Back to: How We Got The Bible
The Septuagint
Some aspects of the Septuagint were covered in a previous lesson
Related to the Apocrypha
The Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament made at Alexandria is known as the Septuagint (LXX). It is the version most often cited by New Testament writers, for it was in many respects the Bible of the apostles and early Christians.
The LXX contained the Apocrypha. The presence of these books in the LXX supports the broader Alexandrian canon of the Old Testament as opposed to the narrower Palestinian canon which omits them.
Additionally, The earliest Greek manuscripts of the Bible contain the Apocrypha interspersed among the Old Testament books. Manuscripts (Aleph), A, and B (see chap. 12) all include these books, revealing that they were part of the early Christian Bible.
As noted, Palestine was the home of the Jewish canon, not Alexandria, Egypt. As such, the great Greek learning center in Egypt was no authority in determining which books belonged in the Jewish Old Testament. Alexandria was the place of translation, not of canonization.
The fact that the Septuagint contains the Apocrypha only proves that the Alexandrian Jews translated the other Jewish religious literature from the intertestamental period along with the canonical books.
But even Philo, an Alexandrian Jew, clearly rejected the canonicity of the Apocrypha at the time of Christ, as has official Judaism at all times. In fact, the extant copies of the LXX date from the fourth century CE and do not prove what books were in the LXX of earlier times (250 BCE and later).
And finally, Josephus, the Jewish historian, expressly rejects the Apocrypha by listing only twenty-two canonical books.(Against Apion 1,8)
Source: Geisler, Norman L; Nix, William E.. From God To Us Revised and Expanded: How We Got Our Bible (p. 124). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.
Jerome’s Latin Vulgate
“Of primary concern to the modern Bible student is the relative weight of the Latin Vulgate. It must be considered in the light of history.
As has been indicated, the Vulgate New Testament was merely a revision of the Old Latin text, and not a critical revision at that.
The Vulgate text of the Apocrypha was of even less value, since it is simply the Old Latin text attached to Jerome’s Old Testament translation, with minor exceptions. The Vulgate Old Testament was an entirely different matter, however, since it was actually a version made from the Hebrew text rather than simply another translation or revision.
Today the Vulgate is usually credited as being the first translation of the Old Testament into Latin directly from the Hebrew Tanakh, rather than the Greek Septuagint.
It is difficult to determine just how direct the conversion of Hebrew to Latin was, however, because of Jerome’s extensive use of exegetical material written in Greek, his use of the Aquiline and Theodotionic columns of the Hexapla, as well as the somewhat paraphrastic style of his translations.
Nonetheless, his reliance on the Hebrew text makes the Old Testament translation much more important to Bible scholars than the New.”
-Geisler, Norman L; Nix, William E.. From God To Us Revised and Expanded: How We Got Our Bible (p. 299). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.
It’s interesting to note that Jerome himself, rejected the apocrypha as part of the canon, but was compelled by the Pope to include them.
Jerome rejected the inspiration of the Apocrypha. He cared little for the Apocrypha and only reluctantly made a hasty translation of portions of it—Judith, Tobit, the rest of Esther, and the additions to Daniel—before his death. As a result, the Old Latin (Vetus Latina) version of the Apocrypha was brought into the Latin Vulgate Bible during the Middle Ages over Jerome’s dead body.
– Geisler, Norman L; Nix, William E.. From God To Us Revised and Expanded: How We Got Our Bible (p. 297). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.
Jerome’s Vulgate became the official Bible of the Roman Catholic Church, and it was during (one of) the Council(s) of Trent that the Apocrypha was declared canonical, inspired scripture, by the Roman Catholic Church in response against Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation.
No qualified Hebrew scholars were present at either of these councils (Hippo/Carthage).
The most qualified Hebrew scholar of the time, St. Jerome, argued strongly against Augustine in his rejecting the canonicity of the Apocrypha.
Jerome refused even to translate the Apocrypha into Latin or to include it in his Latin Vulgate versions.
It was not until after Jerome’s day and literally over his dead body that the Apocrypha was brought into the Latin Vulgate.
-Geisler
The following article is republished from https://vulgate.org/
The Vulgate is a Latin version of the Holy Bible, and largely the result of the labors of St Jerome (Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus), who was commissioned by Pope Damasus I in 382 A.D. to make a revision of the old Latin translations.
By the 13th century this revision had come to be called the versio vulgata, that is, the “commonly used translation”, and ultimately it became the definitive and officially promulgated Latin version of the Holy Bible in the Catholic Church.
Saint Jerome had been commissioned by Pope Damasus to revise the Old Latin text of the four Gospels from the best Greek texts, and by the time of Damasus’ death in 384 A.D. he had thoroughly completed this task, together with a more cursory revision from the Greek Septuagint of the Old Latin text of the Psalms.
After the death of the Pope, St. Jerome who had been the Pope’s secretary, settled in Bethlehem, where he produced a new version of the Psalms, translated from the Hexaplar revision of the Septuagint. But from 390 to 405 A.D., St. Jerome translated anew all 39 books in the Hebrew Bible, including a further, third, version of the Psalms, which survives in a very few Vulgate manuscripts.
This new translation of the Psalms was labelled by him as “iuxta Hebraeos” (i.e. “close to the Hebrews”, “immediately following the Hebrews”), but it was not ultimately used in the Vulgate. The translations of the other 38 books were used, however, and so the Vulgate is usually credited to have been the first translation of the Old Testament into Latin directly from the Hebrew Tanakh, rather than the Greek Septuagint.
Saint Jerome’s extensive use of exegetical material written in Greek, on the other hand, as well as his use of the Aquiline and Theodotiontic texts of the Hexapla, along with the somewhat paraphrastic style in which he translated makes it difficult to determine exactly how direct the conversion of Hebrew to Latin was. In his prologues, Jerome described those books or portions of books in the Septuagint that were not found in the Hebrew as being non-canonical: he called them apocrypha, but they are found in all complete manuscripts and editions of the Vulgate.
In his prologues, Jerome described those books or portions of books in the Septuagint that were not found in the Hebrew as being non-canonical: he called them apocrypha, but they are found in all complete manuscripts and editions of the Vulgate.
-vulgate.org
Of the Old Testament texts not found in the Hebrew, St. Jerome translated Tobit and Judith anew from the Aramaic; and from the Greek, the additions to Esther from the Septuagint, and the additions to Daniel from Theodotion.
The others, Baruch, Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus, 1 Maccabees and 2 Maccabees, 3 Esdras and 4 Esdras, the Prayer of Manasses, Psalm 151, and Laodiceans retain in Vulgate manuscripts their Old Latin renderings.
Their style is still markedly distinguishable from St. Jerome’s. In the Vulgate text, St. Jerome’s translations from the Greek of the additions to Esther and Daniel are combined with his separate translations of these books from the Hebrew.
Martin Luther’s Protestant Reformation
As we’ll see in a later lesson, Jerome’s Latin Vulgate will end up playing an important role in the rise of Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation movement, as well as the Roman Catholic Church declaring the apocrypha to be inspired scripture.