It departs from its sources.
It departs from its sources.
§ 514. (III) In many places it departs from the sources of truth, that is, from the Hebrew text in the Old Testament and from the Greek in the New. From this we infer as follows: Whatever version departs from the sources of truth cannot be authentic to this extent and in this respect. In many places, the Latin Vulgate version departs from the sources of truth. Therefore. The major premise is one of utterly certain truth. Because the Word of God in the Old Testament was written in Hebrew and in the New Testament in Greek, Jerome correctly calls the Hebrew Scripture in the Old Testament and the Greek in the New the “sources of truth.” One must go back to them, therefore, if the version departs from the original text anywhere. Every translation, and hence the Latin Vulgate as well, relates to the original text just as something normed and ruled relates to the norm and rule from which it must be corrected if it departs from it even a little bit. What ruler would allow it if an edict that he had proclaimed had been translated from its native language into another and that was foisted onto his subjects in such a way that they would be compelled to obey a translation that was not trustworthy or fitting enough, even if they had at hand the original copy and saw the obvious corruptions of the translations?
The minor premise is proved by Chemnitz, Osiander, Hunnius, Whitaker, Schroeder, and others with many arguments. Although Bellarmine (in De verbo Dei, bk. 2, c. 12-14) tries to defend those passages in which we prove that the Vulgate edition departs from the sources, one must note, however, that: (1) He does not even satisfy himself, much less his reader. (2) There are far more places in which we accuse the Vulgate version of corruption than those that Bellarmine tries to vindicate. (3) Hunnius, Whitaker, and others have reduced that defense of Bellarmine to smoke and ashes. (4) A comparison of the Hebrew text in the Old Testament and of the Greek in the New clearly confirms our position. (5) The more sensible Papists themselves have acknowledged and corrected those corruptions of the Latin version in which it departs from its sources. The following have done this: Armacanus, Eugubinus, Johannes Isaacus, Cajetan, Jacobus Faber Stapulensis, Laurentius Valla, Pagninus, Bruno Amerbachius, Benedictus Arias Montanus, Isidorus Clarius, Erasmus, Lucas Brugensis, and many others.