5.5 Simple Verses from the Vulgate — Epoché
What you will be able to do Read sixteen verses of continuous Latin prose without a glossary. Translate the Lord's Prayer from the Latin. Recognise a subjunctive used as a wish or a command, which this text is full of. Read the spelling of an early printed book: the ligature, the consonantal j, and the punctuation. Prerequisites : lesson 5.4 — the graffiti, which were the worst-spelled Latin in the course; this is the best-behaved. After the walls of Pompeii, something at the other end of the scale. The Vulgate is the easiest real Latin prose there is, and the reason is worth stating because it is not an accident: Jerome was translating from Hebrew and Greek for readers whose Latin was ordinary, and he kept the vocabulary small, the sentences short and the clauses in the order of the original. The result is a prose that a first-year student can read and that a Roman rhetorician would have thought very plain. Sixteen verses, about a hundred and sixty words. Five of them are the Lord's Prayer, which you may know in English well enough to check yourself against. The text is in a separate document beside this one. Read it there first. About this text What the Vulgate is. A translation of the Bible into Latin, made largely by Jerome between 382 and 405, from the Hebrew for the Old Testament and from the Greek for the New. It replaced a patchwork of earlier Latin versions, and for a thousand years in western Europe it simply was the Bible: quoted, memorised, argued over and set to music in Latin by people who spoke no Latin otherwise. Which Vulgate. There is no single text. The one printed here is the Clementine edition, issued at Rome in 1592 and corrected in 1598, which was the standard Catholic text until 1979 and is in the public domain. A twentieth-century revision exists and differs in places — its Lord's Prayer reads a Malo with a capital where this one has a malo — and modern critical editions differ again. The lesson uses the 1598 text because it is the one that was read for four hundred years and the one that is free. Why it is easy. Three reasons, and all three are properties of translation rather than of Latin. The vocabulary is small — a few thousand words do the whole book, and the core of it is the vocabulary of volume 4. The syntax is paratactic : clauses are strung together with and rather than subordinated, because that is how Hebrew works and Jerome followed it. And the word order is much closer to the original than a Latin author writing freely would have made it. You are reading Latin that is bending towards another language, which is exactly what makes it a good first prose. Word by word Each verse with its reference and a note on what is happening. The references use the Vulgate's own numbering of the psalms, which is one behind the Hebrew numbering used in most English Bibles — the psalm here numbered 22 is the one an English reader knows as 23. Reference Latin What is happening Genesis 1:1 In principio creavit Deus cælum et terram. Prepositional phrase, verb, subject, two objects. The verb second is unusual for Latin and follows the Hebrew. Genesis 1:3 Dixitque Deus : Fiat lux. Et facta est lux. The first word carries an enclitic meaning and , attached to the back of the verb. Then a subjunctive — let it be made — and a perfect passive. Ioannes 1:1 In principio erat Verbum, et Verbum erat apud Deum, et Deus erat Verbum. Three clauses, each with the copula, each in a different order. The last puts the predicate first for emphasis, which is why the sentence has been argued over for two thousand years. Ioannes 1:5 et lux in tenebris lucet, et tenebræ eam non comprehenderunt. A present and a perfect side by side: the light shines , the darkness did not take hold. The tense change is the whole point of the verse. Psalmi 22:1 Psalmus David. Dominus regit me, et nihil mihi deerit : A heading, then two clauses. The second has a dative of the person and a future. Psalmi 22:2 in loco pascuæ, ibi me collocavit. Super aquam refectionis educavit me ; Two perfects with the speaker as object. The repetition is Hebrew parallelism carried straight into Latin. Psalmi 116:1 Alleluja. Laudate Dominum, omnes gentes ; laudate eum, omnes populi. Two imperatives plural with vocatives after them. The shortest psalm in the book. Matthaeus 5:3 Beati pauperes spiritu : quoniam ipsorum est regnum cælorum. No verb in the first half — supply are . The second half is a genitive predicate: of them is the kingdom . Matthaeus 5:4 Beati mites : quoniam ipsi possidebunt terram. Same shape. The verb in the second half is future. Matthaeus 5:5 Beati qui lugent : quoniam ipsi consolabuntur. Same shape again, with a relative clause as the subject and a future passive. Matthaeus 7:7 Petite, et dabitur vobis : quærite, et invenietis : pulsate, et aperietur vobis. Three pairs, each an imperative plural and a future passive. Nothing joins the pairs but punctuation. Matthaeus 6:9 Sic ergo vos orabitis : Pater noster, qui es in cælis, sanctificetur nomen tuum. A future used as a command, then a vocative, then a relative clause, then a subjunctive passive standing as a wish. Matthaeus 6:10 Adveniat regnum tuum ; fiat voluntas tua, sicut in cælo et in terra. Two more subjunctives of the same kind, both with their subjects after them. Matthaeus 6:11 Panem nostrum supersubstantialem da nobis hodie, An imperative with two objects and an adverb. The adjective is a coinage of Jerome and is discussed below. Matthaeus 6:12 et dimitte nobis debita nostra, sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris. An imperative with a dative and an accusative, then a comparison clause with the same verb in the present. Matthaeus 6:13 Et ne nos inducas in tentationem, sed libera nos a malo. Amen. A negative command made with the subjunctive, then an imperative, then a prepositional phrase. The frame of the sentence The striking thing about this text, once you have read it twice, is how many of its verbs are not statements. The subjunctive a