Something introduced to or taken away by the translation. Something that all translations do. That would include the Vulgate by the way.
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NewMan99
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The Glossa Ordinaria was a popular compilation of Scriptural comments from the 12th century. It was used extensively in the Middle Ages. However, it was never an official commentary and it had NO magisterial status. It merely collected a variety of opinion on the biblical text. It was drawn from many sources.
A gloss is NOT the same thing as an official teaching of the Church itself.
It seems to me that he was primarily commenting on Jerome's opinion of them. But even then, neither Cajetan nor Jerome speaks on behalf of the Church itself.
Interestingly enough, though, Jerome often spoke of these same texts as if they were Scripture, and he also used them to teach and support doctrine.
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Now that I have had a little bit more time to delve into this post, I would like to clarify a few things...
We never taught any such thing (nor did the Church itself, in a universal sense, ever exclude the Deuteros from public reading ...only some city-churches in the East did that, and it was because they were erroneously following the Jewish canon ...most Greek-speaking liturgies didn't read from the OT at all in the early days, and so the Greek fathers ended up assuming the post-Christic Jewish canon because of that). But, the Western Church consistently read from the Deuteros and considered them as a source of binding doctrine. I do not grant this incorrect premise - it is wrong.
Same thing. That which was read publicly in the Church had the force of binding public doctrine. This is how the early Church operated and how it related to Scripture.
Yes, following Luther himself, who wanted to remove, not only the OT Deuteros, but also the NT Deuteros (Hebrews, James, 2 Peter, 2 & 3 John, Jude, and Revelation). Luther denied the inspiration and the binding authority of all these books, along with the OT Deuteros.
In the Latin? VERY accurate; and, even far more proscriptively accurate than the bare Greek and Hebrew text itself ...because Jerome's Latin was designed to preserve the implicit understanding of various Greek and Hebrew phrases as they were understood by the Greek fathers and even the Jewish rabbis.
For, in making any translation of Scripture, one must consider both a descriptive approach (i.e., translating the bare text word-for-word, as much as possible) as well as a proscriptive approach (that is, translating the understood implication of what the original language's phrase is referring to).
A good example of this would be Isaiah 7:14, which is often translated (even by St. Matthew) as "the virgin will be with Child." Now, as anyone familiar with the Hebrew text knows, this verse does not use the word "virgin" in Hebrew, but rather the term "maiden" --that is, a young, unmarried woman. And Jewish anti-Christians are quick to point this out to us, implying that St. Matthew distorted the original text and that Isaiah 7:14 doesn't promote the idea of a virgin birth. However, the reality is that St. Matthew wasn't the one who translated this verse into Greek as "virgin." Rather, this was done by the Jewish translators of the Greek Septuagint about 200 years before Jesus was born; and in translating the Hebrew word for "maiden" as "virgin," the Jewish scribes were preserving, not a descriptive rendering of the Hebrew text into Greek, but the proscriptive understand of what Isaiah 7:14 is referring to.
For, since the Hebrew says "maiden" (a young, UNMARRIED woman), there can only be two possibly implications in the text, and only two ways of understanding it --either the mother of the Messiah will be a harlot and the Messiah a b ast ard (the child of a woman who is pregnant out of wedlock) or Isaiah is presenting us with a mysterious paradox in which a good and virtuous maiden (a virgin) is both pregnant yet still a virgin!
This latter understanding was the ancient proscriptive interprtetation among the Jews, and the Jewish scribes who translated Isaiah 7:14 into Greek preserved this implicit and proscriptive interpretation in the Greek text.
Jerome does the same while translating both the Hebrew and the Greek into Latin. THIS is why he made his translation while living in the East --why he didn't do it in his native West, or in Rome. It was because he needed to interact with the ancient Christian liturgical lives of the Greek speaking Church (and the Hebrew-speaking synagogue) and develop a direct, first-hand sense of how the verses were Traditionally understood, so as to preserve their proscriptive meaning.
And Jerome's translation of Luke 1:28 as "full of grace" ("gratia plena" in Latin) rather than "highly favored one" (as it unfortunately appears in most modern English Bibles) is a shining example of this. For, properly understood, especially in the context of the Greek passage, "highly favored one," which is certainly a descriptive translation of the bare text, cannot possibly be the intended proscriptive meaning of the word; both because the Greek word ("Kecharitomenae") is in the past-perfect tense (and so cannot refer to the "favor" that God is about to --future tense --bestow on Mary), and also because the ancient Greek-speaking Church, with which Jerome was intimately familiar, did not see this passage as referring to the "grace" or "favor" ("charis") of Mary becoming the mother of the Savior, but as referring to her personal holiness --to the grace of her personal virtue, which prepared her in advance to become the Savior's mother.
Jerome knew this because he personally interacted with the ancient Greek city-churches and gained a first-hand understanding of how they read the Greek text --their native language. No modern translator (who can only work with the descriptive text alone) has this advantage.
For, doctrine is a matter of proscriptive understanding, not the descriptive bits and bites of the bare text alone.
With respect, you approach Jerome like a modern academic.
Translation, especially for the ancients, was not a matter of merely comparing texts, but of preserving doctrine as it was Traditionally understood. Even if some of the texts that Jerome worked from were corrupt (and there is no evidence for that ...indeed, he certainly had more ancient and accurate codices to work from than we have available to us today), he was also literally surrounded by a culture which lived the Scriptures and knew the texts intimately via the living Traditions of the Greek-speaking city-churches and the synagogues. Few modern academics appreciate this dimension of Jerome's experience and background.
Differences that are not substantial, but merely matters of form. Jerome's Psalter relies on the Septuagint because his translation was designed to work in accord with the Church's Latin liturgies; and the original Hebrew forms of the Psalms were not well-suited to be sung in the Latin liturgies --i.e., various poetic Hebraisms cannot translate well directly into Latin, but are more "poetic" via the Greek. This is what you are seeing. Perhaps you are not appreciating the fact that Jerome's translation at the service of the Liturgy --that that's what canonical Scripture was for.
Jerome did not brand the Deuterocanonicals "Apocrypha." Rather, he suggested (strongly in some cases) that they SHOULD BE placed with the Apocrypha, which consisted of other books which were "set side" (or "hidden"), and so not used for public reading at the Liturgy.
But, this was merely Jerome's personal scholarly opinion, and he submitted it to the final decision of the Church. The Church (e.g. the Council of Carthage) did not accept his opinion (which was influenced by Jerome's Jewish associates, who did not accept the OT Deuterocanonicals as canonical), and the Deuterocanonicals were included in the canon and continued to be read publicly at the Liturgy (i.e., the Mass).
This is the commonly accepted belief, but it is not true. Jerome's NT translation departs from the Old Latin in numerous places; and even where there is 100% agreement, Jerome's work represents a thorough review and confirmation of the Old Latin phraseology against the original Greek.
Agreed.
As was a translation from the Hebrew into Greek.
No one is saying otherwise. Human language is not perfect; but Jerome's work (in Latin) stands as far superior to anything done by a modern translator into English. That's an important consideration.
Again, what you seemingly fail to appreciate is that Jerome was preserving, not merely the bare, descriptive text of the Greek, but the proscriptive understanding of doctrine as it was appreciated by the Greek-speaking Church.
In this, "unigenitum" is a far more accurate translation of what the Greek-speaking Church understood and meant by "monogenes" than the Latin term "unicum" would be.
Where Jerome "failed" (if you want to call it a "failure") is that he did not go far enough in doing this, and so cover every possible perambulation of proscriptive meanings between the Greek and Latin in terms of doctrinal implication --something which, of course, would be impossible to do.
For example, one could arguably lay the root of the Filioque controversy (and so the Great Schism between East and West) at Jerome's feet because of his "failure" to effectively translate the Greek term for "proceeds" in John 15:26 ("ekporeutai"), which implies procession from a single ultimate Source of Cause --chooses, instead, to use the more general Latin term "procedit," which does not imply a single, ultimate Source of Cause, and thus allowed the Latin West to develop a theology of Filioque which was (mistakenly) seen as heretical by the Greek-speaking East --the assumption being that the Latins were denying that the Father alone is the principal Source of Cause of the Spirit, which the Latins did and do believe.
So, if we want to "pick at" Jerome and look for minor areas where he supposedly "dropped the ball," we can of course keep ourselves busy until the Second Coming. Such a thing is very easy to do. It's called being a "Monday morning quarterback."
But, such an approach severely underestimates and downplays the brilliance of what Jerome did achieve.
And there was a reason for this. ...which also explains why the West did not use the Apostle's Creed (but the Nicene Creed) in its public Liturgy.
The issue is one of accurate, proscriptive meaning and orthodox doctrine. The Latin version of the Apostles' Creed did not preserve the proscriptive understanding of the original Greek text of both the Apostles' Creed and Scripture.
In essence, an Arian could recite the Apostle's Creed in Latin and still hold to his Arian belief that Jesus is just one Divine son (one "angelic being") among others. Ergo, the West refined and clarified its meaning (a meaning to reflect the true implication and proscriptive intention of the Greek text) in response to the Arian heresy.
To be continued...
We never taught any such thing (nor did the Church itself, in a universal sense, ever exclude the Deuteros from public reading ...only some city-churches in the East did that, and it was because they were erroneously following the Jewish canon ...most Greek-speaking liturgies didn't read from the OT at all in the early days, and so the Greek fathers ended up assuming the post-Christic Jewish canon because of that). But, the Western Church consistently read from the Deuteros and considered them as a source of binding doctrine. I do not grant this incorrect premise - it is wrong.
Same thing. That which was read publicly in the Church had the force of binding public doctrine. This is how the early Church operated and how it related to Scripture.
Yes, following Luther himself, who wanted to remove, not only the OT Deuteros, but also the NT Deuteros (Hebrews, James, 2 Peter, 2 & 3 John, Jude, and Revelation). Luther denied the inspiration and the binding authority of all these books, along with the OT Deuteros.
In the Latin? VERY accurate; and, even far more proscriptively accurate than the bare Greek and Hebrew text itself ...because Jerome's Latin was designed to preserve the implicit understanding of various Greek and Hebrew phrases as they were understood by the Greek fathers and even the Jewish rabbis.
For, in making any translation of Scripture, one must consider both a descriptive approach (i.e., translating the bare text word-for-word, as much as possible) as well as a proscriptive approach (that is, translating the understood implication of what the original language's phrase is referring to).
A good example of this would be Isaiah 7:14, which is often translated (even by St. Matthew) as "the virgin will be with Child." Now, as anyone familiar with the Hebrew text knows, this verse does not use the word "virgin" in Hebrew, but rather the term "maiden" --that is, a young, unmarried woman. And Jewish anti-Christians are quick to point this out to us, implying that St. Matthew distorted the original text and that Isaiah 7:14 doesn't promote the idea of a virgin birth. However, the reality is that St. Matthew wasn't the one who translated this verse into Greek as "virgin." Rather, this was done by the Jewish translators of the Greek Septuagint about 200 years before Jesus was born; and in translating the Hebrew word for "maiden" as "virgin," the Jewish scribes were preserving, not a descriptive rendering of the Hebrew text into Greek, but the proscriptive understand of what Isaiah 7:14 is referring to.
For, since the Hebrew says "maiden" (a young, UNMARRIED woman), there can only be two possibly implications in the text, and only two ways of understanding it --either the mother of the Messiah will be a harlot and the Messiah a b ast ard (the child of a woman who is pregnant out of wedlock) or Isaiah is presenting us with a mysterious paradox in which a good and virtuous maiden (a virgin) is both pregnant yet still a virgin!
This latter understanding was the ancient proscriptive interprtetation among the Jews, and the Jewish scribes who translated Isaiah 7:14 into Greek preserved this implicit and proscriptive interpretation in the Greek text.
Jerome does the same while translating both the Hebrew and the Greek into Latin. THIS is why he made his translation while living in the East --why he didn't do it in his native West, or in Rome. It was because he needed to interact with the ancient Christian liturgical lives of the Greek speaking Church (and the Hebrew-speaking synagogue) and develop a direct, first-hand sense of how the verses were Traditionally understood, so as to preserve their proscriptive meaning.
And Jerome's translation of Luke 1:28 as "full of grace" ("gratia plena" in Latin) rather than "highly favored one" (as it unfortunately appears in most modern English Bibles) is a shining example of this. For, properly understood, especially in the context of the Greek passage, "highly favored one," which is certainly a descriptive translation of the bare text, cannot possibly be the intended proscriptive meaning of the word; both because the Greek word ("Kecharitomenae") is in the past-perfect tense (and so cannot refer to the "favor" that God is about to --future tense --bestow on Mary), and also because the ancient Greek-speaking Church, with which Jerome was intimately familiar, did not see this passage as referring to the "grace" or "favor" ("charis") of Mary becoming the mother of the Savior, but as referring to her personal holiness --to the grace of her personal virtue, which prepared her in advance to become the Savior's mother.
Jerome knew this because he personally interacted with the ancient Greek city-churches and gained a first-hand understanding of how they read the Greek text --their native language. No modern translator (who can only work with the descriptive text alone) has this advantage.
For, doctrine is a matter of proscriptive understanding, not the descriptive bits and bites of the bare text alone.
With respect, you approach Jerome like a modern academic.
Translation, especially for the ancients, was not a matter of merely comparing texts, but of preserving doctrine as it was Traditionally understood. Even if some of the texts that Jerome worked from were corrupt (and there is no evidence for that ...indeed, he certainly had more ancient and accurate codices to work from than we have available to us today), he was also literally surrounded by a culture which lived the Scriptures and knew the texts intimately via the living Traditions of the Greek-speaking city-churches and the synagogues. Few modern academics appreciate this dimension of Jerome's experience and background.
Differences that are not substantial, but merely matters of form. Jerome's Psalter relies on the Septuagint because his translation was designed to work in accord with the Church's Latin liturgies; and the original Hebrew forms of the Psalms were not well-suited to be sung in the Latin liturgies --i.e., various poetic Hebraisms cannot translate well directly into Latin, but are more "poetic" via the Greek. This is what you are seeing. Perhaps you are not appreciating the fact that Jerome's translation at the service of the Liturgy --that that's what canonical Scripture was for.
Jerome did not brand the Deuterocanonicals "Apocrypha." Rather, he suggested (strongly in some cases) that they SHOULD BE placed with the Apocrypha, which consisted of other books which were "set side" (or "hidden"), and so not used for public reading at the Liturgy.
But, this was merely Jerome's personal scholarly opinion, and he submitted it to the final decision of the Church. The Church (e.g. the Council of Carthage) did not accept his opinion (which was influenced by Jerome's Jewish associates, who did not accept the OT Deuterocanonicals as canonical), and the Deuterocanonicals were included in the canon and continued to be read publicly at the Liturgy (i.e., the Mass).
This is the commonly accepted belief, but it is not true. Jerome's NT translation departs from the Old Latin in numerous places; and even where there is 100% agreement, Jerome's work represents a thorough review and confirmation of the Old Latin phraseology against the original Greek.
Agreed.
As was a translation from the Hebrew into Greek.
No one is saying otherwise. Human language is not perfect; but Jerome's work (in Latin) stands as far superior to anything done by a modern translator into English. That's an important consideration.
Again, what you seemingly fail to appreciate is that Jerome was preserving, not merely the bare, descriptive text of the Greek, but the proscriptive understanding of doctrine as it was appreciated by the Greek-speaking Church.
In this, "unigenitum" is a far more accurate translation of what the Greek-speaking Church understood and meant by "monogenes" than the Latin term "unicum" would be.
Where Jerome "failed" (if you want to call it a "failure") is that he did not go far enough in doing this, and so cover every possible perambulation of proscriptive meanings between the Greek and Latin in terms of doctrinal implication --something which, of course, would be impossible to do.
For example, one could arguably lay the root of the Filioque controversy (and so the Great Schism between East and West) at Jerome's feet because of his "failure" to effectively translate the Greek term for "proceeds" in John 15:26 ("ekporeutai"), which implies procession from a single ultimate Source of Cause --chooses, instead, to use the more general Latin term "procedit," which does not imply a single, ultimate Source of Cause, and thus allowed the Latin West to develop a theology of Filioque which was (mistakenly) seen as heretical by the Greek-speaking East --the assumption being that the Latins were denying that the Father alone is the principal Source of Cause of the Spirit, which the Latins did and do believe.
So, if we want to "pick at" Jerome and look for minor areas where he supposedly "dropped the ball," we can of course keep ourselves busy until the Second Coming. Such a thing is very easy to do. It's called being a "Monday morning quarterback."
But, such an approach severely underestimates and downplays the brilliance of what Jerome did achieve. And there was a reason for this.
...which also explains why the West did not use the Apostle's Creed (but the Nicene Creed) in its public Liturgy. The issue is one of accurate, proscriptive meaning and orthodox doctrine. The Latin version of the Apostles' Creed did not preserve the proscriptive understanding of the original Greek text of both the Apostles' Creed and Scripture.
In essence, an Arian could recite the Apostle's Creed in Latin and still hold to his Arian belief that Jesus is just one Divine son (one "angelic being") among others. Ergo, the West refined and clarified its meaning (a meaning to reflect the true implication and proscriptive intention of the Greek text) in response to the Arian heresy.
To be continued...
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NewMan99
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Continued...
Sure it is. Again - it's a matter of proscriptive intention. This is the dimension that you fail to appreciate, and many modern academics, imho, have no sensitivity to this dimension.
With respect, that's a pretty modernist reading, imho.
Again, you are approaching this as would a true modern academic who is apparently forgetting the cultural sensibility of our ancient Christian (and Jewish) forefathers.
For, not only did ancient Christians never understand the verse this way, but such an understanding is also totally alien to Jewish tradition, which saw Isaac alone as Abraham's only true (that is, only legitimately begotten) son --the son according to the Promise/the Covenant (see Romans 9).
What you are suggesting here is that the ancients distinguished between being "begotten" and being legitimate in terms of a Covenant --that "begotten" only refers to biological reproduction.
But, that's obviously not the case. Being "begotten" refers to the Covenant --e.g. Philimon 1:10. Thus, the rendering of Heb 11 above is a perfectly accurate and valid one.
Or...the imperfection of modern academics that is showing, I'm afraid.
No, that is not the case.
Rather, the Latin Church consistently saw Jerome's Vulgate as "superior" because, in the context of Latin language and cultural sensibilities, it preserved and clarified the implicit and proscriptive teachings of Scripture that were left fluid and unspecified in the original Hebrew and Greek. This was the value of Jerome's Vulgate to the Latin-speaking Western Church. The English appreciation of the King James, on the other hand, was largely a nationalistic one, having less to do with a love for accurate rendering of ancient orthodox teaching, imho. This is the all-important difference between these two translations and two cultures. Obviously, many Protestants will disagree.
Yes, this did happen occasionally. But, those who followed the supposed Tradition of the Septuagint's inspiration had lost sight of the fact that the original Tradition only referred to the Greek translation of the Torah (the first Five Books), not to the Septuagint edition as a whole.
Well, something very close to the Septuagint was the canon of the early Church --that is, the early Church's OT canon was not the modern Protestant or modern Jewish one. This has been proved conclusively by the Protestant scholar Albert C. Sundberg in his "Old Testament of the Early Church." I strongly suggest that you read Sundberg.
Read Sundberg.
You misunderstand the claim. No one is saying that the Septuagint, as some kind of "bound copy," was the early Church's Old Testament canon. Rather, what has been proven is that the early Church was not bound by the canon of the Jewish Masoretic Text, but used a Greek canon of OT Scripture which was actually a lot broader than the 3rd Century (bound) Septuagint canon. This cannot be denied.
Again, you do not understand the history or the position of the Catholic Church.
The simple reality is that, at the time when Judaism and the Church went their separate ways, THERE WAS NO CLOSED OT CANON. Rather, the OT canon, with the exception of the Law and the Prophets, was still in an open and fluid form. That is, while the first two tiers of an OT canon (the Law and the Prophets) were closed and accepted by all, the third tier of the present OT --the section referred to as "The Writings" was still open and fluid, and different Jewish synagogues (and different Christian city-churches) held to different collections of these "Writings."
As for the non-Christian Jews, they, for the most part, closed their OT canon as early as A.D. 90 (at the rabbinical school of Jamnia) excluding the OT Deuterocanonicals and other OT Writings that the Christian city-churches accepted.
But, this had no bearing on the Church, since Christians were not bound by the authority of the anti-Christian rabbis. And so, the Christian version of The Writings continued to be open and fluid (with different city-churches holding to different collections) until the Council of Carthage defined BOTH the Christian NT canon AND the Christian OT canon in A.D. 397.
Ergo, the reality is that there was no, one, universal Christian OT (or NT) until 397 A.D. Both of these were settled by Carthage. And, once one appreciates this historical fact, they can see that most of the so-called "apocryphal" books that are found in the Greek Septuagint WERE used for public and binding reading by the early Christian city-churches, which is why the Deuteros were included in the final Christian OT canon at Carthage.
Also, before Carthage, the early city-churches even read from OT Writing which ARE NOT even found in the Septuagint; and, as Sundberg points out, even the Apostles made use of these mysterious OT Writings.
Case in point, in both 1 Corinth 9-10 and Ephes 5:14, St. Paul quotes from a book called the Apocalypse of Elias, which is not found in anyone's canon today. But, if you read 1 Corinth 2:9-10, Paul clearly considers this work to be inspired Scripture (prefacing his quote with "it is written") and then, in v. 10,. directly calling it a REVELATION from God! One cannot get much more "Scriptural" than that.
Likewise, in James 4:5, that Apostle quotes from a "Scripture" that is not found in anyone's canon today, nor can we identify the book that he's referring to. It has apparently been lost. And, likewise, in Jude 9 and Jude 14-15, this Apostle quotes authoritatively from two OT Writings that are not included in any canon today --the Ascension of Moses and the Book of Enoch, respectively.
So, these NT citations alone (and there are quite a few others) clearly show that the Apostles themselves were not bound by a finalized OT canon, but accepted the inspiration and authority of books which no one includes in their OT canons today. And once we appreciate this, we can suddenly understand what St. Paul means in 2 Tim 3:16, when he says:
"ALL SCRIPTURE is inspired by God (God-breathed) and useful for teaching ..."
What Paul means by "all Scripture" is not what Protestants identify as Scripture (canonical Scripture) today. Rather, addressing Timothy --a Greek-speaking Jew from Asia Minor --Paul is referring to all the Scriptures (the fluid collections of the Writings) which were being used by Jews throughout the Greek-speaking Diaspora in the 1st Century; and Paul (under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit) is declaring that ALL OF THEM are inspired by God.
Now, this creates a remarkable problem for a Protestant, but not for a Catholic.
For, while that which is "canonical" is that which is "inspired by God" for a Protestant, a Catholic (or Eastern Orthodox) does not approach Scripture in this way. Rather, for us, "canonical" just means that a book is approved for public reading in the Liturgy of the Church (the Mass), and thus formally binding on all members of the Church.
It does not negate the fact that there can be other, Divinely inspired and true books which are not approved for public reading at Mass, and thus not formally binding on all members of the Church.
The case of a private revelation like Fatima would be a good example of this. Granted, what I am about to explain will make little sense to most Protestants - and I DO NOT want this thread to be derailed into a discussion about Marian apparitions, the Catholic Church considers the private revelations of Fatima to be "worthy of belief," and thus it grants a Catholic the freedom to believe in them, or to disbelieve in them.
But, those of us who do believe in Fatima clearly believe that the messages of Fatima are "inspired by God." However, while we clearly believe this, this does not mean that the messages of Fatima are canonically binding on every member of the Church, and thus one may not read the messages of Fatima in place of the Gospel at Sunday Mass.
Ergo, for us Catholics, something may very well be inspired by God but still not canonical. And this is how the early Church regarded extra-canonical Scriptures once the universal canon of the Bible was established.
A Protestant, however, because he possesses a faulty understanding of what the Biblical canon is for (and why it was established) cannot make this distinction or deal with this historical reality. ....at least not in a consistent way as a Protestant.
And this is the principal reason why the Protestant rejection of the inspiration and binding authority of the Deuterocanonicals in untenable. For, even Jerome never took the exclusion of the Deuteros to the extent that he denied their inspiration or the doctrinal truths presented by them. But, Protestants do just that.
And, in addition, they undermine the very authority of the Chrisitan Biblical canon itself, since the very same authority which defined the present canon of the New Testament also authorized the canonical status of the OT Deuterocanonicals. One cannot have it both ways. If the Deuteros are not canonical, then the entire canon (OT and NT) is up for grabs and one, following the example of Luther, is free to dispute the inclusion of NT books as well.
God's Peace,
NewMan
Sure it is. Again - it's a matter of proscriptive intention. This is the dimension that you fail to appreciate, and many modern academics, imho, have no sensitivity to this dimension.
With respect, that's a pretty modernist reading, imho.
Again, you are approaching this as would a true modern academic who is apparently forgetting the cultural sensibility of our ancient Christian (and Jewish) forefathers.
For, not only did ancient Christians never understand the verse this way, but such an understanding is also totally alien to Jewish tradition, which saw Isaac alone as Abraham's only true (that is, only legitimately begotten) son --the son according to the Promise/the Covenant (see Romans 9).
What you are suggesting here is that the ancients distinguished between being "begotten" and being legitimate in terms of a Covenant --that "begotten" only refers to biological reproduction.
But, that's obviously not the case. Being "begotten" refers to the Covenant --e.g. Philimon 1:10. Thus, the rendering of Heb 11 above is a perfectly accurate and valid one.
Or...the imperfection of modern academics that is showing, I'm afraid.
No, that is not the case.
Rather, the Latin Church consistently saw Jerome's Vulgate as "superior" because, in the context of Latin language and cultural sensibilities, it preserved and clarified the implicit and proscriptive teachings of Scripture that were left fluid and unspecified in the original Hebrew and Greek. This was the value of Jerome's Vulgate to the Latin-speaking Western Church. The English appreciation of the King James, on the other hand, was largely a nationalistic one, having less to do with a love for accurate rendering of ancient orthodox teaching, imho. This is the all-important difference between these two translations and two cultures. Obviously, many Protestants will disagree.
Yes, this did happen occasionally. But, those who followed the supposed Tradition of the Septuagint's inspiration had lost sight of the fact that the original Tradition only referred to the Greek translation of the Torah (the first Five Books), not to the Septuagint edition as a whole.
Well, something very close to the Septuagint was the canon of the early Church --that is, the early Church's OT canon was not the modern Protestant or modern Jewish one. This has been proved conclusively by the Protestant scholar Albert C. Sundberg in his "Old Testament of the Early Church." I strongly suggest that you read Sundberg.
Read Sundberg.
You misunderstand the claim. No one is saying that the Septuagint, as some kind of "bound copy," was the early Church's Old Testament canon. Rather, what has been proven is that the early Church was not bound by the canon of the Jewish Masoretic Text, but used a Greek canon of OT Scripture which was actually a lot broader than the 3rd Century (bound) Septuagint canon. This cannot be denied.
Again, you do not understand the history or the position of the Catholic Church.
The simple reality is that, at the time when Judaism and the Church went their separate ways, THERE WAS NO CLOSED OT CANON. Rather, the OT canon, with the exception of the Law and the Prophets, was still in an open and fluid form. That is, while the first two tiers of an OT canon (the Law and the Prophets) were closed and accepted by all, the third tier of the present OT --the section referred to as "The Writings" was still open and fluid, and different Jewish synagogues (and different Christian city-churches) held to different collections of these "Writings."
As for the non-Christian Jews, they, for the most part, closed their OT canon as early as A.D. 90 (at the rabbinical school of Jamnia) excluding the OT Deuterocanonicals and other OT Writings that the Christian city-churches accepted.
But, this had no bearing on the Church, since Christians were not bound by the authority of the anti-Christian rabbis. And so, the Christian version of The Writings continued to be open and fluid (with different city-churches holding to different collections) until the Council of Carthage defined BOTH the Christian NT canon AND the Christian OT canon in A.D. 397.
Ergo, the reality is that there was no, one, universal Christian OT (or NT) until 397 A.D. Both of these were settled by Carthage. And, once one appreciates this historical fact, they can see that most of the so-called "apocryphal" books that are found in the Greek Septuagint WERE used for public and binding reading by the early Christian city-churches, which is why the Deuteros were included in the final Christian OT canon at Carthage.
Also, before Carthage, the early city-churches even read from OT Writing which ARE NOT even found in the Septuagint; and, as Sundberg points out, even the Apostles made use of these mysterious OT Writings.
Case in point, in both 1 Corinth 9-10 and Ephes 5:14, St. Paul quotes from a book called the Apocalypse of Elias, which is not found in anyone's canon today. But, if you read 1 Corinth 2:9-10, Paul clearly considers this work to be inspired Scripture (prefacing his quote with "it is written") and then, in v. 10,. directly calling it a REVELATION from God! One cannot get much more "Scriptural" than that.
Likewise, in James 4:5, that Apostle quotes from a "Scripture" that is not found in anyone's canon today, nor can we identify the book that he's referring to. It has apparently been lost. And, likewise, in Jude 9 and Jude 14-15, this Apostle quotes authoritatively from two OT Writings that are not included in any canon today --the Ascension of Moses and the Book of Enoch, respectively.
So, these NT citations alone (and there are quite a few others) clearly show that the Apostles themselves were not bound by a finalized OT canon, but accepted the inspiration and authority of books which no one includes in their OT canons today. And once we appreciate this, we can suddenly understand what St. Paul means in 2 Tim 3:16, when he says:
"ALL SCRIPTURE is inspired by God (God-breathed) and useful for teaching ..."
What Paul means by "all Scripture" is not what Protestants identify as Scripture (canonical Scripture) today. Rather, addressing Timothy --a Greek-speaking Jew from Asia Minor --Paul is referring to all the Scriptures (the fluid collections of the Writings) which were being used by Jews throughout the Greek-speaking Diaspora in the 1st Century; and Paul (under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit) is declaring that ALL OF THEM are inspired by God.
Now, this creates a remarkable problem for a Protestant, but not for a Catholic.
For, while that which is "canonical" is that which is "inspired by God" for a Protestant, a Catholic (or Eastern Orthodox) does not approach Scripture in this way. Rather, for us, "canonical" just means that a book is approved for public reading in the Liturgy of the Church (the Mass), and thus formally binding on all members of the Church.
It does not negate the fact that there can be other, Divinely inspired and true books which are not approved for public reading at Mass, and thus not formally binding on all members of the Church.
The case of a private revelation like Fatima would be a good example of this. Granted, what I am about to explain will make little sense to most Protestants - and I DO NOT want this thread to be derailed into a discussion about Marian apparitions, the Catholic Church considers the private revelations of Fatima to be "worthy of belief," and thus it grants a Catholic the freedom to believe in them, or to disbelieve in them.
But, those of us who do believe in Fatima clearly believe that the messages of Fatima are "inspired by God." However, while we clearly believe this, this does not mean that the messages of Fatima are canonically binding on every member of the Church, and thus one may not read the messages of Fatima in place of the Gospel at Sunday Mass.
Ergo, for us Catholics, something may very well be inspired by God but still not canonical. And this is how the early Church regarded extra-canonical Scriptures once the universal canon of the Bible was established.
A Protestant, however, because he possesses a faulty understanding of what the Biblical canon is for (and why it was established) cannot make this distinction or deal with this historical reality. ....at least not in a consistent way as a Protestant.
And this is the principal reason why the Protestant rejection of the inspiration and binding authority of the Deuterocanonicals in untenable. For, even Jerome never took the exclusion of the Deuteros to the extent that he denied their inspiration or the doctrinal truths presented by them. But, Protestants do just that.
And, in addition, they undermine the very authority of the Chrisitan Biblical canon itself, since the very same authority which defined the present canon of the New Testament also authorized the canonical status of the OT Deuterocanonicals. One cannot have it both ways. If the Deuteros are not canonical, then the entire canon (OT and NT) is up for grabs and one, following the example of Luther, is free to dispute the inclusion of NT books as well.
God's Peace,
NewMan
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NewMan99
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One more thing...
As for this:
No.
The medieval authors of the Glossa Ordinaria assumed (wrongly) that Jerome's opinion against the Deuteros was the official position of the Church itself (Jerome had a lot of "groopies" in Scholastic academia who worshipped him and assumed that Jerome was the final word on Scripture). But these people were wrong. Trent, which returned to Carthage and the other early testimonies, made this clear and shot down the prevailing misunderstanding among the Scholastic university elites.
That's all that is at play here.
Cajetan likewise was appealing to the wrong understanding of the "Ordinaria" in his debate with Luther, where he too referred to the Deuteros as non-canonical. Cajetan too was simply following the opinion of his hero, St. Jerome, who he assumed was the final word.
God's Peace,
NewMan
As for this:
No.
The medieval authors of the Glossa Ordinaria assumed (wrongly) that Jerome's opinion against the Deuteros was the official position of the Church itself (Jerome had a lot of "groopies" in Scholastic academia who worshipped him and assumed that Jerome was the final word on Scripture). But these people were wrong. Trent, which returned to Carthage and the other early testimonies, made this clear and shot down the prevailing misunderstanding among the Scholastic university elites.
That's all that is at play here.
Cajetan likewise was appealing to the wrong understanding of the "Ordinaria" in his debate with Luther, where he too referred to the Deuteros as non-canonical. Cajetan too was simply following the opinion of his hero, St. Jerome, who he assumed was the final word.
God's Peace,
NewMan
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Newman,
I know you think what you wrote supports the Vulgate but what you are saying is that it is not a good translation at all, that Jerome, instead of translating what was written, wrote Roman Theology into his work. I don't think he did that to the extent you say.
As for the Church of Rome believing and teaching the canon in agreement with Luther, there's plenty of evidence but for some reason we don't see a lot of the material coming out and being that readily available.
The translations made by those in good standing with Rome really reveal the belief. For instance the Complutensian Polyglot, and the two Latin translations that came out in the 1520's. Indeed one Italian translation in 1530 didn't even include the Apocryphal books.
For some reason many people seem to want teach that Luther innovated things, he didn't. If he did it's true that he likely would have left some books out, but he didn't he followed the canon as understood by the Roman Church.
Setting the Apocryphal books in a separate section was a reasonable thing to do with a bible intended for a broad audience. But Luther can't take credit for the idea, it had already been done in the Latin translation of Sanctes Pagnini. Johannes Petreius kept the order of the Books but clearly labeled each Apocryphal book as noncanonical. Not a bad word was said by Rome about any of those translations, indeed Popes praised them.
And your view of the Glossa ordinaria, I can see how you would want to have such a view, but the only thing is, your view is completely incompatible with the view of the Roman Catholic Church. Even after Trent it continued to be praised, see for instance the prefaces to the original Douay Rheims, I think they called it the tongue of the bible.
I know you think what you wrote supports the Vulgate but what you are saying is that it is not a good translation at all, that Jerome, instead of translating what was written, wrote Roman Theology into his work. I don't think he did that to the extent you say.
As for the Church of Rome believing and teaching the canon in agreement with Luther, there's plenty of evidence but for some reason we don't see a lot of the material coming out and being that readily available.
The translations made by those in good standing with Rome really reveal the belief. For instance the Complutensian Polyglot, and the two Latin translations that came out in the 1520's. Indeed one Italian translation in 1530 didn't even include the Apocryphal books.
For some reason many people seem to want teach that Luther innovated things, he didn't. If he did it's true that he likely would have left some books out, but he didn't he followed the canon as understood by the Roman Church.
Setting the Apocryphal books in a separate section was a reasonable thing to do with a bible intended for a broad audience. But Luther can't take credit for the idea, it had already been done in the Latin translation of Sanctes Pagnini. Johannes Petreius kept the order of the Books but clearly labeled each Apocryphal book as noncanonical. Not a bad word was said by Rome about any of those translations, indeed Popes praised them.
And your view of the Glossa ordinaria, I can see how you would want to have such a view, but the only thing is, your view is completely incompatible with the view of the Roman Catholic Church. Even after Trent it continued to be praised, see for instance the prefaces to the original Douay Rheims, I think they called it the tongue of the bible.
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NewMan99
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Big Norsk,
I am pressed for time at the moment, and so I plan to return later to address your post more fully...but let me leave you with this tidbit in the meantime...
I certainly would not say that he wrote "Roman" - that is to say Western - theology into the translation. Rather, what he did was to translate the ANCIENT APOSTOLIC meaning of the Greek words in such a way that Western ears could more accurately grasp what the Sacred Text writers actually meant to convey. You are suggesting that my previous posts implied Jerome unnaturally forced alien meanings into his translation.
Quite the contrary.
Remember that Jerome did his work while living IN THE EAST so that way he could gain the most accurate understanding of what the Greek text was not only *literally* saying BUT, just as importantly, what the Greek speaking Church in the East always knew that the words MEANT (that is to say its PROSCRIPTIVE meaning).
So when Jerome translated Kecharitomenae in Luke 1:28 as gratia plena in Latin (or "full of grace" in English) he did not do so to unnaturally force a "Roman" theological principle into the text (as if Jerome would have any clue what controversies would arise centuries later over his word-choice in this particular text) but rather he deliberately chose that proscriptive phrase because that is how the ancient Greek-speaking Church in the EAST always understood it.
Therefore whatever theological implications and doctrinal developments that occured LATER in the Western Church due to the phrase "gratia plena" happened not because the Latins made stuff up, but rather because it was reflecting on the ANCIENT APOSTOLIC meaning of the text itself, regardless of the language (Greek, Latin, whatever...) of the translation itself. Thus there is an organic connection between the doctrinal developments and the Apostolic Traditions of the Church herself.
Protestants, on the other hand, are somewhat handicapped because many of them have *intentionally* divorced themselves from the Traditional understanding of the text - and hence an organic connection to it - and THEY have been the ones to unnaturally force ALIEN concepts into THEIR translations when they (in true tail-wagging-the-dog fashion) refuse to consider the authentic meaning of Luke 1:28 (as per Jerome's correct translation when living within the Greek-speaking ancient Church who maintained the Apostolic Traditions as they were called to in Scripture itself - see 1 Cor 2:11, 2 Thess 2:15, and 2 Thess 3:6). It is Protestants who have inserted their own theologies into their translations because to admit that Mary could possibly have been "full of grace" is...gasp...just too Catholic for Protestant sensibilities.
Please understand I am not accusing anyone of acting outside of good faith. Protestants, I know, love the Lord and would never *intentionally* mistranslate a biblical text. However, that is precisely what happens. It even happens with a few poorly done modern day Catholic translations too. Modernists within Christianity - and within Catholicism too - have wrecked havoc with various translations. They may mean well, but their actions have made Christendom the poorer for it, imho.
Until later...
God's Peace,
NewMan
I am pressed for time at the moment, and so I plan to return later to address your post more fully...but let me leave you with this tidbit in the meantime...
I certainly would not say that he wrote "Roman" - that is to say Western - theology into the translation. Rather, what he did was to translate the ANCIENT APOSTOLIC meaning of the Greek words in such a way that Western ears could more accurately grasp what the Sacred Text writers actually meant to convey. You are suggesting that my previous posts implied Jerome unnaturally forced alien meanings into his translation.
Quite the contrary.
Remember that Jerome did his work while living IN THE EAST so that way he could gain the most accurate understanding of what the Greek text was not only *literally* saying BUT, just as importantly, what the Greek speaking Church in the East always knew that the words MEANT (that is to say its PROSCRIPTIVE meaning).
So when Jerome translated Kecharitomenae in Luke 1:28 as gratia plena in Latin (or "full of grace" in English) he did not do so to unnaturally force a "Roman" theological principle into the text (as if Jerome would have any clue what controversies would arise centuries later over his word-choice in this particular text) but rather he deliberately chose that proscriptive phrase because that is how the ancient Greek-speaking Church in the EAST always understood it.
Therefore whatever theological implications and doctrinal developments that occured LATER in the Western Church due to the phrase "gratia plena" happened not because the Latins made stuff up, but rather because it was reflecting on the ANCIENT APOSTOLIC meaning of the text itself, regardless of the language (Greek, Latin, whatever...) of the translation itself. Thus there is an organic connection between the doctrinal developments and the Apostolic Traditions of the Church herself.
Protestants, on the other hand, are somewhat handicapped because many of them have *intentionally* divorced themselves from the Traditional understanding of the text - and hence an organic connection to it - and THEY have been the ones to unnaturally force ALIEN concepts into THEIR translations when they (in true tail-wagging-the-dog fashion) refuse to consider the authentic meaning of Luke 1:28 (as per Jerome's correct translation when living within the Greek-speaking ancient Church who maintained the Apostolic Traditions as they were called to in Scripture itself - see 1 Cor 2:11, 2 Thess 2:15, and 2 Thess 3:6). It is Protestants who have inserted their own theologies into their translations because to admit that Mary could possibly have been "full of grace" is...gasp...just too Catholic for Protestant sensibilities.
Please understand I am not accusing anyone of acting outside of good faith. Protestants, I know, love the Lord and would never *intentionally* mistranslate a biblical text. However, that is precisely what happens. It even happens with a few poorly done modern day Catholic translations too. Modernists within Christianity - and within Catholicism too - have wrecked havoc with various translations. They may mean well, but their actions have made Christendom the poorer for it, imho.
Until later...
God's Peace,
NewMan
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Well, I thank you for the Broad-Brush stroke there but since I am neither "C"atholic or "Protest-ant" I myself will let that slide.
Luke 5:37 "And no one is casting young/neon wine into OLD/palaiouV <3820> vessels, if yet no surely shall be ruined the wine, the young/neoV <3501>, of the vessels, and it shall be being poured-out and its vessel shall be perishing/apo-lountai <622> .
38 but young/neon <3501> wine into NEW/kainouV <2537> vessels is to be cast and both are preserved together.
39 and no one driking old immediately is willing young/neon <3501>, for he is saying, 'for the the old/palaioV kind/mellow is'".
Hebrews 8:13 in the to be saying `New/kainhn <2537>,' He hath made old/pepalaiwken <3822> (5758) the first. The yet being aged/palaioumenon <3822> (5746) and being obsolete nigh of disappearance/afanismou <854>
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NewMan99
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Well, I thank you for the Broad-Brush stroke there but since I am neither "C"atholic or "Protest-ant" I myself will let that slide.
LLOJ,
If you will please note for the record, I ALSO threw CATHOLIC modernist translations under the same bus, so I wasn't just picking on Protestant translations.
Also, if you know of even one translation (one that you like that is neither Protestant nor Catholic since you don't like being called Protestant) that doesn't suffer from the same maladies as the other translations I was referring to in my last post...just let me know. If I agree with you, I will gladly make an exception to my broad-brush stroke. But, frankly, I will find it hard to believe that a non-Catholic or non-Orthodox Bible would avoid writing their own theologies into the text since - by their very own theological POVs - they express a great deal of antipathy toward Tradition generally speaking (even though they are VERY big on some Traditions without really recognizing it as such, imho).
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Hi. The way the Hebrew and Greek is, it is possible for Myriads of theologies and doctrines to get into translations.
Why not just go word for word from the Hebrew/Greeek texts, neither adding to or substracting from them?
Any translations you know of that do that?
Look up variace tranlsations for Zech 13:5 for example and tell me what you find.
I was rather impressed that the D-R version using the word "adam" in this passage as it is in the Hebrew and followed the Hebrew more closely than others.
.Zechariah 13:5 And he says 'Not a-prophet I, man tilling ground/0127 'adamah I, that adam he-caused-me-to-acquire/07069 qanah from youths of me".
6And he says to him: "what the smitings/04347 makkah, these, between hands of you"? And he says "which I was smitten/05221 nakah House of lovers/0157 'ahab of me".
Douay-Rheims) Zechariah 13:5 But he shall say: I am no prophet, I am a husbandman: for Adam is my example from my youth. 6 And they shall say to him: What are these wounds in the midst of thy hands? And he shall say: With these I was wounded in the house of them that loved me.
Hmm. I have no idea how the NKJV came up with this translation!!!!!!
NKJV) Zechariah 13:5 "But he will say, 'I [am] no prophet, I [am] a farmer; for a man taught me to keep cattle from my youth.' 6 "And [one] will say to him, 'What are these wounds between your arms?' Then he will answer, '[Those] with which I was wounded in the house of my friends.'
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NewMan99
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The trick is to convey the APOSTOLIC meaning of the text. Theologies and doctrines are good things if they are apostolic in origin.
Because there is no such thing as a "word for word" translation that can convey the meanings of some of things being said. I will address this a little bit more deeply in my next post to Big Norsk. There are lots of words and phrases that have no equivalent in other languages such as English. That is where a good translator needs to ask what a given word/phrase MEANT even if there is no word-for-word equivalent.
It would be impossible. If it was that easy we would only need dictionaries.
I was rather impressed that the D-R version using the word "adam" in this passage as it is in the Hebrew and followed the Hebrew more closely than others.
Right...that is a good example. Not every word has an exact equivalent.
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For what? We know what a "synagogue" is correct? Doesn't it consist of the greek word "gog" in it which is used in Reve 20?
In fact I put a thread up on it
http://christianforums.com/showthread.php?p=47000742#post47000742
Revelation 3:9 Behold, I am giving out of the synagogue/sunagwghV <4864> of the Satan, to the ones saying selves Judeans to-be and not they are,.................
Reve 20:8 and will go forth out/exeleusetai <1831> (5695) to deceive the nations that are in the four corners of-the land, the Gog/gwg <1136> and the Magog/magwg <3098>, to-be-together-assembling/sunagagein them into a-battle....[Ezekiel 38 and 39]
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NewMan99
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Alright...back to a fuller response to Big Norsk...who raises some very interesting - and not entirely uncommon - objections from a Protestant POV.
I know I already commented on this, but please permit me to flesh it out a little bit more. Please forgive any duplicate information...
First off, as I explained before, what Jerome's translation supports is not "Roman theology" but the true doctrinal understanding of Scripture as appreciated by the ENTIRE ancient CATHOLIC (universal) Church --Latin as well as Syrian and Greek (with the Hebrew understanding of the ancient Jews thrown in for good measure).
This makes Jerome's translation (for someone who speaks Latin and has Latin cultural sensibilities) not only a good translation, but an EXCELLENT translation.
The problem here with your take is that you seemingly fail to appreciate that the comprehensive and Traditional understanding of the early Church WAS and IS the true content of Scripture.
This is the difference between a proscriptive translation (which preserves the implicit and idiomatic meaning of a given cultural expression in the explicit and formal language of the translation) and a descriptive translation, which merely renders the original words into the translated language.
For example ... What if the early Christians wrote and spoke in modern slang from the ghetto --that is, the "language" and cultural expressions of kids from the ghetto; and so a passage from one of the Gospels declared that "God is a bad cat." If one was to translate this descriptively into mainstream vernacular English, or into French (for example), one would merely render the phrase word for word: "Dieu est mauvais chat"; but, in doing this, the PROSCRIPTIVE meaning of the expression would be totally lost. For, in slang, a "cat" refers to a man or an individual, and being "bad" actually means that someone is good or very competent at what they do. So, the proper translation into French or another non-English slang cultural expression would not be "Dieu est mauvais chat" ("God is a bad cat") but something like "God is great" or "God is a very good Being," because THAT'S what the "Scripture" would REALLY be saying and what it INTENDS to say.
This is how, in many cases, Jerome handled the Greek and the Hebrew --consulting and interacting with those who belonged and were native speakers of these languages, and who, even better, possessed a Traditional appreciation of what the Scriptures were really saying in these languages --that is, the substance of the doctrine that Scripture was addressing.
And so, this would make the non-literal, proscriptive translation BETTER than an exact, literal descriptive translation of the bare text. This is what Jerome brought to the process for Latin-speaking people in the ancient Western Church. He did not change the meaning or the substance of the Scriptures (as they were Traditionally understood by native Greek and Hebrew speakers), but PRESERVED the Traditional and implicit understanding of the Scriptures by employing proscriptive language in his Latin translation rather than merely descriptive language, by which much of the implicit meaning and doctrinal content would be lost in the Latin.
Your notion that good translation must be descriptive and not proscriptive exposes you, imho, as a victim of modernist "scholarship," as does your failure to appreciate the fact that the true content of Scripture is to be found in the ancient and consistent understand of the Church (the "pillar and foundation of Truth" --1 Tim 3:15), which possessed (via its Liturgies, especially) a deep appreciation of what various Scriptural verses are really referring to, as part of the overall New Covenant revelation.
This is the real power of Tradition, which Protestants like yourself profoundly underestimate and have unwisely discarded for a very long time. And this is why we Catholics (and Orthodox too, I assume) believe the Protestant faith is very flawed, nearsighted, and heterodox in terms of true Apostolic doctrine.
I don't think you quite appreciate the context.
Yes, prior to Luther, there were many Catholic Scholastic university professors who, following Jerome, assumed that the OT Deuterocanonical books should not be included in the Bible, or that these books did not hold the same authority as the other books, etc. This is where Luther got his position from.
But, as is the case today, what a certain Catholic university professor might think is not necessarily the official position of the Catholic Church, and such academic opinions are often in direct opposition to the official position of the Catholic Church.
In Luther's day, Scholastic scholarship (that is, the style of academia that prevailed at the medieval universities --an academic approach based on Aristotle, as opposed to the Church's early, academic approach, which was based on Plato, and still used by the medieval Eastern Church which had a very hard time relating to the Scholastic approaches of the medieval Western Church) had largely deteriorated (esp. in Northern Europe) into the error on Nominalism, and this led to a lot of erroneous notions being openly advocated in the universities which were not in accord with the official Traditional teaching of the Catholic Church.
One of these was the prevalent idea that Jerome was the final word on Scripture, just as Aristotle was supposedly the final word on philosophy and physics, etc.
So, a lot of academic types (and Luther's Catholic debate opponent, Cardinal Cajetan, was one of them) blindly followed the writings of Jerome when it came to the status of the OT Deuterocanonical, and thus assumed that they were not really canonical --that Jerome was the "voice of Tradition."
The other shortcoming in this area of the late medieval Scholastics and Nominalists was that they lost sight of the ancient meaning of the term "canonical" and assumed, like modern Protestants (for this is where the Protestants got their understanding --from the Nominalists) that "canonical" was a synonym for "inspired" --that only that which is "canonical" is that which is "inspired by God," and thus they concluded that the OT Deuteros must not really be inspired because Jerome disputed their canonical status.
What the Nominalists failed to grasp, however (whereas the Eastern Church and parts of Roman Italy and France never lost this understanding) is that "canonical" did not mean "inspired" per se, but it merely meant that these particular books were approved by the Church for public reading at the Liturgy (the Mass).
And, according to the ancient understanding, that which was read publicly at the Mass was considered binding upon the entire Catholic Christian Faithful, and so the doctrines contained in the OT Deuteros were considered formally binding and part of the formal Apostolic Faith of the Church.
For, what cannot be denied is that, in the days of Cajetan and Luther, and for over 1,000 years before them, the Catholic Liturgies of the Western Church (both Roman and Gallican) DID read from the OT Deuterocanonical books at Mass. This, by ancient Christian standards (by the standards of those who DEFINED the Biblical canon), made them canonical.
So, it doesn't matter what some late medieval Catholic university professor or some Scholastic academic work might say against the Deuteros (prior to Luther). Such academic opinions were based totally on Jerome and on a failure to understand what being "canonical" really referred to, viz. those who defined the Biblical canon.
And the Council of Trent took care of this misunderstanding by returning the Church to its formal Tradition and dogmatizing the canon (that it, taking it from the status of canon law, which is what Carthage did in A.D. 397, to the status of dogma, which left no room for dispute), thus assuring that the Catholic university professors would not make the mistake of opposing the Church's millennium-old Liturgical tradition again.
But, by this time, the damage was already done among the Protestants, and Luther's folks even denied the canonical status of the NT Deuteros (i.e., Hebrews, James, 2 Peter, 2 & 3 John, Jude, and Revelation), which is something that Jerome never did, of course.
But, Luther felt free to reject the NT Deuteros for the very same reason that he REALLY rejected the OT Deuteros --because they contained statements that threatened or directly contradicted his novel "faith alone" theology (i.e., imputed justification).
For example, Luther writes ...
"Therefore, St. James' Epistle is really an epistle of straw, compared to the others, for it has nothing of the nature of the Gospels about it." (Luther, LW 35, 362).
Also ....
"The epistle of James gives us much trouble, for the Papists embrace it alone and leave out the rest ...Accordingly, if they will not admit my
interpretations, then I shall make rubble also of it. I almost feel like
throwing Jimmy into the stove, as the priest in Kalenberg did." (LW 34,
317).
Also, ... Near the end of his life, in his Table Talk lectures of 1542,
Luther wrote:
"We should throw the epistle of James out of this school [Wittenberg], for it does not amount to much. It contains not a syllable about Christ. Nor once does it mention Christ, except at the beginning. I maintain that some Jew wrote it who probably heard about Christian people but never encountered any. Since he heard that Christians place great weight on faith in Christ, he thought 'Wait a moment! I'll oppose them and urge works alone.' This he did. ....He presents a comparison: 'As the body apart from spirit is dead, so faith apart from works is dead.' O Mary, Mother of God! What a terrible comparrison that is!" (Luther, Table Talk Lectures).
Similarly, Luther says of the Book of Revelation:
"Revelation - There are many things objectionable in this book. To my mind it bears upon it no marks of an apostolic or prophetic character. Everyone may form his own judgment of this book; as for myself I feel an aversion to it, and this, to me, is sufficient reason for rejecting it." (Ibid)
This is the mentality that you are following in your rejection of the OT Deuteros.
To be continued...
I know I already commented on this, but please permit me to flesh it out a little bit more. Please forgive any duplicate information...
First off, as I explained before, what Jerome's translation supports is not "Roman theology" but the true doctrinal understanding of Scripture as appreciated by the ENTIRE ancient CATHOLIC (universal) Church --Latin as well as Syrian and Greek (with the Hebrew understanding of the ancient Jews thrown in for good measure).
This makes Jerome's translation (for someone who speaks Latin and has Latin cultural sensibilities) not only a good translation, but an EXCELLENT translation.
The problem here with your take is that you seemingly fail to appreciate that the comprehensive and Traditional understanding of the early Church WAS and IS the true content of Scripture.
This is the difference between a proscriptive translation (which preserves the implicit and idiomatic meaning of a given cultural expression in the explicit and formal language of the translation) and a descriptive translation, which merely renders the original words into the translated language.
For example ... What if the early Christians wrote and spoke in modern slang from the ghetto --that is, the "language" and cultural expressions of kids from the ghetto; and so a passage from one of the Gospels declared that "God is a bad cat." If one was to translate this descriptively into mainstream vernacular English, or into French (for example), one would merely render the phrase word for word: "Dieu est mauvais chat"; but, in doing this, the PROSCRIPTIVE meaning of the expression would be totally lost. For, in slang, a "cat" refers to a man or an individual, and being "bad" actually means that someone is good or very competent at what they do. So, the proper translation into French or another non-English slang cultural expression would not be "Dieu est mauvais chat" ("God is a bad cat") but something like "God is great" or "God is a very good Being," because THAT'S what the "Scripture" would REALLY be saying and what it INTENDS to say.
This is how, in many cases, Jerome handled the Greek and the Hebrew --consulting and interacting with those who belonged and were native speakers of these languages, and who, even better, possessed a Traditional appreciation of what the Scriptures were really saying in these languages --that is, the substance of the doctrine that Scripture was addressing.
And so, this would make the non-literal, proscriptive translation BETTER than an exact, literal descriptive translation of the bare text. This is what Jerome brought to the process for Latin-speaking people in the ancient Western Church. He did not change the meaning or the substance of the Scriptures (as they were Traditionally understood by native Greek and Hebrew speakers), but PRESERVED the Traditional and implicit understanding of the Scriptures by employing proscriptive language in his Latin translation rather than merely descriptive language, by which much of the implicit meaning and doctrinal content would be lost in the Latin.
Your notion that good translation must be descriptive and not proscriptive exposes you, imho, as a victim of modernist "scholarship," as does your failure to appreciate the fact that the true content of Scripture is to be found in the ancient and consistent understand of the Church (the "pillar and foundation of Truth" --1 Tim 3:15), which possessed (via its Liturgies, especially) a deep appreciation of what various Scriptural verses are really referring to, as part of the overall New Covenant revelation.
This is the real power of Tradition, which Protestants like yourself profoundly underestimate and have unwisely discarded for a very long time. And this is why we Catholics (and Orthodox too, I assume) believe the Protestant faith is very flawed, nearsighted, and heterodox in terms of true Apostolic doctrine.
I don't think you quite appreciate the context. Yes, prior to Luther, there were many Catholic Scholastic university professors who, following Jerome, assumed that the OT Deuterocanonical books should not be included in the Bible, or that these books did not hold the same authority as the other books, etc. This is where Luther got his position from.
But, as is the case today, what a certain Catholic university professor might think is not necessarily the official position of the Catholic Church, and such academic opinions are often in direct opposition to the official position of the Catholic Church.
In Luther's day, Scholastic scholarship (that is, the style of academia that prevailed at the medieval universities --an academic approach based on Aristotle, as opposed to the Church's early, academic approach, which was based on Plato, and still used by the medieval Eastern Church which had a very hard time relating to the Scholastic approaches of the medieval Western Church) had largely deteriorated (esp. in Northern Europe) into the error on Nominalism, and this led to a lot of erroneous notions being openly advocated in the universities which were not in accord with the official Traditional teaching of the Catholic Church.
One of these was the prevalent idea that Jerome was the final word on Scripture, just as Aristotle was supposedly the final word on philosophy and physics, etc.
So, a lot of academic types (and Luther's Catholic debate opponent, Cardinal Cajetan, was one of them) blindly followed the writings of Jerome when it came to the status of the OT Deuterocanonical, and thus assumed that they were not really canonical --that Jerome was the "voice of Tradition."
The other shortcoming in this area of the late medieval Scholastics and Nominalists was that they lost sight of the ancient meaning of the term "canonical" and assumed, like modern Protestants (for this is where the Protestants got their understanding --from the Nominalists) that "canonical" was a synonym for "inspired" --that only that which is "canonical" is that which is "inspired by God," and thus they concluded that the OT Deuteros must not really be inspired because Jerome disputed their canonical status.
What the Nominalists failed to grasp, however (whereas the Eastern Church and parts of Roman Italy and France never lost this understanding) is that "canonical" did not mean "inspired" per se, but it merely meant that these particular books were approved by the Church for public reading at the Liturgy (the Mass).
And, according to the ancient understanding, that which was read publicly at the Mass was considered binding upon the entire Catholic Christian Faithful, and so the doctrines contained in the OT Deuteros were considered formally binding and part of the formal Apostolic Faith of the Church.
For, what cannot be denied is that, in the days of Cajetan and Luther, and for over 1,000 years before them, the Catholic Liturgies of the Western Church (both Roman and Gallican) DID read from the OT Deuterocanonical books at Mass. This, by ancient Christian standards (by the standards of those who DEFINED the Biblical canon), made them canonical.
So, it doesn't matter what some late medieval Catholic university professor or some Scholastic academic work might say against the Deuteros (prior to Luther). Such academic opinions were based totally on Jerome and on a failure to understand what being "canonical" really referred to, viz. those who defined the Biblical canon.
And the Council of Trent took care of this misunderstanding by returning the Church to its formal Tradition and dogmatizing the canon (that it, taking it from the status of canon law, which is what Carthage did in A.D. 397, to the status of dogma, which left no room for dispute), thus assuring that the Catholic university professors would not make the mistake of opposing the Church's millennium-old Liturgical tradition again.
But, by this time, the damage was already done among the Protestants, and Luther's folks even denied the canonical status of the NT Deuteros (i.e., Hebrews, James, 2 Peter, 2 & 3 John, Jude, and Revelation), which is something that Jerome never did, of course.
But, Luther felt free to reject the NT Deuteros for the very same reason that he REALLY rejected the OT Deuteros --because they contained statements that threatened or directly contradicted his novel "faith alone" theology (i.e., imputed justification).
For example, Luther writes ...
"Therefore, St. James' Epistle is really an epistle of straw, compared to the others, for it has nothing of the nature of the Gospels about it." (Luther, LW 35, 362).
Also ....
"The epistle of James gives us much trouble, for the Papists embrace it alone and leave out the rest ...Accordingly, if they will not admit my
interpretations, then I shall make rubble also of it. I almost feel like
throwing Jimmy into the stove, as the priest in Kalenberg did." (LW 34,
317).
Also, ... Near the end of his life, in his Table Talk lectures of 1542,
Luther wrote:
"We should throw the epistle of James out of this school [Wittenberg], for it does not amount to much. It contains not a syllable about Christ. Nor once does it mention Christ, except at the beginning. I maintain that some Jew wrote it who probably heard about Christian people but never encountered any. Since he heard that Christians place great weight on faith in Christ, he thought 'Wait a moment! I'll oppose them and urge works alone.' This he did. ....He presents a comparison: 'As the body apart from spirit is dead, so faith apart from works is dead.' O Mary, Mother of God! What a terrible comparrison that is!" (Luther, Table Talk Lectures).
Similarly, Luther says of the Book of Revelation:
"Revelation - There are many things objectionable in this book. To my mind it bears upon it no marks of an apostolic or prophetic character. Everyone may form his own judgment of this book; as for myself I feel an aversion to it, and this, to me, is sufficient reason for rejecting it." (Ibid)
This is the mentality that you are following in your rejection of the OT Deuteros.
To be continued...
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NewMan99
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Continued...
Yep. And this was product of Scholastic professors at the medieval University of Bologna who assumed that Jerome was infallible and worshipped the ground he walked on. But, again, what was popular in academic circles at the time (as is the case today) is not necessarily the official position of the Catholic Church.
Martin Luther did not develop in a vacuum. He was part of the (what today we'd call "Left Wing" academic culture of the medieval universities, which tested the boundaries of Catholic orthodoxy and Tradition in many ways.
For example ... Another troublesome doctrine that was preserved by academic types was the error of Beregarianism, which taught (despite the dogmatic definitions of the Lateran Council, etc.) that the Eucharist is merely a symbol and not the real and Incarnational Presence of Christ.
The more extreme Protestant reformers did not come up with this idea on their own, but got it from dissident academic types at the universities they belonged to and emerged from; and Luther himself at first espoused the Beregarian error, but then cut ties with Zwingli over this issue because Luther insisted that the Biblical text was too clear in favor of the doctrine of the Real Presence; and this is why Lutherans hold to a modified form of the Catholic belief in the Real Presence today.
So, it's no surprise that pre-Reformation Catholics held to lots of erroneous views that would later be formally adopted by the Protestant sectarians. For, most of these views were developed, not by the Protestants themselves, but by dissident liberal minds at the universities prior to the so-called "Reformation." This is what one must understand.
Not me. See above.
Right. But, he (and the other so-called Reformers) did make certain preexisting errors formal and official for his renegade flock. Before that time, these errors were merely the underground opinions of the fringe in the halls of academia. Luther made them part of a real religion. This is his unfortunate contribution.
You are wrong. See the quotes from Luther above. The Catholic Church in his day certainly didn't exclude James and Revelation, etc. Also, Luther conflicted with many Catholics over the issue of the OT Deuteros; and even among those Catholics (and many early Protestants) who assumed that Jerome's opinion was golden and beyond question still didn't think that the OT Deuteros should not be read at Mass or included in the Bible.
Rather, they held to a modified (and rather untenable) opinion, which was that the OT Deuteros should remain in the canon but that they should not be held to the same degree of authority as the Protocanonical Scriptures.
This is why, for example, the Anglicans and other Protestant groups continued to include the Deuteros in their Bibles for centuries to come --because of this "moderate" position. But, this was never the formal position of the Catholic Church itself, and Trent clarified that beyond question.
But the Catholic Church never did this. This was a Protestant idea.
Go look at the edition. He did not place the Deuteros in a separate section by themselves, as Protestants later did. Rather, he merely labeled them as "apocryphal" (I don't believe he actually used the term "non-canonical", just "apocryphal") because he, like MANY other Catholic academic types, was following the opinion of St. Jerome which was (erroneously) considered to be sacrosanct and the traditional position of the ancient Church. But, Petreius was simply wrong. Like many others, he was the victim of a defective Scholastic education and did not understand history properly in this area.
We are talking about ACADEMIA, my friend. And even a Pope is not above personal academic shortcomings. Many late medieval Popes also came from the school of thought which assumed that St. Jerome knew what he was talking about. And so, it is not surprising that a Pope might approve or even "praise" an academic work that promoted Jerome's scholarly opinions IN THE CONTEXT OF AN ACADEMIC WORK.
What these Popes did not do, however, was use their formal teaching authority to exclude the OT Deuteros from being read at the Liturgy (as Jerome thought they should be) or formally declare that the OT Deuteros were not canonical or inspired.
For, it is only through a Pope's FORMAL TEACHING OFFICE that his authority as Pope is manifested. What he may think personally about an academic work, or a political decision, or even a work of art, etc. is just a Pope's personal opinion, and is in no sense binding on the Church.
Like many good Protestants (for Protestantism is often totally dependent on academic study to the exclusion of ecclesial communal life and liturgical mystery) you seem to think that academia is the be-all-end-all of Church authority and Tradition. It is not. In the Catholic view of things, academia is tolerated and often employed as a helpful resource, but it is not the final word. This is an essential difference between Catholicism and Protestantism. Paul (the academic genius) was not made the visible head of the Church. Rather, Peter was --a simple fisherman.
You mean a historically realistic one? It's not that I "want" to have such a view; it's that I want to assent to historical reality. You, however, apparently wish to avoid historical reality.
Sorry, but that is simply incorrect. Again, your problem is that you fail to distinguish between what was popular in academic circles prior to the Reformation (i.e., the fact that Jerome's opinion was commonly presumed to be the position of the ancient Church by many medieval Scholastics) versus the true and official position of the Catholic Church, which consistently continued to read from the OT Deuteros at Mass, thus confirming their canonical status. This was, again, what was reaffirmed by Trent.
Again, you fail to understand or have any kind of appreciation for the distinction between academic work and the Church's official position on things.
As an academic work, the G. Ordinaria contained many good things --that is, it is an excellent work of scholarship. But, that doesn't mean that it was accepted by the Catholic Church across-the-board in any official capacity.
No academia work (not even Aquinas' Summa or the Liber Pontificalis) is given this kind of status by the Catholic Church! For, even they contain errors and elements which the Catholic Church rejects!
And the fact that you, like a great many other Protestants, do not understand this shows that you don't quite grasp how the Catholic Church operates, let alone how it approached and viewed things on the eve of the Protestant revolt.
God's Peace,
NewMan
Yep. And this was product of Scholastic professors at the medieval University of Bologna who assumed that Jerome was infallible and worshipped the ground he walked on. But, again, what was popular in academic circles at the time (as is the case today) is not necessarily the official position of the Catholic Church.
Martin Luther did not develop in a vacuum. He was part of the (what today we'd call "Left Wing"
academic culture of the medieval universities, which tested the boundaries of Catholic orthodoxy and Tradition in many ways. For example ... Another troublesome doctrine that was preserved by academic types was the error of Beregarianism, which taught (despite the dogmatic definitions of the Lateran Council, etc.) that the Eucharist is merely a symbol and not the real and Incarnational Presence of Christ.
The more extreme Protestant reformers did not come up with this idea on their own, but got it from dissident academic types at the universities they belonged to and emerged from; and Luther himself at first espoused the Beregarian error, but then cut ties with Zwingli over this issue because Luther insisted that the Biblical text was too clear in favor of the doctrine of the Real Presence; and this is why Lutherans hold to a modified form of the Catholic belief in the Real Presence today.
So, it's no surprise that pre-Reformation Catholics held to lots of erroneous views that would later be formally adopted by the Protestant sectarians. For, most of these views were developed, not by the Protestants themselves, but by dissident liberal minds at the universities prior to the so-called "Reformation." This is what one must understand.
Not me.
See above.Right. But, he (and the other so-called Reformers) did make certain preexisting errors formal and official for his renegade flock. Before that time, these errors were merely the underground opinions of the fringe in the halls of academia. Luther made them part of a real religion. This is his unfortunate contribution.
You are wrong. See the quotes from Luther above. The Catholic Church in his day certainly didn't exclude James and Revelation, etc. Also, Luther conflicted with many Catholics over the issue of the OT Deuteros; and even among those Catholics (and many early Protestants) who assumed that Jerome's opinion was golden and beyond question still didn't think that the OT Deuteros should not be read at Mass or included in the Bible.
Rather, they held to a modified (and rather untenable) opinion, which was that the OT Deuteros should remain in the canon but that they should not be held to the same degree of authority as the Protocanonical Scriptures.
This is why, for example, the Anglicans and other Protestant groups continued to include the Deuteros in their Bibles for centuries to come --because of this "moderate" position. But, this was never the formal position of the Catholic Church itself, and Trent clarified that beyond question.
But the Catholic Church never did this. This was a Protestant idea.
Go look at the edition. He did not place the Deuteros in a separate section by themselves, as Protestants later did. Rather, he merely labeled them as "apocryphal" (I don't believe he actually used the term "non-canonical", just "apocryphal") because he, like MANY other Catholic academic types, was following the opinion of St. Jerome which was (erroneously) considered to be sacrosanct and the traditional position of the ancient Church. But, Petreius was simply wrong. Like many others, he was the victim of a defective Scholastic education and did not understand history properly in this area.
We are talking about ACADEMIA, my friend. And even a Pope is not above personal academic shortcomings. Many late medieval Popes also came from the school of thought which assumed that St. Jerome knew what he was talking about. And so, it is not surprising that a Pope might approve or even "praise" an academic work that promoted Jerome's scholarly opinions IN THE CONTEXT OF AN ACADEMIC WORK.
What these Popes did not do, however, was use their formal teaching authority to exclude the OT Deuteros from being read at the Liturgy (as Jerome thought they should be) or formally declare that the OT Deuteros were not canonical or inspired.
For, it is only through a Pope's FORMAL TEACHING OFFICE that his authority as Pope is manifested. What he may think personally about an academic work, or a political decision, or even a work of art, etc. is just a Pope's personal opinion, and is in no sense binding on the Church.
Like many good Protestants (for Protestantism is often totally dependent on academic study to the exclusion of ecclesial communal life and liturgical mystery) you seem to think that academia is the be-all-end-all of Church authority and Tradition. It is not. In the Catholic view of things, academia is tolerated and often employed as a helpful resource, but it is not the final word. This is an essential difference between Catholicism and Protestantism. Paul (the academic genius) was not made the visible head of the Church. Rather, Peter was --a simple fisherman.
You mean a historically realistic one? It's not that I "want" to have such a view; it's that I want to assent to historical reality. You, however, apparently wish to avoid historical reality.
Sorry, but that is simply incorrect. Again, your problem is that you fail to distinguish between what was popular in academic circles prior to the Reformation (i.e., the fact that Jerome's opinion was commonly presumed to be the position of the ancient Church by many medieval Scholastics) versus the true and official position of the Catholic Church, which consistently continued to read from the OT Deuteros at Mass, thus confirming their canonical status. This was, again, what was reaffirmed by Trent.
Again, you fail to understand or have any kind of appreciation for the distinction between academic work and the Church's official position on things.
As an academic work, the G. Ordinaria contained many good things --that is, it is an excellent work of scholarship. But, that doesn't mean that it was accepted by the Catholic Church across-the-board in any official capacity.
No academia work (not even Aquinas' Summa or the Liber Pontificalis) is given this kind of status by the Catholic Church! For, even they contain errors and elements which the Catholic Church rejects!
And the fact that you, like a great many other Protestants, do not understand this shows that you don't quite grasp how the Catholic Church operates, let alone how it approached and viewed things on the eve of the Protestant revolt.
God's Peace,
NewMan
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Hey. All they did was follow the Orthodox revolt! I myself just delved into Translations.
I also never got in to the Mary dogmas or real presence thing.
Matt 4:16 The people, the one-sitting in darkness perceived a Light, great.
And/also to-the ones-sitting in part and shadow of death, a Light springs-up to-them.
John 1:3 All-things thru Him became and apart-from Him became not-yet one-thing which has become.
4 In Him life was, and the Life was the Light of the men.
Reve 21:23 And the City not need is having of the sun, neither of the moon, that they should be appearing to her. For the Glory of the God illuminates her and the Lamp of her, the Lamb-kin.
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It took me a while to find where the Rep button has been moved to so I could give credit to Newman99's excellent posts.
I'd just like to add a couple of comments with regards to translations and particularly from Latin to Greek. A particular difficulty in translating from Greek into Latin is the fact that you are trying to express the meanings of many subtly different words with just a few words. Greek has approximately four times the vocabulary of Latin. The filioque is a good example of this sort of issue where two Greek words of different meanings are translated with one word in Latin. There is also the issue of "energy' words in Greek which have no counterpart in Latin. I have not studied this so I have no idea as to whether Jerome was able to convey anything of this in his translation. I don't believe any of the English translations succeed in conveying this "energy" distinction.
I have also been perplexed by Jerome's translating of identical texts in different parts of the new testament differently in the Latin.
Matthew 6:11 and Luke 11:3 both contain the same expression "τὸν ἄρτον ἡμῶν τὸν ἐπιούσιον", one of which he translates as "panem nostrum supersubstantialem" (our supersubstantial bread) and the other as "panem nostrum cotidianum" (our daily bread). The Matthew translation is the more accurate but guess which one was used liturgically and has thus become the form used by almost all English translations of the Lord's Prayer. It is baffling because there are a number of words meaning "daily" in Greek and "ἐπιούσιον" ain't one of them. In fact the first time this word ever appears in Greek usage is in these two gospels. It seems to have been created because there did not already exist a single word which correctly conveyed the meaning of the words used by Christ.
Anyway, that's all I have to add. Carry on
John
I'd just like to add a couple of comments with regards to translations and particularly from Latin to Greek. A particular difficulty in translating from Greek into Latin is the fact that you are trying to express the meanings of many subtly different words with just a few words. Greek has approximately four times the vocabulary of Latin. The filioque is a good example of this sort of issue where two Greek words of different meanings are translated with one word in Latin. There is also the issue of "energy' words in Greek which have no counterpart in Latin. I have not studied this so I have no idea as to whether Jerome was able to convey anything of this in his translation. I don't believe any of the English translations succeed in conveying this "energy" distinction.
I have also been perplexed by Jerome's translating of identical texts in different parts of the new testament differently in the Latin.
Matthew 6:11 and Luke 11:3 both contain the same expression "τὸν ἄρτον ἡμῶν τὸν ἐπιούσιον", one of which he translates as "panem nostrum supersubstantialem" (our supersubstantial bread) and the other as "panem nostrum cotidianum" (our daily bread). The Matthew translation is the more accurate but guess which one was used liturgically and has thus become the form used by almost all English translations of the Lord's Prayer. It is baffling because there are a number of words meaning "daily" in Greek and "ἐπιούσιον" ain't one of them. In fact the first time this word ever appears in Greek usage is in these two gospels. It seems to have been created because there did not already exist a single word which correctly conveyed the meaning of the words used by Christ.
Anyway, that's all I have to add. Carry on
John
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Greetings. You probably know the greek better than I but here is how it looks in the Tex-Rec:
http://www.olivetree.com/cgi-bin/EnglishBible.htm
http://www.scripture4all.org/
(tr) NT) Matthew 6:11 ton <3588> {THE} arton <740> {BREAD} hmwn <2257> {OF US} ton <3588> {THE} epiousion <1967> {NEEDED/DOLE} doV <1325> (5628) {BE THOU GIVING} hmin <2254> {TO US} shmeron <4594> {TODAY;}
(tr) NT) Luke 11:3 ton <3588> {THE} arton <740> {BREAD} hmwn <2257> {OF US} ton <3588> {THE} epiousion <1967> {NEEDED/DOLE} didou <1325> (5720) {BE GIVING} hmin <2254> {TO US} to <3588> {THE} kaq <2596> {ACCORDING TO} hmeran <2250> {A DAY}
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