A Note on the New Vulgate

The term "Vulgate" is used throughout this essay in a generic sense without any specification as to the particular edition that is under consideration. There is a lengthy history behind the transmission of the Vulgate which need not be fully recounted here, but a few details are in order. More than eleven centuries after Jerome completed his work, the Council of Trent called for the production of a revised Vulgate, but that charge, at least as it appears in the formal decree, is vague as to purpose or objective.33 The historical record of the deliberations of the Council Fathers, however, indicates three issues underlying the need for a corrected text: (1) discrepancies among the various Latin texts in circulation at the time and a lack of clarity as to whether any one text held authoritative status; (2) errors and corruptions that had been introduced into Jerome's text over the centuries since its completion in 405; and (3) the possibility that certain words or phrases in the Vulgate text may not accurately or adequately capture the meaning of the corresponding original-language texts.34

The concerns raised at Trent ultimately gave rise to the Sisto-Clementine Vulgate of 1592, and that text became the authoritative Latin Bible of the Church, a status that it retained for nearly four hundred years. It was the Latin biblical text of record, so to speak, at the time of both Divino Afflante Spiritu and Dei Verbum, and the analysis involving scriptural quotations conducted in the previous section is therefore based on this edition. Despite its authoritative status, it had become clear long before its eventual subordination that the Sisto-Clementine Vulgate was, from a

the type of analysis performed above on the quotations, but the low incidence of reliance on the Greek text in these cases suggests that the Council may well have adhered to a protocol similar to that which was apparently followed for the quotations. 33 At the fourth session of the Council of Trent (April 8, 1546), the Council issued its Decree Concerning the Edition and Use of the Sacred Books, wherein it "decrees and ordains that in the future the Holy Scriptures, especially the old Vulgate Edition, be printed in the most correct manner possible." Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, Schroeder, 19. 34 See Jared Wicks, "Catholic Old Testament Interpretation in the Reformation and Early Confessional Eras," in Hebrew Bible/Old Testament: The History of Its Interpretation, vol. 2, From the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, ed. Magne Sæbø (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008), 627-29. The three concerns identified here are obviously interrelated to some degree. With regard to the first two, once Jerome completed his translation in the year 405, dissemination of the text necessitated copying and recopying. In addition to the inevitable errors resulting from that scribal process, there were, over the centuries, deliberate attempts at improvement and correction of Jerome's text. Cf. Hartman, Peebles and Stevenson, "Vulgate," 594-96.

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What Happened to the Vulgate? An Analysis of Divino Afflante Spiritu and Dei Verbum

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