134 REV. H. J. WHITE. M.A V OX COXXECTION BETWEEN VULGATE 



alone excepted, for Ulfilas translated the Old Testament from 

 the Septuagint, and the Xew Testament from the Greek.* Its 

 influence was felt on Luther's translation and on our own 

 Authorized Version ; and the Vulgate ma}' claim to have had a 

 larger circulation, and to have been more widely studied, than 

 any other version of the Bible, and even than the original 

 Hebrew and Greek. If, therefore, we are to understand Western 

 theology we must study it with the Vulgate Bible at our sides ; 

 if we are to understand Dante, we must refer constantly to the 

 Vulgate : even when working at the Latin theologians who wrote 

 before Jerome's time, we shall do well to have our Vulgate at 

 hand, for that version was. in the Xew Testament, largely an 

 emendation of earlier Latin versions, and many of their distinctive 

 readings passed over into the Vulgate text. 



May I remind you very briefly of the main points in the 

 history of Jerome's work ? It was in a.d. 382 that he received 

 the commission from Pope Damasus to make a revised transla- 

 tion of the whole Xew Testament ; not so much to translate 

 it anew from the Greek as to judge among the numerous exist- 

 ing translations and select throughout that rendering which best 

 represented the Greek.- 1 - In the following year, 383, Jerome 

 brought out the first instalment of his work, the Four Gospels. 

 These were succeeded in the next year, 384, by the rest of the 

 Xew Testament, which was, however, much more hastily done ; 

 indeed, some scholars have doubted whether Jerome ever did 

 revise the rest of the Xew Testament i but my study of the 

 Acts and Epistles has made it clear, to me at any rate, that 

 tradition is correct. Somewhere also about this time, though 

 the exact date is not known, he made his first emendation of 

 the Psalter, revising the Old Latin text from the Greek of the 

 LXX: this is the J* salt, ,-iu Routonam, still in use in S. Peter's 

 at Pioine. In 385 Jerome left Eome and, after a short period of 

 travel, settled for the rest of his life at Bethlehem. In or about 

 387 he revised theiPsalh Hum Roman um, using not only the LXX, 

 but the other Greek versions and appending Origen's critical 

 signs; this is the Psalterium Gcdlicanum, so called from the 

 wide popularity which it attained in Gaul, apparently through 

 the efforts of Gregory of Tours (a.d. 594): it ultimately became 

 the current version in the Pioman Church, and it is this Psalter 



* Scrivener-Miller, Introduction, II, p. 146. 



t See "Vulgate"' in Murray's Illustrated Bible Dictionary, p. 935 f. ; 

 and the letter of Jerome to Pope Damasus, " Novum Opus facere me 

 cogis ex veteri," printed at the beginning of most Vulgate Bibles. 



