148 REV. H. J. WHITE, 1£.A. 3 ON CONNECTION BETWEEN VULGATE 



that they might be released from sin ") : but the later Vulgate 

 MSS. and the Clementine text turn it into a general rule of 

 faith, not a pious practice on the part of Judas mentioned with 

 praise ; it is now " Sancta ergo et salubris est cogitatio pro 

 defunctis exorare ut a peccato solvantur " ( J< It is a holy and 

 sound thought to pray for the dead, that they may be released 

 from sin "). 



I mentioned above that there would occasionally be a play 

 on the words in the original which it might be next to 

 impossible for a translator to reproduce exactly ; it must be 

 allowed, however, that Jerome here often had that good luck 

 which only comes to very clever people. In Acts viii, 30, the 

 question to the Ethiopian Eunuch (" understandest thou what 

 thou readest ? ") yivctxr/ceis a avayivcoa/ceis goes exactly into 

 Latin " intellegis quae leg is," though the similar play in 

 II Corinthians iii, 2, yivwa tcouevri Kai avayivcoa Ko/xevr] was not 

 reproduced in the Vulgate ; Erasmus proposed that it should 

 be translated "quae mtellegitur et /'///'////'"(instead of "quae 

 scitur et legitur " of the Vulgate). But in the Old Testament, 

 Jerome cleverly translated Exodus xv, 23, " unde et congruum 

 loco nomen imposuit, vocans ilium Mara, id est. am<rrituAiiu m " : 

 cf. Euth i, 20, "Vocate me Marc, id est, Amaram " ; also 

 Genesis ii, 23, Virago quoniam de rim sumpta est." 



In rendering Hebrew proper names, Jerome shewed greater 

 freedom and common sense than our own translators: he 

 followed the example of the LXX version, which, in the Book of 

 Genesis, regularly interpreted such names. This is quite 

 legitimate, and makes much of the Old Testament more 

 intelligible and living. We may doubt whether the average 

 country congregation is much the wiser for hearing that 

 Abraham called the mountain on which he offered Isaac, 

 " Jehovah-Jireh " (Genesis xxii, 14); but the Vulgate is 

 perfectly intelligible with its "appellavit nomen loci illius, 

 Dominus videt ; similarly in Genesis xxxi. 47. the " Jegar- 

 Sahadutha" of the A.V. means nothing to the average layman, 

 while the " tumulum testis " of the Vulgate is quite clear. 

 Elsewhere Jerome made his version more clear to a popular 

 audience by adding the interpretation after the proper 

 name, as e.g., Genesis xxxii, 2, " Mahanaim, id est castra/ r 

 and Rev. ix, 11, " Appolyon, Latine habens nomen 

 E' teriii inans." 



It may be thought that points of translation like these 

 have little to do with influence on doctrine ; but Jerome's. 



