The Latin Testament Project

The Latin Testament Project is a scholarly effort begun in 2008 to translate The Vulgate, the Latin-language Bible crafted by St. Jerome between 382 and 405 CE, into contemporary American English. The Project’s English translation is based on Biblia Sacra Iuxta Vulgatam Versionem, Fourth Revised Edition, edited by Roger Gryson, which was published in 1994 by the Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, (German Bible Society), in Stuttgart, Germany.
About the Project
Under the direction of John Cunyus, the Latin Testament Project has published a series of volumes in the United States through Searchlight Press, a Texas-based publisher. The volumes in the series include English-only works, designed for a mass market, and Latin-English versions designed more narrowly for Latin language and Bible study. Most of the volumes in the series are available in both print and electronic formats. In addition to the work of translator Cunyus, the volumes in the project have included contributions from other writers, including: Myles Hall, Tony Salisbury, Joseph Harker, John Bain, Laura Odiorne, Norman Stolpe, Lloyd C Blue, and M Christopher Boyer.
Books in the Series
The first book in the Project was The Way of Wisdom, which translated the books of Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Solomon. The second work was The Audacity of Prayer, which translated the book of Psalms from The Vulgate. Third in line was The Jagged Edge of Forever, which translated Deuteronomy, Daniel, and The Minor Prophets. Next up was Beginnings: A Fresh Translation of Genesis. Following this was The Latin Torah, which translated Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. The Project then turned its attention to the New Testament, releasing Pastoral and General Epistles from the New Testament, followed by Romans: A Latin-English, Verse by Verse Translation, and an English-only edition of Mark's Gospel called Wonderworking Power: A Fresh Translation of the Gospel of Mark. The Project returned to the Old Testament to publish The Latin Nevi'im I: Joshua, Judges, 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, 1 Kings, and 2 Kings. There followed Luke-Acts in a Latin-English edition, and then the hard-cover The Latin Testament Project New Testament: A Latin-English, Verse by Verse Translation. At present, Searchlight Press is planning to release a hard-cover edition of the entire Vulgate, The Latin Testament Project Bible, in November 2016.
About The Vulgate
The Latin Bible, known commonly as The Vulgate, is the oldest version of the Bible in an alphabet most of us recognize, in a language at or near the root of many contemporary languages. Among these languages are Portuguese, Spanish, French, Romanian, and Italian, as well as English. As such, a brief study of the Latin Bible can open a door to some understanding of a variety of different languages at the same time.
The Vulgate, as constructed by St. Jerome and many others, is a literary masterpiece, majestic in its cadences and straightforward in its presentation. As John Keats put it, "A thing of beauty is a joy forever."
Why a Latin Bible Translation
Latin is one of the three languages mentioned as being written on the Cross, along with Hebrew and Koine Greek. The oldest extant Bible, Codex Amiatinus, is in Latin. Studying the Bible in Latin does not diminish in any way the value of the Bible in other languages. In this age of amazing software and translation tools, the Bible is a public revelation. Those sufficiently interested can lay various versions side-by-side, compare and contrast, and discern for themselves what it means.
Christology in the Old Testament
Perhaps the most interesting reason for translating the Latin Vulgate into English anew has to do with Christology. Readers of English Bibles get the impression that the word Christ does not appear in the Bible until Matthew. Yet we also know from the Book of Acts that 1st Century Christian evangelists preached Christ from what we now know as the Old Testament. To understand how that happened, we need to know a little bit about how the book we know as the Bible came down to us.
In the 3rd Century before the Common Era (BCE), Ptolemy Philadelphus, Greek-speaking king of Egypt, was impressed by the moral character of his Jewish subjects. On finding out that they had several holy books, he commanded that they be translated from Hebrew and Aramaic into Greek. This translation, undertaken by Jewish scholars in Alexandria, Egypt, became known subsequently as The Septuagint. What had been various holy books before among the Jews became, after The Septuagint, something we today would recognize as a Bible.
It is hard to overstate how important this work became. Since Hebrew had ceased being a common language even by the 3rd Century BCE, The Septuagint was the means by which Israel’s God introduced Himself, as it were, to the larger world, around the Greek-speaking areas of the Eastern Mediterranean world, and later throughout much of the Roman empire, The Septuagint became the Bible of Greek-speaking Jews and so-called “God-fearers,” those who believed in Israel’s God yet didn’t submit to all the requirements of Jewish conversion.
The Septuagint’s translators chose the Greek word Christos to translate the Hebrew word Moshiach, meaning “anointed king” or Messiah. This word and its cognates appear 42 different times just in those books of The Septuagint that found their way into the later Hebrew canon. It appears ten times in the Psalter, Israel’s ancient prayer book and hymnal.
Thus, to use The Septuagint for worship or study, especially the Book of Psalms, one had to interact with the word Christ. This sense of the Christological flavor of the Old Testament is completely obscured in contemporary English versions, yet is evident in both The Septuagint and The Vulgate. If for no other reason, working from Latin makes that evident.
Some would say, why not translate from The Septuagint then? Of course, that would be a good thing too. Yet The Septuagint itself was a rather free translation of the earlier Hebrew. The Septuagint scholars took certain liberties with wording that later scholars avoided, perhaps the best instance of which being illustrated in The Septuagint translation of what we know as Psalm 23.
When Jerome set out to craft an “authorized” Latin version in the late 4th Century of the Common Era, he had the advantage of seven hundred previous years of Biblical scholarship, perhaps most fully embodied in Origen’s Hexapla, the exhaustive, six-columned version of scripture compiled in the 3rd Century at Alexandria, Egypt. Where The Septuagint translators were rather free in their translation, Jerome was exacting and precise. His use of sources long-since lost to us, his place at the pinnacle of ancient biblical scholarship, his ecumenical approach (studying with multiple Jewish teachers in the course of his work), make the version he produced invaluable, especially now that the German Bible Society has done so much work in restoring his original text.

Main Menu

See Also

Main Menu