This book is the first overall study of the texts and language of the Old Latin Gospels, the versions of the four Gospels that predate the Vulgate of Jerome. Author Philip Burton seeks to cast new light on their origins, translation techniques, and value as a source for vulgar Latin.
This book is the first attempt to give a general account of the language and textual history of the Old Latin Gospels. My first encounter with the Old Latin Gospels was in an undergraduate class on vulgar Latin, ten years ago. Dissatisfaction with a received opinion piqued my interest, and led me to choose them as a topic for my doctoral dissertation. In preparing that dissertation, I found myself trespassing into various fields not on my original route; from textual transmission to early Christian studies, from Romance philology to translation theory. It is hoped this work will be of interest to specialists in these and related fields; and that where others are in turn dissatisfied with it, they will be sufficiently intrigued to go out and prove me wrong.
There are preserved in libraries across Europe some thirty manuscripts, some very fragmentary, which contain translations of the four canonical Gospels which predate the Vulgate of Jerome. These manuscripts, of which about ten are extant at any given point, are collectively known as the 'Old Latin Gospels' (hereafter OLG). The textual relations and language of these manuscripts have received considerable, if uneven, attention from philologists and theologians. This present study is an attempt both to synthesize their work, and to advance it. Three main questions are addressed. How did the OLG come into being? What are the techniques employed by their translators? How far can they be used as sources for the development of post-classical Latin?
These questions are closely intertwined. Our enquiry into the origins of these versions will take its starting-point from an examination of the translation of certain key words. The knowledge thus gained may cast light on their value as sources for post-classical Latin. An evaluation of the position of the OLG within post-classical Latin will, in turn, help us to see how far the translators are prepared to follow everyday patterns of speech and how far they felt bound by the constraints of latinitas.
At this stage it is important to delimit the areas that will not be touched upon. First, our current concern is solely with the Gospels and not with other parts of the Scriptures. Loose references to 'the Latin Bible' appear to presuppose a single monolithic translation; no such homogeneity has been demonstrated, and the term is therefore misleading. Statements made about the origins, translation technique, and language of one part of the Bible should not be generalized to the Bible as a whole.
Secondly, we are not directly concerned with the identification of the types of Greek text underlying the various Latin traditions, nor with the value of the OLG for the textual criticism of the Greek Gospels. However, the possibility that a particular Latin reading is due to a Greek variant will be raised from time to time, even when the putative variant does not appear in any extant manuscript. The conditions under which the possibility of such an unattested Greek reading may be raised are discussed later in this chapter.
Thirdly, we are not directly concerned with the Biblical citations given in the patristic writings. The volume of patristic citations of the Gospels would prohibit more than the most cursory examination of this material. In addition to this, there are unique problems with the patristic citations. On encountering a Scriptural reference in the Fathers, we do not necessarily know whether it is intended to be an exact quotation or a loose allusion or conflation of references; whether the writer is making his own version or quoting from an existing one; whether he has the text in front of him or is quoting from memory.
Moreover, while there was no official policy before the sixteenth century of substituting the Vulgate readings for the original references in patristic texts, none the less it is likely that copyists familiar with the Vulgate (or other Old Latin, or liturgical) forms of a given passage would unconsciously introduce the words they knew best into their copies of the Fathers. The patristic citations are thus too complex to be dealt with in sufficient depth. However, the Oxford Old Latin editors (of whom more presently) of the last century developed the technique of comparing the readings given in the manuscript traditions with those in the patristic writings, as a means of giving a terminus post quern and perhaps a provenance for the various manuscript traditions.
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