Re: USAGE: Vulgate (was: Slezan)

On Monday, January 26, 2004, at 06:10 PM, Mark J. Reed wrote:

> Joe:
>> I don't think Vulgar Latin was ever really a written language - the only
>> information we have of it is from current Romance languages,  and
>> spelling mistakes made in Classical Latin by authors.
>
> I beliave that's true, at least until the late fourth century AD, which
> was
> when St. Jerome wrote the Vulgate.
No, no, no! Jerome did *not* write the Vulgate in Vulgar Latin.

That urban myth seems as persistent as the the one that medievals thought
the
earth was flat! But are totally false.

It was _always_ true that Vulgar Latin was never a written language in the
sense
of having what is commonly called a 'literature' or even standard written
form.
The only written glimpses we get of it are few odd surviving graffiti -
nothing
more.

Vulgar Latin is a reconstructed proto-language but, unlike many other such
reconstructions, we do have a "sister" literary conlang to aid us in the
reconstruction.
 =========================================================================

On Monday, January 26, 2004, at 05:53 PM, Costentin Cornomorus wrote:
>
> --- "Mark J. Reed" <markjreed@...> wrote:
>
>> I thought ecclesiastical Latin was descended
>> from the Latin of the
>> Vulgate,
Yes, it is.

>> which was (later) Vulgar Latin, not
>> Classical?
>
> The Vulgate isn't written in VL as far as I can
> tell!
And you tell correctly :)   How anyone who has actually read any of
the Vulgate can think it's Vulgar Latin beats me. It has all the
full-blown morphology of Classical Latin.
==================================================================

On Monday, January 26, 2004, at 07:21 PM, jcowan@REUTERSHEALTH.COM wrote:
[snip]

> The Vulgate is written in Classical Latin, or at least Jerome's best
> rendering
> of it.  It is not written in common people's Latin, but rather is the
> Bible
> for common people, those who had no Hebrew or Greek.
Well, yes, to it's not quite so simple. Another common urban myth is that
Jerome
translated all the scriptures into Latin (for the first time).

By the 4th cent. many parts of the scriptures had already been translated
in
different places into Latin; they are known as 'Old Latin' versions. It
seems the Latin
speakers of north Africa were most prone to do this.  The Pope of the day
thought it was
about time these different and often variant versions got standardized and
the whole of
the scriptures had an official Latin version. That was Jerome's commission.

Some of the earlier versions had, apparently, become so familiar that
Jerome tried, where
possible to do no more than the odd 'tidying up job'.  But he did, of
course, have a good
deal of translation work to do to fill in the gaps and produce a whole,
complete work.

There is simply no way he could have used Vulgar Latin; there was no
standard form. And he
knew well enough that if he had used colloquial Latin, it would have made
Christianity appear
to be the religion of ignorant, unlearned people (at least in the western
empire). On the other
hand, it is certainly not the Latin of Cicero or Caesar.  If it had been
too literary, it would
have made it almost impossible for the ordinary urban masses to understand.
  Jerome had to strike
a balance between a form acceptable to the educated elite and yet
comprehensible to the 'person
in the street', as well as wielding together the existing anonymous Latin
translations of
parts of the scriptures - a truly remarkable achievement IMHO.

The English word 'Vulgate' is from the Latin "Editio Vulgata" = the
[officially] published edition.
'vulgata' means no more or less than "published" - nothing vulgar about it
  :)

But the Vulgate has not remained fossilized in 4th cent. version.  As our
knowledge of the Greek and,
especially, Hebrew scriptures has improved, the Vulgate has undergone
revision. A revised edition
was issued by Clement VIII in 1592. In 1908, Pius X commissioned a new
edition; AFAIK so far only
Genesis has appeared (1926) and the work is still in progress.

But to turn to Jerome, his remarkable achievement did set the standard for
ecclesastical Latin -
but it was Vulgar Latin by any stretch of the imagination.

Ray
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"A mind which thinks at its own expense will always
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