Tertullian, Cyprian, Augustine, Jerome, and others of the Fathers, was probably made in the second century from the Septuagint, and there appear to have been different varieties of the text. Augustine commends the Itala, and there were also an African and some European versions. The oldest form of the Latin version is in the opinion of critics the African. Portions of the Old Latin versions are still in existence in about forty manuscripts. It was the lack of uniformity in the early Latin versions that led Damasus, Bishop of Rome, to commission Jerome, a Dalmatian, to prepare a Latin translation of the Psalms and Gospels. He finished this work and the New Testament on the basis of Greek texts. A short time later Jerome revised his Psalter on the basis of Origen's work. Origen (184254 A. D.) endeavored to produce an accurate Greek text of the Old Testament, and edited a Tetrapla, or four-text, and later a Hexapla, or six-text work, of which all that remains are fragments quoted in the Church Fathers, and a fragment of some of the Psalms, the latter found in the Ambrosian Library in 1896. In the same library were found also, in 1874, a copy of a Syriac translation of the Septuagint text of the Hexapla made in 616 A. D. Origen arranged in columns, I, the Hebrew text, 2, the Hebrew text in Greek characters, 3, 4, and 5, versions of Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion, 6, a revised Septuagint text. Origen worked on the New Testament as well, endeavoring to fix a canon. He and Jerome were the two great textual critics of the early Church.

Jerome was not content to translate from Greek, but went to live at Bethlehem, where, for fifteen years (390-405 A. D.), he devoted himself to the study of Hebrew, and the translation of the Old Testament from

Hebrew into Latin. At the request of several bishops, he translated also the books of Judith and Tobit, which a friend of his translated from Aramaic into Hebrew for him. He then translated the Hebrew version, though he regarded as canonical only the ancient Hebrew books. The oldest Latin versions were made from the Greek and included the Apocrypha, books rejected by the Jews, but received, with differences of opinion, by the Church. Their inclusion was, against the opinion of Jerome, and owing to the influence of Augustine, decided upon by the Synods of Hippo 393 A. D. and Carthage 397 A. D.

It is interesting to note that in Latin Bibles until 1566 the Old Latin translation of the Psalms revised by Jerome and known as the Roman Psalter was retained, the second revision of Jerome, known as the Gallican Psalter, replacing it in that year. Jerome's third and later translation directly from Hebrew never came into general use. This retention of an older version of the Psalms is similar to the continued use of the Bishops' version to-day in the Book of Common Prayer.

The Council of Trent, at its fourth session 1546, decreed that the Vulgate, Jerome's Latin version, was the Authentic Bible of the Roman Catholic Church. This contains the books of the Apocrypha (except the Prayer of Manasses and I and II Esdras), among the other books. The books of the Apocrypha, included in the Vulgate, and therefore in the Rheims-Douay Version, are sometimes distinguished from the canonical Hebrew Scriptures by the title "deutero-canonical” 1

1 The same term has been applied to certain New Testament books which were accepted as canonical only after long discussion, hence another title Antilegomena," by which they were known. The books are Hebrews, James, Jude, II Peter, II and III John and Revelation.

meaning that they are a supplement to the Hebrew canon. Protestant opinion concerning the Apocrypha ranges from the rejection of it as uninspired and the consequent exclusion of it from the Bible, to the view expressed in Article of Religion VI of the Church of England, which is as follows:

"And the other books (as Hierome saith) the Church doth read for example of life and instruction of manners; but yet doth it not apply them to establish any doctrine; such are these following: The Third, [First] Book of Esdras, The Fourth [Second] Book of Esdras, The Book of Tobias, The Book of Judith, The rest of the Book of Esther, The Book of Wisdom, Jesus the Son of Sirach, Baruch the Prophet, The Song of the Three Children, The Story of Susanna, Of Bel and the Dragon, The Prayer of Manasses, The First Book of Maccabees, The Second Book of Maccabees."

In the Larger Catechism of the Russian Greek Church, 1839, the Apocrypha is not included among canonical books, because "they do not exist in Hebrew."

After the Reformation, Protestants did not regard these books as inspired, but did regard them as valuable for their teachings, and they were therefore commonly printed in Protestant English versions, following the example of Luther's version 1534 in a collection by themselves, between the Old Testament and the New, but for many years they have usually not been printed in English Protestant versions. The omission of the Apocrypha dates from 1826 and is the result of a controversy in the British and Foreign Bible Society, some members of which objected to circulating with the canonical books others which were not regarded as inspired.1 We find, therefore, a difference, as to

1 See The Book and Its Story, on the occasion of the Jubilee of the British and Foreign Bible Society, 1854, p. 319.

books and parts of books, between the Vulgate, and translations of it, used by Roman Catholics, and the Bible as commonly accepted by Protestants. The oldest Christian list of the books of the Old Testament is that of Melito, Bishop of Sardis 170 A. D., which omits the Apocrypha and also Esther.

There were, of course, many versions and variants of the Latin Bible, and it became necessary for the Roman Catholic Church to fix upon a text that should be standard. A particular edition of the Vulgate was designated and, after that of Pope Sixtus V, 1590, had been found unsatisfactory, one issued by Clement VIII was, by Papal Bull of 1592, declared to be Authentic. No word of it is permitted to be altered. The action of the Council of Trent in 1546 in regard to the Vulgate, was reaffirmed by the Ecumenical Council of the Vatican in 1870. In the spring of 1907 announcement was made that Pius X had determined upon a critical revision of the Latin Bible. This work is being done by a Commission under the leadership of Father Gasquet, who are at work studying and collating manuscripts for the purpose of creating a text that shall be superior to that of the Clementine edition of 1592.1

With regard to the canon of The New Testament there is no difference between the versions. Here there was no collection of ancient writings to be adopted, whole, or with exceptions or additions, by the early Christian Church. By a gradual process of acceptance and approval the New Testament came into existence as the authoritative fundamental book of Christianity. Of the twenty-seven books, which it contains, a few were accepted finally only after long discussion. Books, which for a time were read in churches, but which 1 See the article “Vulgate, the Revision of,” in The Catholic Encyclopedia.

were never regarded as inspired, were the Clementine Epistles, the Epistle of Barnabas, and the Shepherd of Hermas. There exist also other books such as the Apocalypse of Peter, Epistle to the Laodiceans, Acts of Paul, and many so-called Gospels.

Of the various early lists of writings permitted to be read in churches that of Athanasius d. 373 is the earliest to include the present twenty-seven books of the New Testament. In his Easter Pastoral Letter in 365 A. D., Athanasius gave a complete list of the Old Testament books, placing the Apocrypha in a separate classification, and naming the books of the New Testament as we have it. Other early lists vary in regard to Hebrews, James, Jude, II Peter, II and III John, and Revelation, which have been mentioned1 as the "Antilegomena," or books "spoken against."

The Hebrew Scriptures, the Greek and Latin versions of them, the New Testament in Greek, and in Latin, these underlie the English versions of the Bible, which differ in contents, or in arrangement of contents, according to the texts from which they have been derived.

The order of the books of the Old Testament in English versions, except the Jewish, which retains the ancient Hebrew groupings, is due to the Greek and Latin translations, as are also the names of the books. In the following lists the contents of the Revised Version which represents the Protestant view of the Old Testament canon, are placed parallel to the contents of the Rheims-Douay Version, which, following the Vulgate, represents the canon as accepted by the Roman Catholic Church. So long as the books were on separate rolls of parchment the order was unim

1 Above, p. 15, note.