Old Latin Version

Overview

The Old Latin version is a collective name for the Latin biblical texts that circulated in the Western church before the Vulgate, which Jerome produced in the late fourth century. It does not refer to a single, fixed translation; rather, it encompasses Latin texts translated independently by different people in different regions. The term belongs to the history of Bible translation and does not appear in the biblical text itself. The Latin name Vetus Latina means "Old Latin," reflecting the fact that these translations preceded the Vulgate.

Background

The church in the early Roman Empire used Greek for the most part. As the number of believers grew in the Latin-speaking West, however, especially in North Africa and Italy, Latin translations are thought to have emerged from around the second century. Latin quotations of Scripture appear in the writings of Tertullian and Cyprian, Church Fathers (theologians and leaders of the early church) from North Africa.

The Old Testament portion was translated not from the original Hebrew but from the Greek translation known as the Septuagint. The New Testament was translated from Greek manuscripts. Because the translation work was not carried out systematically, wording and phrasing varied considerably from manuscript to manuscript. Augustine remarked on the great diversity of Latin translations and referred to one of them as the "Itala." For this reason the Old Latin version as a whole is sometimes called the "Itala," although scholars disagree about exactly what the name referred to.

Significance in the Transmission of Scripture

This textual confusion was the immediate occasion for the creation of the Vulgate. At the request of Damasus I, bishop of Rome, Jerome revised the Latin Gospels in the late fourth century, and this work led to the Vulgate. Over the following centuries the Vulgate displaced the Old Latin version. Nevertheless, for books that Jerome did not translate anew, such as Wisdom, Sirach (Ecclesiasticus), and Maccabees, the Old Latin text is understood to have been retained in the Vulgate.

Today the Old Latin version holds an important place in textual criticism (the discipline that compares manuscripts in order to recover the text closest to the original), because it may reflect a text earlier than most surviving Greek manuscripts. Manuscript fragments and patristic quotations are being collected and edited at institutions such as the institute at Beuron Archabbey in Germany.

Interpretation and Points of Debate

• The Apocrypha and the deuterocanonical books: Because the Old Latin version followed the Septuagint, it includes books not found in the Hebrew Bible. The Catholic Church accepts these books as canonical (that is, recognized as a standard of faith). Protestants generally regard them as apocryphal and exclude them from the canon.
• 1 John 5:7–8: The early evidence for the Trinitarian passage commonly known as the "Johannine Comma" appears chiefly in the Latin tradition. Most critical editions of the Greek New Testament today regard the passage as a later addition. Some supporters of the King James Bible, by contrast, appeal to the Latin evidence to argue that the passage is original. The issue is frequently discussed in the Bible translation debate.

In Korean Churches

In Korean churches, the Old Latin version is rarely mentioned in worship or preaching. It comes up mainly in seminary study of the original biblical texts and of the history of Bible translation.