The Beatitudes ( / b i ˈ æ t ɪ tj u d z / ) are blessings recounted by Jesus in Matthew 5:3-10 within the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew , and four in the Sermon on the Plain in the Gospel of Luke , followed by four woes which mirror the blessings.
119-533: In the Latin Vulgate , each of these blessings begins with the word beātī , which translates to ' blessed ' (plural adjective). The corresponding word in the original Greek is μακάριοι ( makarioi ), with the same meaning. Thus "Blessed are the poor in spirit" appears in Latin as beātī pauperēs spīritū . The Latin noun beātitūdō was coined by Cicero to describe a state of blessedness and
238-639: A Latin version, originating from before Jerome and distinct from that in the Vetus Latina , of the Greek Esdras ;A, now commonly termed 3 Ezra ; and also a Latin version of an Ezra Apocalypse, commonly termed 4 Ezra . God Schools Relations with: The Vulgate was given an official capacity by the Council of Trent (1545–1563) as the touchstone of the biblical canon concerning which parts of books are canonical. The Vulgate
357-660: A century in an earlier Latin version (the Cyprianic Version), before it was superseded by the Vetus Latina version in the 4th century. Jerome, in his preface to the Vulgate gospels, commented that there were "as many [translations] as there are manuscripts"; subsequently repeating the witticism in his preface to the Book of Joshua. The base text for Jerome's revision of the gospels was a Vetus Latina text similar to
476-508: A complete revised New Testament text by 410 at the latest, when Pelagius quoted from it in his commentary on the letters of Paul . In Jerome's Vulgate, the Hebrew Book of Ezra–Nehemiah is translated as the single book of "Ezra". Jerome defends this in his Prologue to Ezra, although he had noted formerly in his Prologue to the Book of Kings that some Greeks and Latins had proposed that this book should be split in two. Jerome argues that
595-652: A contemporary of Jerome, states in Book ;XVII ch. 43 of his The City of God that "in our own day the priest Jerome, a great scholar and master of all three tongues, has made a translation into Latin, not from Greek but directly from the original Hebrew." Nevertheless, Augustine still maintained that the Septuagint, alongside the Hebrew, witnessed the inspired text of Scripture and consequently pressed Jerome for complete copies of his Hexaplar Latin translation of
714-512: A general prologue to the whole Bible. Notably, this letter was printed at the head of the Gutenberg Bible . Jerome's letter promotes the study of each of the books of the Old and New Testaments listed by name (and excluding any mention of the deuterocanonical books ); and its dissemination had the effect of propagating the belief that the whole Vulgate text was Jerome's work. The prologue to
833-645: A noun form of the verb rapere in 1 Thes 4:17). The word " publican " comes from the Latin publicanus (e.g., Mt 10:3), and the phrase " far be it " is a translation of the Latin expression absit. (e.g., Mt 16:22 in the King James Bible ). Other examples include apostolus , ecclesia , evangelium , Pascha , and angelus . In translating the 38 books of the Hebrew Bible ( Ezra–Nehemiah being counted as one book), Jerome
952-536: A partnership between Johannes Gutenberg and banker John Fust (or Faust). At the time, a manuscript of the Vulgate was selling for approximately 500 guilders . Gutenberg's works appear to have been a commercial failure, and Fust sued for recovery of his 2026 guilder investment and was awarded complete possession of the Gutenberg plant. Arguably, the Reformation could not have been possible without
1071-647: A period of centuries. Christians traditionally divide the Old Testament into four sections: the first five books or Pentateuch (which corresponds to the Jewish Torah ); the history books telling the history of the Israelites, from their conquest of Canaan to their defeat and exile in Babylon ; the poetic and " Wisdom books " dealing, in various forms, with questions of good and evil in the world; and
1190-462: A professor of Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Judaism at the University of Edinburgh , identifies the Old Testament as "a collection of authoritative texts of apparently divine origin that went through a human process of writing and editing." He states that it is not a magical book, nor was it literally written by God and passed to mankind. By about the 5th century BC, Jews saw the five books of
1309-547: A school known as biblical minimalism rejected the historical value of the Hebrew Bible for the study of ancient Israel during the Iron Age, "but this extreme approach was rejected by mainstream scholarship." The first five books— Genesis , Exodus , Leviticus , book of Numbers and Deuteronomy —reached their present form in the Persian period (538–332 BC) , and their authors were the elite of exilic returnees who controlled
SECTION 10
#17327803931931428-640: A separate section called Apocrypha . The Old Testament contains 39 (Protestant), 46 (Catholic), or more (Orthodox and other) books, divided, very broadly, into the Pentateuch (Torah) , the historical books , the "wisdom" books and the prophets. The table below uses the spellings and names present in modern editions of the Christian Bible, such as the Catholic New American Bible Revised Edition and
1547-647: A sermon to a group of people in the Americas shortly after His death and resurrection. This event, believed by adherents to be part of Christ’s visit to the Americas around the year 34, is recorded in 3 Nephi 12, where Jesus teaches a version of the Beatitudes similar to that found in Matthew 5. Yea, blessed are the poor in spirit who come unto me, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. And blessed are all they that mourn, for they shall be comforted. And blessed are
1666-487: A set of Priscillianist prologues to the gospels . The Latin biblical texts in use before Jerome's Vulgate are usually referred to collectively as the Vetus Latina , or "Vetus Latina Bible". "Vetus Latina" means that they are older than the Vulgate and written in Latin , not that they are written in Old Latin . Jerome himself uses the term "Latin Vulgate" for the Vetus Latina text, so intending to denote this version as
1785-531: A set period and be followed by the other-worldly age or World to Come . Some thought the Messiah was already present, but unrecognised due to Israel's sins; some thought that the Messiah would be announced by a forerunner, probably Elijah (as promised by the prophet Malachi , whose book now ends the Old Testament and precedes Mark 's account of John the Baptist ). However, no view of the Messiah as based on
1904-522: A simple pattern: Jesus names a group of people normally thought to be unfortunate and pronounces them blessed. The nine Beatitudes in Matthew: Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit
2023-594: A thousand years (c. AD 400–1530), the Vulgate was the most commonly used edition of the most influential text in Western European society. Indeed, for most Western Christians , especially Catholics , it was the only version of the Bible ever encountered, only truly being eclipsed in the mid-20th century. In about 1455, the first Vulgate published by the moveable type process was produced in Mainz by
2142-548: Is ... part folklore and part record. History is ... written by the victors, and the Israelis , when they burst through [ Jericho ( c. 1400 BC )], became the carriers of history." In 2007, a historian of ancient Judaism Lester L. Grabbe explained that earlier biblical scholars such as Julius Wellhausen (1844–1918) could be described as 'maximalist', accepting biblical text unless it has been disproven. Continuing in this tradition, both "the 'substantial historicity' of
2261-471: Is Jerome's preference for the Hebraica veritas (i.e., Hebrew truth) over the Septuagint, a preference which he defended from his detractors. After Jerome had translated some parts of the Septuagint into Latin, he came to consider the text of the Septuagint as being faulty in itself, i.e. Jerome thought mistakes in the Septuagint text were not all mistakes made by copyists , but that some mistakes were part of
2380-642: Is based on the belief that the historical Jesus is also the Christ , as in the Confession of Peter . This belief is in turn based on Jewish understandings of the meaning of the Hebrew term Messiah , which, like the Greek "Christ", means "anointed". In the Hebrew Scriptures, it describes a king anointed with oil on his accession to the throne: he becomes "The L ORD 's anointed" or Yahweh's Anointed. By
2499-678: Is how their ancestors treated the false prophets. These woes are distinct from the Seven Woes of the Pharisees which appear later in Luke 11:37–54 . Each Beatitude consists of two phrases: the condition and the result. In almost all cases the phrases used are familiar from an Old Testament context, but in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus elevates them to new levels and teachings. Together,
SECTION 20
#17327803931932618-541: Is indeed one of at least five revised versions of the mid-4th century Vetus Latina Psalter, but compared to the other four, the revisions in the Roman Psalter are in clumsy Latin, and fail to follow Jerome's known translational principles, especially in respect of correcting harmonised readings. Nevertheless, it is clear from Jerome's correspondence (especially in his defence of the Gallican Psalter in
2737-530: Is known, though there is plenty of speculation. For example, it is speculated that this may have provided motivation for canon lists and that Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus are examples of these Bibles. Together with the Peshitta and Codex Alexandrinus , these are the earliest extant Christian Bibles. There is no evidence among the canons of the First Council of Nicaea of any determination on
2856-556: Is neither read nor held among the Hebrews, but does not explicitly call it apocryphal or "not in the canon". The Synod of Hippo (in 393), followed by the Council of Carthage (397) and the Council of Carthage (419) , may be the first council that explicitly accepted the first canon which includes the books that did not appear in the Hebrew Bible ; the councils were under significant influence of Augustine of Hippo , who regarded
2975-544: Is not the same. Six "modern Beatitudes" were proposed by Pope Francis during his visit to Malmö , Sweden on All Saints Day 2016: Vulgate The Vulgate ( / ˈ v ʌ l ɡ eɪ t , - ɡ ə t / ) is a late-4th-century Latin translation of the Bible . It is largely the work of Jerome who, in 382, had been commissioned by Pope Damasus I to revise the Vetus Latina Gospels used by
3094-636: Is not." The phrase "poor in spirit" ( πτωχοὶ τῷ πνεύματι ) in Matthew 5:3 has been subject to a variety of interpretations. A.W. Tozer describes poverty of spirit as "an inward state paralleling the outward circumstances of the common beggar in the streets." It is not a call to material poverty, but spiritual need. The idea being that when one realizes how much they need God, he will satisfy their need by giving them himself. Conversely, if someone does not really believe they need God, he will not reveal himself to them. These blessed poor are no longer slaves to
3213-496: Is the Kingdom of Heaven. Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you... The ninth beatitude (Matthew 5:11–12) refers to the bearing of reviling and is addressed to the disciples. R.T. France considers verses 11 and 12 to be based on Isaiah 51:7 . The Beatitudes unique to Matthew are
3332-646: Is the first division of the Christian biblical canon , which is based primarily upon the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible , or Tanakh, a collection of ancient religious Hebrew and occasionally Aramaic writings by the Israelites . The second division of Christian Bibles is the New Testament , written in Koine Greek . The Old Testament consists of many distinct books by various authors produced over
3451-526: Is the kingdom of heaven. Though the teachings in 3 Nephi 12 closely mirror the Beatitudes in Matthew, the Book of Mormon version emphasizes the importance of baptism and receiving the Holy Ghost , which is seen as central to the blessings. Additionally, in 3 Nephi 12:48, Jesus invites the people to be perfect, “even as I, or your Father who is in heaven is perfect,” expanding the call to divine perfection to include Himself, thus highlighting His divinity in
3570-584: Is the third and latest official Bible of the Catholic Church; it was published in 1979, and is a translation from modern critical editions of original language texts of the Bible. A number of manuscripts containing or reflecting the Vulgate survive today. Dating from the 8th century, the Codex Amiatinus is the earliest surviving manuscript of the complete Vulgate Bible. The Codex Fuldensis , dating from around 545, contains most of
3689-735: Is to be read." They are present in a few historic Protestant versions; the German Luther Bible included such books, as did the English 1611 King James Version. Empty table cells indicate that a book is absent from that canon. Several of the books in the Eastern Orthodox canon are also found in the appendix to the Latin Vulgate , formerly the official Bible of the Roman Catholic Church. Some of
Beatitudes - Misplaced Pages Continue
3808-423: Is to worship , or the one "true God", that only Yahweh (or YHWH ) is Almighty. The Old Testament stresses the special relationship between God and his chosen people , Israel, but includes instructions for proselytes as well. This relationship is expressed in the biblical covenant (contract) between the two, received by Moses . The law codes in books such as Exodus and especially Deuteronomy are
3927-605: The Septuagint (Latin for 'Seventy') from the supposed number of translators involved (hence its abbreviation " LXX "). This Septuagint remains the basis of the Old Testament in the Eastern Orthodox Church . It varies in many places from the Masoretic Text and includes numerous books no longer considered canonical in some traditions: 1 Esdras , Judith , Tobit , the books of Maccabees ,
4046-482: The Babylonian exile ) upon his people. The theme is played out, with many variations, in books as different as the histories of Kings and Chronicles, the prophets like Ezekiel and Jeremiah , and in the wisdom books like Job and Ecclesiastes. The process by which scriptures became canons and Bibles was a long one, and its complexities account for the many different Old Testaments which exist today. Timothy H. Lim,
4165-738: The Biblical apocrypha , a term that is sometimes used specifically to describe the books in the Catholic and Orthodox canons that are absent from the Jewish Masoretic Text and most modern Protestant Bibles. Catholics, following the Canon of Trent (1546), describe these books as deuterocanonical, while Greek Orthodox Christians, following the Synod of Jerusalem (1672) , use the traditional name of anagignoskomena , meaning "that which
4284-576: The Book of Wisdom , Sirach , and Baruch . Early modern biblical criticism typically explained these variations as intentional or ignorant corruptions by the Alexandrian scholars, but most recent scholarship holds it is simply based on early source texts differing from those later used by the Masoretes in their work. The Septuagint was originally used by Hellenized Jews whose knowledge of Greek
4403-864: The Codex Veronensis , with the text of the Gospel of John conforming more to that in the Codex Corbiensis . Jerome's work on the Gospels was a revision of the Vetus Latina versions, and not a new translation. "High priest" is rendered princeps sacerdotum in Vulgate Matthew; as summus sacerdos in Vulgate Mark; and as pontifex in Vulgate John. The Vetus Latina gospels had been translated from Greek originals of
4522-535: The Comma Johanneum was open to dispute. Later, in the 20th century, Pope Pius XII declared the Vulgate as "free from error whatsoever in matters of faith and morals" in his encyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu : Hence this special authority or as they say, authenticity of the Vulgate was not affirmed by the Council particularly for critical reasons, but rather because of its legitimate use in
4641-605: The Epistle of James contains a verse which is worded in much the same way as the Beatitudes; and which shares themes particularly with Matthew 5:10,12: Blessed is the one who perseveres under trial because, having stood the test, that person will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love Him. (James 1:12) In the Book of Mormon , a religious text of the Latter Day Saint movement , Jesus delivers
4760-714: The Gallican Psalms , Song of Songs, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, the minor prophets, the gospels. The final prologue is to the Pauline epistles and is better known as Primum quaeritur ; this prologue is considered not to have been written by Jerome. Related to these are Jerome's Notes on the Rest of Esther and his Prologue to the Hebrew Psalms . A theme of the Old Testament prologues
4879-405: The Hellenistic time (332–198 BC), though containing much older material as well; Job was completed by the 6th century BC; Ecclesiastes by the 3rd century BC. Throughout the Old Testament, God is consistently depicted as the one who created the world. Although the God of the Old Testament is not consistently presented as the only god who exists , he is always depicted as the only God whom Israel
Beatitudes - Misplaced Pages Continue
4998-489: The Latin Church . The Clementine edition of the Vulgate became the standard Bible text of the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church, and remained so until 1979 when the Nova Vulgata was promulgated. The term Vulgate has been used to designate the Latin Bible only since the 16th century. An example of the use of this word in this sense at the time is the title of the 1538 edition of the Latin Bible by Erasmus : Biblia utriusque testamenti juxta vulgatam translationem . While
5117-597: The Roman Church . Later, of his own initiative, Jerome extended this work of revision and translation to include most of the books of the Bible . The Vulgate became progressively adopted as the Bible text within the Western Church . Over succeeding centuries, it eventually eclipsed the Vetus Latina . By the 13th century it had taken over from the former version the designation versio vulgata (the "version commonly used" ) or vulgata for short. The Vulgate also contains some Vetus Latina translations that Jerome did not work on. The Catholic Church affirmed
5236-420: The Temple at that time. The books of Joshua , Judges , Samuel and Kings follow, forming a history of Israel from the Conquest of Canaan to the Siege of Jerusalem c. 587 BC . There is a broad consensus among scholars that these originated as a single work (the so-called " Deuteronomistic History ") during the Babylonian exile of the 6th century BC. The two Books of Chronicles cover much
5355-518: The Torah (the Old Testament Pentateuch) as having authoritative status; by the 2nd century BC, the Prophets had a similar status, although without quite the same level of respect as the Torah; beyond that, the Jewish scriptures were fluid, with different groups seeing authority in different books. Hebrew texts began to be translated into Greek in Alexandria in about 280 BC and continued until about 130 BC. These early Greek translations – supposedly commissioned by Ptolemy II Philadelphus – were called
5474-449: The Vetus Latina text of the four Gospels from the best Greek texts. By the time of Damasus' death in 384, Jerome had completed this task, together with a more cursory revision from the Greek Common Septuagint of the Vetus Latina text of the Psalms in the Roman Psalter, a version which he later disowned and is now lost. How much of the rest of the New Testament he then revised is difficult to judge, but none of his work survived in
5593-456: The Vetus Latina , considered as being made by Pelagian circles or by Rufinus the Syrian , or by Rufinus of Aquileia . Several unrevised books of the Vetus Latina Old Testament also commonly became included in the Vulgate. These are: 1 and 2 Maccabees , Wisdom , Ecclesiasticus , Baruch and the Letter of Jeremiah . Having separately translated the book of Psalms from the Greek Hexapla Septuagint , Jerome translated all of
5712-407: The Western text-type . Comparison of Jerome's Gospel texts with those in Vetus Latina witnesses, suggests that his revision was concerned with substantially redacting their expanded "Western" phraseology in accordance with the Greek texts of better early Byzantine and Alexandrian witnesses. One major change Jerome introduced was to re-order the Latin Gospels. Most Vetus Latina gospel books followed
5831-428: The protocanonicals . The Talmud (the Jewish commentary on the scriptures) in Bava Batra 14b gives a different order for the books in Nevi'im and Ketuvim . This order is also cited in Mishneh Torah Hilchot Sefer Torah 7:15. The order of the books of the Torah is universal through all denominations of Judaism and Christianity. The disputed books, included in most canons but not in others, are often called
5950-517: The "Western" order of Matthew, John, Luke, Mark; Jerome adopted the "Greek" order of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John. His revisions became progressively less frequent and less consistent in the gospels presumably done later. In places Jerome adopted readings that did not correspond to a straightforward rendering either of the Vetus Latina or the Greek text, so reflecting a particular doctrinal interpretation; as in his rewording panem nostrum supersubstantialem at Matthew 6:11 . The unknown reviser of
6069-449: The 22-letter Hebrew alphabet. Alternatively, he numbered the books as 24, which he identifies with the 24 elders in the Book of Revelation casting their crowns before the Lamb . In the prologue to Ezra, he sets the "twenty-four elders" of the Hebrew Bible against the "Seventy interpreters" of the Septuagint. In addition, many medieval Vulgate manuscripts included Jerome's epistle number 53, to Paulinus bishop of Nola , as
SECTION 50
#17327803931936188-483: The 24 books of the Tanakh , with some differences of order, and there are some differences in text. The greater count of books reflects the splitting of several texts ( Samuel , Kings , Chronicles , Ezra–Nehemiah , and the Twelve Minor Prophets ) into separate books in Christian Bibles. The books that are part of the Christian Old Testament but that are not part of the Hebrew canon are sometimes described as deuterocanonical books . These books are ultimately derived from
6307-425: The 8th century. The Gutenberg Bible is a notable printed edition of the Vulgate by Johann Gutenberg in 1455. The Sixtine Vulgate (1590) is the first official Bible of the Catholic Church. The Clementine Vulgate (1592) is a standardized edition of the medieval Vulgate, and the second official Bible of the Catholic Church. The Stuttgart Vulgate is a 1969 critical edition of the Vulgate. The Nova Vulgata
6426-414: The 9th century the Vetus Latina texts of Baruch and the Letter of Jeremiah were introduced into the Vulgate in versions revised by Theodulf of Orleans and are found in a minority of early medieval Vulgate pandect bibles from that date onward. After 1300, when the booksellers of Paris began to produce commercial single volume Vulgate bibles in large numbers, these commonly included both Baruch and
6545-405: The Beatitudes present a new set of ideals that focus on love and humility rather than force and exaction. They echo the highest ideals of Jesus' teachings on spirituality and compassion. The term the meek would be familiar in the Old Testament, e.g., as in Psalm 37:11 . Although the Beatitude concerning the meek has been much praised even by some non-Christians such as Mahatma Gandhi , some view
6664-402: The Bible into vernacular languages. In English, the interlinear translation of the Lindisfarne Gospels as well as other Old English Bible translations , the translation of John Wycliffe , the Douay–Rheims Bible , the Confraternity Bible , and Ronald Knox 's translation were all made from the Vulgate. The Vulgate had significant cultural influence on literature for centuries, and thus
6783-399: The Christian's proper gait." There are men who fear to call their souls their own, and if they did, they would deceive—themselves. At times such men baptize their cowardice in holy water, name it humility, and tremble. ...They are not blessed. Their life is a creeping paralysis. Afraid to stand for their convictions, they end by having no convictions to stand to. Also in the New Testament,
6902-444: The Churches throughout so many centuries; by which use indeed the same is shown, in the sense in which the Church has understood and understands it, to be free from any error whatsoever in matters of faith and morals; so that, as the Church herself testifies and affirms, it may be quoted safely and without fear of error in disputations, in lectures and in preaching [...]" The inerrancy is with respect to faith and morals, as it says in
7021-491: The Earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the Sons of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs
7140-426: The Hebrew Masoretic Text . For the Orthodox canon, Septuagint titles are provided in parentheses when these differ from those editions. For the Catholic canon, the Douaic titles are provided in parentheses when these differ from those editions. Likewise, the King James Version references some of these books by the traditional spelling when referring to them in the New Testament, such as "Esaias" (for Isaiah ). In
7259-488: The Hebrew, Greek and Latin versions of the Hebrew Bible are the best known Old Testaments, there were others. At much the same time as the Septuagint was being produced, translations were being made into Aramaic, the language of Jews living in Palestine and the Near East and likely the language of Jesus : these are called the Aramaic Targums , from a word meaning "translation", and were used to help Jewish congregations understand their scriptures. For Aramaic Christians, there
SECTION 60
#17327803931937378-526: The Letter of Jeremiah as the Book of Baruch . Also beginning in the 9th century, Vulgate manuscripts are found that split Jerome's combined translation from the Hebrew of Ezra and the Nehemiah into separate books called 1 Ezra and 2 Ezra. Bogaert argues that this practice arose from an intention to conform the Vulgate text to the authoritative canon lists of the 5th/6th century, where 'two books of Ezra' were commonly cited. Subsequently, many late medieval Vulgate bible manuscripts introduced
7497-404: The New Testament in the Vulgate version, but the four gospels are harmonised into a continuous narrative derived from the Diatessaron . "The two best-known revisions of the Latin Scriptures in the early medieval period were made in the Carolingian period by Alcuin of York ( c. 730 –840) and Theodulf of Orleans (750/760–821)." Old Testament The Old Testament ( OT )
7616-405: The Old Testament predicted a Messiah who would suffer and die for the sins of all people. The story of Jesus' death, therefore, involved a profound shift in meaning from the Old Testament tradition. The name "Old Testament" reflects Christianity's understanding of itself as the fulfillment of Jeremiah's prophecy of a New Covenant (which is similar to "testament" and often conflated) to replace
7735-426: The Old Testament, a request that Jerome ducked with the excuse that the originals had been lost "through someone's dishonesty". Prologues written by Jerome to some of his translations of parts of the Bible are to the Pentateuch , to Joshua , and to Kings (1–2 Kings and 1–2 Samuel) which is also called the Galeatum principium . Following these are prologues to Chronicles, Ezra, Tobit, Judith, Esther, Job,
7854-400: The Old Testament. Of the remainder, the books of the various prophets— Isaiah , Jeremiah , Ezekiel , and the twelve " minor prophets "—were written between the 8th and 6th centuries BC, with the exceptions of Jonah and Daniel , which were written much later. The "wisdom" books— Job , Proverbs , Ecclesiastes , Psalms , Song of Songs —have various dates: Proverbs possibly was completed by
7973-513: The Pauline Epistles in the Vulgate defends the Pauline authorship of the Epistle to the Hebrews , directly contrary to Jerome's own views—a key argument in demonstrating that Jerome did not write it. The author of the Primum quaeritur is unknown, but it is first quoted by Pelagius in his commentary on the Pauline letters written before 410. As this work also quotes from the Vulgate revision of these letters, it has been proposed that Pelagius or one of his associates may have been responsible for
8092-446: The Protestant Revised Standard Version and English Standard Version . The spelling and names in both the 1609–F10 Douay Old Testament (and in the 1582 Rheims New Testament ) and the 1749 revision by Bishop Challoner (the edition currently in print used by many Catholics, and the source of traditional Catholic spellings in English) and in the Septuagint differ from those spellings and names used in modern editions which are derived from
8211-451: The Septuagint ( 3 Ezra and 3 and 4 Maccabees are excluded); the Anglicans after the English Civil War adopted a compromise position, restoring the 39 Articles and keeping the extra books that were excluded by the Westminster Confession of Faith , both for private study and for reading in churches but not for establishing any doctrine, while Lutherans kept them for private study, gathered in an appendix as biblical apocrypha . While
8330-459: The Septuagint's, and Theodotion's. The so-called "fifth" and "sixth editions" were two other Greek translations supposedly miraculously discovered by students outside the towns of Jericho and Nicopolis : these were added to Origen's Octapla. In 331, Constantine I commissioned Eusebius to deliver fifty Bibles for the Church of Constantinople . Athanasius recorded Alexandrian scribes around 340 preparing Bibles for Constans . Little else
8449-610: The Son of Man. Luke 6:23 ("Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven. For that is how their ancestors treated the prophets.") appears to parallel the text in Matthew 5:11–12. The four woes that follow in Luke 6:24–26 "But woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort. Woe to you who are well fed now, for you will go hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep. Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you, for that
8568-595: The Vulgate as its official Latin Bible at the Council of Trent (1545–1563), though there was no authoritative edition of the book at that time. The Vulgate did eventually receive an official edition to be promulgated among the Catholic Church as the Sixtine Vulgate (1590), then as the Clementine Vulgate (1592), and then as the Nova Vulgata (1979). The Vulgate is still currently used in
8687-577: The Vulgate contains Vetus Latina which are independent from Jerome's work. The Alcuinian pandects contain: The 13th-century Paris Bibles remove the Epistle to the Laodiceans , but add: Another text which is considered as part of the Vulgate is: Jerome did not embark on the work with the intention of creating a new version of the whole Bible, but the changing nature of his program can be tracked in his voluminous correspondence. He had been commissioned by Damasus I in 382 to revise
8806-632: The Vulgate text of these books. The revised text of the New Testament outside the Gospels is the work of other scholars. Rufinus of Aquileia has been suggested, as has Rufinus the Syrian (an associate of Pelagius ) and Pelagius himself, though without specific evidence for any of them; Pelagian groups have also been suggested as the revisers. This unknown reviser worked more thoroughly than Jerome had done, consistently using older Greek manuscript sources of Alexandrian text-type . They had published
8925-719: The Western Church, specifically as the Sixto-Clementine Vulgate , while the Churches in the East continued, and continue, to use the Septuagint. Jerome, however, in the Vulgate's prologues , describes some portions of books in the Septuagint not found in the Hebrew Bible as being non- canonical (he called them apocrypha ); for Baruch , he mentions by name in his Prologue to Jeremiah and notes that it
9044-458: The above quote: "free from any error whatsoever in matters of faith and morals", and the inerrancy is not in a philological sense: [...] and so its authenticity is not specified primarily as critical, but rather as juridical. The Catholic Church has produced three official editions of the Vulgate: the Sixtine Vulgate , the Clementine Vulgate , and the Nova Vulgata (see below). For over
9163-849: The admonition to meekness skeptically. Friedrich Nietzsche in On the Genealogy of Morals considered the verse to be embodying what he perceived as a slave morality . In Christian teachings, the works of mercy (good acts that are considered meritorious) have resonated with the theme of the Beatitude for mercy. These teachings emphasize that these acts of mercy provide both temporal and spiritual benefits. The term peacemakers has traditionally been interpreted to mean not only those who live in peace with others, but also those who do their best to promote friendship among humanity and between God and man. St. Gregory of Nyssa interpreted it as "Godly work", which
9282-536: The books of the Jewish Bible —the Hebrew book of Psalms included—from Hebrew himself. He also translated the books of Tobit and Judith from Aramaic versions, the additions to the Book of Esther from the Common Septuagint and the additions to the Book of Daniel from the Greek of Theodotion . The Vulgate is "a composite collection which cannot be identified with only Jerome's work," because
9401-682: The books of the biblical prophets, warning of the consequences of turning away from God. The books that compose the Old Testament canon and their order and names differ between various branches of Christianity . The canons of the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox Churches comprise up to 49 books; the Catholic canon comprises 46 books; and the most common of the Protestant canons comprises 39 books. There are 39 books common to essentially all Christian canons. They correspond to
9520-536: The canon as already closed. In the 16th century, the Protestant reformers sided with Jerome; yet although most Protestant Bibles now have only those books that appear in the Hebrew Bible, the order is that of the Greek Bible. Rome then officially adopted a canon, the Canon of Trent , which is seen as following Augustine's Carthaginian Councils or the Council of Rome , and includes most, but not all, of
9639-663: The canon. However, Jerome (347–420), in his Prologue to Judith , claims that the Book of Judith was "found by the Nicene Council to have been counted among the number of the Sacred Scriptures". In Western Christianity or Christianity in the Western half of the Roman Empire , Latin had displaced Greek as the common language of the early Christians, and in 382 AD Pope Damasus I commissioned Jerome ,
9758-655: The common Latin rendering of the Greek Vulgate or Common Septuagint (which Jerome otherwise terms the "Seventy interpreters"). This remained the usual use of the term "Latin Vulgate" in the West for centuries. On occasion Jerome applies the term "Septuagint" ( Septuaginta ) to refer to the Hexaplar Septuagint, where he wishes to distinguish this from the Vulgata or Common Septuagint. The earliest known use of
9877-631: The council listed the books included in the canon, it qualified the books as being "entire with all their parts, as they have been used to be read in the Catholic Church , and as they are contained in the Vetus Latina vulgate edition". The fourth session of the Council specified 72 canonical books in the Bible: 45 in the Old Testament, 27 in the New Testament with Lamentations not being counted as separate from Jeremiah. On 2 June 1927, Pope Pius XI clarified this decree, allowing that
9996-482: The development of the English language, especially in matters of religion. Many Latin words were taken from the Vulgate into English nearly unchanged in meaning or spelling: creatio (e.g. Genesis 1:1, Heb 9:11), salvatio (e.g. Is 37:32, Eph 2:5), justificatio (e.g. Rom 4:25, Heb 9:1), testamentum (e.g. Mt 26:28), sanctificatio (1 Ptr 1:2, 1 Cor 1:30), regeneratio (Mt 19:28), and raptura (from
10115-494: The diaspora of biblical knowledge that was permitted by the development of moveable type. Aside from its use in prayer, liturgy, and private study, the Vulgate served as inspiration for ecclesiastical art and architecture , hymns , countless paintings, and popular mystery plays . The fifth volume of Walton's London Polyglot of 1657 included several versions of the New Testament: in Greek, Latin (a Vulgate version and
10234-465: The earlier Septuagint , the earliest extant Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, and are also Jewish in origin. Some are also contained in the Dead Sea Scrolls . In general, Catholic and Orthodox churches include the deuterocanonical books in the Old Testament. Most Protestant Bibles do not include them in their canon, but some versions of Anglican and Lutheran Bibles place such books in
10353-696: The first translation of the Old Testament into Latin directly from the Hebrew Tanakh rather than from the Greek Septuagint. Jerome's extensive use of exegetical material written in Greek, as well as his use of the Aquiline and Theodotiontic columns of the Hexapla, along with the somewhat paraphrastic style in which he translated, makes it difficult to determine exactly how direct the conversion of Hebrew to Latin was. Augustine of Hippo ,
10472-508: The great uncial codices of the mid-4th century, most similar to the Codex Sinaiticus . The reviser's changes generally conform very closely to this Greek text, even in matters of word order—to the extent that the resulting text may be only barely intelligible as Latin. After the Gospels, the most widely used and copied part of the Christian Bible is the Book of Psalms. Consequently, Damasus also commissioned Jerome to revise
10591-414: The leading scholar of the day, to produce an updated Latin Bible to replace the Vetus Latina , which was a Latin translation of the Septuagint. Jerome's work, called the Vulgate , was a direct translation from Hebrew, since he argued for the superiority of the Hebrew texts in correcting the Septuagint on both philological and theological grounds. His Vulgate Old Testament became the standard Bible used in
10710-505: The long and detailed Epistle 106) that he was familiar with the Roman Psalter text, and consequently it is assumed that this revision represents the Roman text as Jerome had found it. Wisdom , Ecclesiasticus , 1 and 2 Maccabees and Baruch (with the Letter of Jeremiah) are included in the Vulgate, and are purely Vetus Latina translations which Jerome did not touch. In
10829-399: The majority of the Vulgate's translation is traditionally attributed to Jerome (directly helped by Paula of Rome ), the Vulgate has a compound text that is not entirely Jerome's work. Jerome's translation of the four Gospels are revisions of Vetus Latina translations he did while having the Greek as reference. The Latin translations of the rest of the New Testament are revisions to
10948-504: The meek, for they shall inherit the earth. And blessed are all they who do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled with the Holy Ghost. And blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. And blessed are all the pure in heart, for they shall see God. And blessed are all the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God. And blessed are all they who are persecuted for my name’s sake, for theirs
11067-582: The meek, the merciful, the pure of heart, and the peacemakers, while the other four have similar entries in Luke, but are followed almost immediately by "four woes". The term "poor in spirit" is unique to Matthew. While thematically similar, the introduction of the phrase "Poor in spirit" spiritualizes or ethicizes the poor in their predicament (in alignment with Isaiah 61), while the Lucan version focuses on their actual hardship, poverty, marginalization and rejection of
11186-707: The original text itself as it was produced by the Seventy translators . Jerome believed that the Hebrew text more clearly prefigured Christ than the Greek of the Septuagint, since he believed some quotes of the Old Testament in the New Testament were not present in the Septuagint, but existed in the Hebrew version; Jerome gave some of those quotes in his prologue to the Pentateuch. In the Galeatum principium (a.k.a. Prologus Galeatus ), Jerome described an Old Testament canon of 22 books, which he found represented in
11305-465: The patriarchs" and "the unified conquest of the land" were widely accepted in the United States until about the 1970s. Contrarily, Grabbe says that those in his field now "are all minimalists – at least, when it comes to the patriarchal period and the settlement. ... [V]ery few are willing to operate [as maximalists]." In 2022, archaeologist Avraham Faust wrote that in the 1990s
11424-721: The poor who will see eventual vindication. The four Beatitudes in Luke 6:20–22 are set within the Sermon on the Plain . Looking at his disciples, he said: "Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. Blessed are you when people hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil, because of
11543-562: The post-resurrection context of the Americas. The Baháʼí Lawḥ-i-Aqdas tablet concludes with 21 beatitudes, including this statement: Blessed the soul that hath been raised to life through My quickening breath and hath gained admittance into My heavenly Kingdom. The Qur'an mirrors the Bible only in Q:21:105 which resembles Psalm 25:13 referred to in Matthew 5:5 ; but the Qur'an uses "righteous" rather than "meek". The Qur'an (e.g., "say
11662-583: The psalter in use in Rome, to agree better with the Greek of the Common Septuagint. Jerome said he had done this cursorily when in Rome, but he later disowned this version, maintaining that copyists had reintroduced erroneous readings. Until the 20th century, it was commonly assumed that the surviving Roman Psalter represented Jerome's first attempted revision, but more recent scholarship—following de Bruyne—rejects this identification. The Roman Psalter
11781-466: The rest of the New Testament shows marked differences from Jerome, both in editorial practice and in their sources. Where Jerome sought to correct the Vetus Latina text with reference to the best recent Greek manuscripts, with a preference for those conforming to the Byzantine text-type, the Greek text underlying the revision of the rest of the New Testament demonstrates the Alexandrian text-type found in
11900-675: The revision of the Vulgate New Testament outside the Gospels. At any rate, it is reasonable to identify the author of the preface with the unknown reviser of the New Testament outside the gospels. Some manuscripts of the Pauline epistles contain short Marcionite prologues to each of the epistles indicating where they were written, with notes about where the recipients dwelt. Adolf von Harnack , citing De Bruyne, argued that these notes were written by Marcion of Sinope or one of his followers. Many early Vulgate manuscripts contain
12019-473: The said old and vulgate edition, which, by the lengthened usage of so many years, has been approved of in the Church, be, in public lectures, disputations, sermons and expositions, held as authentic; and that no one is to dare, or presume to reject it under any pretext whatever. The qualifier "Latin editions, now in circulation" and the use of "authentic" (not "inerrant") show the limits of this statement. When
12138-470: The same material as the Pentateuch and Deuteronomistic history and probably date from the 4th century BC. Chronicles, and Ezra–Nehemiah , was probably finished during the 3rd century BC. Catholic and Orthodox Old Testaments contain two (Catholic Old Testament) to four (Orthodox) Books of the Maccabees , written in the 2nd and 1st centuries BC. These history books make up around half the total content of
12257-702: The spirit of ecumenism , more recent Catholic translations (e.g. the New American Bible , Jerusalem Bible , and ecumenical translations used by Catholics, such as the Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition ) use the same "standardized" (King James Version) spellings and names as Protestant Bibles (e.g. 1 Chronicles as opposed to the Douaic 1 Paralipomenon, 1–2 Samuel and 1–2 Kings instead of 1–4 Kings) in those books which are universally considered canonical:
12376-562: The stories of the Pentateuch may derive from older sources. Scholars such as Andrew R. George point out the similarity of the Genesis flood narrative and the Gilgamesh flood myth . Similarities between the origin story of Moses and that of Sargon of Akkad were noted by psychoanalyst Otto Rank in 1909 and popularized by 20th-century writers, such as H. G. Wells and Joseph Campbell . Jacob Bronowski writes that, "the Bible
12495-543: The term Vulgata to describe the "new" Latin translation was made by Roger Bacon in the 13th century. The translations in the Vetus Latina had accumulated piecemeal over a century or more. They were not translated by a single person or institution, nor uniformly edited. The individual books varied in quality of translation and style, and different manuscripts and quotations witness wide variations in readings. Some books appear to have been translated several times. The book of Psalms , in particular, had circulated for over
12614-544: The term to refer to a pledge. Further themes in the Old Testament include salvation , redemption , divine judgment , obedience and disobedience, faith and faithfulness, among others. Throughout there is a strong emphasis on ethics and ritual purity , both of which God demands, although some of the prophets and wisdom writers seem to question this, arguing that God demands social justice above purity, and perhaps does not even care about purity at all. The Old Testament's moral code enjoins fairness, intervention on behalf of
12733-495: The terms of the contract: Israel swears faithfulness to God, and God swears to be Israel's special protector and supporter. However, The Jewish Study Bible denies that the word covenant ( brit in Hebrew) means "contract"; in the ancient Near East, a covenant would have been sworn before the gods, who would be its enforcers. As God is part of the agreement, and not merely witnessing it, The Jewish Study Bible instead interprets
12852-591: The time of Jesus, some Jews expected that a flesh-and-blood descendant of David (the " Son of David ") would come to establish a real Jewish kingdom in Jerusalem, instead of the Roman province of Judaea. Others stressed the Son of Man , a distinctly other-worldly figure who would appear as a judge at the end of time . Some expounded a synthesised view of both positions, where a messianic kingdom of this world would last for
12971-417: The two books of Ezra found in the Septuagint and Vetus Latina , Esdras A and Esdras B, represented "variant examples" of a single Hebrew original. Hence, he does not translate Esdras A separately even though up until then it had been universally found in Greek and Vetus Latina Old Testaments, preceding Esdras B, the combined text of Ezra–Nehemiah. The Vulgate is usually credited as being
13090-444: The tyranny of things. They have broken the yoke of the oppressor; and this they have done not by fighting but by surrendering. Though free from all sense of possessing, they yet possess all things. "Theirs is the kingdom of heaven." William Burnet Wright , seeking to avoid a common misunderstanding of the meaning of poverty of spirit, distinguishes those who are "poor in spirit" from those he calls "poor spirited," who "consider crawling
13209-619: The version by Arius Montanus ), Syriac, Ethiopic, and Arabic. It also included a version of the Gospels in Persian. The Vulgate Latin is used regularly in Thomas Hobbes ' Leviathan of 1651; in the Leviathan Hobbes "has a worrying tendency to treat the Vulgate as if it were the original". Before the publication of Pius XII 's Divino afflante Spiritu , the Vulgate was the source text used for many translations of
13328-457: The vulnerable, and the duty of those in power to administer justice righteously. It forbids murder, bribery and corruption, deceitful trading, and many sexual misdemeanours . All morality is traced back to God, who is the source of all goodness. The problem of evil plays a large part in the Old Testament. The problem the Old Testament authors faced was that a good God must have had just reason for bringing disaster (meaning notably, but not only,
13447-535: The word of humility and enter the gate of paradise") and some Hadith ( e.g. , "My mercy exceeds my anger") contain some passages with somewhat similar tone, but distinct phraseology, from the Beatitudes. The Bhagavad Gita and the traditional writings of Buddhism (e.g., some of the Mangala Sutta ) have been interpreted as including teachings whose intentions resemble some of the messages of Beatitudes (e.g., humility and absence of ego), although their wording
13566-413: Was an imitation of God's love of man. John Wesley said the peacemakers "endeavour to calm the stormy spirits of men, to quiet their turbulent passions, to soften the minds of contending parties, and, if possible, reconcile them to each other. They use all innocent arts, and employ all their strength, all the talents which God has given them, as well to preserve peace where it is, as to restore it where it
13685-510: Was a Syriac translation of the Hebrew Bible called the Peshitta , as well as versions in Coptic (the everyday language of Egypt in the first Christian centuries, descended from ancient Egyptian ), Ethiopic (for use in the Ethiopian church , one of the oldest Christian churches), Armenian (Armenia was the first to adopt Christianity as its official religion), and Arabic . Christianity
13804-538: Was better than Hebrew. However, the texts came to be used predominantly by gentile converts to Christianity and by the early Church as its scripture, Greek being the lingua franca of the early Church. The three most acclaimed early interpreters were Aquila of Sinope , Symmachus the Ebionite , and Theodotion ; in his Hexapla , Origen placed his edition of the Hebrew text beside its transcription in Greek letters and four parallel translations: Aquila's, Symmachus's,
13923-440: Was declared to "be held as authentic" by the Catholic Church by the Council of Trent. The Council of Trent cited long usage in support of the Vulgate's magisterial authority : Moreover, this sacred and holy Synod,—considering that no small utility may accrue to the Church of God, if it be made known which out of all the Latin editions, now in circulation, of the sacred books, is to be held as authentic,—ordains and declares, that
14042-558: Was later incorporated within the chapter headings written for Matthew 5 in various printed versions of the Vulgate. Subsequently, the word was anglicized to beatytudes in the Great Bible of 1540 , and has, over time, taken on a preferred spelling of beatitudes . While some opinions can differ as to exactly how many distinct statements into which the Beatitudes should be divided (ranging from eight to ten), most scholars consider them to be only eight. These eight of Matthew follow
14161-401: Was relatively free in rendering their text into Latin, but it is possible to determine that the oldest surviving complete manuscripts of the Masoretic Text which date from nearly 600 years after Jerome, nevertheless transmit a consonantal Hebrew text very close to that used by Jerome. The Vulgate exists in many forms. The Codex Amiatinus is the oldest surviving complete manuscript from
#192807