CHANGE PRIN Progetto di ricerca di Rilevante Interesse Nazionale Contact and History in Ancient Grammar of Europe

The Latin translations of the Bible

The Siena Research Unit endeavours to study Biblical translation into Latin: Jerome’s Vulgate and the number of pre-vulgate versions which are collectively known as Vetus Latina. These texts are compared to both the Greek version and – in the case of the Old Testament – to the Hebrew text.

A special focus is on Biblical Greek, which has the potential to provide a privileged viewpoint on language contact phenomena, as it stands in the rather peculiar position of being both a source-language (even though Jerome also used Hebrew texts) and a target-language (as it was the language adopted by the Seventy translators of the Old Testaement).

Our research is concerned with morphological, syntactic (and morpho-syntactic), and lexical aspects of these languages, in relation to both the internal evolution of these languages and the contact-induced phenomena that are due to translation processes. For instance, some of our studies concern the translation strategies of Greek participles and infinitives into Latin, the translation of verbal forms which are diathetically marked, complementation strategies, the expansion of dative and genitive, and the Wortbildung processes that come about because of the re-interpretation of Greek forms.

The analysis of Biblical Latin and Greek in their role as translation languages sheds new light on morpho-syntactic issues which are not easy to frame within the individual linguistic systems, but which are clearly understandable as contact phenomena that have occurred along with the translation processes.

Select bibliography

Bogaert, P.-M. 2013, The Latin Bible, in J. Carleton Paget – Schaper, J. (edd.), The New Cambridge History of the Bible (New Cambridge History of the Bible), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 505-526.

Burton, P.H. 2000, The Old Latin Gospels: a study of their texts and language, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Fischer, B. 1972, Das neue Testament in lateinischen Sprache, in K. Aland (ed.), Die alten Übersetzungen des Neuen Testaments, die Kirchenväterzitate und Lektionare, Berlin / New York: de Gruyter: 1-92.

Greaves, M. 2007, Jerome's Hebrew Philology. A Study Based on his Commentary on Jeremiah, Leiden: Brill.

Houghton, H.A.G. 2016, The Latin New Testament. A Guide to its Early History, Texts, and Manuscripts, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Kamesar, A. 1993, Jerome, Greek scholarship, and the Hebrew Bible: a study of the Quaestiones hebraicae in Genesim, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Kamesar, A. 2013, Jerome, in J. Carleton Paget – Schaper, J. (edd.), The New Cambridge History of the Bible (New Cambridge History of the Bible), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 653-675.

Kedar-Kopfstein, B. 1988, The Latin Translations, in M.J. Mulder (ed.), Mikra: Text, Translation, Reading and Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity, Assen: Van Gorcum: 299–338.

Metzger, B.M. 1977, Early Versions of the New Testament, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Vineis, E. 1974, Studi sulla lingua dell’Itala, Pisa: Pacini.

Useful links

https://www.academic-bible.com

https://www.biblegateway.com

https://biblehub.com

https://www.blueletterbible.org

http://www.sacredbible.org

https://sblgnt.com

https://scholarsgateway.com

https://www.stepbible.org/

Online resources for the study of the Vetus Latina