Thursday, August 4, 2011

Working from the Vulgate: three good reasons

Most contemporary Scripture scholars tend to take the Greek New Testament, or the Hebrew (generally  the Masoretic Text) as their starting points.  By contrast, on this blog I generally plan to focus primarily (though certainly not exclusively) on the Latin (Clementine) Vulgate text of Scripture. 

Why? 

There are in my view three good reasons for starting from the Vulgate.

1.  Scripture is (mostly) not written in stone: rather the Church has an officially approved version(s) of it, and it is in Latin.

Christians tend to think of 'the Bible' as a fixed text.  The reality is rather different. 

The Bible has been passed down to us in manuscripts copied by fallible scribes who could make errors.  Some of the books of the Bible went through several editorial compilations/drafts, and different traditions have survived in different manuscript families, resulting for example, in legitimate text variants between the 'Septuagint/Vulgate' tradition and the modern-day 'Hebrew' Bible (that is, the Masoretic Text, the oldest manuscript of which dates from the middle ages).  And some of the books of the Old Testament may not have been composed in Hebrew at all, but Aramaic and other languages, so have been subjected to a translation process.

What books of the Bible constitute the canon of Scripture is the result of Tradition and Magisterial decisions. Translations fall into the same category: the Church has always been aware that translation decisions can distort the meaning of Scripture, and thus reserved the right to approve translations for various purposes to itself.

And because the Catholic Church retains Latin as its official language, the official, standard version of its Scripture is actually in Latin, not Greek or Hebrew.  Accordingly, while we can properly draw on other languages to throw light on the meaning of the text, the proper Catholic starting point is the Latin.

2. But which version of the Latin?  The Vulgate has withstood the test of time.

Over the centuries there has been greater and lesser degrees of satisfaction with the version of the Latin used in the liturgy.  Attempts have been made to classicize first the hymns of the Breviary, and in the twentieth century the psalter itself.  But sooner or later, general use has reverted to the Vulgate.  Why is that?

Within the Church, there are today three main, 'official' base texts for Scripture.

The first chronologically and perhaps in terms of priority is the Greek, consisting of the Septuagint translation of the Old Testament made from the third century before Our Lord onwards, and the New Testament as it has come down to us in that language. The Septuagint was originally approved by the Jewish hierarchy (though repudiated in the second century in reaction to Christianity's appropriation of it), was widely used at the time of Our Lord, and is extensively quoted in the New Testament.  Recent scholarship arising from the Dead Sea Scrolls has led to a renewed interest in the Septuagint, because some of the manuscripts found there attest both to the integrity of the Septuagint's manuscript tradition and translation, and to the truth of early Christian allegations of deliberate alteration of the Hebrew Masoretic Text to remove passages that supported Christian tradition. Greek Scripture continues to be used liturgically in Rome and in the Eastern Catholic (and Orthodox) Churches.

The second key text is the Vulgate translation largely made by St Jerome (from the Hebrew in the case of the Old Testament except for the psalms). The Vulgate has stood the test of time, continuing to be used in the '1962', or traditional versions of the liturgy, and the subject of a number of affirmations as to its use by the Magisterium.

The Council of Trent stated that:

“Moreover, the same 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… But if any one receive not, as sacred and canonical, the said books 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; and knowingly and deliberately contemn the traditions aforesaid; let him be anathema.” (Fourth Session)

Vatican I reaffirmed this, stating that:

“The complete books of the old and the new Testament with all their parts, as they are listed in the decree of the said Council and as they are found in the old Latin Vulgate edition, are to be received as sacred and canonical.”

The third is the 'neo-Vulgate' authorised by Blessed Pope John Paul II. This is the current official text of the Catholic Church, used in the novus ordo/Ordinary Form liturgy, and as the base text for translations into other languages.  The Neo-Vulgate, promulgated in 1979, in effect displaces the Clementine Vulgate - but the older Vulgate version of the Vulgate continues to be approved for use in the liturgy courtesy of Summorum Pontificum and previous decrees. 

The main problem with the neo-Vulgate is that it reflects the state of Biblical scholarship at the time it was made.  In most cases the changes it makes move the text closer to the Hebrew 'Masoretic Text', accepting the view that had been building since the Reformation that the Septuagint translators often misunderstood the Hebrew and made frequent errors.  Unfortunately, since that time the scholastic consensus has largely moved on due to study of the Dead Sea Scrolls, with a new found respect for the integrity of the Septuagint/Vulgate, displacing the views that prevailed in the first half of the twentieth century and beyond.

3.  The Vulgate is reflected in the tradition.

A third key reason for using the Vulgate is that this is the version of Scripture that has become part of the Latin tradition. 

If we want to understand how the Church has traditionally interpreted a text, to adopt a 'hermaneutic of continuity', we need to look to the 'monuments of tradition'.  Hundreds, even thousands of chant settings of verses in Office antiphons and other liturgical texts attest to traditional interpretations of the texts. 

In addition, it is the Vulgate that the Western Fathers and Theologians of the Church have generally worked from: using the Neo-Vulgate instead, as the excellent Fr Hunwicke has pointed out, can render their commentaries meaningless.

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