TRANSLATIONS WERE MADE EARLY FROM HEBREW AND GREEK TO LATIN

There were also within a few hundred years after Christ many translations into the Latin language. This language also was very fit to convey the law and the Gospel because in those times very many countries of the West, yes of the South, East, and North, spoke or understood Latin, having been made provinces to the Romans. But now "the Latin translations became too many to be all good, for they were infinite!", said Augustine. These were not made from the Hebrew texts, (we speak of the Latin translations of the Old Testament) but out of the Greek translations. The Greek being not altogether clear, the, Latin derived from it must needs be muddy as well. This moved Jerome, a most learned Father, and the best linguist, without controversy, of his age, or of any other that went before him, to undertake the translating of the Old Testament out of the Hebrew itself. His work showed the evidence his of great learning, judgment, industry, and faithfulness, and he has forever bound the Church to him in a debt of special remembrance and thankfulness.

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This Page Last Updated: 06/25/05 A. Allison Lewis aalewis@christianbeliefs.org