VERSION OF BIBLE AND THEOLOGY OF WESTERN CHURCH. 149 



practice of interpreting in this way had considerable effect 

 in those passages of the Old Testament where the word 

 " Anointed," or " Messiah," comes in ; here, following the 

 LXX, he boldly put " Christus," with the result that many 

 more passages have a Messianic reference in tin 1 Vulgate than 

 in our own A.V. Again, it may be asked, "What else could 

 he have done ? " Very likely it was inevitable ; but still the 

 fact, and its influence, remained. Psalm ii, 2, is an obvious 

 instance : " Principes convenernnt in unum adversus Dominum 

 et adversus Christum ejus," compare Acts iv, 27, where in 

 the A.V. it is also rendered "against the Lord, and against 

 his Christ," though the R.V. has "against his Anointed." 

 Equally personal is the reference in Habakkuk hi, 18,* where 

 " \ will joy in the God of my salvation" appears as " Exsultabo 

 in Deo Jesu meo"; also Lamentations iv, 20, where "The 

 breath of our nostrils, the anointed of the Lord, was taken in 

 their pits " appears as " Spiritus oris nostri, Christus Dominus, 

 captus est in peccatis nostris." In some cases anxiety to find a 

 reference to our Saviour in the Old Testament led Jerome to 

 force the translation of the Hebrew, as in Isaiah xi, 10, where 

 w r e read of the lioot of Jesse that " unto him shall the 

 Gentiles seek, and his rest shall be glorious," but Jerome 

 translated " Ipsum gentes deprecabuntur, et erit sepulcrum 

 ejus gloriosum " ; or again, Isaiah xvi, 1, " Send ye the lambs 

 for the ruler of the land from Sela, which is towards the 

 wilderness, unto the mount of the daughter of Sion," becomes 

 in the Vulgate " Emitte agnum, Domine, dominatorem 

 terrae de petra deserti ad montem filiae Sion " ; again in 

 Genesis xli, 45, it is said that Pharaoh gave to Joseph the 

 name " Zaphenath-Paneah " ; Jerome translated this " Vocavit 

 eum lingua ^Egyptiaca, Salvatorem mundi" which makes the 

 passage appear distinctly Messianic ; according to Driveiyf 

 however, the name means " God (or " the God ") spake and 

 he (the bearer of the name) came into life," so that Jerome 

 has strained the interpretation here. 



I should like in conclusion to draw your attention to 

 some very small points where, by its punctitation, the 

 Clementine Vulgate has altered the sense of the original 

 Greek. Time after time St. Paul in the greetings of his 

 Epistles speaks of " The God and Father of our Lord Jesus 



* See Kanlen, Geschichte der Vulgata, p. 175 (Mainz, 1868). 



t Commentary on Genesis {Westminster Commentaries), pp. 344, 345. 



