The translation, too, varies in the ditterent books ; some were translated with the utmost care, some were finished in extraordinarily short tijue. In the Friiluqus Galeatus Jerome speaks of the dili- gence he iiad bestowed on the Bks. of Samuel and Kings, It and Kaulen ranks his translation of the historical books as his best work,Jt and after them Job and the prophetic books. Proverbs, Ecclesi- astes, and Song of Songs are carefully rendered, notwithstanding the short time that was directly spent on them ; but Judith and Tobit, which were translated in great haste, show more dependence on the Old Latin version. In spite of this occasional uneveuncss, then, we may confidently assert that the general standard of the translation is a very high one ; and we may gladly echo the words of the 'translators to the reailer' in our own AV, that Jerome performed his task ' with that evidence of great learning, judgment, industry, and faithful-
• G. Hober^, De S. Hiennymi rations interpretandi. Bonn, 18S8, p. MU.
t See Nowack's essav, quoted above, and Driver, Notes on the Ileh. T'-zt 0/ Ihe Bks. of Sam. (Oxford, 1890), p. liv f., who notices that Jerome was especially prone to be guided by byinmachus, and that, where the Viiljfate exhibits a rendering which deviates alilte from the Hebrew text and from the LXX, tlie clue to its origin will generally be found in one or other of the Greek translations, especially in that of Symmachus. In the I*refaoe to the Comment, in Eccleviasten, Jerome frankly says, 'interdura Aquilu) quoque et S>-nimachi et Tbeodotionis recordatus sum.'
I See the passages collected in Hoberg, p. 4.
§ t.ij. On .iSS, Jos Hii, Nell 9' (Kaulen, p. 173).
li e.q. Is lli» 101, Uab »i (Kaulen, p. 174).
" On 313i « 4022, Lv 163, Jos Si", Jg 8" (p. 177) ; see Hoberg,
1 p. 21
"On 3513 39i» 400 4128, Ex 40»-23 ; aee also Nowack, pp. 18-21 ; Hoberg, p. 19.
ft 'Lege ergo primum Samuel et Malacbim nieum ; meuni, inquam, meum. Quidquid enim crebrius vertendo et emen* dando sollicitius et didi<:iir.u9 et tenenius nostrum est.'
t! Kaulen, p. 179; Uagen {Sprachliche ErtrterungemurYulg. p. 8) praisea also the I'eutateucb highly.
ness, that he hath for ever bound the Church nnt« him in a debt of special remembrance and thank fulness.'
It must be remembered that the Latinity of tha Vulgate is thus partly that of the Old Latin ; and, even where Jerome was translating anew, he prob- ably modelled his style, perhaps unconsciously, on that of the older versions. The Latin of those versions was the Latin of ordinary popular con- versation, the old 'lingua rustica' with all ita archaic characteristics, spoken not simply by the lower classes, but generally, even in jftome and amongst the higher classes ; difi'erent, of course, from the classical Latin of literature, but at the same time not simply confined to Africa in its popular use, as some writers seem to imagine. Nor, again, do we get this Latin in its natural form ; anxiety to reproduce the original as accur- ately as possible has led to the introduction and preservation of numerous Graecisms and Hebraisms in the translation ; and we hardly ought to deplore this when we reflect how this literalism has re- vealed to the Western world the matchless beauty and power of Hebrew. The Latin of the Vulgate is therefore at once artificial and archaic, and yet forcible, clear, and majestic*
The textual criticism of the Vulgate OT is, alas ! stUI in its infancy. Heyse and Tischendorf pub- lislied in 1873 a collation of the Codex Amiatinus throuohout the OT j t and Vercellone has fur- nishedf valuable material for the Pentateuch and historical books in the mass of variant readings collected and arranged in his two volumes of ' Varia; lectiones.'J H. P. Smith § has devoted some attention to examining and classifying the MSS whose readings are there quoted, with the result of awarding a higher place to the Codex Amiatinus in the OT than even in the NT : he maintains that for a recovery of Jerome's original it is of the first importance, and that any critical edition would have to be constructed on the basis of the Amiatine MS and other MSS belonging to the same group; P. Thielmann has collected a useful amount of material for Wisdom, Siiach, etc. (see Literature, p. 890), and is preparing a critical edition of those liooks.
iv. History of the Name. II— For us, as to the Fathers at the Council of Trent, the term vulqnta — properly mtlgata bibliorum editio, vulgata bibli- oritm interpretatio, biblia vulgata — has one mean- ing, and one meaning only ; it means the common authorized Latin version of the Holy Scriptures, translated or edited by Jerome. Yet the expres- sion is older than Jerome's time, and he himself frequently employs it of an edition already in use. It is used primarily in early Latin writers not of a Latin version at all, but of the Greek version of the Septuagint,ir and so is equivalent to the term (C01P7) lKSo<rti, by which th.it translation was known ;** as, however, the LXX was already familiar to Western Europe in the various Old Latin trans- lations which had been made from it, the term editio mtlgatawoald naturally be applied to these; though, as Westcott says, there does not seem to