The Vulgate

The Vulgate

A source-witness: Jerome's Latin Bible

The Vulgate is the Latin Bible produced largely by Jerome at the end of the fourth century. Dissatisfied with the variety and the indirectness of the Old Latin, Jerome returned for the Old Testament to the Hebrew itself — the Hebrew truth, as he called it — and made a fresh translation, while revising the Gospels against the Greek. His work became, in time, the common Bible of the Western Church for a thousand years.

Value as a witness

Because Jerome translated from the Hebrew text of his day, the Vulgate is a witness to the Hebrew as it stood in the fourth century, close to the consonantal text later fixed by the Masoretes. It also preserves, in the parts Jerome did not newly translate, older Old Latin readings; and its long dominance shaped the language and the interpretation of Scripture in the West.