Chapter XIII: From the fact that the Old Testament was written by holy men of God in the Hebrew language, and the New Te
CHAPTER XIII: ON THE AUTHENTIC TEXT OF SCRIPTURE
§ 310. From the fact that the Old Testament was written in Hebrew and the New in Greek by holy men of God—prophets, evangelists, and apostles—we draw this corollary: that the Hebrew text in the Old Testament and the Greek text in the New are alone authentic. We prove this thesis with the following demonstrations: (I) Every public document is authentic only in the language in which it was originally written by the person who had the power and mandate to write it. Holy Scripture is a public document, written by the authority, order, and command of God. Therefore it is authentic only in that language in which it was written originally, namely, Hebrew with respect to the Old Testament, Greek with respect to the New. The major premise is one of obvious truth: (1) If the king of France were to publish some decree in French and if private citizens were to translate it into Latin, Greek, or German, one surely would have to go back to the original French text in which that decree had been written at the king’s order if any doubt or controversy were to arise regarding those translations. (2) In every controversy of any name or kind, when there is contention about an epistle or testament or any other writing, one goes back to the original version as the authentic one, even if it had been translated into other languages. (3) The pope would not allow his brevia [“briefs”], as they are called, written in Italian, to be judged according to the German language into which they had then, by chance, been translated by a private person. He would want judgment passed on them according to the original text. Concerning the minor premise, there is and can be no doubt in the Christian Church.
§ 311. (II) In whatever language the Old Testament was written by the prophets and the books of the New Testament by the evangelists and apostles, those languages alone are authentic in Holy Scripture. Yet the prophets wrote the books of the Old Testament in Hebrew, and the evangelists and apostles wrote the books of the New in Greek. Therefore Hebrew and Greek are the only authentic languages in Scripture—the former in the Old Testament, the latter in the New. The major premise is most certainly true. (1) Only the prophets and apostles, as they were instructed by the inbreathing of the Holy Spirit (2 Pet. 1:21), could have published a God-breathed and authentic Scripture (2 Tim. 3:16). This is because they received the command to write from God, and they were impelled to write by the Holy Spirit and were directed by Him in the actual work of writing, which cannot be said about any other interpreter who translated the Hebrew text in the Old and the Greek in the New into other languages. (2) We are said to be “built upon the foundation of the prophets and apostles” (Eph. 2:20), that is, upon the teaching of the prophets and apostles contained in their writings. This, however, is contained only in the Hebrew literature of the Old Testament and the Greek literature of the New. Regarding the minor premise, we must note the following: (1) Daniel 2—7, Ezra 4—6, and Jer. 11:10 were written in the Chaldaic idiom, a language that is different from Hebrew only in its endings, and became known to the Jews after the Babylonian captivity, as we have mentioned earlier (§ 70). (2) According to Jerome, some things in Job were written in Arabic. (3) Some of the ancients want Matthew to have written his Gospel in Hebrew, concerning which matter we have explained earlier (§ 243) what should be thought. (4) Baronius (vol. 1, Annal., ann. 45) and Bellarmine (De verbo Dei, bk. 2, c. 7, 15) claim that Mark wrote in Latin rather than in Greek, and we also explained earlier (§ 244) what should be thought about this.
§ 312. (III) Whatever version is the norm and rule for all the rest, that alone is authentic; otherwise it could not be the norm and rule. But now, the Hebrew version in the Old Testament and the Greek in the New are the norm and rule of all other versions; for whatever those other versions may be, they are normed and regulated according to the Hebrew and Greek texts. Therefore the Hebrew version in the Old Testament and the Greek in the New are the only authentic versions. Jerome has the custom of calling the Hebrew text in the Old Testament “the source” [fons]. But now, when rivers are muddy as they flow, one must go back to the source. Therefore one must also run back from the versions to the Hebrew text of the Old Testament. Cyprian, Ad Pompeium: “If a channel of water that once used to flow abundantly and plentifully should suddenly fail, does not one go back to the source to discover there the reason for the failure, whether the veins at the spring have dried up or whether, flowing forth full and unharmed, it fails along the way?” Some learned people piously apply to this the passage: “Bless God the Lord in the Church from the fountains (
) of Israel” (Ps. 68:[26]). “The fountains of Israel” are nothing else than the salutary and salvation-bearing teaching entrusted by God to the church of Israel through the prophets (Isa. 12:3; Rom. 3:2), which the prophets wrote in Hebrew. Therefore Jerome is correct in calling the Hebrew version of the Old Testament “the fountain of truth” [fons veritatis].
§ 313. (IV) Whatever edition of Scripture was considered authentic in the Israelite church of the Old Testament and the early apostolic Church of the New Testament, it is right for our churches to claim it as authentic too. But the Hebrew edition of the Old Testament was considered authentic in the Israelite church, and the Greek edition of the New was held as authentic in the early apostolic Church. Therefore our churches are also right in claiming this. The major premise is of obvious truth, for as our Church should be joined to the Israelite church of the Old Testament and to the early apostolic Church of the New by the transmission and kinship of doctrine, so also the foundation for this doctrine—namely, the authentic edition of Scripture—ought to be the same for both. The minor premise also shines with its own light. You see, no one can deny that at the time of the Old Testament, before Christ, only the Hebrew edition was authentic, nor can it be doubted that at the time when the writings of the evangelists and apostles were extant only in Greek, the Greek edition of the New Testament was authentic. Otherwise one would have to declare that at that time there was no authentic version of Scripture in the Church, which is extremely absurd. The Greek Septuagint translation into which the books of the Old Testament were translated was not considered authentic by the Israelite church. But such a version also cannot be considered authentic because nothing certain is evident about the prophetic spirit of the Septuagint translators and, according to Sigebertus (Chron.): “After the Latin version of Jerome, it began to be considered favorably.” The ancient Greeks attributed much to that Septuagint version, and from this the opinion arose that by a divine miracle they prepared agreeing translations in separate rooms. In fact, in De civ. Dei, bk. 15, c. 23, Augustine does not hesitate to attribute “the prophetic Spirit” to them. Not even the Papists themselves, however, dare assign it authentic authority. Regarding the Latin version of both Testaments, it is evident from Platina (Vita Damasi) that “several years after Christ, it first began to have some authority in the Church.” Therefore it, too, was not authentic in the early apostolic Church.
§ 314. The devout ancients did not only teach this thing with their words, they also confirmed it by the very fact that they went back from the translations to the sources. Hilary, on Psalm 118: “We have warned frequently that one cannot satisfy his understanding from the Latin translation.”
Ambrose, De Spiritu sancto, bk. 2, near the middle of c. 6: “If anyone argues about the variety of the Latin codices, some of which the treacherous have falsified, he should take a look at the Greek codices and note that it is written: ‘Those who worship God the Spirit.’ “Ambrose, De incar. Domin. sacramento, before the middle of c. 8: “This is what we have found in the Greek codices, whose authority is greater.”
In his preface to the Pentateuch, Jerome rejects as “absurd” the opinion of those “who said that the Latin texts were more correct than the Greek and the Greek more than the Hebrew.” Jerome, commentary on Zechariah 8: “We are compelled to have recourse to the Hebrews and to seek the truth of knowledge from the source, rather than from the streams.” In his preface to the four Gospels, Jerome writes as follows to Damasus, who had incited him to emend the New Testament from the Greek: “If one must place faith in the Latin texts, let those who have almost as many texts as codices respond. But if one must seek out the truth about many things, why do we not correct those passages that have been published badly by faulty translators or have been emended incorrectly by the careless and unskilled or that have been added to or changed by sleepy scribes, by turning back to the Greek original?” In his Epistle ad Vitalem, he writes: “I am accustomed to flee for refuge to the Hebrew truth as to a sort of citadel and fortress.” Epistle ad Lucinium, 28: “As the trustworthiness of the books of the Old Testament must be examined according to the Hebrew volumes, so also that of the New desires the norm of the Greek language.” Epistle ad Suniam et Rettilam, 135: “Just as in the case of the New Testament we have recourse to the fount of the Greek language in which the New Testament was written, so in the case of the Old Testament we have recourse to the Hebrew truth.” Epistle ad Marcell., at the end: “The faultiness of the Latin codices must be summoned back to the Greek original.” Adv. Helvid., vol. 3, f. 3: “We must believe that the waters of the source flow much purer than the streams.” (From these statements of Jerome, it is clearly apparent that what the Jesuit Sacroboscus writes in Defens. decret. conc. Trident., pt. 1, c. 4 is false: “St. Jerome, too, did not consider it safe at his time to have recourse to the Hebrew texts.”)
Augustine, De doctr. Christ., bk. 2, c. 11: “Men of the Latin language whom we have now undertaken to instruct need two other languages for an understanding of Holy Scripture—namely, Hebrew and Greek—that they may have recourse to preceding texts if the infinite variety of the Latin interpreters causes any doubt.” Chapter 15: “Let the Greek codices be used to emend any Latin ones.” Ibid.: “One must not doubt that the Hebrew words have no small power and help for solving enigmas of the Scriptures if a person can translate them.” De civ. Dei, bk. 15, c. 13, toward the end: “I would have no manner of doubt that when any variance is found in either codex—seeing that both cannot be true for confidence in their accounts—one should rather believe the language from which the translators translated it into another language.” Chapter 14: “We must seek the trustworthiness of accounts from that language from which what we have has been translated.” (Cf. his Epistle 108 and treatise 3 on John.)
Cassiodorus, Instit., bk. 1, c. 15: “It is fitting that whence a salutary translation has come to us, thence a proper correction may come again.” Lyra and Burgensis quite often correct the Vulgate translation from the Hebrew in the Old Testament and from the Greek in the New. Reuchlin walks in the footsteps of Jerome and says, “The Hebrews drink from the springs, the Greeks from the streams, the Latins from the swamps.”
§ 315. Some of our adversaries acknowledge the same thing. In [Jus canonicum,] dist. 9, c. Ut veterum, a statement of Jerome is quoted: “Just as the trustworthiness of the books of the Old Testament must be examined according to the Hebrew volumes, so that of the New desires the norm of the Greek language.” (A gloss tries to weaken the clearness of this statement with fictitious distinctions, to which Erasmus responds in detail in his scholia on bk. 2 of Jerome’s Adv. Jovinianum. Finally, he deduces from this chapter that it is notable that, “however authentic any document may be, if something from it is called into doubt, one must always exhibit that from which it takes its origin.” If this noteworthy statement stands, nothing else can be claimed than that one must have recourse to the Hebrew text in the Old Testament and to the Greek text in the New.) In dist. 96, c. Jejunium, a statement from the same Jerome is quoted: “We are compelled to have recourse to the Hebrews,” etc. In the [Jus canonicum,] in Clementinis, c. Inter solicitudines de magist., Clement V is said to have ordered in the Council of Vienna that “the more renowned academies support professors of the Hebrew, Greek, Arabic, and Chaldean languages,” obviously in order for the sources of the Scriptures to be explained rightly.
Thomas More, Epist. ad Dorpium: “The Church trusts the Latin translation, but it trusts the archetype more. The Gospel in Latin is true to the extent that it agrees with the Greek.”
Ludovicus Vives, on Augustine’s De civ. Dei, bk. 15, c. 8:
It would be too tedious, I think, to want to persuade with many words. When there is doubt about the meaning or integrity of the words of the Latin Gospel, we must go back to the source, to the Greek texts, in which language the apostles wrote. Jerome proclaims this. Here Augustine advises and orders this by his own example. But those others protest against this and argue that the Gospel translated into Latin is more certain than it is in its own original language. I believe, however, that refuting them is an easy matter, for they are few and unlearned and either will quiet down of their own will when they realize that they are accomplishing nothing or will be rejected along with their dissonant cries by the consensus of all the learned.
In his commentary on Augustine’s De civ. Dei, bk. 15, c. 11: “Augustine quite rightly laughs at those who want more trustworthiness to be given to interpretations than to those languages from which the Holy Scriptures flowed to the other languages.” In his commentary on the same book, c. 13:
Jerome proclaims this very thing (that one must have recourse to the sources); reason itself teaches it. No one who disclaims it is of a very sound judgment; but the consensus of good minds judges this to be in vain, for a rigid stupidity opposes it like a heavy weight. This is not because they are ignorant of these languages, for Augustine did not know Hebrew and knew Greek less than moderately well. They, however, do not have that modesty of mind that Augustine had. He was ready to be taught from any source, but they do not want to be taught by anyone, and they want to teach everyone what they do not know.
Benedictus Arias Montanus, one of the fathers of the Council of Trent, in the preface to his biblical work demonstrates with arguments and testimonies of the fathers that all things about which doubt arises in the interpretation of the Bible must be examined according to the Hebrew truth in the Old Testament and the form of Greek language in the New. Among other things, he writes thus: “From a very great many examples in the old edition of the Bible, it is clear that when those things that mean one definite thing in the first language are translated ambiguously by interpreters, and when they are again translated from a second to a third language, they leave a still more uncertain meaning.” A little later: “With daily use, one discovers that by fault of both scribes and printers many errors are committed everywhere in the Greek, as well as in the Latin language, errors that can be corrected in no way except from the truth of that first language.” And still later: “If the Latin translation of the Holy Bible be corrupted or contaminated under the pretext of ‘new interpretations’ or even be perverted by the false interpretation of an idea, no more salutary remedy can be used for this than if the truth itself, confirmed with the aid of the earliest and archetypal language of it, be set free from the impiety of wicked men.” What he confirmed with arguments, he observed in actual practice. In Genesis 3[:15], he removes ipsa [“she”] and renders it ipsum [“him”] according to the Hebrew. The Vulgate has in Genesis 48[:16]: Invocetur super eos nomen meum [“Let my name be invoked upon them”], which Arias renders: Vocetur in eis nomen meum [“Let my name be named among them”].
Erasmus, preface to his Annot. in N. T.: “The Testament that all call New we have authenticated with all diligence and with the faithfulness that is fitting. We have done this, first, according to the Greek truth. To flee to this for refuge as if to a spring, if anything happens, the examples of illustrious theologians persuade, Jerome and Augustine many times advise, and the decrees of the Roman popes order.” Erasmus, Meth. script. sacrae:
But if Jerome’s translation was once sufficient, what point was there in paying attention to the decrees of the popes that we seek out the truth of the Old Testament from the Hebrew books and the faithfulness of the New from the Greek sources? Finally, if what Jerome had translated was sufficient, how did it later happen that so many theologians of the foremost reputation fell into so many obvious and shameful errors, something that is so clear that it cannot be denied or concealed? Among these there falls even Aquinas, that most diligent of all modern writers, whom I would want to be but less favorable to me if I am lying or saying this in insult.
Melchior Canus, Locorum, bk. 2, c. 15, lists many benefits that a knowledge of the sources brings: “(1) When we argue with unbelievers; (2) when we want to explain the emphasis of statements; (3) to find more meanings; (4) to recognize idioms, phrases, and proverbs of a foreign language; (5) to correct errors; (6) to understand certain passages that cannot be explained without a knowledge of languages; (7) to avoid the double meanings and ambiguity of Latin; (8) to interpret correctly certain words that are used, such as ‘anathema,’ ‘maranatha,’ etc.” (But if a knowledge of the sources provides so many and such great advantages, we are certainly right to judge that they are authentic and to have recourse to them in doubtful matters.)
In De verbo Dei, bk. 2, c. 11, Bellarmine concedes that there are four times when one may go back to the Hebrew and Greek sources: “(1) When there seems to be a scribal error in the Latin codices; (2) when the Latin codices vary so that one cannot come to a definite conclusion as to the true reading of the Vulgate; (3) when the words or statements in the Latin are doubtful; (4) to understand the force and property of terms.”
Acosta, De Christo revelato, bk. 2, at the beginning of c. 15: “Therefore what more must we concede to the Latin or Greek than that the translation be considered good when it agrees with the original language? All divine authority lies in that language in which the holy writer wrote first.”
Here we should mention that: (1) As often as they call one from the Latin Vulgate translation to the Hebrew text in the Old Testament and to the Greek in the New, they reveal thereby that they are claiming that only the Hebrew text in the Old Testament and the Greek in the New are authentic. (2) As often as they acknowledge and admit that the Latin Vulgate translation is corrupt in some places, those corruptions can be corrected only from the authentic sources of the Hebrew text in the Old Testament and the Greek in the New.
Brugensis, in his notes on the Latin translation, several times repeats: “The Greek cries out that it is to be read in this way.”
In Matt. 6:5 the Latin has “those who love”; the Greek has 
(“because they love”). Maldonatus (Comm.) prefers the Greek text to the Latin translation. He says, “In this passage I consider that we must correct our version rather than the Greek.”
The Latin version of Luke 22:20 has “the blood that will be shed for you”; the Greek text reads in the present: “that is shed (
).” Stapleton, Promt. Cath. fer. 3. hebd. sanct., § 4, prefers the Greek text.
The Latin version of John 1:30 reads “who was made before me.” The Greek sources read 
(“was”). Jacobus Faber Stapulensis prefers the Greek sources. He writes in his commentaries on Hebrews 1: “The unfortunate Arius desired no other explanation, so that he could spew out his insanity against us and from a translation draw conclusions against us that he was not able to draw from the truth.”
The Latin translation of Eph. 2:10 is “We were created in Christ Jesus in good works.” The Greek text has 
(“for good works”). Vega, in his Opusc. de merit. et justif., p. 803, q. 6, prefers the Greek text. He says, “The Vulgate translator is not translating appropriately enough. It would be more appropriate not to translate it thus, lest anyone take the opportunity from this to impute his creation in Christ to works, for nothing was more foreign to Paul, who everywhere annuls this grace [that would come] by our works and ascribes it all to Christ alone.”
The Latin version of Heb. 4:2 reads: “in the things that they heard.” The Greek text has 
(“those who heard”). Ribera prefers the Greek text in his commentary on this passage, no. 5. He says, “We must undoubtedly read in the Vulgate ‘those who heard,’ for it can be understood in no other way in the Greek.” The Latin version of Heb. 11:34 has effugaverunt [“they put to flight”]; the Greek sources have 
, effugerunt [“they escaped”]. In his commentary on this passage, Ribera prefers the Greek text. He says, “In Latin, ‘they put to flight the edge of the sword’ ought to be ‘they escaped’ according to the property of the Greek word.”
The Latin version of Rev. 14:3 reads: “No one can say a new song”; the Greek text has 
(“learn”). In his commentary, Ribera prefers the Greek source. He says, “The error in this passage, therefore, is not in the Greek words but in the Latin.”