Existing simultaneously with the African family we find another type of text current in Western Europe, though whether it is a revision of the African text or is of independent origin, it is hard to say. This type Dr. Hort calls the European. It is represented in the Gospels by b, which may be taken as the typical European MS.; by a in St. Matthew, i (Luke and Mark), n and a2 (giving us fragments of all the Gospels from the same MS.); t in St. Mark; in a slightly revised form by h of St. Matthew; in a form marked by special local characteristics, in the Irish MSS. r1 and p (St. John); to a certain extent also by q (i.e. in its renderings, and turns of expression, as distinct from the type of Greek text underlying it); of the early Fathers, the Latin version of Irenaeus may probably be referred to this family.
For the European text in the Acts, Dr. Hort cites the Gigas Holmiensis (g), and the Milan Lectionary g2, and the Bobbio fragments at Vienna (s); for the Epistles, the Corbey MS. of St. James (ff), though this has possibly a tinge of Africanism in it (see Bp. Wordsworth and Dr. Sanday in “Studia Biblica,” i. pp. 113, 233); and g again for the Apocalypse.
The Italian family presents us with a type of text mainly European, but doubly revised; first in its renderings, “to give the Latinity a smoother and more customary aspect,” and secondly in its underlying text, which has been largely corrected from the Greek; in both these points the Italian MSS. are a sort of stepping-stone between the European MSS. and Jerome's Vulgate; and as many of the Biblical quotations in Augustine's works agree closely with them, it is distinctly probable that it was this [pg 056] revision which he praised as the Itala. To this group we would assign f in the Gospels, and less notably q; in the Epistles the Freisingen fragments q of St. John and St. Peter, and r r2 of St. Paul's Epistles, and the Göttweig fragments r3 of Romans and Galatians.
But it will be seen that this arrangement leaves a large number of MSS. unaccounted for; many of the Old Latin MSS. present texts which it is impossible to class either as African, European, or Italian. Some of them possess all three characteristics; some have been half corrected from the Vulgate; and local variation, independent translation from the Greek, and in the case of the Graeco-Latin MSS., assimilation to the Greek, have still further complicated matters. Among these mixed texts must be placed a in SS. Mark, Luke, and John (with occasional Africanisms, and a large element quite peculiar to itself); c, which gives us a text very near the Vulgate in St. John; d, that apparently insoluble problem; ff1 and f2g1sδ; l, a text which to a large extent is almost pure Vulgate, but which at the same time preserves a number of readings, mostly interpolations, that are quite peculiar.
We must bear in mind too that even the MSS. which seem to represent most consistently one type of text, show here and there strange vacillations; e, African throughout as it seems at first sight, must have been copied from an ordinary European MS. in the last few chapters of St. Luke; the parent MS. of r obviously did not contain the pericope de adultera, for that passage has been supplied in a Vulgate text; and other instances might be added.
(2) Jerome's revised Latin Version, commonly called the Vulgate.
The extensive variations then existing between different copies of the Old Latin version, and the obvious corruptions which had crept into some of them, prompted Damasus, Bishop of Rome, in a.d. 382, to commit the important task of a formal revision of the New, and probably of the Old Testament, to Jerome, a presbyter born at Stridon on the confines of Dalmatia and Pannonia, probably a little earlier than a.d. 345. He had just returned to Rome, where he had been educated, from his hermitage in Bethlehem, and in the early ripeness of his scholarship [pg 057] undertook a work for which he was specially qualified, and whose delicate nature he well understood[62]. Whatever prudence and moderation could do in this case to remove objections or relieve the scruples of the simple, were not neglected by Jerome, who not only made as few changes as possible in the Old Latin when correcting its text by the help of “ancient” Greek manuscripts[63], but left untouched many words and forms of expression, and not a few grammatical irregularities, which in a new translation (as his own subsequent version of the Hebrew Scriptures makes clear) he would most certainly have avoided. The four Gospels, as they stand in the traditional Greek order without Western variation, revised but not re-translated on this wise principle, appeared in a.d. 384, accompanied with his celebrated Preface to Damasus (“summus sacerdos”), who died that same year. Notwithstanding his other literary engagements, it is probable enough that his recension of the whole New Testament for public use was completed a.d. 385, though the proof alleged by Mill (N. T., Proleg., § 862), and by others after his example, hardly meets the case. In the next year (a.d. 386), in his Commentary on Galat., Ephes., Titus, and Philem., he indulges in more freedom of alteration as a translator than he had previously deemed advisable; while his new version of the Old Testament from the Hebrew (completed about a.d. 405) is not founded at all on the Old Latin, which was made from the Greek Septuagint; the Psalter excepted, which he executed at Rome at the same date, and in the same spirit, as the Gospels. The boldness of his attempt in regard to the Old Testament is that portion of his labours which alone Augustine disapproved[64] (August, ad [pg 058] Hieron. Ep. x. tom. ii. p. 18, Lugd. 1586, a.d. 403), and indeed it was never received entire by the Western Church, which long preferred his slight revision of the Old Latin, made at some earlier period of his life. Gradually, however, Jerome's recension of the whole Bible gained ground, as well through the growing influence of the Church of Rome as from its own intrinsic merits: so that when in course of time it came to take the place of the older version, it also took its name of the Vulgate, or common translation[65]. Cassiodorus indeed, in the middle of the sixth century, is said to have compared the new and old Latin (of the New, perhaps of both Testaments) in parallel columns, which thus became partially mixed in not a few codices: but Gregory the Great (590-604), while confessing that his Church used both “quia sedes Apostolica, cui auctore Deo praesideo, utrâque utitur,” (Epist. Dedic. ad Leandrum, c. 5), awarded so decided a preference to Jerome's translation from the Hebrew, that this form of his Old Testament version, not without some mixture with his translation from the Septuagint (Walton, Polyglott, Prol. x. pp. 242-244, Wrangham), and his Psalter and New Testament as revised from the Old Latin, came at length to comprise the Vulgate Bible, the only shape in which Holy Scripture was accessible in Western Europe (except to a few scattered scholars) during the long night of the Middle Ages.
But it was not a pure Vulgate text that was thus used; the old versions went on side by side with it for centuries, and even when they were thus nominally superseded, fragments of them found their way into probably all existing MSS. We have already remarked (in c g &c.) how the same MS. will present us with an Old Latin text in some books of the New Testament, and with a Vulgate text in others; we shall note the same phenomenon in other MSS., especially the British and Irish (see the MSS. numbered [51], [67], [78], [85], [87] below), which preserve on the whole a pure Hieronymian text, but are coloured here and there from the earlier versions. Variation was still further increased by the apparently numerous local or provincial recensions which were made, sometimes anonymously, sometimes [pg 059] under the editorship of famous men. Many of the Irish MSS., for instance, seem to have been corrected immediately from the Greek; but the two most notable recensions of the text came, not, as we might have expected, directly from Rome, but from Gaul; they are those of Alcuin and Theodulf in the ninth century. That of Alcuin was undertaken at the desire of Charles the Great[66], who bade him (a.d. 797) review and correct certain copies by the best Latin MSS. without reference to the original Greek. Charles' motive was not so much critical as a wish to obtain a standard Bible for church use, and consequently of simple and intelligible Latin. Alcuin obtained bibles for this purpose from his native Northumbria, the scene at the beginning of the eighth century of an earlier recension of the text; for it was to their monasteries at Wearmouth and Jarrow (see below, p. [71]) that Benedict Biscop and Ceolfrid had brought the bibles and other books collected in Rome and elsewhere during their journeys; and it was in Northumbria that the magnificent Anglian texts (such as those numbered 29, 64, 82, 91, &c.) were written, perpetuating the pure Vulgate text contained at that time in the Roman MSS.[67]
At Christmas in 801, Alcuin presented Charles with a copy of the revised Bible[68]; specimens of this revision are to be found in the MSS. numbered below, [5], [9], [25], [37], [117], and others.
About the same time, Theodulf, Bishop of Orleans (787-821), undertook a similar revision, and not of a less scientific character, but followed a different method. Theodulf, himself a Visigoth and born near Narbonne, seems to have done little more than introduce into France the Spanish type of MSS., which was mixed, confused, full of interpolations, and of very slight critical value[69]; this however he corrected carefully and enriched with a large number of marginal readings. This revision is preserved for us in the Theodulfian Bible at Paris (no. [18] below), [pg 060] less correctly in its sister volume at Puy (no. [24]), the Paris MS. (no. [22] below), and partly also in the correction of the Bible of St. Hubert (no. [6]).