Vulgate

Name and Origins

The name "Vulgate" (Latin Vulgata) comes from a Latin word meaning "widespread" or "common." The custom of calling this translation by that name is generally thought to have become established later. The term does not appear in the biblical text; it refers to a particular translation of the Bible.

In the fourth century, the Western church used a variety of Latin translations whose wording differed from manuscript to manuscript. These are commonly called the "Old Latin" versions. In the late fourth century, at the request of Damasus I, bishop of Rome, Jerome revised the Latin Gospels against Greek manuscripts. Jerome then translated most of the Old Testament directly from the Hebrew.

Contents and Characteristics

• Old Testament: Most books were translated from the Hebrew. The Psalms, however, circulated widely in a version that Jerome revised on the basis of a text in the tradition of the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament).
• New Testament: Jerome revised the Gospels. Scholars disagree about who revised the remaining books.
• Deuterocanonical books (Apocrypha): Some were included in their Old Latin form without passing through Jerome's hands. Jerome himself distinguished the books not found in the Hebrew Bible from the rest.

Place in Church History

The Vulgate was the standard text for worship, theology, and preaching in the medieval Western church. The chapter divisions used today are also thought to derive from those added to the Latin Bible in the thirteenth century, which later came into wide use (Chapters and verses of the Bible). The Bible that Gutenberg printed in the mid-fifteenth century was likewise the Vulgate.

In 1546 the Council of Trent declared the Vulgate the authentic text for public reading, disputation, and preaching. The Clementine edition of 1592 subsequently served for a long time as the standard edition, and in 1979 the Nova Vulgata, newly revised to conform to the original-language texts, was promulgated.

Interpretation and Points of Debate

During the Reformation, amid the call to "return to the sources," the Vulgate's renderings were compared with the original languages. Erasmus published the Greek New Testament in 1516, and Martin Luther translated from the original languages into German. A representative example is Matthew 4:17. The Vulgate rendered this verse paenitentiam agite, an expression that could be read as "do penance" (that is, perform acts of satisfaction for sin). The Reformers held that the original meant "turn your heart" (that is, repent). The first of Luther's Ninety-five Theses likewise addresses the repentance spoken of in this verse. Other renderings frequently cited as departing from the original include the feminine pronoun in Genesis 3:15 ("she shall crush") and the "horns" of Exodus 34:29 (an expression rendering the light that shone from Moses' face).

The Catholic Church explains that the decision of Trent did not place the Vulgate above the original languages. Rather, it meant that the Vulgate is an authentic text free from error in its teaching on faith and morals, as Pope Pius XII also affirmed in his 1943 encyclical. Protestantism regards the Hebrew and Greek originals as the final standard and therefore does not accept the deuterocanonical books included in the Vulgate as canonical.

In the Korean Church

The major Korean Protestant translations did not use the Vulgate as their base text. The Vulgate is mentioned mainly in the teaching of church history, in lectures on the Reformation, and in discussions of the Apocrypha.