iii. The Natui;e and Method of Jerome's Revision. — Tlie work before Jerome in his edition of the two Testaments varied so widely that we must treat them apart ; and, as the NT was pub- lished first, it may be advisable to consider it before the OT.
In his letter to Daiiiasus, Jerome describes plainly enough the nature of his revision of the four Gospels. He revised the existing Latin ver- sions by the aid of tlie oldest Greek M3S he could have access to, making alterations only where the sense of the passage required it.§
Such a revision was no new thing in the history of the Latin versions. We may put aside the ques- tion whether what is called the European family of the Old Latin texts be an independent version from the African family, or an early revision of it
* Naturally enough, the various modern editions do not all re- present the Clementine text with absolute or unth equal accuracy; the stiiilent who wishes to possess an accurate text is advised to obtnin ll:e very careful edition published by Vercellone at Rome in isol, and to note what the editor says in bis preface as to the few occa.sion8 on which he haa deviated from the Clementine edition of 1592 : for the NT the edition of Hetzenauer (Oenipont* 1899) is convenient and, so far aa we have tested it. accurate.
t His letter to Abp. Wake is dated April 1710, the proposals for printing were issued in 1720 ; see A. A. Ellis, Bentleii critica lacra (Cambr. 18<J2), p. xii t.
I Corssen, Bpistula ad GcUatag, Berlin, Weidmann, 1885.
\ Ep. ad Damajtum, *Hiec pnesens prsefatiuncula pollicctur quattuor tantura Evangelia . . . codicum Grsecorum emendata conlatione, Bed veterum. Qu» ne multum a lectionis Latinte consuetudine discreparent, ita calAmo temperavimus, ut his tantum qus sensum videbanAur mutars correctifl, reliqua maDer« pateremur ut fuerant.'
[see L.\TIN Versions]. But there can be no doubt that the Italian family, represented in the Gospels by the Codices. Brixianua (/) and Monacensis (j), though principally by the former, is a revision of the Eurupean family, partly in accordance with a dirt'erent and somewhat later type of Greek MSS, partly in order to give the Latiiuty a smoother and more even appearance (Westcott and Hort, Intro- duction, p. 79). There can be equally little doubt that Jerome knew of, and valued, this revision, and made it the ba.se of his own : a short exaiuination of a few pages of the Vulgate with the main Old Latin MSS wOl convince any reader that Jertune's text is in Latinity much closer to the Codex Brixianus than to any other Old Latin MS ; Mr. Burkitt, indeed, maintains that / is really a Vulgate MS with Old Latin elements that have come in through the Gothic (see JThSt, i. 129 ; and Kaufmann in Ztschr. f. dcutsche Philologie, xxxiL 305-335).
If, however, we compare the Greek text under- lying the Vulgate with that represented hy f q, we shall see that for the Gospels at any rate it is a return to the older type of MS, especially N and B ; the tables of readings which, as the present writer believes, demonstrate this, may be studied in the EpHugus to the Oxford edition of the Vulgate ; * but if the student will examine the apparatus criticus of Tischendorf s Greek Testament the same fact will be disclosed to him ; time after time t the Vulgate follows the older Latin and older Greek MS.S, while/ and q agree with the later. Jerome, indeed, twice in his commentaries quotes with re- spect the readings of the Greek MSS belonging to Origen ; t but the readings in one case agree w ith and in the other case ditl'er from NB, so that we cannot conclude much as to the nature of their . text. Other points have been noticed by scholars, connecting Jerome with the Sinaitic and Vatican texts ; in the OT, Mr. Burkitt g says that Jerome ' in his translations from the LXX in the prophets is generally very faithful to the Vatican text ' ; and in the Acts the Codex Amiatinus has 70 capitula with corresponding section-numerals in the text, an enumeration which is marked in the margins of both N and B, but is otherwise, according to Hort, un- known in Greek MSS and literature ; || so that there is a cumulative argument of considerable weight on behalf of Jerome's having made use of manuscripts of this type.
At the same time it is clear that he must have consulted MSS of a type different from anything we now possess. There are instances in the Gos- pels, few but clear, where he has apparently cor- rected the reading against all known Greek authorities, as well as against the Old Latin ; 1 and in some of his commentaries he expressly mentions and discusses readings which are other- wise unknown to us. The most striking instances of these latter are, (1) the clause at the end of St. Mark's Gospel (16") quoted in the contra Pelag. it
• Novum trslammtum . . . lecundum editimiem S. Bieromjnn . . . recensuit J. Vi'ordvicorth, in operis gocktatem adsutnto ii, J. White. Oxonii, 1SS9, p. 600 f.
t e.g. in one chapter of St. Matthew, 6>- *■ «■ "■ ''■ ».