Pre MVs

[Tootle]

What are the thoughts of this board's members on pre-modern versions (PMVs)? Let us assume, for the sake of discussion, that modernity began at midnight, January 1st, A.D. 1500. That's kind of an arbitrary date, but I wanted to exclude the entire Tyndale tradition--in fact, the entire Erasmian NT tradition.

The only PMV I use with any regularity is the Stuttgart Vulgate which, wheresoever its editors succeeded, reproduces the text of Jerome and his immediate successors. (And wheresoever they fell short, they at least printed a spelling-regularized medieval Vulgate.) I need a dictionary handy and I sometimes consult a modern version when I find Jerome indecipherable, but usually the language is fairly straightforward. It is printed per cola et commata, without punctuation or capitalization, which occasionally hinders understanding but not as often as I'd feared. The translation in the NT seems formally equivalent, where I have been able to check it--benefit of using an inflected language, I guess. (Knowing almost no Greek, my Latin-Greek comparisons are limited to comparing word order, meaning, and declension or conjugation.) Sometimes I read it aloud; it was probably meant to be read that way, and it sounds good.

Anyone else have a favorite pre-modern version?

[Jerry]

Jerome's Vulgate is a Catholic text - and the basis for their Douey-Reims (as far as I know).

[John81]

Anyone else have a favorite pre-modern version?

No.

[Philip]

I use the Geneva Bible fairly often, but still refer back to my Old Scofield. I like the notes in the Geneva, and compare them to Scofield and the notes in the KJV Study I use also.

[Tootle]

Jerome's Vulgate is a Catholic text - and the basis for their Douey-Reims (as far as I know).

I'm not sure exactly which edition of the Vulgate was followed by Douay-Rheims, but I know it doesn't hew very close to Jerome's in the particulars. For instance, it maintains several medieval changes: the comma Johanneum of 1 John 5:7-8, which is absent from the Stuttgart text; and the "book of life" in Rev 22:19. Stuttgart agrees with the early manuscripts in reading "tree of life (ligno vitae)." Douay-Rheims follows the printed editions in reading "book of life (libro vitae)."

Douay-Rheims was probably based on an early printed Latin edition, all of which are known to be corrupt from the point of view of Jerome's Vulgate. The Challoner revision of D-R was corrected against the Clementine Vulgate, also considered a poor text by today's scholars. (And outside the scope of my "pre-modern versions.") For one reason or another, medieval Catholic copyists changed a lot of the text they inherited, but the Stuttgart Vulgate fixes a lot of that.

As for Catholics, it doesn't much matter to me which sect commissioned a translation. The KJV was commissioned by the head of the Anglican Church, after all, and they're basically Catholics who don't like the Pope because he wouldn't let one of their kings get a divorce.

[Guest Guest]

The difference is that the KJB doesn't cater to one religion, sect or denomination. I can soundly refute the tenets of the Anglican church in five minutes with my King James Bible, but men like Jerome and his work were commissioned to create a book that would back the "church" up, and make them look good as if they really were getting the Word of God into the peoples' hands (all the while they were burning people at the stake for possessing a copy of the scriptures). At the same time, however, God, in his rather odd sense of humor, decided that of all the "vulgar" translations of the Bible, the Vulgate would be the only one (at that time) to include the Johanine Comma, and give critics yet another excuse to reject His word since the KJB followed that very Latin corruption in including that in 1 John.

In response to the OP, no, I have no "pre MV" translation that I read, in English anyhow. I also disagree with setting 1500 as the division point; where did you people come up with this nonsense? You're not the first person to claim anything since then or around then is modern, but that's about as ridiculous as claiming that Beowulf was written for Broadway. The real division of "modernism" would probably be around 1800 to 1850ish, when German "higher criticism" and humanistic philosophy began infiltrating our society. With that came textual criticism and Westcott and Hort's abominable wretchedness.