Vulgate

The Vulgate (/ˈvʌlɡeɪt, -ɡət/) is a late-4th-century Latin translation of the Bible. It is largely the work of Saint Jerome who, in 382, had been commissioned by Pope Damasus I to revise the Vetus Latina Gospels used by the Roman Church. Later, of his own initiative, Jerome extended this work of revision and translation to include most of the books of the Bible.

The Vulgate became progressively adopted as the Bible text within the Western Church. Over succeeding centuries, it eventually eclipsed the Vetus Latina texts. By the 13th century it had taken over from the former version the designation versio vulgata (the "version commonly used") or vulgata for short. The Vulgate also contains some Vetus Latina translations that Jerome did not work on.

The Catholic Church affirmed the Vulgate as its official Latin Bible at the Council of Trent (1545–1563), though there was no single authoritative edition of the book at that time in any language. The Vulgate did eventually receive an official edition to be promulgated among the Catholic Church as the Sixtine Vulgate (1590), then as the Clementine Vulgate (1592), and then as the Nova Vulgata (1979). The Vulgate is still currently used in the Latin Church. The Clementine edition of the Vulgate became the standard Bible text of the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church, and remained so until 1979 when the Nova Vulgata was promulgated.

The earliest known use of the term Vulgata to describe Jerome's "new" Latin translation was made by Roger Bacon in the 13th century.

The term Vulgate was used in a 1538 edition Latin Bible by Robert Estienne which coupled the popular (i.e. the Vulgate) with the "most improved" (i.e., the recent new Latin translations of Pagninus, Beza and Baduell): Biblia utriusque testamenti juxta vulgatam translationem et eam, quam haberi potut, emendatissimam.

While the majority of the Vulgate's translation is traditionally attributed to Jerome, the Vulgate has a compound text that is not entirely Jerome's work. Jerome's translation of the four Gospels are revisions of Vetus Latina translations he did while having the Greek as reference.

The Latin translations of the rest of the New Testament are revisions to Vetus Latina texts, considered as being made by Pelagian circles or by Rufinus the Syrian, or by Rufinus of Aquileia. Several unrevised (deuterocanonical or non-canonical) books from Vetus Latina Old Testaments also commonly became included in the Vulgate. These are: 1 and 2 Maccabees, Wisdom, Sirach or Ecclesiasticus, Baruch and the Letter of Jeremiah.

Having separately translated the book of Psalms from the Greek Hexapla Septuagint, Jerome translated all of the books of the Jewish Bible—the Hebrew book of Psalms included—from Hebrew himself. He also translated the books of Tobit and Judith from Aramaic versions, the additions to the Book of Esther from the Common Septuagint and the additions to the Book of Daniel from the Greek of Theodotion.