Vetus Latina is a collective name given to the
BiblicalThe Bible contains the central religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. Modern Judaism generally recognizes a single set of canonical books known as the Tanakh, or Hebrew Bible, as it is written almost entirely in the Hebrew language, with some small portions in Aramaic...
texts in
LatinLatin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Roman conquest, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe...
that were
translatedThe Bible has been translated into many languages from the biblical languages of Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek.The Latin Vulgate was dominant in Christianity through the Middle Ages. Since then, the Bible has been translated into many more languages...
before St
JeromeSaint Jerome was a Christian priest and apologist. He was the son of Eusebius, of the city of Strido, which was on the border of Dalmatia and Pannonia...
's
VulgateThe Vulgate is an early 5th-century Latin version of the Bible, largely the result of the labors of Jerome, who was commissioned by Pope Damasus I in 382 to make a revision of old Latin translations...
Bible (382-405 AD) became the standard Bible for Latin-speaking Western
ChristiansChristianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as presented by the revelations in the New Testament....
. The phrase
Vetus Latina is Latin for
Old Latin, and the Vetus Latina is sometimes known as the
Old Latin Bible. It was, however, written in
Late LatinLate Latin is the scholarly name for the written Latin of Late Antiquity. The English dictionary definition of Late Latin dates this period from the 3rd to the 6th centuries AD. extending in Spain to the 7th. This somewhat ambiguously defined period fits between Classical Latin and Medieval Latin...
, not the early version of the Latin language known as
Old LatinOld Latin refers to the Latin language in the period before the age of Classical Latin; that is, all Latin before 75 BC...
.
Text
There was no single "Vetus Latina" Bible; there are, instead, a collection of Biblical
manuscriptA manuscript is a recording of information that has been manually created by someone or some people, such as a hand-written letter, as opposed to being printed or reproduced some other way...
texts that bear witness to Latin translations of Biblical passages that preceded Jerome's. After comparing readings for
LukeThe Gospel of Luke is the third and longest of the four canonical Gospels. This synoptic gospel is an account of the life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. It details his story from the events of his birth to his Ascension...
24:4-5 in Vetus Latina manuscripts,
Bruce MetzgerBruce Manning Metzger was a professor at Princeton Theological Seminary and Bible editor who served on the board of the American Bible Society...
counted "no fewer than 27 variant readings!" To these witnesses of previous translations, many scholars frequently add quotations of Biblical passages that appear in the works of the Latin Fathers, some of which share readings with certain groups of manuscripts. As such, many of the Vetus Latina "versions" were generally not promulgated in their own right as translations of the Bible to be used in the whole Church; rather, many of the texts that form part of the Vetus Latina were prepared on an
ad hoc basis for the local use of Christian communities, to illuminate another Christian discourse or
sermonA sermon is an oration by a prophet or member of the clergy. Sermons address a Biblical, theological, religious, or moral topic, usually expounding on a type of belief, law or behavior within both past and present contexts...
, or as the Latin half of a diglot manuscript (e.g.
Codex BezaeThe Codex Bezae Cantabrigensis, designated by Dea or 05 , δ 5 , is an important codex of the New Testament dating from the fifth-century. It is written in an uncial hand on vellum and contains, in both Greek and Latin, most of the four Gospels and Acts, with a small fragment of the Third...
). There are some Old Latin texts that seem to have aspired to greater stature or currency; several manuscripts of Old Latin
GospelA gospel is a writing that describes the life of Jesus. The word is primarily used to refer to the four canonical texts: the Gospel of Matthew, Gospel of Mark, Gospel of Luke and Gospel of John, probably written between AD 65 and 80...
s exist, containing the four canonical Gospels; the several manuscripts that contain them differ substantially from one another. Other Biblical passages, however, are extant only in excerpts or fragments.
The language of the Old Latin translations is uneven in quality, as
Augustine of HippoAugustine of Hippo , Bishop of Hippo Regius, also known as St. Augustine or St. Austin, was an Algerian Berber philosopher and theologian....
lamented in
De Doctrina Christiana (2, 16). Grammatical
solecismA solecism is a grammatical mistake or absurdity, or even a simply non-standard usage. The word was originally used by the Greeks for mistakes in their language...
s abound; some reproduce literally
GreekGreek , an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, is the language of the Greeks. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. In its ancient form, it is the language of classical...
or
HebrewHebrew is a Semitic language of the Afro-Asiatic language family. Culturally, it is considered a Jewish language. Hebrew in its modern form is spoken by more than seven million people in Israel while Classical Hebrew has been used for prayer or study in Jewish communities around the world for over...
idioms as they appear in the
SeptuagintThe Septuagint , or simply "LXX", referred to in critical works by the abbreviation ...
. Likewise, the various Old Latin translations reflect the various versions of the Septuagint circulating, with the African manuscripts (such as the
Codex BobiensisCodex Bobiensis is a fragmentary Latin manuscript of the bible. Specifically, it is an example of a Vetus Latina bible, which were used from the 2nd century until Jerome's Latin translation, the Vulgate, was written in the 5th century. The text contains parts of the Gospel of Mark and Gospel of...
) preserving readings of the
Western text-typeThe Western text-type is one of several text-types used in textual criticism to describe and group the textual character of Greek New Testament manuscripts...
, while readings in the European manuscripts are closer to the
Byzantine text-typeThe Byzantine text-type is one of several text-types used in textual criticism to describe the textual character of Greek New Testament manuscripts. It is the form found in the largest number of surviving manuscripts, though not in the oldest...
. Many grammatical idiosyncrasies come from the use of
Vulgar LatinVulgar Latin can be defined simply as colloquial Latin.-Origin of the term:...
grammatical forms in the text.
Replacement
With the publication of Jerome's Vulgate, which offered a single, stylistically consistent Latin text translated from the original tongues, the Vetus Latina gradually fell out of use. Jerome, in a letter, complains that his new version was initially disliked by Christians who were familiar with the phrasing of the old translations. However, as copies of the complete Bible were infrequently found, Old Latin translations of various books of the Bible were copied into manuscripts alongside Vulgate translations, inevitably exchanging readings; Old Latin translations of single books can be found in manuscripts as late as the 13th century. However, the Vulgate generally displaced the Vetus Latina and was acknowledged as the official Bible of the
Roman Catholic ChurchThe Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church. With more than a billion members, over half of all Christians and more than one-sixth of the world's population, the Catholic Church is a communion of the Western, or Latin Rite Church, and...
at the
Council of TrentThe Council of Trent was the 16th-century Ecumenical Council of the Roman Catholic Church. Considered to be one of the Church's most important councils, it convened in Trento between December 13, 1545, and December 4, 1563 in twenty-five sessions for three periods...
.
Below are some comparisons of the Vetus Latina with text from critical editions of the
VulgateThe Vulgate is an early 5th-century Latin version of the Bible, largely the result of the labors of Jerome, who was commissioned by Pope Damasus I in 382 to make a revision of old Latin translations...
.
The following comparison is of Luke 6:1-4, taken from the Old Latin text in the
Codex BezaeThe Codex Bezae Cantabrigensis, designated by Dea or 05 , δ 5 , is an important codex of the New Testament dating from the fifth-century. It is written in an uncial hand on vellum and contains, in both Greek and Latin, most of the four Gospels and Acts, with a small fragment of the Third...
:
| Vetus Latina |
Latin Vulgate |
| Et factum est eum in Sabbato secundoprimo abire per segetes discipuli autem illius coeperunt vellere spicas et fricantes manibus |
Factum est autem in sabbato secundo, primo, cum transíret per sata, vellebant discípuli eius spicas, et manducabant confricantes manibus. |
| manducabant. Quidam autem de farisaeis dicebant ei, Ecce quid faciunt discipuli tui sabbatis |
Quidam autem pharisæorum, dicebant illis : Quid facitis quod non licet in sabbatis ? |
| quod non licet ? Respondens autem IHS dixit ad eos, Numquam hoc legistis quod fecit David quando esurit ipse et qui cum eo erat ? |
Et respondens Jesus ad eos, dixit : Nec hoc legistis quod fecit David, cum esurisset ipse, et qui cum illo erant ? |
| Intro ibit in domum Dei et panes propositionis manducavit et dedit et qui cum erant quibus non licebat manducare si non solis sacerdotibus ? |
quomodo intravit in domum Dei, et panes propositionis sumpsit, et manducavit, et dedit his qui cum ipso erant : quos non licet manducare nisi tantum sacerdotibus ? |
The Old Latin text survives in places in the liturgy, such as the following verse well known from Christmas carols, Luke 2:14:
| Vetus Latina |
Latin Vulgate |
| Gloria in excelsis Deo "Gloria in excelsis Deo" is the title and beginning of a hymn known also as the Greater Doxology and the Angelic Hymn....
, et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis |
Gloria in altissimis Deo, et in terra pax in hominibus bonæ voluntatis |
The Old Latin text means, "Glory [belongs] to God among the high, and peace [belongs] to men of good will on earth". The Vulgate text means "Glory [belongs] to God among the most high and peace among men of good will on earth".
Probably the most well known difference between the Old Latin and the Vulgate is in the
Pater NosterPater Noster is probably the best-known prayer in Christianity.Pater Noster or Paternoster may also refer to:*Paternoster, a passenger elevator which consists of a chain of open compartments that move slowly in a loop up and down inside a building* Paternoster, Western Cape, South Africa* Pierres...
, where the phrase from the Vetus Latina,
quotidianum panem, "daily bread", becomes
supersubstantialem panem, "
supersubstantialEpiousios is a Greek word used in the fourth petition of the Lord's Prayer, as it is recorded in the Gospel of Matthew and in the Gospel of Luke...
bread" in the Vulgate.
Psalms
The Old Latin Psalms are a special case. Here, the Latin liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church continues the use of the Gallican psalter, which is a version of the Psalms from the Vetus Latina that was doubly revised by St Jerome before he began to prepare his Vulgate translation. These Psalms had already become widely used in the liturgy, and their phrasing was familiar to worshippers despite their occasional divergences from
classical LatinClassical Latin in simplest terms is the sociolinguistic register of the Latin language regarded by the enfranchised and empowered populations of the late Roman republic and the Roman empire as good Latin. Most writers during this time made use of it...
usage. Jerome also translated the Psalms from the original Hebrew; Jerome's new Psalter is called the
Iuxta Hebraicum, but this new version failed to displace the Gallican psalter in liturgical use, and ultimately the Gallican was used as the psalter of the Vulgate. The Gallican is the psalter that is chanted to
Gregorian chantGregorian chant is the central tradition of Western plainchant, a form of monophonic liturgical chant in Western Christianity that accompanied the celebration of Mass and other ritual services...
and used in classical music. In 1979, the Roman Catholic Church issued a
Nova Vulgata version of the Psalms, and authorised them for liturgical use; by then, Latin liturgies were seldom used, and the Nova Vulgata has made little impact.
Books cited
Texts from the Gallican and "juxta hebraicum" of psalm 122(121) and some of the points in this article are from:
- Biblia sacra : iuxta Vulgatam versionem / adiuvantibus Bonifatio Fischer ... [et al.] recensuit et brevi apparatu critico instruxit Robertus Weber. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft
The Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft , is a non-denominational Christian charity that exists to make the Bible available throughout the world. The Society was formed on 1948...
, 1994.
External links