HKB
Since the publication of the third edition of this book, exhaustive work on the Old Latin Versions and the Vulgate, commenced before for the University of Oxford, as is well known amongst biblical scholars, by the Right Rev. John Wordsworth, D.D., Bishop of Salisbury, with the assistance of the Rev. H. J. White, has been prosecuted further, resulting in the publication of three volumes of Old Latin Biblical Texts, and of the edition of the Vulgate New Testament as far as the end of St. Luke’s Gospel. It was therefore with the liveliest gratitude that the Editor received from the Bishop, in reply to consultation upon a special point, an offer to superintend the entire revision of this chapter, if Mr. White would give him his important help, notwithstanding other laborious occupations. Mr. White has carried out the work under the Bishop’s direction, rewriting most of the chapter entirely, but incorporating, where possible, Dr. Scrivener’s language.
(1) The Old Latin, previous to Jerome’s Revision.
There are passages in the works of the two great Western Fathers of the fourth century, Jerome [345?-420] and Augustine [354-430], whose obvious and literal meaning might lead us to conclude that there existed in their time many Latin translations, quite independent in their origin, and used almost indifferently by the faithful. When Jerome, in that Preface to the Gospels which he addressed to Pope Damasus (in 384), anticipates but too surely the unpopularity of his revision of them among the people of his own generation, he consoles himself by the reflection that the variations of previous versions prove the unfaithfulness of them all: “verum non esse quod variat etiam maledicorum testimonio comprobatur.” Then follows his celebrated assertion: “Si enim Latinis exemplaribus fides est adhibenda, respondeant quibus: tot enim sunt exemplaria pene quot codices(54).” The testimony of Augustine seems even more explicit, and at first sight conclusive. In his treatise, De Doctrina Christiana (lib. ii. cc. 11-15), when speaking of “Latinorum interpretum infinita varietas,” and “interpretum numerositas,” as not without their benefit to an attentive reader, he uses these strong expressions: “Qui enim Scripturas ex hebraea lingua in Graecam verterunt, numerari possunt, Latini autem interpretes nullo modo. Ut enim cuique primis fidei temporibus in manus venit codex Graecus, et aliquantulum facultatis sibi utriusque linguae habere videbatur, ausus est interpretari” (c. 11); and he soon after specifies a particular version as preferable to the rest: “In ipsis autem interpretationibus Itala(55) ceteris praeferatur. Nam est verborum tenacior cum perspicuitate sententiae” (cc. 14-15).
When, however, the surviving codices of the version or versions previous to Jerome’s revision came to be studied and published by Sabatier(56) and Bianchini(57), it was obvious that though there were many points of difference, there were still traces of a source common to many, if not to all of them; and on a question of this kind, occasional divergency, however extensive, cannot weaken the impression produced by resemblance, if it be too close and constant to be attributable to chance, as we have just seen. The result of a careful and thorough examination and comparison of the existing Old Latin texts, is a conviction that they are all but off-shoots from one, or at most two, parent stocks. Now when, this fact fairly established, we look back at the language employed by Jerome and Augustine, we can easily see that, with some allowance for his habit of rhetorical exaggeration, the former may mean no more by the term “exemplaria” than that the scattered copies of the Latin translation in his own day varied widely from each other; and though the assertions of Augustine are too positive to be thus disposed of, yet he is here speaking, not from his own personal knowledge so much as from vague conjecture; and of what had been done, not in his own time, but “in the first ages of the faith.”