* It must be noticed that we are not here separating differ- ences of reading from differences of rendering. See some im- portant remarks by Sanday, OL Bibl. Texts, ii. p. xlii.
t See, e.g., Reusch, Tiling. Quartal-Schrift, 1862, p. 244 ff. 5 Fritzsche in Herzog, RE? viii. p. 433 ff. ; Zimmer, SK, 1889, ii. p. 331 ff. ; Haussleiter in Zahn’s Forschungen, iv. pp. 72, 73.
3 See, ¢.9., Kaulen, Gesch. ἃ. Vulg. p. 107 ff. ; L. Ziegler, Die lat. Bibeliibersetzungen, etc., Munich, 1879, p. 4 ff. ; P. Corssen, ia be τς protest. ee 1831, p. 507 ff.
ὃ Breslau, 1889. It bears only upon the Apocal. .
1 De Doct. Christ. ii. 13. ee oe
G 1b. ii. 11.
LATIN VERSIONS, THE OLD
many other similar expressions.* It is quite evi- dent that Aug. believed in a large number of separate OL versions.
ἡ the writings of Jerome the facts are pre- sented somewhat differently. Thus, for example, in his Pref. in lib. Paralip.: ‘cum pro uarietate regionum diuersa ferantur exemplaria, et germana illa antiquaque translatio corrupta sit, atque uiolata, nostri arbitrii putas aut e pluribus iudicare quid uerum sit aut nouum opus in ueteri opere eudere.’ And again, Lpist. ad Damasum: ‘si enim Latinis exemplaribus fides est adhibenda, responde- ant quibus: tot sunt pene quot codices. Sip autem ueritas est querenda de pluribus, cur non ad Grecam originem reuertentes ea que uel a uitiosis interpretibus male edita uel a presump- toribus imperitis emendata peruersius uel a librariis dormitantibus aut addita sunt aut mutata cor- rigimus?’ See also his Pref. in lib. Job. It seems as if, in the passages quoted, Jerome is thinking rather of separate and most corrupt re- censions or copies (exemplaria) of the tr® than of several distinct versions. For in the first he con- trasts the ‘germana antiquaque translatio’ with the ‘diuersa exemplaria’ of it which have arisen through corruption and local variations. And he could scarcely speak of there being almost as many separate tr™ as there were MSS. On the other hand, many passages can be quoted from his writ- ings which give colour to the opposite hypothesis. So, e.g., in his Pref. in Proverb. he talks of ‘im- periti translatores’; in Zpist. 18. 21 of ‘interpre- tum uarietatem.’§ In what way can the apparent confusion of the evidence be harmonized? Perhaps we are not justified in treating these statements of the Fathers as authoritative on the subject. There is much force in the words of Zahn:|| ‘It is a thoroughly short-sighted attempt to seek in the occasional utterances... of a Jerome or an Augus- tine regarding the Latin Bible an answer to the questions which bear on the date of its origin, the original unity or multiplicity of translators. These men would not have kept back from us a definite tradition regarding the place, the time, the origin- ator of the version or versions, if they had pos- sessed such. . . . What they say has neither in form nor meaning the slightest resemblance to an historical tradition or an ancient report. It is rather the scanty result of a more or less intelli- gent view of the actual facts which they had before their eyes.’ We cannot, at least, be blind to the rhetorical exaggeration in the passages quoted. And it seems quite reasonable to suppose that Jerome and Aug. are simply putting forward their own hypotheses to account for the state of things which they find existing. Probably, they could give no more definite answer to the question before us than that which Jerome gave as to the use of Theodotion’s tr. of Daniel by the Church in place of the LXX: ‘et hoe cur acciderit nescio’ (Pref. in Dan.). It is along other lines that the problem must be approached.
It has been already observed that a comparison of the extant OL texts, whether in MSS or Fathers, reveals clearly enough a large number of more or less important variations. These are of different kinds. Sometimes the variant consists in the use
* See the large collection of quotations bearing on this point, from Aug., in Ziegler, op. cit. pp. 6-10.
t Wiseman’s attempt (Essays on Various Subjects, i. p. 24 ff.) to show that ‘interpretari’ and its cognates can be used, and are used, by Aug., of recensions as well as translations, is now dis- credi' even by defenders of the one-version theory, 6.9. Fritzsche, op. cit. p. 435.
Σ ‘Of no passage is this judgment more true than of this actual sentence itself, which is hardly quoted in the same way in any three MSS’ (H. J. White in Scrivener’s Jntroduction, vol. ii p. 42. See also Wordsworth and White’s Vulgate, Fase. i. p. 2)
§ See Picglet; op. cit. p. 13.
§ Gesch. ἃ. NT Kanons, hd. i. Ὁ. 38.
LATIN VERSIONS, THE CLD 49
LATIN VERSIONS, THE OLD of a pynoa ye sometimes it presupposes a differ- ent underlying Gr. text: sometimes it shows another form of construction: sometimes it lies in
an addition or omission, while, at times, it is merely an inversion of the order of words in a sentence, or
followed is found on almost every page of the OL versions of OT. The same cause would also be at work in NT. Add to this the carelessness of scribes and the independent efforts at translating the original, either deliberately introduced into the