href="@public@vhost@g@gutenberg@html@files@42514@[email protected]#f_1" id="fna_1" class="pginternal" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">[1] It is probable, both on general grounds and from internal evidence, that the Pentateuch was the portion first translated, and that subsequently, though after no very long interval of time, the other portions were translated also. It is quite certain that the whole was in circulation in the middle of the second century before Christ. Various tales respecting the origin of this translation got spread abroad.[2] These are largely due to the vivid imagination of their authors. They may, however, be taken as evidence of the high esteem in which this version was held; and we shall probably not err in concluding from them that Alexandria was the city in which it originated. During, then, the two centuries that preceded the Advent, the Bible, as used by the great majority of its readers in various parts of the world, had assumed an entirely different form from that in which it at first appeared. It was in Greek, and not in Hebrew, and it included several additional works; those, namely, which are now called collectively the Apocrypha. The use of this translation amongst the extra-Palestinian Jews contributed largely to the spread of Christianity; and to many amongst the earliest Christian churches, and for many generations, it was still the form under which they studied the books of the Old Testament.

At the time of our Lord and His Apostles, Greek was the language which most widely prevailed through the Roman Empire. It was the ordinary language of intercourse amongst all the peoples that had formerly been subjugated by Grecian arms, and was read and spoken by many in Rome itself. It was in this language, and not in the sacred language of the ancient Church, that the books of the New Testament were written; and the lesson was thereby emphatically taught us that the Bible was for man, and not man for the Bible; that the form was subordinate to the substance, and should be so modified, as occasions occur, that it may best minister to the spiritual wants of mankind.

As years passed on Christianity spread into the rural parts of the districts already occupied, where Greek was but little known, and into new regions beyond, where that language had never prevailed. This called for further changes in the form of Scripture, and in the second century of our era both the Old and New Testaments were translated for the use of the numerous Christians in Northern and Eastern Syria into that form of Aramaic which is known as Syriac. This language—the Syro-Aramaic—differs by dialectic peculiarities from the Palestinian Aramaic. In its earliest forms, however, we have probably the nearest representation we can now hope to obtain of the native language of the people amongst whom our Lord lived and laboured.

About the same time also the Scriptures began to be translated into Latin for the use of the Churches of North Africa, and there is good reason for believing that in the last quarter of the second century the entire Scriptures in Latin were largely circulated throughout that region. This was what is termed the Old Latin version. It was the Bible as possessed and used by Tertullian and Cyprian, and subsequently, in a revised form, by Augustine. In the Old Testament this version was made, not from Hebrew, but from the Greek of the Septuagint, and so was but the translation of a translation.

From Africa this Bible passed into Italy. Here a certain rudeness of style, arising from its provincial origin, awakened ere long a desire to secure a version that should be at once more accurate and more grateful to Italian ears. Various attempts at a revision of the Latin were consequently made. One of these, known as the Itala, or the Italic version, is highly commended by Augustine. In the year A.D. 383, Damasus, the then Bishop of Rome, troubled by the manifold variations that existed between different copies of the Latin Scriptures then in circulation, used his influence with one of the greatest scholars of the age, Eusebius Hieronymus, to undertake the laborious and responsible task of a thorough revision of the Latin text. Hieronymus, or, as he is commonly termed, Jerome, at once set himself to the task, and his revised New Testament appeared in A.D. 385. He also once and again revised the Old Latin version of the Book of Psalms, and subsequently the remaining books of the Old Testament, carefully comparing them with the Greek of the Septuagint, from which they had been derived. In A.D. 389, when in his sixtieth year, he entered upon the further task of a new translation of the books of the Old Testament from the original Hebrew, and completed it in the year A.D. 404. Out of the various labours of Jerome arose the Bible which is commonly known as the Vulgate. Jerome’s translation of the Old Testament from the Hebrew was not made at the instance of any ecclesiastical authority, and the old prejudice in favour of the Septuagint led many still to cling to the earlier version. Only very gradually did the new translation make its way; and not until the time of Gregory the Great, at the close of the sixth century, did it receive the explicit sanction of the head of the Roman Church.[3] In the case of the Psalter, the old translation was never superseded.

The Vulgate is thus a composite work. It contains (1) Jerome’s translation from the Hebrew of all the books of the Old Testament, except the Psalms; (2) Jerome’s revision of the Old Latin version of the Psalms, that version being, as stated above, made from the Septuagint; (3) the Old Latin version of the Apocrypha unrevised, save in the books of Judith and Tobit; (4) Jerome’s revised New Testament, which in the Gospels was very careful and complete, and might almost be termed a new translation, though he himself repudiated any such claim.

During many centuries the Vulgate was the only form in which the Bible was accessible to the people of Western Europe, and it was the Bible from which in turn the earliest Bibles of our own and other countries were immediately derived. It will thus be seen that the history of the Bible has from the beginning been a history of revision. Only so could they who loved the Bible fulfil the trust committed to them; only so could the Bible be a Bible for mankind.

LECTURE II.

THE GROWTH OF THE ENGLISH BIBLE.

The English Bible, more than any other of the forms in which the Scriptures have been used by Christian men, has been a growth. It is not the production of one man, or of one epoch. It has come down to us through a long series of transformations, and it is the result of the continuous endeavours of a succession of earnest labourers to give to their fellow-countrymen a faithful representation of the word of God.

At what date, and by whom, the Scriptures were first set forth in a form which was intelligible to the people of this country is not known. In the earliest period respecting which we have any clear information, the Latin Vulgate was the Bible of the clergy and of public worship. Some portions only were rendered into the language of the common people. Few of them probably were able to read,