here "Old Latin" means that they are older than the Vulgate and written in Latin, not that they are written in Old Latin. Likewise the Latin Vulgate was so named because it was the Latin counterpart to the Greek Vulgate; it was not written in Vulgar Latin.) The translations in the Vetus Latina had accumulated piecemeal over a century or more; they were not translated by a single person or institution, nor uniformly edited. The individual books varied in quality of translation and style, and different manuscripts witness wide variations in readings. Jerome, in his preface to the Vulgate gospels, commented that there were "as many [translations] as there are manuscripts". The Old Testament books of the Vetus Latina were translated from the Greek Septuagint, not from the Hebrew.

          Jerome's earliest efforts in translation, his revision of the four Gospels, was dedicated to Damasus; but his version had little or no official recognition. Jerome's translated texts had to make their way on their own merits. The Old Latin versions continued to be copied and used alongside the Vulgate versions. Bede, writing in 8th century Northumbria, records Abbot Ceolfrid quoting Genesis 1:16 according to both the Vulgate and the Old Latin text, as the new and former editions. Nevertheless, the superior quality of the Vulgate texts led to their increasingly superseding the Old Latin; although the loss of familiar phrases and expressions still aroused hostility in congregations; and, especially in North Africa and Spain, favourite Old Latin readings were often re-introduced by copyists, while individual books within Spanish Vulgate Bibles are sometimes found to retain the Old Latin text. Spanish biblical traditions, with many Old Latin borrowings, were influential in Ireland; while both Irish and Spanish influences are found in Vulgate texts in northern France. In Italy and southern France, by contrast, a much purer Vulgate text predominated; and this is the version of the Bible that became established in England following the mission of Augustine of Canterbury. As late as the 13th century, the Codex Gigas retained an Old Latin text for the Apocalypse and the Acts of the Apostles.

          Throughout Late Antiquity and most of the Middle Ages, the name Vulgata was applied to the Greek Vulgate and the Vetus Latina, but as the acceptance of Jerome's version overtook that of the Vetus Latina in the Western church, it too began to be called an editio vulgata, a Latin analogue to the older Greek editio vulgata. The earliest known use of the term Vulgata to describe the new Latin translation was made by Roger Bacon in the 13th century.

          Wordsworth and White suggested that Jerome used Old Latin text close to Codex Brixianus as the basis for his New Testament and corrected it with the Alexandrian manuscripts.

          Influence on Western culture


          Codex Amiatinus
          For over a thousand years (c. AD 400–1530), the Vulgate was the definitive edition of the most influential text in Western European society. Indeed, for most Western Christians, it was the only version of the Bible ever encountered.

           The Vulgate's influence throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance into the Early Modern Period is even greater than that of the King James Version in English; for Christians during these times the phraseology and wording of the Vulgate permeated all areas of the culture. Aside from its use in prayer, liturgy and private study, the Vulgate served as inspiration for ecclesiastical art and architecture, hymns, countless paintings, and popular mystery plays.

          Reformation

          While the Genevan Reformed tradition sought to introduce vernacular versions translated from the original languages, it nevertheless retained and extended the use of the Vulgate in theological debate. In both the published Latin sermons of John Calvin, and the Greek New Testament editions of Theodore Beza, the accompanying Latin reference text is the Vulgate; and where Protestant churches took their lead from the Genevan example – as in England and Scotland – the result was a broadening appreciation of Jerome's translation in its dignified style and flowing prose. The closest equivalent in English, the King James Version or Authorized Version, shows a marked influence from the Vulgate, especially by comparison with the earlier vernacular version of Tyndale, in respect of Jerome's demonstration of how a technically exact Latinate religious vocabulary may be combined with dignified prose and vigorous poetic rhythms.

          The Vulgate continued to be regarded as the standard scholarly Bible throughout most of the 17th Century. Walton's London Polyglot of 1657 disregards the English Language entirely. Walton's reference text throughout is the Vulgate. The Vulgate Latin is also found as the standard text of scripture in Thomas Hobbes Leviathan of 1651, indeed Hobbes gives Vulgate chapter and verse numbers (i.e. Job 41:24; not Job 41:33) for his head text. In Chapter 35: 'The Signification in Scripture of Kingdom of God', Hobbes discusses Exodus 19:5, first in his own translation of the 'Vulgar Latin', and then subsequently as found in the versions he terms "...the English translation made in the beginning of the reign of King James", and "The Geneva French" (i.e. Olivetan). Hobbes advances detailed critical arguments why the Vulgate rendering is to be preferred. It remained the assumption of Protestant scholars that, while it had been of vital importance to provide the scriptures in the vernacular for ordinary people, nevertheless for those with sufficient education to do so, biblical study was best undertaken within the international common medium of the Latin Vulgate.

          Council of Trent

          The Vulgate was given an official capacity by the Council of Trent (1545–1563) as the touchstone of the Biblical canon concerning which parts of books are canonical. When the council listed the books included in the canon, it qualified the books as being "entire with all their parts, as they have been used to be read in the Catholic Church, and as they are contained in the old Latin vulgate edition". There are 76 books in the edition authorized by the council: 46 in the Old Testament, 27 in the New Testament, and three in the Apocrypha. This decree was clarified somewhat by Pope Pius XI on June 2, 1927, who allowed that the Comma Johanneum was open to dispute, and it was further explicated by Pope Pius XII's encyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu.

          The council cited Sacred Tradition in support of the Vulgate's magisterial authority:
          Moreover, this sacred and holy Synod,—considering that no small utility may accrue to the Church of God, if it be made known which out of all the Latin editions, now in circulation, of the sacred books, is to be held as authentic,—ordains and declares, that the said old and vulgate edition, which, by the lengthened usage of so many years, has been approved of in the Church, be, in public lectures, disputations, sermons and expositions, held as authentic; and that no one is to dare, or presume to reject it under any pretext whatever.

           

          Translations

          Before the publication of Pius XII's Divino Afflante Spiritu, the Vulgate was the source text used for many translations of the Bible into vernacular languages. In English, the interlinear translation of the Lindisfarne Gospels as well as other Old English Bible translations, the translation of John Wycliffe, the Douay-Rheims Bible, the Confraternity Bible, and Ronald Knox's translation were all made from the Vulgate.

           

          Influence on the English language

          The Vulgate had a large influence on the development of the English language, especially in matters of religion. Many Latin words were taken from the Vulgate into English nearly unchanged in meaning or spelling: creatio (e.g. Genesis 1:1, Heb 9:11), salvatio (e.g. Is 37:32, Eph 2:5), justificatio (e.g. Rom 4:25, Heb 9:1), testamentum (e.g. Mt 26:28), sanctificatio (1 Ptr 1:2, 1 Cor 1:30), regeneratio (Mt 19:28), and raptura (from a noun form of the verb rapiemur in 1 Thes 4:17). The word "publican" comes from the Latin publicanus (e.g., Mt 10:3), and the phrase "far be it" is a translation of the Latin expression absit (e.g., Mt 16:22 in the King James Bible). Other examples include apostolus, ecclesia, evangelium, Pascha, and angelus.

          Contents

          By the end of the 4th century the New Testament had been established in both Greek and Latin Bibles as containing the 27 books familiar to this day; and these are the books found in all Vulgate New Testaments. Over 100 late antique and medieval Vulgate texts also include the concocted Epistle to the Laodiceans (accepted as a genuine letter of Paul by many Latin commentators), although often with a note to the effect that it was not counted as canonical.

          The Vulgate Old Testament from the first comprised the 39 books (as counted in Christian tradition) of the Hebrew Bible, but always also including books from the Septuagint tradition, which by this date had ceased to be used by Jews, but which was copied in Greek Bibles as the Old Testament. The Septuagint, however, was not then definitively fixed; no two surviving Greek Old Testaments of this period agree. Consequently Vulgate Old Testaments continued to vary in their content throughout the medieval period.

          Although Jerome preferred the books of the Hebrew Bible, he deferred to church authority in accepting as scripture not only the Greek additions to Esther and Daniel, but also an extra five 'apocryphal' books in Judith, Tobit, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus and the two books of Maccabees, which in his listing of the Old Testament in the prologus galeatus he placed after the Hebrew canon. But, as Jerome explained in the prologue to Jeremias, he continued to exclude altogether the Book of Baruch (and with it the letter of Jeremiah); and indeed these two books are not found in the Vulgate before the 9th century, and only in a minority of manuscripts before the 13th century. The 71 biblical books as listed by Jerome, although not in his order, formed the standard text of the Vulgate as it became established in Italy in the 5th and 6th centuries. No Italian manuscript of the whole Vulgate Bible survives, and such pandect Bibles were always rare in this period; but the Codex Amiatinus written in Northumbria from Italian exemplars around 700 and intended to be presented to the Pope, represents the complete Bible according to the Italian Vulgate tradition. It contains the standard 71 books; with the Psalms according to Jerome's translation from the Hebrew, except for Psalm 151 which is translated from the Greek.

          The early Vulgate text in Spain tended to vary much further from Jerome's original, specifically in the retention of many Old Latin readings, in the expansion of the text of the Book of Proverbs, and in the incorporation into the first epistle of John of the Comma Johanneum. Spanish Bibles, on occasion, also included additional apocryphal texts, including the Book of Baruch, the Letter of Jeremiah, 3 Esdras and 4 Esdras. Spanish, Italian and Irish Vulgate traditions were all reflected in Bibles created in northern France, which by the end of the 8th century featured a wide variety of highly variable texts. Under prompting from the emperor Charlemegne, several scholars attempted in the 9th century to reform the French Vulgate. The English scholar Alcuin produced a text substantially based on Italian exemplars (although also including the Comma Johanneum), but with the major change of substituting Jerome's Gallican version of the psalms for his third version from the Hebrew that had previously predominated in Bible texts. In the 50 years after Alcuin's death, the abbey of Tours reproduced his text in standardised pandect Bibles, of which over 40 survive. Alcuin's contemporary Theodulf of Orleans produced a second independent reformed recension of the Vulgate, also based largely on Italian exemplars, but with variant readings, from Spanish texts and patristic citations, indicated in the margin. Theodulf kept Jerome's Hebraic version of the Psalms, and also incorporated the Book of Baruch and the Letter of Jeremiah within the book of Jeremiah. However, otherwise Theodulf adopted Jerome's proposed order of the Old Testament, with the five books from the Septuagint at the end. Theodulf's text was widely influential. A Vulgate revision was also undertaken in the early 9th century by scholars in the Abbey of Corbie, and Bibles from this abbey are the first in France to include the books of 3 Esdras and 4 Esdras, though this practice remained rare.

          Although a large number of Bible manuscripts resulted from all this work, no standard Vulgate text was to be established for another three centuries. Marsden points out, in discussing the process by which the Gallican version from the Psalter came to become established as the text of the psalms in the Vulgate Bible; "Its dominant position was in fact not assured before the early 13th century, and even then was not universal". However, the explosive growth of medieval universities, especially the University of Paris during the 12th century created a demand for a new sort of Vulgate. University scholars needed the entire Bible in a single, portable and comprehensive volume; which they could rely on to include all biblical texts which they might encounter in partristic references. The result was the Paris Bible, which reached its final form around 1230. The text of the Paris Bible owed most to Alcuin's revision and always presented the psalms in the Gallican version; but readings throughout were in many places adjusted to be more consistent with patristic citations (which would very frequently have been based on Old Latin or Greek texts). The book of Baruch and Letter of Jeremiah were now always included, as too were 3 Esdras, and usually (appended to the book of Chronicles) the Prayer of Manasses. Less commonly included was 4 Esdras.

          The early printings of the Latin Bible took examples of the Paris Bible as their base text, culminating in the successive critical Vulgate editions of Robert Estienne (Stephanus). Estienne's Geneva Vulgate of 1555, the first Bible to be subdivided throughout into chapters and verses, remained the standard Latin Bible for Reformed Protestantism; and established the content of the Vulgate as 76 books; 27 New Testament, 39 Hebrew Bible, plus Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, I & II Maccabees, 3 Esdras, 4 Esdras and the Prayer of Manasses. At the Council of Trent it was agreed that seven of these books: all except 3 Esdras, 4 Esdras and the Prayer of Manasses, should be considered inspired scripture; and the term "deuterocanonical", first applied by Sixtus of Siena, was adopted to categorise them. The Council also requested that the Pope should undertake the production of definitive editions of the Latin, Greek and Hebrew scriptures conforming to their definition of the Biblical Canon; and this resulted, after several false starts, in the publication of the Clementine Vulgate of 1592. The Clementine Vulgate incorporates the books of Trent's Deuterocanon in the main Bible text; but also introduces, following the New Testament, a section of Apocrypha, containing the Prayer of Manasses, 3 Esdras, and 4 Esdras of which only the first two are found in the Septuagint.


          Clementine Vulgate



          Prologue of the gospel of John, Clementine Vulgate, 1922 edition
          The Clementine Vulgate (Biblia Sacra Vulgatæ Editionis Sixti Quinti Pontificis Maximi iussu recognita atque edita) is the edition most familiar to Catholics who have lived prior to the liturgical reforms following Vatican II.

          After the Reformation, when the Catholic Church strove to counter the attacks and refute the doctrines of Protestantism, the Vulgate was reaffirmed in the Council of Trent as the sole, authorized Latin text of the Bible. To fulfill this declaration, the council commissioned the pope to make a standard text of the Vulgate out of the countless editions produced during the Renaissance and manuscripts produced during the Middle Ages. The actual first manifestation of this authorized text did not appear until 1590. It was sponsored by Pope Sixtus V (1585–90) and known as the Sistine Vulgate. It was based on the edition of Robertus Stephanus corrected to agree with the Greek, but it was hurried into print and suffered from many printing errors.

          The Sixtine edition was soon replaced by Clement VIII (1592–1605) who had ordered Franciscus Toletus, Augustinus Valerius, Fredericus Borromaeus, Robertus Bellarmino, Antonius Agellius, and Petrus Morinus to make corrections and a revision. This new revised version was based more on the Hentenian edition. It is called today the Sixto-Clementine Vulgate, or simply the Clementine, although it is Sixtus' name which appears on the title page. Clement published three printings of this edition, in 1592, 1593 and 1598.

          The Clementine differed from the manuscripts on which it was ultimately based in that it grouped the various prefaces of St. Jerome together at the beginning, and it removed 3 and 4 Esdras and the Prayer of Manasses from the Old Testament and placed them as Apocrypha into an appendix following the New Testament.

          The Psalter of the Clementine Vulgate, like that of almost all earlier printed editions, is the Gallicanum, omitting Psalm 151. It follows the Greek numbering of the Psalms, which differs from that in versions translated directly from the Hebrew.

          The Clementine Vulgate of 1592 became the standard Bible text of the Roman Rite of the Roman Catholic Church until 1979, when the Nova Vulgata was promulgated.

          Later printings

          After Clement's 1598 printing of the Vulgate, the Vatican issued no other official printings, leaving the task to other printers. Although the other printers of the Clementine Vulgate faithfully reproduced the words of the official edition, they were often quite free in matters of spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and paragraph boundaries. In 1906, Capuchin friar Fr. Michael Hetzenauer produced an edition restoring the original Clementine text while taking into account variations in Clement's three printings as well as correctoria officially issued by the Vatican.

          In 1982, Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos issued a printing of the Clementine Vulgate (ISBN 84-7914-021-6) omitting the Clementine Apocrypha, but containing excerpts from various magisterial documents and the Piana version of the psalms in addition to the vulgate version.

          Newer critical editions

          After the publication of the Clementine Vulgate, few critical editions were published. In 1734 Vallarsi published a corrected edition of the Vulgate. Most other later editions limited themselves to the New Testament, most notably Fleck's edition of 1840, Constantin von Tischendorf's edition of 1864, and the Oxford edition of Bishop John Wordsworth and Henry Julian White in 1889. In 1906 Eberhard Nestle published Novum Testamentum Latine, which presented the Clementine Vulgate text with a critical apparatus comparing it to the editions of Sixtus V (1590), Wordsworth and White (1889), Lachman (1842), and Tischendorf (1854), as well as the manuscripts Codex Amiatinus and Codex Fuldensis.

          In 1907 Pope Pius X commissioned the monks of the Benedictine Abbey of St. Jerome in Rome to prepare a critical edition of Jerome's Vulgate as a basis for a revision of the Clementine. Only the Old Testament was ever completed, which however complemented the New Testament edition of Wordsworth and White; the fruit of this labour led to the creation of the Nova Vulgata. The Benedictine critical edition was used as a basis for much of the Old Testament of the Stuttgart Vulgate.

          Stuttgart edition

          Edition sigla of the Biblia Sacra Vulgata
          * Dates Contents Editor Location
          b 1951–1954 Genesis Bonifatius Fischer Freiburg
          b 1977–1985 Wisdom; Cath Walter Thiele Freiburg
          b 1962–1991 Paul; Hebrews HJ Frede Freiburg
          b 1895 4 Esdras Robert Lubbock Bensly Cambridge
          c 1592–1598 Bible Pope Clement VIII Rome
          d 1932 Maccabees Donatien de Bruyne Maredsous
          h 1922 Psalms JM Harden London
          h 1931 Laodiceans Adolf von Harnack Berlin
          r 1926–1994 Old Testament Benedictines of Jerome Rome
          s 1954 Psalms Henri de Sainte-Marie Rome
          v 1889–1954 New Testament Wordsworth & White Oxford
          v 1910 4 Esdras B Violet Leipzig
          w 1911 1 Cor–Eph Henry Julian White Oxford


          This Vulgate was first published in 1969 (5th edition, 2007) by the German Bible Society (Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft), based in Stuttgart. This edition, alternatively titled Biblia Sacra Vulgata or Biblia Sacra iuxta vulgatam versionem (ISBN 3-438-05303-9 and ISBN 1-59856-178-2 for North America), is a "manual edition" in that it reduces much of the information in the big multi-volume critical editions that preceded it into a single compact volume. It is based on earlier critical editions of the Vulgate, including the Benedictine edition and the Latin New Testament produced by Wordsworth and White, which provided variant readings from the diverse manuscripts and printed editions of the Vulgate and comparison of different wordings in their footnotes. The Stuttgart Vulgate attempts, through critical comparison of important, historical manuscripts of the Vulgate, to recreate an early text, cleansed of the scribal errors of a millennium.
          An important feature in the Stuttgart edition for those studying the Vulgate is the inclusion of all of Jerome's prologues to the Bible, the Testaments, and the major books and sections (Pentateuch, Gospels, Minor Prophets, etc.) of the Bible. This adheres to the style of medieval editions of the Vulgate, which were never without Jerome's prologues. In its spelling, the Stuttgart also retains a more medieval Latin orthography than the Clementine, sometimes using oe rather than ae, and having more proper nouns beginning with H (i.e., Helimelech instead of Elimelech), but the spelling is inconsistent throughout, as in the manuscripts. The Stuttgart Vulgate also follows the medieval manuscripts in using line breaks, rather than the modern system of punctuation marks, to indicate the structure of each verse. Because of these features, it initially presents an unfamiliar appearance to readers accustomed to the Clementine text.

          It contains two Psalters, both the traditional Gallicanum and the juxta Hebraicum, which are printed on facing pages to allow easy comparison and contrast between the two versions. It has an expanded Apocrypha, containing Psalm 151 and the Epistle to the Laodiceans in addition to 3 and 4 Esdras and the Prayer of Manasses.

          In addition, its modern prefaces are a source of valuable information about the history of the Vulgate.
          One reason for the Stuttgart edition's importance rests in the fact that it is the one most disseminated on the Internet. However, this electronic version is commonly mutilated, lacking all formatting, notes, prefaces and apparatus, and often lacking the Gallican Psalter, Apocrypha, and Deuterocanonical books and sections. Moreover, the protocanonical part of Daniel following chapter 3 is commonly missing.

          Nova Vulgata

          The Nova Vulgata (Bibliorum Sacrorum nova vulgata editio, ISBN 88-209-2163-4), also called the Neo-Vulgate, is currently the typical Latin edition published by the Holy See for use in the Roman rite. The Second Vatican Council in Sacrosanctum Concilium mandated a revision of the Latin Psalter in accord with modern textual and linguistic studies, while preserving or refining its Christian Latin style. In 1965 Pope Paul VI appointed a commission to revise the rest of the Vulgate following the same principles. The Commission published its work in eight annotated sections, inviting criticism from Catholic scholars as the sections were published. The Latin Psalter was published in 1969; the New Testament was completed by 1971 and the entire Nova Vulgata was published as a single volume edition for the first time in 1979.

          The foundational text of most of the Nova Vulgata's Old Testament is the critical edition done by the monks of the Benedictine Abbey of St. Jerome under Pope St. Pius X. The foundational text of the books of Tobit and Judith are from manuscripts of the Vetus Latina rather than the Vulgate. The New Testament was based on the 1969 edition of the Stuttgart Vulgate. All of these base texts were revised to accord with the modern critical editions in Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic. There are also a number of changes where the modern scholars felt that Jerome had failed to grasp the meaning of the original languages, or had rendered it obscurely.

          The Nova Vulgata does not contain some books found in the earlier editions but omitted by the Canon promulgated by the Council of Trent, namely the Prayer of Manasses, the 3rd & 4th Book of Esdras (sometimes known by different names: see naming conventions of Esdras) and the Epistle to the Laodiceans.
          In 1979, after decades of preparation, the Nova Vulgata was published and promulgated as the Catholic Church's current official Latin version in the Apostolic constitution Scripturarum Thesaurus promulgated by the Pope John Paul II. The Nova Vulgata is the translation used in the latest editions of the Roman Lectionary, Liturgy of the Hours, and Roman Ritual.

          A second edition was published in 1986; this second edition added a Preface to the reader, an Introduction to the principles used in producing the Nova Vulgata as well as an appendix containing 3 historical documents from the Council of Trent and the Clementine Vulgate. In addition, the second edition included the footnotes to the Latin text found in the 8 annotated sections published before 1979; it also replaced the few occurrences of the form Iahveh, when translating the Tetragrammaton, with Dominus, in keeping with an ancient tradition.

          The Nova Vulgata has not been widely embraced by conservative Catholics, many of whom see it as being in some verses of the Old Testament a new translation rather than a revision of Jerome's work. Also, some of its readings sound unfamiliar to those who are accustomed to the Clementine.

          In 2001, the Vatican released the instruction Liturgiam Authenticam, establishing the Nova Vulgata as a point of reference for all translations of the liturgy of the Roman rite into the vernacular from the original languages, "in order to maintain the tradition of interpretation that is proper to the Latin Liturgy".

          Novum Testamentum Latine

          In 1984 and 1992 Kurt and Barbara Aland updated and entirely revised Nestle's edition of 1906 and republished it under the same name, Novum Testamentum Latine (ISBN 1-59856-175-8). The new text is a reprint of the New Testament of the Nova Vulgata to which has been added a critical apparatus giving the variant readings of earlier editions. The editions described in the apparatus are the Stuttgart edition, the Gutenberg Bible (1452), the Latin text of the Complutensian Polyglot (1514), the edition from Wittenberg, which was favored by Luther (1529), the editions of Desiderius Erasmus (1527), Robertus Stephanus (1540), Hentenius of Louvain (1547), Christophorus Plantinus (1583), Pope Sixtus V (1590), Pope Clement VIII (1592), and Wordsworth and White (1954).

          Electronic editions

          The title "Vulgate" is currently applied to three distinct online texts which can be found from various sources on the Internet. Which text is used can be ascertained from the spelling of Eve's name in Genesis 3:20.
          • Heva: the Clementine Vulgate
          • Hava: the Stuttgart edition of the Vulgate; this text is the one most widely distributed on the internet
          • Eva: the Nova Vulgata

          References

          • The Latin Versions of First Esdras, Harry Clinton York, The American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures, Vol. 26, No. 4 (Jul., 1910)
          • Jerome, Greek Scholarship, and the Hebrew Bible: A Study of the Quaestiones Hebraicae in Genesim by Adam Kamesar, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1993, page 97. This work cites E. Burstein, La compétence en hébreu de saint Jérôme (Diss.), Poitiers 1971
          • Biblia Sacra iuxta latinam vulgatam versionem ad codicum fidem, iussu Pii PP. XI, Pii PP. XII, Ioannis XXIII, Pauli VI, Ioannis Pauli PP. II, cura et studio monachorum Abbatiae Pontificiae Sancti Hieronymi in Urbe Ordinis Sancti Benedicti edita. Textus ex interpretatione Sancti Hieronymi. Romae: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1926–1995. 18 vols.
          •    The Vulgate New Testament, with the Douay Version of 1582. In Parallel Columns (London 1872).
          • Samuel Berger, Histoire de la Vulgate pendant les premiers siècles du Moyen Age (Paris 1893).
          • Richard Gameson ed. The Early Medieval Bible, Cambridge University Press, 1994
          • G.W.M. Lampe ed. The Cambridge History of the Bible. Vol 2 Cambidge University Press 1969.
          • Richard Marsden, The Text of the Old Testament in Anglo-Saxon England, Cambridge University Press, 1995
          • C. H. Turner, The Oldest Manuscript of the Vulgate Gospels (The Clarendon Press: Oxford 1931).
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