Vulgate in Russian. New Testament

The Vulgate (“Commonly Accepted Bible”) is a Latin translation of the books of Holy Scripture, based on the works of the blessed one. Hieronymus of Stridon. With the blessing of Pope Damasus in 383-384. years of blzh. Jerome attempted to revise the Old Latin translation of the New Testament on the basis of the original Greek. He translated both from Old Latin, the Septuagint, and from the pre-Soretian Hebrew text. This work continued until the death of the blessed one. Jerome. His works subsequently formed the basis of the classic Latin translation of the Bible, called the Vulgate. The Vulgate was edited by Blessed Alcuin, Saint Bede the Venerable, Theodulf of Orleans and others. Critical research and editing of the Vulgate was completed only in 1592. At the Council of Trent in the 16th century. The Catholic Church recognized the Vulgate as the inspired text of Holy Scripture, and in the 19th century. The Vulgate influenced the Russian Synodal translation of the Bible. This translation was made for the ABC of Faith website by a highly qualified medievalist and translator from Latin Dmitry Eduardovich Puchkin. The numbering of chapters and verses and the order of the books of Holy Scripture in this translation follows exactly the Vulgate. *The name in Latin is Vulgata. (translation by Dmitry Eduardovich Puchkin) Biblia Sacra Vulgatæ Clementis (New Testament) Vulgate, from Lat. Biblia Vulgata – “The Commonly Accepted Bible” – is a Latin translation of the books of Holy Scripture (Bible), based on the works of Blessed Jerome (342–420). With the blessing of Pope Damasus, in the 380s, Blessed Jerome made an attempt to put the Old Latin translation in order. This work continued until the death of Blessed Jerome in 420 (419). Jerome translated both from Old Latin, the Septuagint, and from the pre-Soretian Hebrew text. The Vulgate was actively edited by Bede the Venerable (672–735), followed by Alcuin (735–804) and Theodulf (750(60)–821). The critical study and editing of the Vulgate was completed only in 1592, which is known under the name Biblia Sacra Vulgatæ Clementis. All theological and philosophical polemics of the 17th, 18th, 19th and 20th centuries were based precisely on the Vulgatæ Clementis, the relationship of which with Jerome’s Vulgate is similar to the relationship between the Cyril and Methodius texts (9th century) and the Elizabethan Bible of 1751. This publication (translation) was made (for the ABC of Faith website) by a highly qualified medievalist and translator from Latin Dmitry Eduardovich Puchkin. The arrangement of some messages and the order of verses is given according to the Vulgate and cannot be violated. Currently, a translation by E. Rosenblum of Jerome's Vulgate based on the most ancient copies is being prepared. On our website you can find Rosenblum’s translation from Latin of the Gospel of Matthew already completed. Work on two texts (now with your help) continues and will be completed when they are published. The use of this text on other sites is prohibited by the copyright holder. Editorial staff of the ABC of Faith website. The great translator and interpreter of the Bible once said: “Not knowing the Scriptures is not knowing Christ” (St. Jerome of Stridon, Comm. in Is., prol.). And we tried to help the Russian reader get to know Scripture better and thereby get to know Christ better, revealing new facets of the meanings of Scripture. This edition of the Russian translation of the New Testament is made according to the guidance of the Holy Bible Vulgate in Clement’s edition [editio Clementina]. There are three types of New Testament translations: 1) translations from the unified and established traditional Greek text of the New Testament, based on Byzantine manuscripts and first published in the West by Erasmus of Rotterdam in 1516 (the Complutensian Polyglot, a multilingual Bible published through the efforts of Cardinal Jimenez, was printed earlier, but went on sale later). This text is called the Textus Receptus. Traditional translations for the so-called “Orthodox” and “Protestant” countries were made from it (German translation by Dr. M. Luther, English translation by W. Tyndale [in a revised form included in the Bible of King James I], Russian translations - translation of the Russian Bible Society in 1821 [in a revised form included in the Synodal Translation of the Bible], translation by K. P. Pobedonostsev); 2) translations from critical editions of the Greek New Testament: a) taking into account ancient manuscripts, including those written in Egypt (most modern Western translations; in Russian - a quite decent translation of the New Testament by Bishop Cassian (Bezobrazov), as well as others, unworthy of mention for the clumsiness of their style); b) there are also translations from critical editions, which largely ignore the ancient manuscripts written in Egypt and reconstruct the text called the majority text [Majority Text], - for it is based on the majority of manuscripts, even later ones - which is in many ways close to the generally accepted [Textus Receptus], in Russian - translations of some New Testament books made by K. I. Logachev; 3) translations from the Vulgate, i.e. from the Latin translation of the Bible, dating back to St. Jerome of Stridon (most of the New Testament and some books of the Old were taken in edited form from more ancient translations of the Bible into Latin) - Catholic translations of the 16th–19th centuries. and older ones, and sometimes newer ones. To translate the New Testament into Latin, a version of the Greek text that has not reached us was used. Sometimes it coincides with what we see in critical editions, sometimes with what we see in the Textus Receptus, and often a unique version is given. We believe that in many cases the discrepancy is not due to errors in the Latin translation, as Protestant researchers thought, but rather to the peculiarities of the Greek text that the Latin translators had at their disposal. Renaissance biblical scholars prepared a unified printed text of the Vulgate, cleared of the clerical errors of late medieval scribes, published under Pope Clement VIII in 1592. Of course, they relied on the enormous work of their predecessors - in the Middle Ages the Vulgate was edited by Blessed Alcuin, Saint Bede the Venerable, Theodulf of Orleans and others. Immediately preceding the above-mentioned text was an edition published in 1590 under Pope Sixtus V. The edition of 1592 was called “Clementines.” Its text was considered the official Latin text of the Bible of the Catholic Church until 1979, and Catholic traditionalists are still faithful to it. In the 19th and 20th centuries, critical editions of the Vulgate were prepared, claiming to be a return to the ancient text of St. Jerome (the Oxford edition of Wordsworth-White, the Stuttgart edition of Weber-Gryson). The Latin translation, called the New Vulgate (70s of the twentieth century), belongs, if we talk about the New Testament part, to the second type of translations; in it, the differences between the Vulgate itself and the Greek text given in critical editions are smoothed out. We intend to subsequently translate the entire Bible and in the preface to it we will talk about the textual features of the Old Testament part of the Vulgate. Our translation, like the classic Catholic translations of the 16th–19th centuries, is designed for all those interested in Latin Christian culture and gives the reader the opportunity to become familiar with the textual features of the Vulgate (“Clementine”). Without claiming scientific value or accuracy, it is of interest to medievalists and can be used by translators of Christian Latin literature into Russian. Until now, there was no translation of the third of the types we named into Russian. Alas, there was previously no Russian translation similar to, for example, the English The Rheims New Testament, included in The Douay Rheims Bible, (16th century, edited in the 18th century by Bishop Richard Challoner), the Polish translation by priest Jakub Wujek SI (16th century, edited in the 20th century by priest Stanislav Stys SI). That is why it is being done in the 21st century, when the solution to this problem may seem “belated” or even unnecessary to many. As for the stylistic design, we tried to stay within the framework of the Russian translation tradition, dating back to the Church Slavonic text. Our translation is in many ways close to the already existing Russian translations of the New Testament - Synodal (1876, 1956), K. P. Pobedonostsev (1906), Bishop Cassian (Bezobrazov) (1953). The frequency of use of Church Slavonicisms is on average similar to that in the Synodal Bible. We did not want to shock the reader who loves Church Slavonicism and is accustomed to the Synodal Translation. We categorically do not accept a phobia towards Church Slavonicisms in the spirit of V.N. Kuznetsova. In some verses the language is less or more Slavicized than in the Synodal Translation. In cases similar to the word usage of the Synodal Translation, as a rule, the use of the words “this” (this) and “se” (here) is retained. Aramaic words given in the Greek and Latin text without translation (mammona [“wealth”], amen [“truly” or “so be it”], etc.) are usually also given without translation, but in the Church Slavonic transcription traditional for Russian translations (mammon, amen, etc.). At the same time, the phrase “amen dico vobis” [cf. gr. “Amin lego imin”, slav. “Amen I say to you”, English. “amen I say to you” (The Douay Rheims Bible)] is translated, following the tradition of previous Russian translations, as “truly I say to you.” The realities of the ancient world (coins, clothing, etc.) are indicated by Greekisms and Latinisms adopted in Russian historical literature, the names of clothes in Matt. 5:40 translated taking into account the Greek original. However, instead of the Latin word “centurion”, the Church Slavonic tracing paper “centurion”, traditional for Russian translations of the Bible, is used. It would be a terrible mistake to consider as “Western” the distortion of the Russian language, the use of non-standard spellings of names (I recall an anecdote about a young man who, translating something from German, wrote “the apostles Peter and Paul”), a deliberate avoidance of Church Slavonicisms (the late academician S.S. Averintsev actively used them when translating medieval Latin texts). We translate into RUSSIAN! Europeans do not distort their native languages. Any differences in this translation from the previous ones, even down to such little things as invisible to the average reader as the preference for the use of the preposition “and” or the placement of a comma, can in many cases be explained by the need to convey the peculiarities of the Vulgate. On the other hand, where the literal translation from Latin is too dissonant, the translation was made under the influence of previous Russian translations. Well, the edition of the English translation from the Vulgate, carried out by Bishop R. Challoner, in a number of cases comes close to the King James Bible, diverging from the literal translation from the Vulgate; here we are completely in line with the tradition of old translations from the Vulgate. In particular, we follow the Russian translation tradition, dating back to the Church Slavonic and Synodal translations, preferring verbal adjectives to literal translations of phrases like ““which” + verb”, non-literally translating in some places “stone” rather than “rock”, etc. Some readers will not be entirely satisfied, but we have tried to create a translation that is euphonious from the point of view of church eloquence, suitable for the edification of the believing reader. Alas, the grammar and vocabulary of Russian and classical (Greek and Latin) languages ​​differ, and in some cases it is impossible to translate with the same accuracy with which in some cases the Church Slavonic translation corresponds to the Greek and Latin text. “On ed and well from Saturdays...” [una sabbatorum...] cannot be translated into Russian otherwise than “on the first [day of the week] after Saturday...” (Mark 16:2) cannot be translated. In a number of cases, the use of Church Slavonicisms is caused by the need to accurately transmit the Latin text, which we resorted to, for example, when translating the Lord's Prayer. The capabilities of the Russian language to create a translation from Latin that is close to literal, even tracing paper, are better than those of many modern Western languages, but worse than Church Slavonic. On the other hand, we, following many Western translations, both modern and ancient, in many places prefer the non-literal translation of the word anima [soul] with the word “life” (see e.g. Matt. 16:25 ; OK. 9:24), although the Latin text of the Vulgate itself, as well as the previous Russian translations, is translated literally (from Greek). Words missing from the original and inserted for clarification are printed in square brackets. The translator's in-text comments are given in oblique brackets. Alas, the technical and financial capabilities of the publishers do not allow publishing a rather lengthy commentary by the translator in the first edition. This comment has been written a long time ago and is waiting in the wings. Perhaps the publishers will be able to provide short excerpts from it. The numbering of chapters and verses and the order of the books of the Holy Scripture in our translation exactly follows the Vulgate, completely disregarding the numbering and order of editions of the Hebrew and Greek originals and previous Russian translations.