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Source: (consider it) Thread: Jerome's Vulgate
Demas
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# 24

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While discussing the proper translation of 1 Tim 4:10, IngoB and I got sidetracked into a discussion of Jeromes' translation into Latin commonly known as the Vulgate. Basically it went like this:

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
(RCs could argue that since the Vulgate has been authoritatively declared to contain no error concerning Christian faith and morals, "maxime" must be considered as not standing against correct scripture interpretation.

quote:
Originally posted by Demas:
Oh wow. I didn’t know that there was a RC equivalent to King-James-Onlyism. Is this a common belief in the RCC?

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
It isn't an "Onlyism". It is a guarantee that one particular text can be assumed as unfailingly reliable in what it says. Note: not unfailingly reliable as a translation, rather considered by and in itself. And no, it is not a common belief in the RCC. Most Catholics today wouldn't know that. Most Catholics today probably wouldn't know what a "Vulgate" is... But it is clearly doctrine, and arguably conciliar dogma, of the RCC.

quote:
Council of Trent, 4th session
Moreover, the same sacred and holy Synod - considering that no small utility may accrue to the Church of God, if it be made known which out of all the Latin editions, now in circulation, of the sacred books, is to be held as authentic - ordains and declares, that the said old and vulgate edition, which, by the lengthened usage of so many years, has been approved of in the Church, be, in public lectures, disputations, sermons and expositions, held as authentic; and that no one is to dare, or presume to reject it under any pretext whatever.

Divino Afflante Spiritu
And if the Tridentine Synod wished "that all should use as authentic" the Vulgate Latin version, this, as all know, applies only to the Latin Church and to the public use of the same Scriptures; nor does it, doubtless, in any way diminish the authority and value of the original texts. For there was no question then of these texts, but of the Latin versions, which were in circulation at that time, and of these the same Council rightly declared to be preferable that which "had been approved by its long-continued use for so many centuries in the Church." Hence this special authority or as they say, authenticity of the Vulgate was not affirmed by the Council particularly for critical reasons, but rather because of its legitimate use in the Churches throughout so many centuries; by which use indeed the same is shown, in the sense in which the Church has understood and understands it, to be free from any error whatsoever in matters of faith and morals; so that, as the Church herself testifies and affirms, it may be quoted safely and without fear of error in disputations, in lectures and in preaching; and so its authenticity is not specified primarily as critical, but rather as juridical.

Behind this is then a fundamentally different attitude to what Protestants have: it is the Church that makes the bible, not the bible that makes the Church. Thus a translation can be elevated by the Church to be authoritative scripture. In this case that has happened organically, i.e., council and pope here merely affirm what has happened to the Vulgate. If you read the encyclical, you will also see that this does not deny the authority of the original texts, or the value of translating these into modern languages. It does not even mean that you cannot criticise the Vulgate considered as translation of the original texts. But it means - as the pope says - that the Vulgate has the fullness of juridical power, and is free of error when used to judge faith and morals. I hence can judge faith and morals in the light of the Vulgate, as much as I can do so in terms of the original texts. (And consequently they cannot ultimately contradict each other.) The Vulgate is authoritative scripture in that specific sense.
Now I find all this pretty interesting and would love some input from the other RC's on the ship. Is it the case that the RCC considers the Vulgate to be in a sense a divinely trustworthy translation? Is it the only divinely trustworthy translation? How does this interrelate with modern scholarship on ancient Hebrew, Koine, and textual criticism?

And what does it actually mean? IngoB's description is to my Protestant mind so qualified that I'm not sure I understand what the difference in the end is in RC doctrine between, say, the Vulgate and the NRSV.

(Not sure if this should be Purg or Kerygmania?)

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orfeo

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# 13878

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Not Catholic, but...

As I understand it, IngoB is trying to get you away from thinking that the word-for-word accuracy of the translation is the criterion. So I'm not sure the questions you're asking are actually in line with the relevant claims about the status of the Vulgate.

A quick look at the Wikipedia article indicates that the key thing is the Vulgate has achieved official status. That expresses satisfaction with its doctrine, presumably, but not necessarily it's status as a textual translation. Indeed, the article says that for some parts of the Bible Jerome's translation is relatively free and not that valuable for the purpose of textual criticism. Whether that means his work is "accurate" depends very much on what you mean by accuracy.

And there are in fact variant texts of the Vulgate itself, owing to the fact that copies had to be produced by hand for the first 1000+ years. The official version now is something called the "Nova Vulgata", which according to Wikipedia has, among other things, been revised in some places in light of modern studies on the Hebrew and Greek texts.

[ 30. January 2015, 00:47: Message edited by: orfeo ]

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IngoB

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OK, simple example: how many gifts of the Holy Spirit are there according to Isaiah 11:1-3?

There are six according to the Masoretic text, with a coda that doubles the mention of "fear of the Lord". Consequently, that's what you will find in modern "Masoretic-dominated" translations into English, like the NRSV. Whereas in the Septuagint and in the Vulgate there are seven, wherein the first of the doubled "fear of the Lord" becomes "piety".

Now, what does that mean for the Catholic doctrines and theologies that have been built upon seven gifts? In a "Protestant mode" one now would presumably have to worry whether Septuagint/Vulgate have mistranslated the Masoretic coda, or whether the Masoretic coda is a corruption of an original text that had two different gifts at the end, or whether there are simply two different traditions, both confusingly able to claim authority... Given however that the Vulgate is declared to be free of error in faith and morals, in a "Catholic mode" I can simply say that the Vulgate justifies listing seven gifts. And that it must be possible to understand the Masoretic text as at least not contradicting this as far as faith and morals are concerned.

That does not solve the question why there is a discrepancy. It does not change that translators have to choose which text to follow. But it does mean that I can source my "biblical explanation" from the Vulgate instead of the Masoretic text, if I so wish. And in this case I do...

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Demas
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Thanks IngoB, that's interesting.

I think maybe Orfeo's suggestion that you were "trying to get [me] away from thinking that the word-for-word accuracy of the translation is the criterion" isn't so right though, because your example seems exactly about word-for-word accuracy (or maybe better - reliability? trustworthiness?)

So you would agree that the Vulgate isn't an 'accurate' translation of either the LXX or the Hebrew Bible but nevertheless is a trustworthy expression of the Bible - to the extent that where it disagrees with the Masoretic text we should trust the Latin translation over the Hebrew original?

Still sounds like KJV-onlyism to me, I'm afraid.

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Ad Orientem
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# 17574

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quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
The official version now is something called the "Nova Vulgata", which according to Wikipedia has, among other things, been revised in some places in light of modern studies on the Hebrew and Greek texts.

The Nova Vulgata is just horrible. In the Psalms especially it breaks from nearly two thousand years of tradition by using mainly the Hebrew instead of the Greek and also the Hebrew numbering.

Blessed Jerome's version is venerable due to its antiquity.

In the old Roman liturgy many of the parts directly quoted from scripture actually predate Blessed Jerome's version.

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orfeo

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# 13878

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quote:
Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
The official version now is something called the "Nova Vulgata", which according to Wikipedia has, among other things, been revised in some places in light of modern studies on the Hebrew and Greek texts.

The Nova Vulgata is just horrible. In the Psalms especially it breaks from nearly two thousand years of tradition by using mainly the Hebrew instead of the Greek and also the Hebrew numbering.

Blessed Jerome's version is venerable due to its antiquity.

In the old Roman liturgy many of the parts directly quoted from scripture actually predate Blessed Jerome's version.

The Psalms in Hebrew are even more antique than the Psalms in Greek. You're basically objecting to breaking with a couple of thousand years of tradition in order to return to an even older tradition. One could just as easily argue that the break from tradition was the period during which Greek was favoured over Hebrew, and this break from tradition has finally been rectified.

This is frequently the problem with arguments based on tradition, they usually don't involve recognising that the 'tradition' one is talking about is just the latest in a series of traditions.

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Ricardus
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Isn't part of the issue that 'inerrancy' in the Evangelical / Fundamentalist sense isn't really a feature of Catholicism? And is also different from authority or canonicity.

I would think it is slightly meaningless to argue about whether there are 'really' six or seven gifts of the Spirit - it's not really something quantifiable as though the Holy Spirit was an Argos catalogue.

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Ad Orientem
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# 17574

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quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
quote:
Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
The official version now is something called the "Nova Vulgata", which according to Wikipedia has, among other things, been revised in some places in light of modern studies on the Hebrew and Greek texts.

The Nova Vulgata is just horrible. In the Psalms especially it breaks from nearly two thousand years of tradition by using mainly the Hebrew instead of the Greek and also the Hebrew numbering.

Blessed Jerome's version is venerable due to its antiquity.

In the old Roman liturgy many of the parts directly quoted from scripture actually predate Blessed Jerome's version.

The Psalms in Hebrew are even more antique than the Psalms in Greek. You're basically objecting to breaking with a couple of thousand years of tradition in order to return to an even older tradition. One could just as easily argue that the break from tradition was the period during which Greek was favoured over Hebrew, and this break from tradition has finally been rectified.

This is frequently the problem with arguments based on tradition, they usually don't involve recognising that the 'tradition' one is talking about is just the latest in a series of traditions.

Bollocks! From the very beginning the Church favoured the Greek, even in Jerusalem. There's a reason the Church favoured the Greek and not only because Greek was spoken throughout the empire, but because it was considered to be a new step in revelation compared to the Hebrew.
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goperryrevs
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quote:
Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
Blessed Jerome's version is venerable due to its antiquity.

My guess is that a statement like that would have made Jerome cringe. The whole reason he translated the Greek version of the scriptures into Latin was because he knew that the Septuagint had its faults, and that he wanted to give people a contemporary translation in a language that they understood, with up-to-date scholarship and using the original Hebrew scriptures, rather than the later Greek ones. And he met resistance (see his correspondance with Augustine).

If he was around now, Jerome would probably consign his Latin translation to history (albeit interesting and important history) and be working on new contemporary translations in languages that people actually speak.

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anteater

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# 11435

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Well, good on the RCC!

I don't want to discuss inerrancy (which I do not accept) but one of my chief beefs with protestant doctrine is that their pronouncements on the Bible relate to a text that does not now exist, and probably never did: viz the original autograph text.

In arguments, it is often said that available texts are good enough, as are translations. But all? The JWs NT? There is a valid argument for preferring the Septuagint to the Mssoretic text and IIRC the Orthodox do hold the LXX as the canonical OT.

So I've always thought it incumbent to make a statement about texts you can actually obtain, and it looks like the RCC has been realistic enough to do so.

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IngoB

Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700

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quote:
Originally posted by Demas:
So you would agree that the Vulgate isn't an 'accurate' translation of either the LXX or the Hebrew Bible but nevertheless is a trustworthy expression of the Bible - to the extent that where it disagrees with the Masoretic text we should trust the Latin translation over the Hebrew original? Still sounds like KJV-onlyism to me, I'm afraid.

How can it be an "onlyism" if I did not insist on an "only"? I never said that we should trust the Latin translation over the Hebrew and for that matter Greek NT originals. I said that if I want to judge matters of faith and morals, then I can look to the Vulgate as much as I can look to the original sources. It's a "bothism", perhaps. It just so happens that in the particular case of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, the Vulgate works better for my purposes.

It's just like we have four gospels. If you look for something in both Luke and Matthew, and find that the verses in Luke work better for you, then you are not declaring Luke to be the only gospel, and Matthew not. You are simply saying that you will stick with Luke for whatever you are doing. Of course, this only works if whatever is in Matthew at least does not outright contradict what you are reading from Luke. But that's just what I have been saying about the Vulgate vs. the original sources. I cannot use something from the Vulgate over and against the original sources, because truth cannot contradict truth and both are supposed to be free of error for faith and morals. But I certainly can say that I'm getting more out of one than the other for a certain topic.

In my example, the Masoretic text does not deny that piety is a gift of the Holy Spirit. For example, it could well be that one can reasonably split the fear of the Lord into two distinguishable pieces, one being "awe of the Lord" the other "piety". That would restore correspondence with the Vulgate. It's just that if I did not read the Vulgate, I probably would never had that idea. The Vulgate hence delivered something extra. And saying that it is just as authoritative as the original sources for faith and morals means that I can consider this extra to be Divinely inspired. I don't have to worry about it being a translation error. (That by the way is not denying that it might have been one, but if it was one, then an inspired one...)

There is an added level of fun here, because the Vulgate is a translation. Though it is not a translation from an actually known source, AFAIK. But anyway, the point is that we can discuss the Vulgate as a translation, but that's a completely different discussion! It is entirely possible to say that Jerome translated something incorrectly, in the sense of not matching in Latin what the sources he was working on were saying in Hebrew. What is not possible for RCs to say is that this translation error corrupts what scripture teaches about faith and morals. The translation error hence has to be inconsequential, or even inspired. Or at least this follows from the declaration of Trent.

I would like to add that the "New Vulgate" may now be the official Latin text of the RCC. But it does not enjoy the status of the "Old Vulgate". There are no guarantees about the "New Vulgate", it merely is an officially endorsed translation into Latin. And given that basically nobody is using this "New Vulgate" for serious scripture work, we can be sure that it will never acquire such guarantees organically over time, as the "Old Vulgate" did. The "New Vulgate" is basically an outcome of needing a Latin scripture text as normative for the Latin liturgy, but wanting to hang with the cool Protestant kids by using the Masoretic sources. So a translation of those sources into Latin had to be made, and that's the "New Vulgate". Since also the new liturgy has more or less ceased to be held in Latin, and since for vernacular liturgies one can look at vernacular translations from the same sources, its one and only function is now to be a bureaucratic norm that enforces some uniformity.

What I think the RCC should do is to make a similar declaration as Trent did for the Vulgate, but for a Septuagint version (pick whatever has been most time-honoured by consistent usage in the Eastern churches). I think Christianity de facto has three scripture versions that have full juridical power concerning faith and morals. And then some commercial publisher should be inspired to produce a "triple bible", which gives Catholics access to all three of these in a parallel fashion (one text where they are the same, two or three texts where they deviate sufficiently). And the Holy See may as well make a Latin version of the "triple bible" for the liturgy, and then pick what is most edifying in case of variance.

Well, one can dream.

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orfeo

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# 13878

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quote:
Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
Bollocks! From the very beginning the Church favoured the Greek, even in Jerusalem. There's a reason the Church favoured the Greek and not only because Greek was spoken throughout the empire, but because it was considered to be a new step in revelation compared to the Hebrew.

The only thing I can really say to this is: eh?

Greek is not a more divine language than Hebrew. Such a proposition gets you into all sorts of horrible knots, such as why Our Lord and Saviour failed to speak the more divine language available to him.

I also think that Jesus would find your belief that the history of the Psalms started with the church spectacularly odd.

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Ad Orientem
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# 17574

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quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
quote:
Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
Bollocks! From the very beginning the Church favoured the Greek, even in Jerusalem. There's a reason the Church favoured the Greek and not only because Greek was spoken throughout the empire, but because it was considered to be a new step in revelation compared to the Hebrew.

The only thing I can really say to this is: eh?

Greek is not a more divine language than Hebrew. Such a proposition gets you into all sorts of horrible knots, such as why Our Lord and Saviour failed to speak the more divine language available to him.

I also think that Jesus would find your belief that the history of the Psalms started with the church spectacularly odd.

I'm not arguing that Greek, or any language for that matter, is superior or "divine" than any other. My argument was that from the beginning the Church considered the Greek version of the Old Testament to be superior to the Hebrew. If that distinction is too subtle for you, take time to work it out. And as if to show the importance of the Greek version as the basis of any translation, Jerome's version still had the Pslams from the Greek.
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orfeo

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# 13878

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quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
I would like to add that the "New Vulgate" may now be the official Latin text of the RCC. But it does not enjoy the status of the "Old Vulgate". There are no guarantees about the "New Vulgate", it merely is an officially endorsed translation into Latin. And given that basically nobody is using this "New Vulgate" for serious scripture work, we can be sure that it will never acquire such guarantees organically over time, as the "Old Vulgate" did.

Of course it will. The very reason that the "Old Vulgate" enjoyed the status that you describe is because it was regarded as the standard of the church. The church has now declared a new standard. Later generations will be familiar with the new standard, as the only standard they've lived under, and be fine with it and use it.

I've got absolutely no problem with the concept of having an official standard. What I find bemusing is the idea that the power to set a standard can only ever be exercised once and can never be re-exercised. This is the problem with attachment to the King James, and now that I see the attachment to the "Old Vulgate"* it's the problem with that attachment as well.

I'm sure there are people who remember pre-decimal currency and prefer it because that's what they first learnt, just as there are people who prefer Imperial measurement because they grew up before this country fully switched to metric. People always dislike change. That doesn't mean the change is objectively bad and will therefore never catch on. Most of the changes do catch on, and basically they've caught on once a new generation can't remember any other system.


* Are we talking about the Clementine Vulgate? In which case one wonders what you think of the Vulgates used before its publication in 1592, as the pre-Clementine history of the Vulgate is actually far longer than the Clementine history. If the Clementine is your Vulgate of choice, then you are attached to a new-fangled version that many people born before 1592 probably eyed with great suspicion.

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orfeo

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# 13878

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quote:
Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
quote:
Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
Bollocks! From the very beginning the Church favoured the Greek, even in Jerusalem. There's a reason the Church favoured the Greek and not only because Greek was spoken throughout the empire, but because it was considered to be a new step in revelation compared to the Hebrew.

The only thing I can really say to this is: eh?

Greek is not a more divine language than Hebrew. Such a proposition gets you into all sorts of horrible knots, such as why Our Lord and Saviour failed to speak the more divine language available to him.

I also think that Jesus would find your belief that the history of the Psalms started with the church spectacularly odd.

I'm not arguing that Greek, or any language for that matter, is superior or "divine" than any other. My argument was that from the beginning the Church considered the Greek version of the Old Testament to be superior to the Hebrew. If that distinction is too subtle for you, take time to work it out. And as if to show the importance of the Greek version as the basis of any translation, Jerome's version still had the Pslams from the Greek.
The problem is that you think it was superior for any reason besides the fact that Greek was more widely understood. You explicitly insist that that was NOT the reason, that they thought the Greek version was INHERENTLY better.

Whereas it seems incredibly obvious to me that the primary purpose of a translation is to put the material into a language that is useful.

The great irony here is that you are simultaneously arguing that translations into new languages represent progress in revelation, while at the same time insisting that progress has now become bad. How do you logically define the point where the good old days of progressing revelation became the bad new days of innovation? Was translating from Greek into Latin an improvement, or a backwards step? What about translating from Latin into the native tongues of people of the Middle Ages? What about translating from medieval languages into modern languages?

I can't think of any sensible basis, either logical or theological, for saying that the work of translators was divinely inspired up to one point of time yet after that point it became a bad thing.

I certainly can't think of a logical basis for saying that the Pope who commissioned Jerome was doing good, and the Pope Clement who commissioned the Clementine Vulgate which held sway from the late 16th century to the late-ish 20th century was doing good, but that the Pope who decided there was a need to engage in exactly the same kind of standard-setting process to reflect another few centuries of additional knowledge was committing a grievous error.

[ 30. January 2015, 08:42: Message edited by: orfeo ]

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Enoch
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# 14322

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The most significant thing about the Vulgate NOW, rather than at the Reformation, is that when one comes to the New Testament, St Jerome was translating between two languages which were both familiar, normal, vernacular languages in everyday use. There may have been some changes in Greek usage between the 1st and 4th century, just as there have been in English since 1715 (a comparable distance in time), but not that much. And Latin was still an ordinary spoken language.

Although it was the universal language of scholarly debate in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, it was a sort of Esperanto. It wasn't anyone's first language in the C16.

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IngoB

Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700

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quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
Of course it will. The very reason that the "Old Vulgate" enjoyed the status that you describe is because it was regarded as the standard of the church. The church has now declared a new standard. Later generations will be familiar with the new standard, as the only standard they've lived under, and be fine with it and use it.

That's simply counterfactual. The "Old Vulgate" was declared to be above board concerning faith and morals because so many generations of lay people, priests, bishops, popes, saints, theologians, doctors of the church, ... made constant use of it in every way for such a long time. And, of course, the council of Trent was motivated to declare this because it wanted to combat Protestant claims to have a better translation. It was not declared to be free of error simply because the Vatican had made it official. Basically, nobody is using the "New Vulgate" for anything now, and there is no reason to believe that anybody ever will. It occasionally gets dragged out for a consistency check for a liturgical translation into another language. And maybe someone somewhere occasionally celebrates a Novus Ordo mass all in Latin, where its text would be heard. But that's it. The confirmation process is hence not going to happen. Furthermore, there is no New Reformation now, and even if there were, a fight about sources of scripture is highly unlikely to play a big part of it. So there is neither any motivation, not would the same reasoning be available. The "New Vulgate" is never going to achieve the same status. That's a very, very good bet indeed.

You are simply plain wrong if you think that this is a standardising body issuing a new standard. That's not how this is playing.

And yes, we are for all intents and purposes talking about the Sixto-Clementine Vulgate, because that editions was made precisely in response to the fact that Council of Trent made a normative declaration without pointing to a normative edition of the Vulgate. The Sixto-Clementine Vulgate is this normative edition produced after the fact. As a process, that's really putting the cart before the horse, but in the end the Church got there. Formally, it is the authority of the popes involved which guarantees that this is the proper realisation of the authority of the council.

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Adeodatus
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# 4992

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quote:
Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
I'm not arguing that Greek, or any language for that matter, is superior or "divine" than any other. My argument was that from the beginning the Church considered the Greek version of the Old Testament to be superior to the Hebrew. If that distinction is too subtle for you, take time to work it out. And as if to show the importance of the Greek version as the basis of any translation, Jerome's version still had the Pslams from the Greek.

If there are no other factors to be taken into consideration, people will always prefer a book that's written in their own first language. Greek was the language of the Eastern Empire, Latin of the Western. What more natural than that the Greek and Latin Bibles would achieve dominance in the East and the West respectively? And, as the King-James-Onlyists show, it's a small step from dominance to imputed inerrancy.

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orfeo

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# 13878

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quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
And yes, we are for all intents and purposes talking about the Sixto-Clementine Vulgate, because that editions was made precisely in response to the fact that Council of Trent made a normative declaration without pointing to a normative edition of the Vulgate. The Sixto-Clementine Vulgate is this normative edition produced after the fact. As a process, that's really putting the cart before the horse, but in the end the Church got there. Formally, it is the authority of the popes involved which guarantees that this is the proper realisation of the authority of the council.

Then how is this different to the New Vulgate? Why, if the church had the power to create a normative edition, is it a power that could only be exercised once for all time?

The very notion of a Sixto-Clementine Vulgate involves the fact that the Sixtine Vulgate, the first attempt, was not satisfactory. If it was permissible to make a second attempt, I cannot see any reason why it somehow becomes impermissibile to make a third attempt just because the gap between the second and third attempts is longer than the gap between the first and second.

[ 30. January 2015, 10:40: Message edited by: orfeo ]

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IngoB

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The New Vulgate is intentionally and decidedly not an attempt to create a better edition out of the same material that Trent declared to be above error. That project by clear and explicit choice focused on translating Masoretic and Greek sources anew.

Furthermore, while it is a common assumption that council and/or pope can just declare willy-nilly whatever they want, this is just plain wrong.

The sum total of new and authoritative pronouncements that council and/or pope can make in their own right is this: fuck all.

Both always have to argue that they are merely expounding what God has said. Their authority is totally derived, and they must reference Divine authority.

That's why Trent goes on about the millennium of usage by the Church and her saints. There argument there is that if this had been against God's will, then surely he would have put some kind of stop to generation upon generation of his finest being misled by a bad translation. Because God has done nothing of the sort, but rather allowed this usage to grow and grow, we can be confident that there's nothing wrong with this translation at least as far as faith and morals are concerned.

Whereas it just won't work if council and/or pope point at the New Vulgate and merely say "well, we like it - therefore it is free of error." Says who? Says you. You are not God, so why would we trust your opinion? They must find some reason, some Divine reason. So maybe if there is a grand apparition of the BVM in Rome where she shows the New Vulgate to the faithful and says "this is a good translation, I'm well pleased", then they can argue that it is free of error. On their own authority, nope. They have none to say that.

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orfeo

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# 13878

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quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
That's why Trent goes on about the millennium of usage by the Church and her saints. There argument there is that if this had been against God's will, then surely he would have put some kind of stop to generation upon generation of his finest being misled by a bad translation. Because God has done nothing of the sort, but rather allowed this usage to grow and grow, we can be confident that there's nothing wrong with this translation at least as far as faith and morals are concerned.

Two things flow from this, and I'm actually going to put what was my second thought first.

My second thought is: has anyone actually suggested that the New Vulgate teaches different things, as far as faith and morals are concerned, from the Old Vulgate? I would be quite surprised if it did.

My first thought is: you appear to be arguing that God can only correct errors if he does so quickly. I find this highly problematic, firstly because it seems to assume that human beings being uncooperative don't come into the equation, and secondly because it seems to fly in the face of Biblical history which, on any measure, involves very long timespans between the Fall, the Old Testament covenants and the life of Jesus. The argument that it wouldn't take God a thousand years or more to put us on the right path is in direct contradiction to the lengthy process involved in moving from Fall to a Saviour.

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Ad Orientem
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quote:
Originally posted by Adeodatus:
quote:
Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
I'm not arguing that Greek, or any language for that matter, is superior or "divine" than any other. My argument was that from the beginning the Church considered the Greek version of the Old Testament to be superior to the Hebrew. If that distinction is too subtle for you, take time to work it out. And as if to show the importance of the Greek version as the basis of any translation, Jerome's version still had the Pslams from the Greek.

If there are no other factors to be taken into consideration, people will always prefer a book that's written in their own first language. Greek was the language of the Eastern Empire, Latin of the Western. What more natural than that the Greek and Latin Bibles would achieve dominance in the East and the West respectively? And, as the King-James-Onlyists show, it's a small step from dominance to imputed inerrancy.
I'm not arguing against translations not in Greek. I'm arguing that the Septuagint was for the early Church the authoritative version of the Old Testament, considered inspired by most (that is if you believe in the tradition of the seventy scribes and that is represents in part a kind of preparation for the coming of the Gospel in the Greek world), and that use of the Hebrew as the text from which all other translations came, especially of the Psalms, was a break from tradition.
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Adeodatus
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quote:
Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
I'm not arguing against translations not in Greek. I'm arguing that the Septuagint was for the early Church the authoritative version of the Old Testament, considered inspired by most ...

And all I'm saying is, I wouldn't have expected otherwise - but for cultural reasons, not because that authority or inspiration can be found in, or argued from, the text itself.

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orfeo

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# 13878

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quote:
Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
use of the Hebrew as the text from which all other translations came, especially of the Psalms, was a break from tradition.

Hebrew IS the text from which all other translations came. Starting with a translation into Greek!

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Ad Orientem
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quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
quote:
Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
use of the Hebrew as the text from which all other translations came, especially of the Psalms, was a break from tradition.

Hebrew IS the text from which all other translations came. Starting with a translation into Greek!
Not in the Christian context, no.

[ 30. January 2015, 12:29: Message edited by: Ad Orientem ]

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Enoch
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quote:
Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
quote:
Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
use of the Hebrew as the text from which all other translations came, especially of the Psalms, was a break from tradition.

Hebrew IS the text from which all other translations came. Starting with a translation into Greek!
Not in the Christian context, no.
Sorry Ad Orientem, I agree with the Orthodox on many things but that is nonsense. One respects the Septuagint. One sometimes needs to evaluate whether it or the Masoretic is more likely to represent the original text, or even how it was originally understood. But the Septuagint is a Greek translation of a Hebrew original and there's no way of getting round that.

Otherwise, one really might as well say that the CofE should be a KJV Only church, and people should not go behind it to look at the Greek New Testament.

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orfeo

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# 13878

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quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
quote:
Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
quote:
Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
use of the Hebrew as the text from which all other translations came, especially of the Psalms, was a break from tradition.

Hebrew IS the text from which all other translations came. Starting with a translation into Greek!
Not in the Christian context, no.
Sorry Ad Orientem, I agree with the Orthodox on many things but that is nonsense. One respects the Septuagint. One sometimes needs to evaluate whether it or the Masoretic is more likely to represent the original text, or even how it was originally understood. But the Septuagint is a Greek translation of a Hebrew original and there's no way of getting round that.

Otherwise, one really might as well say that the CofE should be a KJV Only church, and people should not go behind it to look at the Greek New Testament.

Exactly. The writers of the New Testament were perfectly aware they were using a Greek version of a Hebrew original. They used it because they were writing in Greek.

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IngoB

Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700

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quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
My second thought is: has anyone actually suggested that the New Vulgate teaches different things, as far as faith and morals are concerned, from the Old Vulgate? I would be quite surprised if it did.

No. Since the New Vulgate is a translation of those source texts which are in the first place considered to be free of error concerning faith and morals, then as long as it is a half-decent translation it is unlikely to teach any error. I have never heard anybody claim that the New Vulgate is so corrupt a translation as to be erroneous in faith and morals. If you wish, you can hence certainly use the New Vulgate, just as you would use for example the NRSV translation. But as far as teaching faith and morals is concerned, the New Vulgate is not somehow "better" than for example the NRSV. The New Vulgate has a special, official role merely for the Latin liturgy.

That said, compare the Sixto-Clementine with the Nova Vulgate on Isaiah 11:1-3, the verses already mentioned above:
quote:
New Vulgate
Et egredietur virga de stirpe Iesse,
et flos de radice eius ascendet;
et requiescet super eum spiritus Domini:
spiritus sapientiae et intellectus,
spiritus consilii et fortitudinis,
spiritus scientiae et timoris Domini;
et deliciae eius in timore Domini.


Sixto-Clementine Vulgate
Et egredietur virga de radice Iesse,
et flos de radice ejus ascendet;
et requiescet super eum spiritus Domini:
spiritus sapientiae et intellectus,
spiritus consilii et fortitudinis,
spiritus scientiae et pietatis;
et replebit eum spiritus timoris Domini.


(For translation of the Latin, please see the translation of your choice for Isaiah 11:1-3, plus my commentary above concerning the different number of gifts. It is this difference which is highlighted by italics.)

So if your question is "how many gifts does the Holy Spirit give", then in fact you will get different answers. It is a matter of discernment that nevertheless no error in faith and morals arises, it is not obvious. See above for my explanation how this might work. You could also argue that the precise number of gifts just does not matter to faith and morals, etc. But the point is: you need to argue. And you could certainly argue against "spiritual compatibility", this is not something that the text itself can settle. That in fact is settled by the Church effectively declaring it to be so.

quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
My first thought is: you appear to be arguing that God can only correct errors if he does so quickly. I find this highly problematic, firstly because it seems to assume that human beings being uncooperative don't come into the equation, and secondly because it seems to fly in the face of Biblical history which, on any measure, involves very long timespans between the Fall, the Old Testament covenants and the life of Jesus. The argument that it wouldn't take God a thousand years or more to put us on the right path is in direct contradiction to the lengthy process involved in moving from Fall to a Saviour.

Your argument is faulty because history after Christ is not comparable to history before Christ. We do have the fullness of revelation, we do have the assistance of the Holy Spirit, and finally we do have the Church. Now, it is indeed a most obvious answer to Trent for Protestants to say "but God is correcting this faulty Jerome translation, namely right now, through us." But Trent is not addressing the conceit of heretics as an apologist. It is actually addressing its own faithful and hence appeals to a Catholic understanding. The Church, in her collective operation through the ages, in possession of the deposit of faith, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit and in living apostolic tradition, cannot err. It would mean nothing less than to conceded to the Protestants that the true Church had somehow "submerged" for over a thousand years, and only now was being awoken again, if one were to allow that scripture got corrupted within the universal life of the Church for this period.

Note that this is a "global" and "long term" argument. The Church is not infallible at every moment everywhere. But in the sense of this entire living entity spreading through space and time, she is. And the argument here is that one cannot say that she is that if her very heart was poisoned all along. That makes no sense to a Catholic. It's not an argument designed to impress Protestants though, who after all are asserting precisely that they are facing the rotting, stinking carcass of a Church that died internally long ago. It is an argument designed to impress Catholics against Protestants. And well, it sure works for me... [Biased]

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Alan Cresswell

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# 31

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quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
Exactly. The writers of the New Testament were perfectly aware they were using a Greek version of a Hebrew original. They used it because they were writing in Greek.

And, once the Church spread beyond Jews to Gentiles who'd had no significant contact with Judaism then they would use the Septuagint because members of the Church would not have been able to understand Hebrew.

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orfeo

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# 13878

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quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
Your argument is faulty because history after Christ is not comparable to history before Christ.

Which might make sense as a response if Christ, Jerome and the Clementine Vulgate all coincided in time. They don't. The gap between Christ and the Clementine Vulgate is larger than the gap between Christ and King David.

You're now basically providing an answer that says the presence of the Church is more powerful than the presence of God. Or that's certainly what it sounds like - that God, in the period between the Fall and the life of Jesus had a fair bit of work to do and maybe he got thwarted along the way and might have had some missteps, but the Church has got it all right from then on.

The fundamental flaw in your logic is this: you are not merely asserting the perfection of the Church across all space and time, you are asserting that you can TIME when the Church reached perfection, and in the case of the Vulgate you manage to assert that it reached it with the Clementine Vulgate but before the Nova Vulgata. You cannot say that it reached perfection with Christ because the very idea of the Vulgate did not occur until several hundred years after Christ. There is absolutely no basis in your theological argument for saying that one historical development after Christ enabled an ideal Latin text and another historical development after Christ didn't. Especially not when, as you acknowledge, the 2 Latin texts in question don't differ in their crucial theological principles. You have no grounds for dismissing the possibility that the Nova Vulgata is in fact another step in the Church's work towards an ideal Latin text, other than your own personal preference for a text that was set at the time that you started learning about the Bible as a Latin text.

And the same is true of many of your other positions. You are not timing the attainment of perfection by reference to Christ at all, but by a particular version of the Church which, by a miraculous coincidence, was in place at a point somewhere around your own birth or introduction to these matters.

In my experience this is the case with most traditionalists in most fields. What they mean by 'tradition' is usually 'what I first learnt about because it was in place when I was young (or young in the faith) and learning'. It is very rare indeed to find someone who says that no, what they first learnt was wrong and they must go back to something older.

Of course, the line of people who have basically claimed that they were born into the perfect thing that was then ruined at some time after their birth stretches back centuries, even millennia. An observation which is deeply ironic.

[ 30. January 2015, 13:56: Message edited by: orfeo ]

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Gwai
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We have decided that the language of this thread is much more Kerygmaniacal than Purgatorial, so hold your bibles for the transition.

Gwai,
Purg Host

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If they think they ha’ slain our Goodly Fere
They are fools eternally.


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IngoB

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# 8700

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quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
Sorry Ad Orientem, I agree with the Orthodox on many things but that is nonsense. One respects the Septuagint. One sometimes needs to evaluate whether it or the Masoretic is more likely to represent the original text, or even how it was originally understood. But the Septuagint is a Greek translation of a Hebrew original and there's no way of getting round that.

Ad Orientem can speak for himself, but this falls short of the reality even from a Protestant point of view. It is true that the Septuagint is a Greek translation of a Hebrew original. However, we do not have access to that Hebrew original. And there is no a priori reason why one would assign higher Divine authority to the Masoretic textual tradition than to the one represented by the Septuagint. In fact, there is at least one good reason to assign higher authority to the Septuagint tradition, since the Masoretic text did coalesce into its final form only after Christ, and not among Christians. One can indeed worry that the Masoretic text is biased by the ensuing conflict between Jews and Christians, if not in a direct manipulation of the text then possibly in the selection among available variants.

At any rate, the Septuagint and the Vulgate both represent somewhat different traditions of the original texts than the Masoretic one. (And I think also are somewhat different to each other, though closer to each other than to the Masoretic.) It is true that we can only look at these latter texts only through the window of translation (to the Greek and Latin, respectively). But that does not strip these other traditions of their authority. If tomorrow all Masoretic texts and all its translations burned to ash, but for the NRSV, then the NRSV would not simply lose all of the authority it derives from the original revelation. I seriously think that Protestants are blind and foolish if they ignore the Septuagint and Vulgate. I think Catholics are blind and foolish if they ignore the Septuagint (and these days, Vulgate). I think the Orthodox are blind and foolish if the ignore the Vulgate and Masoretic. These are all windows onto revelation, and all of them are not entirely clear. Maybe the Masoretic window has least tint. Maybe. But to say "this is true because I have it in Masoretic Hebrew, whereas this is different and hence false, because I only have it in Greek Septuagint" is just nonsense. One could say so if the Greek Septuagint was translating the Masoretic Hebrew, but this is not the case.

Also, the Orthodox believe that the Septuagint translation is itself Divinely inspired. De facto, this leads to the same situation as the declaration of Trent about the Vulgate. (And I hope for the day where the RCC officially recognises this.)

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orfeo

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# 13878

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quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
It's not an argument designed to impress Protestants though

Can I just go back to this and say that I dislike your tendency to say that my views are because I'm Protestant. I realise this is not something you do to me personally, but you do tend to label people in a way that says "well, you would say that because you're Protestant".

My views on questions about the value and correctness of tradition aren't a reflection of my Protestantism, because my views on these things aren't confined to theological tradition.

I have exactly the same kind of scepticism, for example, about the inherent rightness of a particular state of affairs at a particular moment in time when it comes to musical traditions. Knowledge of musical history shows me that there have been at least several centuries worth of people who've taken the view that the music that was around in their youth was fantastic stuff, far better than the boring material the previous generation listened to, but that the next generation has made it all go downhill.

People are naturally resistant to change. Or many people are, anyway - it's arguable that some people, by dint of personality, are naturally restless and eager for change. I myself am often resistant to change, but I recognise that "this is the way things are" is not a very solid argument on its own, without a proper explanation of (1) the benefits of the current state of affairs, and (2) an explanation of why a particular, specific change is going to be a net loss rather than a net benefit.

There is something fundamentally problematic about assuming that the current state of affairs must be the best possible state of affairs, and that's that it usually involves being blessed with remarkably lucky timing - to have arrived/been born at exactly the right moment to enjoy something that neither your predecessors nor your followers will be able to enjoy.

And of course, I always feel comforted in my position on the weakness of tradition by the knowledge that Cyprian took exactly the same view in the 3rd Century. [Biased]

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Ad Orientem
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quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
And of course, I always feel comforted in my position on the weakness of tradition by the knowledge that Cyprian took exactly the same view in the 3rd Century. [Biased]

Eh?
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orfeo

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# 13878

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It is admittedly a translation, but he said that custom without truth is the antiquity of error.

Basically, the fact that you've been doing something a long time is no guarantee that it is correct. It just means that if a mistake was made, it was made a long time ago.

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Ad Orientem
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But Cyprian wasn't saying that tradition in the Christian context was weak, which is what you implied. Antiquity does have a say, for the faith was delivered once to the saints. With that in mind, anything new cannot be true.
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IngoB

Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700

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quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
Which might make sense as a response if Christ, Jerome and the Clementine Vulgate all coincided in time. They don't. The gap between Christ and the Clementine Vulgate is larger than the gap between Christ and King David.

No. My argument, or rather Trent's argument, precisely relies on the length of time in which Jerome's translation was in use. That the Clementine Vulgate as authorised edition of Jerome's translation appeared so much later does not speak against it, but for it. You can of course worry about the length of time between Christ and Jerome's Vulgate. But then neither were there no translations before Jerome (the so-called Vetus Vulgate) nor is the argument for Jerome's translation that it was done close to Christ in time, or somehow itself represented centuries old translation tradition when it was done, or whatever. There is just one argument here. Jerome's translation was in universal usage by the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church for a millennium. It is authorised as free of error by the very life of the Church, which depended on it for so long, and which cannot err on such scales. It was then compiled into a definitive edition, and served for another few hundred years on an even more global scale. That's all.

quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
The fundamental flaw in your logic is this: you are not merely asserting the perfection of the Church across all space and time, you are asserting that you can TIME when the Church reached perfection, and in the case of the Vulgate you manage to assert that it reached it with the Clementine Vulgate but before the Nova Vulgata. You cannot say that it reached perfection with Christ because the very idea of the Vulgate did not occur until several hundred years after Christ.

Seriously, I don't know where you are getting all this nonsense from. The Church has been what she is since Pentecost. She didn't need to reach some state of perfection to produce the Vulgate, or whatever. One can say that the Church had to grow to a certain size - both temporally and spatially - before an argument like that of Trent could be made. On the next day after Jerome had finished his translation, we could not have known that it is free of error, because it had not yet been field-tested by the global Church for a millennium. But that's not some failure of the Church, or Jerome, or the translation - that's just how history works. And if the New Vulgate suddenly becomes the go to translation for all and sundry in the RCC, because the Matrix has decided to infuse Latin in every Catholic's brain, and if this keeps on going for a thousand years or so, then it is of course entirely possible that in 3100 AD the Council of New Sirius declares that the New Vulgate is free of error, as testified by the life of the Church since the Matrix reestablished Latin. There's nothing that speaks against that other than astronomical odds.

quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
There is absolutely no basis in your theological argument for saying that one historical development after Christ enabled an ideal Latin text and another historical development after Christ didn't. Especially not when, as you acknowledge, the 2 Latin texts in question don't differ in their crucial theological principles. You have no grounds for dismissing the possibility that the Nova Vulgata is in fact another step in the Church's work towards an ideal Latin text, other than your own personal preference for a text that was set at the time that you started learning about the Bible as a Latin text.

What are you going on about? Seriously. None of this has anything to do with what I have said, or for that matter with what bible translations I first learned about or now use. Barring an apocalyptic destruction of all Masoretic original sources, or the complete disappearance of all knowledge of ancient Hebrew, the New Vulgate will never be anything else than a translation of these sources. It might be reckoned the best Latin translation of these ever possible. Fine. But it will never replace the sources. Because source is better than translation. The New Vulgate may over a thousand years become reckoned as free of error. As mentioned above, that's highly unlikely, but possible. That wouldn't change its derived status though. And the New Vulgate can never ever replace the Clementine Vulgate. For two simple reason. First, they are not translating the same sources. I cannot replace a translation with a translation of something else. Second, the Clementine Vulgate is declared to be free of error in its own right. So in 5100 AD, in the glorious second millennium of the reign of Latin Matrix and New Vulgate, a Catholic can still pull out the Clementine Vulgate and judge faith and morals from it. Nobody and nothing can stop him. No pope and no council. The magisterium cannot revise its definitions, ever, and the Clementine Vulgate has been defined as free of error. Oh, and if you actually care, I mostly us NRSV and RSV-CE, with some Knox and NJB, on the English side of things. If I use the Clementine Vulgate, then by using the parallel Augustin Arndt German bible that I have (I also have a parallel Douay-Rheims, but the German translation is by far superior). And I must have been one of the few people in this world who tried hard to get a New Vulgate. I partially succeeded via the Navarre bible. And the first bible I ever read probably was the NJB, though I don't really remember.

quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
And the same is true of many of your other positions. You are not timing the attainment of perfection by reference to Christ at all, but by a particular version of the Church which, by a miraculous coincidence, was in place at a point somewhere around your own birth or introduction to these matters.

Once more, complete nonsense. Now we are apparently talking about tradition. Well my view of tradition is the Catholic one, which considers the Church now as compared to the Church Christ founded as a young oak tree compared to an acorn. It's the same thing, developing along the same internal principles (DNA you might say) - but grown. And in another two millennia, if the world has not ended, then there will be a church that relates like a massive and mature oak tree to the young oak tree that we are now. Still the same thing, still developing along the same internal principles, but even more grown. And so on. In this picture then, the perfection the Church enjoys across space and time basically means that her DNA will remain untouched, non-mutated, and also that even if she loses a branch or two, she will keep on growing. And even if the storms rip that tree right out of the earth and smashes it into a million pieces, still, somewhere one of the scattered branches will still be sprouting - and it will still be the same living plant that has ever grown by the same DNA when the One returns who planted the acorn. That's Catholic tradition. It is both conservative and dynamic, it is alive, it grows, against all odds or with them, till the end of time.

quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
It is very rare indeed to find someone who says that no, what they first learnt was wrong and they must go back to something older.

There is no "older" Christianity than the one I belong to. It simply doesn't exist. We have an unbroken tradition from Christ to today, and every step along the way the tradition has crystallised out further. But none of what has gone before is lost. It's all right there. What the pope says today must be compatible with scripture, with the Church Fathers, with the medieval councils, with what the pope said in the Victorian age. Or he is a heretic, and not my pope. But it must only be compatible, not identical. It is an unbroken tradition, not a dead one.

quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
Of course, the line of people who have basically claimed that they were born into the perfect thing that was then ruined at some time after their birth stretches back centuries, even millennia. An observation which is deeply ironic.

It's also an observation that is completely irrelevant to my faith. I have no doubts that this Church now is transient, and also - so God willing - that the future Church will be better than the one I encounter now. But not without organic growth, not simply by "being something else". Whatever was, whatever is, whatever shall be - it must be in harmony and not contradict each other. The DNA stays untouched. It is Divine.

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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear

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IngoB

Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700

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quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
Can I just go back to this and say that I dislike your tendency to say that my views are because I'm Protestant. I realise this is not something you do to me personally, but you do tend to label people in a way that says "well, you would say that because you're Protestant".

I actually didn't say that there. Nor is Bulverism my usual go to strategy.

quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
There is something fundamentally problematic about assuming that the current state of affairs must be the best possible state of affairs, and that's that it usually involves being blessed with remarkably lucky timing - to have arrived/been born at exactly the right moment to enjoy something that neither your predecessors nor your followers will be able to enjoy.

There is also something fundamentally problematic with putting words into other people's mouths and asserting that they spout them just to satisfy their psychological needs.

For one thing, when one then complains about projection and Bulverism in others, they tend to behave strangely. Some start to slow-clap, others face-palm, others write strange letter combinations like LOL or ROTFL or WTF, others again alternate repeatedly between [Roll Eyes] and [brick wall] ... But the strangest kind are those who mutter to themselves about motes and planks and eyes. That's probably some seriously weird BDSM play, I would stay well clear of those if I were you.

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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear

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ThunderBunk

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There is an enormous amount of ideological kool-aid washing around in this thread. So much that the translations themselves are almost entirely washed out of the picture.

Each church (RC, Orthodox and "protestant") has its canonical text and/or translation, and its associated canonical tradition of interpretation. I know "protestant" isn't a church per se, but I nevertheless suggest it is functioning as one for the purposes of this discussion.

All we are hearing is that each church does not accept any other approach with the same enthusiasm as it does its own. To me, this does not count as a novel revelation.

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Currently mostly furious, and occasionally foolish. Normal service may resume eventually. Or it may not. And remember children, "feiern ist wichtig".

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orfeo

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# 13878

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Ingo, it is perfectly possible to believe in a church that never changes in any IMPORTANT way. I have no problem with that in and of itself.

It is not, however, possible to believe that at the same time as arguing that a change that the Church has made is significantly bad.

The RCC has declared a change in the official version of the Vulgate, from the Clementine to the Nova Vulgata. This is an incontrovertible fact. Either this a significantly mistaken decision, in which case the Church you're telling me is free from error has made an error, or it is not a significantly mistaken decision, in which case there is no real point to muttering about how the Church has gone wrong by replacing the Clementine.

What is not possible is to tell me that a perfect Church has gone significantly wrong by introducing the Nova Vulgata, which is what you APPEAR to have been telling me. I am more than happy for you to tell me which half of your position I am misunderstanding.

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IngoB

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# 8700

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quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
I am more than happy for you to tell me which half of your position I am misunderstanding.

What you are actually misunderstanding is quite simply the significance of the New Vulgate, and its relationship to the Clementine Vulgate. You seem to think that there is this one slot for a Latin translation, and that the Clementine Vulgate was lifted into this privileged spot by the Church. But then the Church decided to dethrone the Clementine Vulgate and lift the New Vulgate into its place. And now I have the problem to explain how the infallible Church could do such a horrible thing, since I think that the Clementine Vulgate belongs into that spot.

And that is just all total bonkers. It simply has nothing to do with reality, or for that matter with any opinion I hold.

The Church switched to the vernacular in her liturgy in the wake of Vatican II. It actually makes sense to translate to modern vernacular from the original sources, and thus from the Masoretic text. If one thinks that the Masoretic text is at least free of error for faith and morals. And I do. Translating directly, rather than from say the Vulgate, avoids "Chinese whispers" effects. And it was also practical since the Protestants had gone down that road. If there's no problem with the Masoretic text, why not profit from their efforts? (Many vernacular texts used in the liturgy are actually "Catholic editions" of translation works carried out mostly by Protestants.) You even might get a bit of ecumenism done that way.

Fine. Problem is, the reference version of the Latin liturgy is in Latin, not in say English or French or Italian. If now all these vernacular liturgies which invariably translate stuff from the Masoretic sources are to be compared to a Latin reference, what do we need? Exactly. We need a Latin translation of the Masoretic sources. That's the New Vulgate, basically. We cannot keep the Clementine Vulgate, because it actually does not translate the Masoretic sources. It is a translation of other, now lost, source texts. (Very similar, of course, but not the same.)

And that's really all there is to this. The New Vulgate does not "replace" the Clementine Vulgate. There is not just one possible spot for a Latin translation. It does not even really replace the Clementine Vulgate in the liturgy. More properly one has to say: the old (extraordinary, "Tridentine") form of the liturgy was replaced by the new (ordinary, "Vatican II") form of the liturgy, and in the wake of that it was necessary to get a different Latin version of the readings. But if you celebrate a "Tridentine" mass, you of course still use the Clementine Vulgate. Because, why not? The Clementine Vulgate is not gone, or anything like that, and for the "Tridentine" mass we do not have to worry about coherence with "Masoretic" vernacular masses.

If you want to get a fight going about the errors the Church here, then that would have to be about the liturgy. Not about scripture. The New Vulgate really only came about in service of the the new liturgy, and consequently nobody really cares about that translation outside of that specific context.

Now, liturgical wars we do have. But I'm not really the person to try to get going about that. Frankly, I have to make an effort to care about liturgy. Though I'm slightly more interested these days. Anyway, the point is that you are really barking up the wrong tree. The Clementine Vulgate remains just what it has been. But it was not a useful yardstick for the vernacular Masoretic mass, so another translation was made as well. That's all.

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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear

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orfeo

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# 13878

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But it HAS replaced it as the official translation.

That is what I am trying to figure out, whether you care about that or not. And it now seems that you do not.

I can fully understand that you've made statements about the importance of being aware of different versions of the Bible, but if that's the case I can't really understand what the original point was of your statements about how the New Vulgate won't enjoy the 'status' of the Old Vulgate. You were basically putting the boot into the New Vulgate and saying it wasn't up to scratch.

Or that it wouldn't ever become the standard used in practice. Which I still think is a misconceived view, simply because later generations will be presented the New Vulgate as the standard, and will come to know the Vulgate in that form because they're told by the Church that it's the standard form, and they'll consider the New Vulgate to be 'normal'.

[ 30. January 2015, 23:03: Message edited by: orfeo ]

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orfeo

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# 13878

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quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
The magisterium cannot revise its definitions, ever, and the Clementine Vulgate has been defined as free of error.

This is really the bit that seems to be at the heart of these logical knots, because you are essentially stating that the power to define is a power that can only ever be exercised once.

And you keep emphasising that the Clementine Vulgate has been declared free from error. Well, fine. But I'm more interested in the fact that it was declared the official version. And it has now been removed from that status.

If you don't care whether or not something is the official version, then I suppose you don't have to, but it seems fairly obvious and fundamental to me that the purpose of declaring a version to be an official version is to say "we like this one". And you're now in a position that the Church has declared that it likes a version that is different to the one that was declared free from error.

There's actually no reason why you can't have two versions, both of which are free from error, on the grounds that the two versions aren't trying to do the same thing. I've no problem with that as a proposition. But it keeps feeling as if what you are saying is that the church has replaced an error-free Vulgate with something that is in some way inferior.

Otherwise, what is there to criticise or complain about?

[ 30. January 2015, 23:14: Message edited by: orfeo ]

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Demas
Ship's Deserter
# 24

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quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
there is no a priori reason why one would assign higher Divine authority to the Masoretic textual tradition than to the one represented by the Septuagint. In fact, there is at least one good reason to assign higher authority to the Septuagint tradition, since the Masoretic text did coalesce into its final form only after Christ, and not among Christians. One can indeed worry that the Masoretic text is biased by the ensuing conflict between Jews and Christians, if not in a direct manipulation of the text then possibly in the selection among available variants.

Seriously dude, some awareness of the implications of what you are saying wouldn't go astray. The allegation that the Jews manipulated/selected what went into their holiest writings to remove Christological references is seriously offensive rubbish.

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They did not appear very religious; that is, they were not melancholy; and I therefore suspected they had not much piety - Life of Rev John Murray

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IngoB

Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700

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quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
But it HAS replaced it as the official translation.

As the official translation of what and for what? This is the text of its promulgation:

quote:
Scripturarum Thesaurus
This New Vulgate edition will also be of such a nature that vernacular translations, which are destined for liturgical and pastoral use, may be referred to it; and, to use the words of our predecessor Paul VI, "it is permissible to think that it is a certain sort of foundation on which biblical studies... may rest, especially where libraries open to special studies can be consulted only with greater difficulty, and where the diffusion of suitable research materials is more hindered" ... These things being so, by virtue of this Letter we declare the New Vulgate edition of the Holy Bible as "typical" and we promulgate it to be used especially in the sacred Liturgy but also as suitable for other things, as we have said.

So, it is to be used for the sacred liturgy. And if you want, you can refer vernacular translations to it. You don't have to though. And if you are sitting somewhere without any access to scholarly material, you can perhaps use it as a proxy.

Not that it is used much in the sacred liturgy. Almost all Latin masses are "Tridentine", and there the Clementine Vulgate is still used. What is it really being used for then?

quote:
Liturgiam Authenticam
Furthermore, it is not permissible that the translations be produced from other translations already made into other languages; rather, the new translations must be made directly from the original texts, namely the Latin, as regards the texts of ecclesiastical composition, or the Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek, as the case may be, as regards the texts of Sacred Scripture. Furthermore, in the preparation of these translations for liturgical use, the Nova Vulgata Editio, promulgated by the Apostolic See, is normally to be consulted as an auxiliary tool, in a manner described elsewhere in this Instruction, in order to maintain the tradition of interpretation that is proper to the Latin Liturgy.

It's used as an auxiliary tool in the translation of liturgical texts from the original sources to the modern vernacular.

That's basically it.

Yes, the New Vulgate has an official function. But it is not the "official translation of the Church" in this kind of universal way that you seem to imagine there. Theoretically, it is the standard biblical text for the (ordinary) Latin liturgy. Practically, since Latin isn't used much anymore (at least in masses, not sure about Liturgy of the Hours among priests), it is mostly a sort of translation reference.

It has not really replaced the Clementine Vulgate. What has replaced the Clementine Vulgate, for all intents and purposes, including in reality also the liturgical ones, are the various vernacular versions: NAB, NRSV, NJV, ... whatever.

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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear

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orfeo

Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878

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quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
But it HAS replaced it as the official translation.

As the official translation of what and for what? This is the text of its promulgation:

quote:
Scripturarum Thesaurus
This New Vulgate edition will also be of such a nature that vernacular translations, which are destined for liturgical and pastoral use, may be referred to it; and, to use the words of our predecessor Paul VI, "it is permissible to think that it is a certain sort of foundation on which biblical studies... may rest, especially where libraries open to special studies can be consulted only with greater difficulty, and where the diffusion of suitable research materials is more hindered" ... These things being so, by virtue of this Letter we declare the New Vulgate edition of the Holy Bible as "typical" and we promulgate it to be used especially in the sacred Liturgy but also as suitable for other things, as we have said.


Of the Holy Bible.

That's what it says. You appear to want to work around that by saying that it's the official Latin translation of a particular text of the Bible - of a Masoretic text - whereas the Clementine is a translation of a different text, but really that is treating variations in different ancient versions of the Bible as if they're completely different books.

This just isn't how anyone other than a scholar working in textual criticism thinks of it. People don't think of different editions of the works of Shakespeare as being like they're reading "Romeo and Juliet" and "another play that looks remarkably like the first Romeo and Juliet but is actually a different play".

They didn't pronounce it as "typical" of the Masoretic Text. They pronounced it as "typical" of the Holy Bible. The same Holy Bible that is translated in the Clementine Vulgate. The observation is that it's a foundation for biblical studies, not a foundation for Masoretic Text studies.

[ 30. January 2015, 23:52: Message edited by: orfeo ]

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Trudy Scrumptious

BBE Shieldmaiden
# 5647

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Just a gentle Hostly reminder to keep the discussion here clearly focused on the text in question, and to avoid even the appearance of personal attack. It is perfectly possible to discuss a controversial text with great vigour, without needing to speculate on the motives or the psychological quirks of one's discussion partners. Please do so.

Trudy, Scrumptious Kerygmania Host

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Books and things.

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IngoB

Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700

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quote:
Originally posted by Demas:
Seriously dude, some awareness of the implications of what you are saying wouldn't go astray. The allegation that the Jews manipulated/selected what went into their holiest writings to remove Christological references is seriously offensive rubbish.

I indeed exactly say that this is a possibility, though I didn't specify "Christological references", and I didn't say that I have any particular proof for this. Making painstakingly exact copies is actually a late development, AFAIK starting more a couple to a few centuries after Christ. There was a lot more variance and fluidity in Hebrew scriptural text before then. I see no particular reason why selection and copying processes could not possibly have been biased by strong and heated religious convictions. Obviously that would not typically take the form of "I will now falsify my own holy text just to diss the Christians." But it might well take the form of "If one clarifies this obscure writing here as it should be done, it shows that these Christians are wrong." Or it could take the form of "This variant of our holy text is clearly superior, look, it shows here that the Christians are wrong. Let's use that one henceforth." And so on. I'm not saying that it did happen, but I'm saying that it could have happened. And to be honest, I find it a bit naive to think this to be impossible...

The simple fact is that only the Septuagint is guaranteed to be free from all post-Christ bias, because it is the only fully pre-Christ version.

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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear

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Demas
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quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
I didn't say that I have any particular proof for this.

This is sort of the point. It is not the sort of accusation which should be bandied about without being backed by serious heavy-duty scholarship - even surrounded by 'maybe's and 'possible's. "I'm not saying that it did happen, but I'm saying that it could have happened." is manifestly inadequate.

The suggestion is a clear smear on Judaism (and a backhanded one on Protestantism).

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IngoB

Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700

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quote:
Originally posted by orfeo:
They didn't pronounce it as "typical" of the Masoretic Text. They pronounced it as "typical" of the Holy Bible. The same Holy Bible that is translated in the Clementine Vulgate. The observation is that it's a foundation for biblical studies, not a foundation for Masoretic Text studies.

Yes, it is the "typical" Latin translation of the Holy Bible of the RCC today. But so primarily for the liturgy: if you instruct your priests to read from this verse to this verse, then what words they will be reading must have a definitive answer. It is not official in the sense of just outright establishing the definitive text of the Holy Bible, albeit in Latin. That's why you can, but do not have to, compare your vernacular bible translation to this text. If it was "the" text, simply, then obviously everything would have to be checked against it always. And it was not advertised as a proper foundation of biblical studies. It was advertised as being available as stop-gap measure just in case you have no access to proper materials for biblical studies.

We have several texts that differ from each other, in some places more, in some places less, and you can call all of them "Holy Bible". Or indeed, you can call them all together "Holy Bible" (it's a bit like the Trinity, really...). Famously, the Masoretic text even has entire books missing. That's not just a "textual variation" in any normal sense...

Anyway, I keep forgetting what the point of all this relentless insistence is. You seem desperate to catch me out on something here, but there really is nothing to catch me out on. As a private Catholic, who is not required to recite Latin liturgy, I don't have to care about New Vulgate in the slightest. I don't even have to know that it exists, and I bet most Catholics don't. As a private Catholic, I remain free to use the Clementine Vulgate as the Holy Bible to judge faith and morals. The New Vulgate has no guarantees to be free of error, only its sources do. The Clementine Vulgate has a guarantee itself. This is unlikely to change in the next thousand years or so, and the Church cannot simply go ahead and declare the New Vulgate error free. Given it's highly specialised and limited official function, and the near complete lack of public interest in the New Vulgate, it is a fair bet that it will remain a footnote in the history of (Catholic) bible translations. I would not be terribly surprised if the official language of the RCC at some point ceased to be Latin, and likely this would be the point at which the New Vulgate will fade from history without leaving a further trace.

None of this affects my opinions on the infallibility of the Church in the slightest. In particular, there was no requirement for the Church to produce a Latin translation "free of error", and there is not one now. It just so happened that she did. It is also the case that she probably won't again. It is not that the Church requires some special status from these scripture, rather, to have their special status affirmed these scriptures (would) need the special status of the Church.

Are we about done with this?

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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear

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