Are modern Bible translations always better? A Catholic linguist praises St. Jerome’s Vulgate

Most people know that St. Jerome — whose feast day the Catholic Church celebrates on Sept. 30 — is famous for translating the entire Bible into Latin in the fourth century A.D., creating a widely read edition later known as the Vulgate.

But fewer people probably realize how groundbreaking — and how enduring — Jerome’s work truly is. The Vulgate became the predominantly used Bible of the Middle Ages and has endured to this day as a translation that at least one prominent linguist considers one of the very best available.

“I don’t know any other translation, either ancient or modern, so good as the Vulgate,” Christophe Rico, a Catholic linguist living and working in Jerusalem, told CNA.

Rico, a Frenchman, is a professor of ancient Greek and dean at the Polis Institute in Jerusalem, which teaches a variety of ancient languages. Working with the Polis Institute, Rico produces books to help students learn to speak and read Latin and Greek — with the goal, in part, of allowing those who wish to read the original Latin Vulgate to do so.

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