260 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



Gallican recension. It has but little in common with the Old Latin. And, 

 as regards mixture, it is almost on a level with the Book of Durrow, 

 the manuscript which of all our early Irish evangelia is most purely 

 Vulgate. 



It is right, however, to add that this conclusion as to the general character 

 of the text of our manuscript can only be regarded as provisional. The 

 received text of the Yulgate undoubtedly differs to some extent from 

 St. Jerome's translation. It is probable that it has, on the one hand, Old 

 Latin readings which he discarded, and, on the other, readings introduced in 

 later times which have no support from ancient versions. It follows that in 

 some places where it differs from the Clementine Vulgate the Oathach may, 

 preserve the Hieronymian text, and that elsewhere, where the two are in 

 agreement, they may follow an Old Latin recension i-ather than St. Jerome. 

 For a strictly scientific estimate of the relation of the Cathach text to the 

 Old Latin and Gallican versions we must wait till the commission at present 

 engaged in preparing a critical edition of the Vulgate have finished their 

 work. 



Moreover, when we discover that a phrase peculiar to C or V is Old Latin 

 we have not proved the existence of mixture in the proper sense. For, as we 

 have seen, St. Jerome incorporated in his Gallican version many readings 

 peculiar to the Septuagint, marking them with an obelus ; and it is probable 

 that in many cases he took the Latin rendering of such readings, unaltered, 

 from a current version. When, later on, scribes began to omit the obeli, they 

 sometimes omitted with them the words to which they were attached. 

 Accordingly, when of two manuscripts one contains, and the other omits, an 

 Old Latin word or phrase, it may be that the former, and not the latter, agrees 

 with St. Jerome. 



It may be well therefore to attempt, by another method, to form some 

 notion of the value of the Cathach considered as a manuscript of the Gallican 

 Psalter. In the production of that version St. Jerome for the first time 

 made serious use of the Hebrew original. In the determination of the test 

 he placed the Hebrew and Greek to some extent on an equal footing, merely 

 distinguishing their respective contributions by his system of asterisks and 

 obeli. Now, V has entirely, and C to a large extent, omitted the asterisks 

 and obeli ; and in some cases we can assert with some confidence that one or 

 other of them has also omitted the corresponding words or phrases. Thus in 

 two places V has a reading supported by the Hebrew which C, following the 

 Septuagint, omits:' Ixviii. 31 et; Ixxxii. 15 et. In 9 places follows the 



' By the Hebrew, where the contrary is not stated, I mean St. Jerome's version from 

 the Hebrew (Lagarde). It is the best witness to the original text, as read by St. .Jerome, 



