BIBBIA

Bible

Volume II · p. 895 · 1949

English translation · Testo originale italiano

Machine translation of the 1948–1954 Italian original. The original text is authoritative.

BIBLE. – A collection of books regarded as sacred, differing in number between Jews and Christians.

OUTLINE:

I. Names and divisions

II. Sacred character

III. Canon

IV. Original texts

V. Ancient versions

VI. Modern versions

VII. Polyglot Bibles

VIII. Interpretation of the Bible

IX. Reading of the Bible

X. The Bible in literature

XI. The Bible in the Divine Office

XII. The Bible in art.

I. NAMES AND DIVISIONS

The term is the transcription of the Greek βιβλίον (plural of βιβλίον) "books," signifying the books par excellence, the sacred books that form the aforementioned collection. In Vulgar Latin, as in similar cases, it became a feminine singular, *biblia*, from which it has further passed into the various modern languages: Italian *biblia*, French *bible*, Spanish *biblia*, English *bible*, etc. The same collection, by a similar process, is also called the Scripture par excellence, or Sacred Scripture. This term corresponds to the Greek διὰ γραφή (διὰ γραφή, αἱ γραφή, αἱ γραφή, αἱ γραφή, αἱ γραφή, αἱ γγραφή, αἱ γγραφή, αἱ γγραφή, αἱ γγραφή, αἱ γγραφή), which was already employed in antiquity and is still in use among the Greeks.

This collection of books differs in quantity among the Jews and among Christians, and among Christians it differs between Catholics and non-Catholics. Christians, without distinction, divide the collection into the Old (or Ancient) Testament, which is of Hebrew origin, and the New Testament, which is of Christian origin; for this reason the Jews reject the New Testament. In turn, the Protestants agree with the Jews in the number and quantity of books that constitute the Old Testament, differing from the Catholics.

The ancient Jews divided the books of the Bible (Old Testament) into three groups: the *Tōrāh* "law," that is, the Pentateuch; the *Nēbī'īm* "prophets," that is, their writings; and the *Kēthūbīm*, "writings (sacred)," that is, the hagiographa. This grouping is very ancient, and is already found in the 2nd century B.C. in the prologue prefixed to the book of Ecclesiasticus by its Greek translator; it is the most commonly used by present-day Israelites to designate the Bible, less frequently by them with the comprehensive terms *sēphārīm*, "sacred books," *kithbīhē haq-qōdēs*, "holy writings," and the like.

With reference to content, the books of the Old Testament can be grouped into legal books, or historical-legal, which contain especially the sacred legislation of the Hebrew people; historical books, which narrate the history of that people; prophetic books, containing writings composed by the Hebrew prophets; sapiential or didactic books, which impart especially practical norms for honest and wise conduct.

As to literary form, the books of the Old Testament are either prosaic or poetic: some, especially the legal books, use only prose; others, like the book of Psalms, only poetry; others mix the two, usually giving greater or lesser predominance to poetry, as in Job and the prophetic books.

The New Testament, in terms of content, consists of historical writings, such as the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles; didactic writings, such as the various Epistles or Letters; and one prophetic writing, which is the Apocalypse.

The term Testament, by which Christians designate the two parts of the entire Bible, has a historical-theological meaning, as it alludes to the two great periods in which the divine Revelation was realized. The term corresponds to the Hebrew bērith, and to the Greek διαθήκη, both indicating a "covenant" or "alliance" concluded between several persons, and more recently the "testament" made by a dying person regarding their own goods. Thus, as Old Testament (cf. Hebr. 8, 13) was designated the ancient period of the Revelation in which God had made a "covenant" or "alliance" with the single nation of Israel; as New Testament (cf. Mt. 26, 28; II Cor. 3, 6), instead, was designated the second period, in which the ancient "covenant" was replaced by the new one and all nations were indistinctly called to participate in the fruits of the redemption of Jesus Christ. And since such redemption is the effect of the death of Jesus Christ, the new "covenant" is at the same time his "testament" (cf. Hebr. 9, 15-17).

Today all the books of the entire Bible are divided into chapters, and each chapter is divided into short sections called "verses"; chapters and verses are numbered in progressive order, and according to this numbering they are cited: e.g., Gen. 3, 15, indicates verse 15 of chapter 3 of Genesis. This division into chapters was introduced at the beginning of the 12th century by the English cardinal Stephen Langton in the text of the Latin Vulgate, from which it was subsequently brought into the Hebrew and Greek texts; the Latin and Greek manuscripts prior to Langton’s time follow other criteria for chapter division, while the Hebrew text is divided in relation to the public reading to be done in the synagogues and according to the norms of the rabbinic schools of the first centuries of Christianity. The division into verses also has the same origin for the Hebrew text; for the New Testament various divisions into verses were attempted over the centuries, until in the mid-16th century that introduced by Robert Estienne (Stephanus) in the Latin Bible prevailed. Often neither the division into chapters nor that into verses corresponds logically to the concepts of the text, and it would be easy to improve in many points: but they now have an exclusively practical value, for citations and comparisons.

Here, therefore, is the list of the books that constitute the Catholic Bible (the asterisk * indicates the deuterocanonical books, the asterisk in parentheses [*] the books that have deuterocanonical sections):

OLD TESTAMENT: A) The Pentateuch (historico-legal books): Genesis; Exodus; Leviticus; Numbers; Deuteronomy. B) Historical books: JONAH; Judges; Ruth; 1 and 2 Samuel (or 1 and 2 Kings); 1 and 2 Kings (or 3 and 4 Kings); 1 and 2 Paralipomenon (or Chronicles); 1 and 2 Esdras (or Ezra and Nehemiah); * Tobit; * Judith; (*) Esther; * 1 and * 2 Maccabees. C) Sapiential or didactic books: Job; Psalms; Proverbs; Ecclesiastes; Song of Songs; * Wisdom; * Sirach. D) Prophetic books: Isaiah; Jeremiah; Lamentations; * Baruch (with the Letter of Jeremiah); Ezekiel; (*) Daniel; 12 Minor Prophets (Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi).

NEW TESTAMENT: A) Historical books. Gospels: Matthew; Mark; Luke; John; Acts of the Apostles. B)

Didactic writings. Letters of Paul: Romans; 1 Corinthians; 2 Corinthians; Galatians; Ephesians; Philippians; Colossians; 1 Thessalonians; 2 Thessalonians; 1 Timothy; 2 Timothy; Titus; Philemon; Hebrews. Catholic Letters: James; 1 Peter; 2 Peter; 1 John; 2 John; 3 John; Jude. C) Prophetic book: Revelation.

This is the order, except for 1–2 Maccabees, in which the books of the Bible are arranged in modern editions of the Latin Vulgate. In the Old Testament, however, this order does not correspond to that of the Hebrew Bible or, to a lesser extent, to the Greek Septuagint version from which the Latin Vulgate derives. The order of the first five books (from Genesis to Deuteronomy) is constant; in the Hebrew Bible they form the first group, called the Tôrâh (“Law”). The second group, called Nêbhîm (“Prophets”), is divided in the Hebrew Bible into “former” and “latter”: the former contains the books from Joshua to all the Kings, the latter contains the 12 Minor Prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. Finally, the third group, called Kêthûbhîm (“Writings”), or Hagiographa, contains in order Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Daniel, Ezra and Nehemiah, Chronicles. The five books from Song of Songs to Esther inclusive form a separate collection called the Five Scrolls (Hebrew Mêgillôth).

The books of the Old Testament contained in the Hebrew Bible are therefore 24; to these the Latin Vulgate, following the Greek Septuagint, adds the 7 “deuterocanonical” books (8, if the Letter of Jeremiah is separated from Baruch).

II. Sacred Character

At this point a fundamental question naturally arises: why were only the books just listed, and not others, included in the collection called the Bible? What was the criterion by which these alone, unlike others, were chosen, or by what quality were they admitted to the collection called the Bible?

The general criterion for their selection was that ancient tradition—first Jewish and then Christian—recognized them as “sacred” books, in contrast to other books that were not so recognized. The foundation of this recognition, namely the intrinsic quality by which a book was acknowledged as “sacred,” was the book’s “inspiration,” whereby it is not a human book but a divine one, having God as its principal author and man as its secondary or instrumental author. Yet this quality of the Bible’s books is so important, both historically and theologically, that it must be studied separately (v. ISPIRAZIONE).

III. Canon

The Greek word “canon” (κανών), meaning “rule” or “norm,” has been used since the 4th century to designate the collection of the Bible’s sacred books. From that time one speaks of canonical books in contrast to non-canonical ones, depending on whether they are or are not part of the aforementioned collection or canon. The terms protocanonical and deuterocanonical, however, are of more recent formation: they go back to Sixtus of Siena (16th century), who thereby wished to distinguish, among the books that make up the canon of the Old Testament, those that were unanimously recognized by all as part of the collection from those whose inspired character had been questioned over the centuries. This distinction is used almost exclusively by Catholics, since Protestants and Jews call the deuterocanonical books apocrypha, excluding them from the biblical canon. These books, as stated above, are: Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, the two Books of Maccabees, and certain passages of Daniel (3:24–90; 13; 14) and Esther (10:4–16:24).

Since this character is supernatural, only the Church, as the depositary of the doctrine of Jesus Christ, has the faculty to declare infallibly which book possesses the character of inspiration and is therefore to be included in the biblical canon. Hence the sure criterion for knowing whether a book should form part of this collection is tradition, which goes back to apostolic times. In practice, this criterion also reduces, in various respects, the one advocated by some Catholics of the prophetic or apostolic origin of the books composing the Bible.

I. Canon of the Old Testament

It is undeniable that this tradition, even when its apostolic origin can be securely demonstrated, was not always free from doubt, especially with regard to the canon of the Old Testament. Among the Jews in the 1st century A.D. we find a notable divergence, which perhaps goes back to an even earlier period.

The Jewish historian Flavius Josephus (Contra Apionem, I, 8-9) transmits, without explicitly naming individual titles, a canon that excluded the deuterocanonical books; on the other hand, the Greek version known as the Septuagint, made by Alexandrian Jews several centuries before Christ, also contains the deuterocanonical books, which demonstrates that these books were read in synagogue assemblies and considered inspired. The divergence seems due to a rigorism among Palestinian scribes and rabbis, who tolerated no book originally written in Greek, and who were also suspicious of books originally composed in Hebrew or Aramaic when they did not appear as the work of an author endowed with the prophetic charisma (cf. 1 Macc. 4:46; 14:41); so that the indispensable requirements of a sacred book were almost fixed in the Hebrew language, in the prophetic quality of the supposed author prior to Ezra, and in the Palestinian origin of the book. This rigorism was not shared by the Hellenized Jews of the diaspora, who generally read the Bible in the Greek version. Moreover, there are indications to suppose that even among Palestinian Jews, at first, these books, especially the older ones, were admitted. It suffices to recall that the Jews of the diaspora originally had to receive their canon from their coreligionists in Palestine, the center of all Judaism, and thus received from them also the deuterocanonical books. When, however, later, the rigorism of the Palestinian scribes reduced the canon to the protocanonical books alone, even the Alexandrians accepted this judgment, repudiating the ancient version of the Septuagint. With regard to Jesus Christ and the Apostles, although they left no official catalogue of inspired and canonical books, from their allusions preserved in the New Testament and from their frequent use of the Septuagint, it results in practice that they also considered the deuterocanonical books as inspired. This is also the norm of the earliest Fathers, who indifferently cite or use both series of books (Clement of Rome, Hippolytus, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, Cyprian). So that for the first two centuries there is no uncertainty regarding the inspiration and authority of the deuterocanonical books. Only toward the end of the 2nd century did frequent controversies with the Jews, who now unanimously rejected the deuterocanonical books, lead the apologists not to draw their arguments from these writings not accepted by their adversaries. This was a practical norm to follow, more than a theoretical principle; however, doubts soon arose, even among some Christians. We find symptoms of this in Melito of Sardis (c. 160-80), who in a passage preserved by Eusebius of Caesarea (Hist. eccl., IV, 26) reports as the authentic canon the Palestinian one, explicitly affirming that he is reporting information obtained during a journey to Palestine. The same canon is reported by Origen, who, however, uses the deuterocanonical books as inspired. In later times this opinion spread more noticeably in the Greek Church; it was adhered to

ATHANASIUS, CYRIL OF JERUSALEM, EPIPHANIUS, GREGORY OF NAZIANZUS, and some others, in compiling the list of sacred books, although in practice they did not consistently adhere to that opinion, since it is not difficult to find in their works citations of deuterocanonical books as inspired.

At that time a threefold distinction of the books of the Bible began to circulate among the Greeks: mention was made of certain books or those accepted by all (ὁμολόγουμενα), of controversial books (ἐντολές γόμνα), and of spurious or apocryphal books. The second term included our deuterocanonical books. How little rooted was the rejection of such books is confirmed by the unconditional acceptance of them by numerous other Church Fathers and by the decision of the Council of Constantinople of 692, called the Trullan, which, although in a form not entirely clear, referred to the complete canon, always maintained unchallenged in the Greek Church, at least until the rise of Protestantism.

In the Latin Church the first to adhere to the Jewish canon were HILARY OF POITIERS, RUFINUS OF AQUILEIA, and JEROME. The first two were influenced by the example of ORIGEN, of whom they professed themselves disciples; the third, who before going to the East seems to have accepted the complete canon, with his authority generated doubts in later authors. However, the great majority of writers categorically maintained the inspiration and canonicity of the controversial books. A representative of this opinion was AUGUSTINE, who through his personal work and the conciliar pronouncements he promoted preserved the genuine tradition of the Church. The Roman See had already pronounced itself decisively in favor of these books with INNOCENT I (405); some years later the Decree, erroneously called Gelasian, established the constant norm of faith for the following centuries, until the ecumenical Councils of Florence (1441) and Trent (1546) solemnly sanctioned II. Nevertheless, the authority of JEROME, who had caused some to hesitate and stray in the Middle Ages (HUGH OF ST. VICTOR, NICHOLAS OF LYRA, and a few others), is still felt in ST. ANTONINUS, archbishop of Florence (d. 1459), and in Cardinal CAJETAN (1532), who denied to the deuterocanonical books an authority binding in matters of faith.

Man, while rejecting ecclesiastical tradition, nevertheless showed some hesitation in repudiating the deuterocanonical books, and was content merely to relegate them to the end of his translation. Yet already Andreas Bodenstein (Karlstadt) proved more resolute: in his book De canonicis Scripturis (1520) he adopted the Jewish canon, which soon became universal among Protestants, who thus excluded the disputed books from their editions of the Bible, designating them as apocryphal. The attitude of the Protestants was likewise repudiated by the Greek schismatic Church, which condemned some of its followers who inclined toward the Reformers’ opinion (Cyril Lucaris and Metrophanes Critopoulos); nevertheless, in the 17th century hostility toward the deuterocanonical books spread in Russia, among the Slavic countries, and even in Greece, where it found many adherents, the question of the canon being declared a free and non-dogmatic issue by ecclesiastical authority.

Among rationalistic critics, who deny inspiration, this question assumes a secondary character, since all the books of Scripture are treated like any profane book.

2. Canon of the New Testament

Better documented is the formation of the canon of the New Testament. Here, often the inspired authors themselves indicate the occasion and other circumstances that caused the composition of the writing; we also find clear hints of the formation of more or less extensive collections, containing at least a part of the apostolic writings. St. Peter speaks of the letters of St. Paul as if they enjoyed equal authority to the books of the Old Testament (II Pt. 3, 15-16). The Apostolic Fathers did not hand down a complete catalogue of the books composing the New Testament; often even in their quotations, made more in the sense than literally, it is difficult to determine with exactness the book to which they refer; however, the ever-increasing number of such quotations, more or less direct, in the writings of Clement of Rome, Polycarp, and Ignatius, allows us to believe that such authors, especially the latter, possessed a complete corpus at least of the writings of St. Paul. Other authors bear witness to the existence of other books, such as Papias of Hierapolis for the Gospels, from which Tatian towards the end of the 2nd century composed his Diatessaron. A proof that among the early Christians a canon of the books of the New Testament was already in use is the reaction that arose against Marcion (v.), when he wished to compile another according to his own personal and heterodox principles. From the replies of Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Hippolytus, it is clear that Marcion was not the first to fix a collection of inspired writings, as A. Harnack would have it, but only a reformer of the common canon according to his particular ideas. It may be, however, that his boldness induced the Church to express in a more precise manner its own traditional thought; in fact, from that time (ca. 170-80) comes a document in the Roman Church of the greatest importance for the history of the canon of the New Testament, namely the Muratorian Fragment or Canon, discovered by L. A. Muratori in 1740: it bears witness that four Gospels were recognized as inspired (the first is not mentioned, and only a decade of the second survives, the document being mutilated at the beginning), 13 letters of St. Paul (it does not mention the one to the Hebrews), the Acts, two or three letters of John, the letter of Jude, the Apocalypse, and perhaps two letters of Peter, one of which was controversial.

From this almost official document, it already appears that a slight doubt was forming and persisting: some books are not mentioned at all, others can be read as indicated only if one accepts a fortunate correction of the text, as some scholars wish regarding the letters of Peter. More explicit attestations from later authors confirm a real perplexity in some Churches regarding the admission of certain books. In particular, the letter to the Hebrews and the Apocalypse were contested, for which the doubt was almost divided between the Western and Eastern Church: the former showed reluctance to incorporate the letter

PAULINA, while the other, for reasons especially connected with the margins, harbored a certain distrust of the Johannine Apocalypse.

If we add the doubts and disagreements, manifested here and there, regarding some of the Catholic Epistles, namely James, Jude, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, we may count seven controversial books (ἀντιλεγόμενα) even for the New Testament. But this disagreement, due to other reasons but in part also to the difficulty of originally bringing all the inspired writings to every Church, was less profound than that which occurred for the canon of the Old Testament.

Little by little the divergences were smoothed out, the doubts diminished; especially in the West the distrust toward the Epistle to the Hebrews vanished, following the teaching of the great doctors who pronounced themselves in favor of the controversial works. Jerome and Augustine, the Councils of Hippo (393) and of Carthage (397 and 419) supported their admission in a precise manner; in the same sense Pope Innocent I expressed himself (405; Denz-U, nn. 92, 96). In the East, however, the doubts persisted longer; especially in the Church of Antioch, and among the Syrians who followed its lead, there was a reluctance to recognize the canonicity of the Apocalypse and of some Catholic Epistles (2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, Jude). By the time of Justinian every disagreement within the Byzantine Empire had vanished. Among the Syrians recognition came more slowly, since at first their Bibles lacked the disputed books; the rest never admitted the Apocalypse, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, Jude, as is attested by Isho'dad of Merv (850) and Ebedjesu (1318).

The uterus at first particularly opposed the Epistle of James, calling it the “epistle of straw,” because it was contrary to his theological cornerstone of salvation by faith alone. In practice, at the beginning of the Reformation there was great disagreement on this point among the most authoritative Protestants; later, little by little, the disputed books were readmitted, so that from the 17th century onward there was no difference regarding the canon of the New Testament between Catholics and Protestants.

For writings not admitted to the biblical canon V. APOCRYPHA.

IV. ORIGINAL TEXTS

A fundamental presupposition in the study of any ancient writing is the fidelity and exactness of the documents that have preserved II. In this respect, no profane writing has had so many investigators throughout the history of its transmission as the Bible, especially the New Testament. Naturally, the investigation extends both to the original texts and to the most important ancient versions.

3. Old Testament

It was written for the most part in Hebrew (with a few brief passages in Aramaic), and only a few of its books, such as 2 Maccabees and Wisdom, were originally composed in Greek; likewise, only in this latter language do we possess the other deuterocanonical books, which were originally written in Hebrew or Aramaic.

The history of the Hebrew text of the Old Testament is quite simple from the first Christian centuries onward, when the text took on a precise form and was subsequently transmitted almost perfectly unchanged. Very little, however, is known of the earlier period, when the text underwent significant modifications, which we can today only vaguely assess. In 1948, biblical scrolls from the 2nd century B.C. were discovered among the mountains of Judea. Many Hebrew codices, although not very ancient (none dating back beyond the 10th century A.D.), were painstakingly collated by scholars, among whom Gian Bernardo De Rossi (q.v.) stands out around 1800; yet this vast work has yielded a homogeneous Hebrew text, since the rare variants are entirely secondary and never deeply affect the meaning. Thus, this minute examination testifies to a text that was already uniform at the time of the drafting of our oldest Hebrew codices. However, this certainty does not extend to the more than a thousand years that separate our codices from the original writings. By resorting to the comparison of ancient versions and following the testimonies of ancient Jewish and Christian writers, one can still trace back to the first centuries of the Christian era; and even for this period, the most scrupulous investigations merely confirm the faithful transmission of the text, safeguarded by the meticulous “hedge around the Torah,” as the vast work of the Masoretes (q.v.) was defined.

But tracing back to the pre-Christian period, the textual divergences appear both evident and significant. For this period we possess the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Septuagint version—which is the most important and was based on a Hebrew text recension prior to the Maccabees—the very brief Nush papyrus, and the writings of Flavius Josephus; in addition to these, even the Hebrew text of the Bible offers clear proof that in ancient times the transmission of the biblical text was not accurate or precise. We indeed find passages repeated several times, even within the same book (as in the Psalms), which often testify to textual diversity hardly attributable solely to scribal errors; moreover, the greater abundance of variants in the books that form the last two collections of the Hebrew Bible (namely the “Prophets” and the “Hagiographa”) demonstrates that these collections arose at a time when scribal activity, which began in the Persian period, was still relatively ineffective. However, such textual divergences, however serious in individual books like Samuel, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Proverbs, do not affect the overall substance of the individual works. The modifications, when not due to scribal negligence or editorial license, sometimes stem from a misunderstanding of the text, which was often provoked by the imperfections of Hebrew writing, which lacked vowels. The introduction, in fact, of special signs (ca. 6th century A.D.) to indicate Hebrew vowels contributed greatly, together with the entire work of the Masoretes, to preserving the fixed text faithfully; it is the text which, as we have said, was transmitted with singular precision up to the invention of printing.

In 1525 the first complete Hebrew Bible was published in Venice, under the care of Jacob ben Chajjim (the Rabbinic Bible); from that edition up to the critical editions of C. D. Ginsburg (London 1908–26) and R. Kittel (Leipzig 1906; 3rd ed. revised by P. Kahle entirely on the basis of the oldest manuscripts, Stuttgart 1929), printed editions have multiplied, always with the utmost fidelity. Therefore we can say that today we hold in our hands the Hebrew text as it was read in the 1st–2nd centuries A.D., that is, a copy substantially—but not literally—faithful to the lost original autographs. Comparison with ancient versions, particularly with the Septuagint, can often suggest correct emendations; at other times a cautious and well-founded conjecture may restore the original reading.

4. New Testament

If for the Old Testament we have a wide gap in the history of manuscript transmission, for the New Testament we are more fortunate. No ancient text, not even the most celebrated of classical authors, can boast of manuscripts as numerous and of such high antiquity as those of the New Testament, whose manuscripts number over 4,000; some of them date back to the 4th century, while more or less fragmentary papyri (such as Chester-Beatty, Egerton, etc.) take us back even to the 2nd century. The multitude of manuscripts does indeed present us, it is true, with an extraordinary number of variants, perhaps exceeding the number of words, but this disagreement is much more apparent than real. In fact, most of the variants are either obvious scribal errors or insignificant alterations due to particular spellings in the Greek of the Koine dominated by the "iotacism."

To distinguish the individual manuscripts (a system, in truth, quite complicated and which has therefore gained little acceptance) is found in the highly erudite work Die Schriften des N. T. (4 vols., Berlin-Göttingen 1902-12). However, this work did not fully satisfy scholars; therefore, a commission, headed by E. von Dobschütz, set out to produce a new critical edition of the New Testament.

Numerous manual editions have contributed to the dissemination of the critically scrutinized text: such as the minor edition by von Soden (1913), the widely circulated edition by E. Nestle, based on a comparison of the three major editions (Tischendorf, Westcott-Hort, B. Weiss), those by the Catholics M. Hetzenauer (1892-1900), E. Bodin (2nd ed. 1918), H. I. Volges (2nd ed. 1922), and A. Merk (1933, 6th ed. 1948).

Taking into account the work of von Soden and other critics, scholars today tend to group the manuscripts into three or four classes according to the various books, distinguished by unique characteristics. The first of these classes, which von Soden designated with the siglum H (= Hesychius), is considered the best, as it is free from contaminations due to the influence of parallel passages and less affected by puristic tendencies. The principal manuscripts representing this class are the Vaticanus (B) and the Sinaiticus (s). The second class, marked by von Soden with the siglum I (= Jerusalem) and represented by Codex D (Beza), exhibits various amplifications, paraphrases, omissions, etc., which characterize the so-called Western text. The third family, marked with the siglum K (= Koinē, “common”), has characteristics peculiar to the Antiochene school, particularly due to the influence of Lucian: this family is distinguished by its polished language and its tendency toward additions, with the Codex A (Alexandrinus) being its principal representative. Finally, many manuscripts, according to various scholars, derive from the school of Caesarea in Palestine, such as the Lake and Ferrar groups, which have distinctive features. This classification, proper to the Gospels, undergoes various modifications when applied to the other books of the New Testament. Often a manuscript, depending on the different books, may belong to various families and classes. Of all the classes, the first is the best, being characteristic of Egypt, and it is upon this that critical editions are primarily based (cf. TEXTUAL CRITICISM).

V. ANCIENT VERSIONS

The Bible is today the most widely circulated book in the world; yet this diffusion has been achieved over the centuries only to a small extent by its original Hebrew and Greek texts, and to a far greater extent by the numerous versions in various ancient and modern languages. Indeed, of the original texts, the Hebrew could be read and understood only by a very limited number of people, since the Hebrew language was known by few Jews living outside Palestine, and even by not many of those in Palestine several centuries before the Christian era; the Greek texts, on the other hand, including the entire New Testament, were accessible to a much wider circle, since Greek had been the international language of the Roman Empire in the last centuries B.C., even among the Jews of the Diaspora. However, as Christianity spread to regions where the common language was not Greek, and later as new languages arose in regions already reached by Christianity, the Bible was gradually translated into other languages so that the people might understand the content of the sacred books during liturgy: in fact, the common motive for the preparation of the various ancient versions, first among the Jews and then among Christians, was to enable the Bible to be understood in public and, secondarily, in private liturgical reading.

The long series of versions includes both ancient and modern languages. While some ancient versions began to appear when the canon of the Old Testament was not yet fixed and closed, modern versions continue even today and will continue in the future. Ancient versions are of particular importance as documents for the ascertainment or critical reconstruction of the primitive biblical text, and their importance is usually all the greater the greater the antiquity of the version. Modern versions, in their earliest period, are notable monuments of their respective languages, since the complete or partial translation of the Bible into the vernacular is almost always one of the first products of the various European literatures; in their more recent period, modern versions may have an exegetical value, as essays in the interpretation of biblical meaning.

Since the ancient versions will all be treated individually elsewhere, we give here a collective summary presentation, referring for each to the respective entry.

The earliest translations of the Old Testament were into the Greek language. The oldest, and the only one preserved in its entirety, is that known as the Septuagint (v.), whose beginnings date back to the 3rd century B.C. With the rise of Christianity, this version was adopted by Christians, who drew their biblical quotations from it in their controversies against the Jews. This was the main reason why, during the 2nd century A.D., the Jews repudiated the Septuagint as unfaithful (though previously they had held it in special veneration) and replaced it with other Greek versions, complete or partial, made by Jews and now reaching us only in fragments (v. GRECIA, VERSIONI, della B).

Almost contemporaneously with the translation of the Septuagint, and likewise among the Jews, translations into Aramaic were being formed, which, after the Christian era, began to be committed to writing, thus giving rise to that complex of versions generally called Targums, i.e., “translations” (v. TARGUM).

Meanwhile in the West, with the spread of Christianity there, the need was felt to have the Bible translated into Latin, and particularly into the popular Latin of the time. To meet this need, work began as early as the 2nd century A.D. on one, or perhaps more than one, Latin version, though these were made not from the Hebrew text but from the Greek of the Septuagint. The history of these early Latin versions, sometimes collectively but inaccurately referred to as the Itala, is extremely complicated and has been little explored to this day; they were later in part superseded and in part incorporated into the new version made from the Hebrew text by St. Jerome, now known as the Vulgate (v. VOLGATA).

As early as the 3rd century, versions into Coptic began to be made for the use of Christians in Egypt, i.e., into that language formed from a mixture of ancient Egyptian and Greek which was spoken there by the lower classes. Coptic versions exist in the southern dialect, or Sahidic, in the dialects of Middle Egypt, i.e., Fayyumic and Achmimic, and in the northern dialect, or Bohairic, all based on the Greek text of the Septuagint, and only part of them have come down to us (v. COPTE, VERSIONI, della B).

In Syriac, the Old Testament was begun to be translated between the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD directly from the Hebrew text; then the deuterocanonical books were translated from the Greek of the Septuagint, and the series thus completed was called the Pēšītā version, “simple.” The New Testament was translated several times and according to various criteria: the earliest translation is that of the Diatessaron of Tatian (q.v.), in which he combined the four Gospels, hence called “mixed”; a little later, but already in the 2nd century, the Gospels were translated separately, hence called “separate,” of which we have two different recensions, the Curetonian (from its discoverer W. Cureton [q.v.]) and the Sinaitic (from the place where it was found). In the 5th century a new version, or radical revision, of the New Testament appeared, attributed to Rabbūlā of Edessa, which was joined to the Pēšītā of the Old Testament; Rabbūlā’s text lacked the deuterocanonical books of the New Testament, which were added later. Later Syriac versions are: the Philoxenian (6th century), from the Septuagint text according to the recension of Lucius; the Syro-Hexaplar (7th century), from the Septuagint text according to the recension of the Hexapla of Origen; and some others of lesser importance (q.V. SIRACH, VERSIONS, sub B).

The Ethiopian or Abyssinian version was begun in the 5th century: based on the Greek text of the Septuagint, it was later subjected to some revisions. The Armenian version (q.V. MESROP), of the 5th century, was based on the Greek text of the Septuagint. The Gothic version was completed in the 4th century, on the Greek text of the Septuagint, by Ulfilas, the Arian bishop of the Goths. The Georgian version seems to date to the 5th century; it was based on the Greek text of the Septuagint but also shows the influence of the ancient Armenian version. The Old Slavonic (paleoslavic) version was begun in the 9th century by SS. Cyril and Methodius; later it underwent numerous additions and modifications. The Arabic versions, of various types, do not go back beyond the 9th century and depend on Hebrew or Greek texts according to the different authors.

VI. MODERN VERSIONS

Italian. - The first attempts at translating the Bible into the vernacular in Italy date back to before Dante. More than true translations, these are usually amplifying and explanatory paraphrases, made for devotional purposes, and extended to individual books or only to extracts, especially from the Gospels. The vernacular used is usually Tuscan, sometimes Venetian. The text from which the translation is made is normally the Latin of the Vulgate, in some cases represented by one of the recensions prior to that fixed at the University of Paris at the beginning of the 13th century, which soon spread also to Italy: this would lead to the conclusion that some of these vernacularizations date back to the early 1200s; exceptionally, translations were also made from French versions. These early attempts, almost all unpublished, have not yet been sufficiently explored and studied.

With the 14th century, the first complete Bibles in the vernacular began to appear, resulting from the combination of previous partial translations, mostly anonymous; so that, depending on the choices made by the different compilers, the complete copies could differ in the various books translated. These Bibles, still transmitted in manuscript form, are today very rare and almost always, either due to the incompleteness of the original collection or to the ravages of time, lack some books. Sometimes individual books bear the name of the translator at the head: among the various names mentioned, the most worthy of note is Fra Domenico Cavalca, to whom the translation of the Acts is attributed; this attribution is also found in solitary copies of that book, but it always leaves room for doubt as to whether Cavalca was not the translator but only the authoritative reviser of a previous translation of the Acts, as seems to result from a comparison of the texts contained in the various copies. Other famous names put forward in connection with 14th-century vernacular Bibles, such as Iacopo da Varagine and Iacopo Passavanti, have no justification in the manuscript tradition. A famous example of these complete Bibles is the one once belonging to Francesco Redi (now preserved only from Genesis to part of the Psalms: Florence, Laurenziana Ashburnham 1102, from the year 1466); Redi used it for the annotations to his Dittamno and the Accademia della Crusca for its Vocabolario.

With the invention of printing, the complete vernacular Bible soon came to the fore with two editions in 1471, both in Venice. The first appeared on 1 August (B. d'ag.) from the presses of the German printer Vendelino da Spira with the title B. dignamente vulgarizzata per il clarissimo religioso duon Nicolao Malermi Veneziaio..., 2 vols. in-fol., in 2 columns; the seco

Bible — Hebrew text. Petropolitan Codex (year 1009). Is. 20, 1-21,6. It contains, besides the Hebrew text, the marginal masorah. The vowel signs are those of the Babylonian system, preceding the Tiberian, now in use.

B. thus completed certainly showed a fidelity and uniformity that partial translations could not have, but it also greatly damaged their fourteenth-century language, thereby considerably diminishing their almost unique merit. Nevertheless, the B. of Malermi enjoyed great favor, which had many editions during the incunabula period and almost 20 throughout the sixteenth century; the edition published in Venice in 1773, although it still bears the name of Malermi, is in reality a reworking by the Paduan Alvise Guerra, of Jansenist tendencies, who largely replaced the ancient translation with his own or others’. The “B. d’ott.”, i.e., the Jensonian, used fourteenth-century manuscripts without altering them—as it seems—but perhaps integrating them where they were lacking with passages taken from the “B. d’ag.”; it is certain that the two B. agree almost verbatim in the New Testament and also in the Psalms, while they differ greatly in the Old Testament. Because it was so rough and of varied origin, the Jensonian B. found no favor and was never reprinted, becoming extremely rare. It was, however, published again during the nineteenth century, due to the renewed love for vernacular texts of the “good century” of the language: but an initial attempt by the Venetian Society of Bibliophiles stopped at the first volume (B. volgare, testo di lingua secondo l’edizione del 1471 di Nicolò Fenson, Venezia 1846) because of difficulties arising with ecclesiastical authority and the printer, and all copies ended up destroyed in the printing house or scattered; it was instead Carlo Negroni who managed to produce the complete edition (La B.Volgaresecondola raraedizione del ott. MCCCXLXI. 10 voll., Bologna 1882-87). The text of the Jensonian has value not for biblical criticism, but only for the history of the Italian language, although even on this point some exaggeration has occurred.

There are then many editions of fourteenth-century versions, especially of the Psalms, printed during the nineteenth century out of love for linguistic texts: these therefore interest philologists.

At the time of Protestantism, biblical versions of a new kind also began to appear in Italy. Almost contemporaneously with Luther’s German Bible, there appeared in Italy the version by the Florentine Antonio Brucioli, first limited to the New Testament (Il Nuovo Testamento di Cristo Jesu Signore e Salvatore nostro, di greco nuovamente tradotto in lingua toscana, Venezia, Lucentino Giunti, 1530, reprinted several times subsequently) and shortly afterward extended to the whole Bible (La B., quale contiene i sacri libri del Vecchio Testamento tradotti nuovamente da la hebraica verità... Coi divini libri del Nuovo Testamento, in-fol., Venezia, Lucentino Giunti, 1532).

Il Brucioli was of marked Protestant tendencies, although officially he did not separate from the Church, and his version, which soon became common among exiled Italian Protestants, was placed on the Index already in 1559; as for his literary nature, it is a rough and uncultured translation, and his alleged determination of the original texts was in reality achieved through the assiduous use of Sante Pagnini’s Latin version for the Hebrew text and that of Erasmus for the New Testament. It was reprinted several times, even with Brucioli’s commentaries in which his Protestant tendencies appear more clearly; a new edition with extensive modifications was prepared for the use of the Protestants of Geneva (there, at Francesc Duomo, 1562) by Filippo Rustici.

From the Catholic side, shortly after Brucioli’s version, there appeared that of the Dominican from the Florentine convent of S. Marco, Sante Marmochino (La B. nuovamente tradotta dalla Hebraica verità in lingua Thoscana per Maestro Santi Marmochino, in-fol., Venice, Lucantonio Giunti, 1538).

This version, which the author claims was completed in twenty-two months, was in reality based more on Sante Pagnini’s related version than on the Hebrew text itself, with frequent recourse to the Vulgate; for the New Testament it employs the version made shortly before by Fra Zaccaria of the same convent of S. Marco, based on the Greek text (Il nuovo Testamento tradotto in lingua toscana dal r. p. fra Zaccheria, Venice, Lucantonio Giunti, 1536). Marmochino’s version met with little favor and was reprinted only in 1546.

During the same 16th century, there were numerous partial versions of the Bible, especially of the New Testament; some were published even outside Italy, and very many were in verse. Almost all of them are devoid of any scientific value, and those in verse also lack literary merit; some betray Protestant tendencies. Yet how widespread in Italy were the vulgar versions of the Bible, even before Protestantism arose, is shown by the preface that the regular canon Isaia or Esaya da Este Patavino prefixed to his *Expositione sopra la cantica di Salomone*, printed in 1504 in Venice “by Bartolameo de Zanni da Portese.” There he justifies himself for having written this biblical exposition not in Latin but in the vernacular, affirming that it was “necessary for many”: “because of the cheapness of printing, the whole most sacred Bible had been reduced to this lowliness; and from the Sundays, and whichever one brings and reads it, among the spinning wheels of wool, in the gatherings (company, groups) of neighbors it was discussed, in which even the Canticle was included.” It is possible that when the author speaks of “the whole most sacred Bible” he is alluding to the two Venetian editions of 1471, the only complete ones that existed in his time, but he certainly intends also to refer to other partial editions that appeared here and there after those, and which, taken together, constituted almost as many complete Bibles. Moreover, it is highly significant that these versions were extremely widespread among the common people, so much so that they were sung “by little women among the distaffs and spindles.”

A curious piece of information is then offered by a biography of St. Charles Borromeo (preserved in an unpublished manuscript consulted by the author of the present article), according to which this Paul [i.e., Charles Borromeo] before his death (1590) “wished that the Bible be printed in the Italian language, a language known to all, so that they might read it,” and this wish of his was carried out in the press of His Holiness. But since this vernacular translation seemed untimely to various cardinals and to Philip II, King of Spain, the latter sent his own ambassador from Rome to remonstrate with the Pope, who however dismissed the ambassador in a violent manner. Yet of this Roman edition no trace whatever exists (cf. on this point J. Le Long, *Bibliotheca Sacra*, I, Paris 1723, pp. 357–58).

There followed a long period in which in Italy Catholics ceased to produce new translations or editions, because of the rule established in 1559 and reaffirmed in 1564 by the Index to halt the spread of Protestantism, a rule that required a special written permission to read the Bible in the vernacular. In this period there appeared the most important Protestant version, due to Giovanni Diodati (q.v.), published with notes in 1607 in Geneva.

At this time, vernacular Bibles in Italy were practically represented only by Protestant texts. This concerned Benedict XIV, who, by a decree of the Index of 13 June 1757, modified the previous rule, allowing the reading of vernacular versions approved by the Holy See or published under the supervision of the bishops; moreover, the same Pope, privately, recommended the preparation of a new Italian version conducted in accordance with these norms. This greater freedom soon produced its effects, and within a few years three new Italian versions were published.

The first was that which appeared in 1773 as a reprint of the Malermi Bible, though in reality it was almost entirely a new work by Alvise Guerra, of whom mention has been made above. The second depended on the French Bible known as the Port-Royal Bible, due to Isaac Louis Le Maistre de Sacy, and published under the title *Sacra Scrittura giusta la Volgata in lingua latina e volgare colla spiegazione del senso letterale e del senso spirituale tratta dai Santi Padri e dagli autori ecclesiastici dal Sign. Le Maistre de Sacy* (Venice 1775–85). However, in the Italian edition, while the notes are those of Le Maistre de Sacy, the text is translated not from the French but with great fidelity from the Latin of the Vulgate.

The third was the Bible of Antonio Martini (q.v.), who produced an entirely new work for his time and circumstances. Of this, the New Testament first appeared (6 vols., Turin 1769–71), dedicated to King Charles Emmanuel III and soon reprinted, followed by the Old Testament (16 vols., ibid. 1776–81). Welcomed by most with praise, and by some with such bitter hostility that an attempt was even made to have it prohibited by the Church, Martini’s version was praised in a brief of Pius VI addressed to the author on 17 March 1778. However, the Tuscan Jansenists sought to appropriate it by producing a spurious edition, which nevertheless was limited to the New Testament and a small part of the Old Testament (11 vols., Florence 1779–83). The many editions, both complete and

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