“The Handbook of the Vulgate Bible and Its Reception has no model and no predecessor, being the first work of its kind” (p.5), boldly announces Bernhard Lang in the Preface. Loosely structured as a classified and annotated bibliography and including literature reviews, a glossary of biblical Latin, a preliminary linguistic commentary on selected biblical verses, sidebars on discrete topics, and covering the history of the Vulgate from its origins to the present, the work indeed defies conventional classifications. And yet this approach from multiple, discrete angles best serves a text relevant to numerous fields. The Vulgate is connected to the Hebrew Bible, the Septuagint, the New Testament, the translation of the Greek Bible into Latin (the Old Latin), Jerome’s extensive writings on biblical philology, interpretation, and theology, Classical literature, Late Antique language, literature, and society, and the subsequent history of the Church, all of which is complicated by the fact that Jerome translated most, but not all of the Vulgate. As a result, entry points to Vulgate Studies are biblical textual criticism, Hieronymian studies, Late Antique literature, the afterlife of the Latin Bible, and the Latin Bible in the history of the Church. That the current essential resources are scattered, outdated, and primarily in German and French makes Vulgate Studies frustrating and barely stimulates future research.[1]
To his credit, then, Lang has produced an essential tool for advancing research on the Vulgate. For the beginning scholar in Vulgate Studies, the work is an indispensable introduction to the field. For the more seasoned scholar, it is a treasury of essential information about virtually any topic associated with the Latin Bible. In fact, the Handbook, along with recent collections of articles and essays on the Vulgate have made 2023 a remarkable year for the field.[2] Moreover, the work is available online at no cost that makes it easily accessible and searchable.
Lang makes explicit his intent to provide a tool to address four lacunae in Vulgate Studies: a dictionary of Vulgate Latin, a grammar of biblical Latin, a linguistic and factual commentary on the Latin Bible, and a cultural history of the Latin Bible. The lexicons of Blaise as well as Lewis and Short include Vulgate usage, but do not combine Hebrew, Greek, Old Latin, and Classical Latin influences into their lexical analyses. Despite overstating the case, Lang nevertheless rightly recognizes that Plater and White’s grammar is long overdue for an update. In order to read the Vulgate as a cultural product of Late Antique Latin literature, a linguistic and exegetical commentary is essential. With a glossary and annotated bibliography classified by biblical verse, he has greatly facilitated the production of such a commentary.
The book consists of twenty-four chapters divided into four parts, and the back matter includes person and subject indices, and a detailed table of contents. Significant bibliographical entries are marked with a blue triangle. The first part, “Introduction”, has sections on “The scholar’s minimal shelf” (Chapter One), “Getting in touch with Vulgate research” (Chapter Two), “Surveys and reference works” (Chapter Three), “Latin today? Latin in the church?” (Chapter Four), “Biblical Latin for beginners” (Chapter Five) and “Bibliographical Resources” (Chapter Six). The “Introduction” provides an overview of the scattered and often outdated character of research in Vulgate Studies and covers topics ranging from the origins and scope of the term Vulgata, the first golden age of Vulgate Studies in the late 19th Century, official statements of the Catholic Church, and the decline of Latin in the twentieth century. A section in Chapter Two, subtitled “An anthology of research desiderata, 1933-2022,” surveys research in the past ninety years and highlights the paucity of bibliography in many areas crucial to the future of Vulgate Studies. Here Lang makes a compelling case for a dictionary of the Vulgate, an updated grammar, detailed studies of Jerome’s vocabulary and his relationship to Classical authors, cultural echoes of the Vulgate, and an annotated translation of the Vulgate in English. Again, one sees the range of rubrics from textual criticism of the Hebrew and Greek bibles, the Old Latin, to the linguistic history of Latin, and Hieronymian and Classical scholarship.
The twelve chapters of the next section, “Manuscripts–Language–History,” contain the outstanding contributions of the book. Distinguishing between the two biblical translations of Jerome (according to the Septuagint and according to the Hebrew), the Old Latin, the biblical books not translated by Jerome, the various manuscripts, the two modern editions of Jerome’s version, and the Nova Vulgata can be a daunting task that Lang organizes with remarkable clarity. He offers a balanced amount of information clarifying the significance, character, and relationship of various manuscripts without simply listing them or providing too extensive descriptions. This is the best introduction in English to the technical aspects of Vulgate Studies that I have seen. It describes the Vetus Latina and Vulgate manuscripts and the biblical books they contain (Chapter Seven) and resources for the lexicographical and grammatical tools for biblical Latin as well as definitions of “Biblical Latin”, “Vulgar Latin”, “Late Latin”, and “Christian Latin” (Chapter Eight). “Chapter 9 Vetus Latina” not only offers up to date lists of resources related to the Old Latin, it provides brief explanations of editions of the Old Latin as well as historical and philological issues, such as Jewish origins, Augustine’s Itala, and the fourth century C.E. Fortunatianus commentary, that function as a brief and clear survey of the relationship between the Old Latin and the Vulgate. Other sections focus on Jerome’s life and learning relevant to his translation (Chapter Ten), uniquely complex issues such as his three versions of Psalms (Chapter Eleven), and whether Rufinus or Jerome revised the New Testament books beyond the four Gospels (Chapter Twelve). Chapters 13-18 read like a brief history of publications of the Vulgate that explains the differences between the Migne, Benedictine, and Weber editions (Chapter 13); its development in the medieval, renaissance and early modern periods (Chapters 14 and 15); its role in the Catholic Church as well as the story behind the so called “New Vulgate” of 1979, which sought to produce a new Latin text close to the Hebrew (Chapters 16 and 17). By including Chapter 18 “The Vulgate Bible in vernacular translations,” Lang highlights the Vulgate as an object of research valuable in its own right. Recent work on translation studies center translation as crucial to understanding social, historical and political context so translations of the Vulgate offer hermeneutical keys for illuminating the actors, institutions, and audiences involved in these projects. Section Three “Quick Reference” makes up almost half of the Handbook and lays the groundwork for a linguistic and historical commentary on the Vulgate. It includes “A Glossary of Biblical Latin (Chapter 19), while the section on “Jerome’s Bible Commentaries” (Chapter 20) recognizes the relationship between his commentary work and his translation. “Textual Notes on the Old Testament” (Chapter 21) and “Textual Notes on the New Testament” (Chapter 22) and “Textual Notes on the Appendix to the Vulgate” (Chapter 23) classify secondary literature by biblical or apocryphal book and verse, a precursor for creating a Vulgate commentary. The last section, “Reception”, consists of a single chapter, “The Vulgate Bible in art, life, and literature” provides a modest starting point for a vast subject.
The wide-ranging and eclectic content of the work represents its greatest strength. Examples of useful information abound. Lang includes standard features such as a brief timeline of Jerome’s life with bibliography. He also offers more obscure references such as the unpublished 2018 thesis of Timothy William Dooley, Jerome’s Text of the Gospels, the Vetus Latina, and the Vulgate. With Comparative Tables of Jerome’s Text of Matthew and Mark (King’s College, London), that demonstrates Jerome’s preference for the Old Latin and the likelihood that others contributed to what became the Vulgate text. Similarly, Lang carefully and lucidly describes the 1590 Sixtina edition of the Vulgate and that was corrected by the 1592 Clementina version. The Clementina became the standard edition of the Vulgate in the Catholic Church through the twentieth century until replaced by the New Vulgate. Elements of antiquarian interest are precisely that, interesting. For example, the 16th century scholar Sébastien Castellio produced a Latin Bible rewritten in the Ciceronian style that was reprinted in 2008 from a 1697 edition as part of the collected works of Christian Wolf and includes relevant extracts from Josephus. The textual notes are equally helpful. The entry on caelum in the glossary discusses its singular and more Hebraic plural usage, he highlights the Christian preferences for words prefixed with con and com, and notes the specifically biblical valence of revelare. One also can find Classical allusions to Priapus (1 Kings 15:13, 2 Chron. 15:16) and Sirens (Isa. 13:22). The over two hundred pages of “textual notes”, organized by biblical book, chapter, and verse, offer ample bibliography on interpretations of specific verses that range from biblical Vorlagen to external information found in commentaries and the Late Antique context. This section has valuable information including a long discursus on translation and original sin and a lengthy discussion of 1 John 5:7–8, the so-called Johannine comma, which does not appear in the Septuagint or most Vulgate manuscripts.
While the unquestionable utility of the work makes it essential for future Vulgate Studies, I have minor critiques concerning missing bibliography, some inconsistencies, and some of Lang’s interpretations. The section on biographies of Jerome omits the citation of Rebenich’s fine English biography in Jerome, London, 2002, and Section 10.4 “Jerome’s familiarity with Hebrew and things rabbinic” omits Hillel Newman’s comprehensive 1997 Hebrew University PhD dissertation “Jerome and the Jews” (in Hebrew). Annotations and quotations are sometimes translated into English and sometimes not. Discussions of specific Latin biblical terms only occasionally have the Hebrew and/or Greek Vorlagen. The rubric “Psychologically problematic Psalms, 1968” begs the question of what makes a passage “psychologically problematic”. While the glossary does well to mention Classical usage of a term, his claim that plebs in Exodus 11.2-3 is not to be contrasted with patricians, obscures distinctions between Moses and the people and the Lord and the people. In suggesting that the rendition of Nineveh as “speciosa” in Zephaniah 2.13 is a mistaken reading of “spatiosa”, Lang relies on Jonah 1.2 that describes Nineveh as a “great city” (civitas grandis) and rejects the claim that speciosa is a midrashic interpretation of the name Nineveh. However, the Hebrew naveh can mean “beautiful” and is the more likely basis for the rendition in Zephaniah.
These examples sufficiently demonstrate that this broad survey of almost 800 pages is not perfect. Lang himself acknowledges this in the epigraph coined by the Egyptologist Hellmut Brunner, “Completeness is the grave of scholarship.” The work may lack completeness, but certainly not thoroughness. He has collected, organized, and beneficially annotated extensive and up-to date bibliographical references that would normally require laboriously chasing down scattered sources. The Handbook also offers a comprehensive introduction to all matters related to the Vulgate and Jerome. At the same time, it takes full advantage of an online format that makes it easily updated and accessible.
For anyone working on the Vulgate, the Handbook of the Vulgate Bible and Its Reception is an essential work for the scholar’s “bookmark shelf”.
Notes
[1] For instance, Franz Kaulen, Geschichte der Vulgata, Mainz, 1868; Franz Kaulen, Sprachliches Handbuch zur biblischen Vulgata, 2nd edition, Freiburg, 1904; W.E. Plater and H.J. White, A Grammar of the Vulgate. Oxford, 1926, and Albert Blaise, Dictionnaire latin–français des auteurs chrétiens, Turnhout: Éditions Brepols, 1954. The recent entries in the encyclopedic Textual History of the Bible, Armin Lange (ed), 2016–2020, by Julio Trebolle Barrera, “Vetus Latina,” volume 1A, pp. 319–330, and Michael Graves, “Vulgate,” volume 1A, pp. 278–288 are brief and complement the best introductions prior to Lang by Benjamin Kedar, “The Latin Translations” in Martin Jan Mulder (ed.), Mikra. Text, Translation, Reading and Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity, Assen and Philadelphia, 1988, pp. 299–338 and Eva Schulz-Flügel, “The Latin Old Testament Tradition,” in Magne Saebo (ed.), Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. The History of Its Interpretation. Volume 1.1., Göttingen, 1996, pp. 642–662.
[2] Brigitta Schmid Pfändler and Michael Fieger (eds.), Nicht am Ende mit dem Latein: Die Vulgata aus heutiger Sicht. Frankfurt, 2023; Hugh A.G. Houghton (ed.): The Oxford Handbook of the Latin Bible, Oxford, 2023; and Anneliese Felber (ed.), Hieronymus und die Vulgata. Quellen und Rezeption, Stuttgart, 2023.