CHAPTER XXVIII.

ANCIENT VERSIONS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT.

In the present chapter those versions of the Old Testament also that were made in connection with versions of the New, and in the interest of Christianity, will be briefly considered.

I. LATIN VERSIONS.

1.  A peculiar interest attaches to the early Latin versions.  The “Old Latin” translation of the New Testament, in connection with which one of the Old Testament was executed from the Septuagint, is perhaps the earliest that exists in any language.  The Old Syriac alone can rival it in antiquity, and if either may claim the precedence, it is probably the Latin.  This version, and afterwards the revision of it by Jerome, was the grand medium through which the Holy Scriptures were known to the Western or Latin churches for more than twelve centuries.  It has exercised no small influence on the popular modern versions of Christendom, and it is the great storehouse of theological terms for both Catholic and Protestant Christianity.

The English version of Wiclif (1324-1384) is a literal translation of the current text of the Latin Vulgate.  The Psalter of the English Prayer Book is taken from Cranmer’s Bible called the “Great English Bible:”  and the version of the Psalms follows the Gallican Psalter, the second of the revisions made by Jerome from the Old Latin.  See below, No. 4.

2.  How early the ante-Hieronymian Latin version (that current before the days of Hieronymus, that is, Jerome), was executed is unknown; but the writings of Tertullian furnish satisfactory proof that it was in popular use in North Africa (the place where it was made) in the last quarter of the second century.  According to the testimony of the ancient church fathers, its text existed in a great variety of forms, and the same variety has come down to us in the old manuscripts that contain it.  Some, indeed, have maintained that several independent versions existed.  But the sum of the evidence from both the early fathers and the manuscripts goes to show that there was never more than one that could be called independent.  The copies of this were subjected to multiplied emendations or revisions from the Greek original, till the text had fallen in the days of Augustine and Jerome into a state of great confusion.

The language of Augustine is very strong:  “The translators of the Scriptures from the Hebrew tongue into the Greek can be numbered, but the Latin interpreters can by no means be numbered.  For whenever, in the first ages of Christianity, any one had gained possession of a Greek manuscript, and imagined himself to possess some little skill in the two languages, he ventured to become an interpreter.”  De Doct.  Christ. 2. 16.  According to the received opinion the so-called Itala (Italian) was not an independent