Justin Appel

Dear Friends,

Today is the commemoration of Saint Jerome (c. 347-420), hermit, scholar, spiritual director, and translator of the new Latin Bible called the ‘Vulgate’.

Jerome began his translation of the Bible into a vernacular Latin by starting from the Hebrew text (the so-called ‘Masoretic Text’). Previously, the only Latin version of the Bible was based on the Greek text ( called the ‘Septuagint’ after the 70 Jewish scholars who wrote it in Alexandria).

In spite of his scholarly intention to produce a more accurate translation, Jerome hit a bump when got to the Psalms. Even though he wanted to render his street-Latin version from the Hebrew text, he ended up putting his critical translation in an appendix, opting instead to translate the more familiar Greek text for Vulgate's main Psalter. You see, by the fourth century, Christians had already used the Psalms so much for prayer that the prospect of materially changing the text of this beloved book was unwise.

Humorously, James Kiefer connects this story to a similar situation in the Church of England, when the 1611 King James translation of the Bible was published with London street-English. In this case, the 1536 Coverdale translation already occupied a beloved place in churchgoers’ piety, not to be displaced by a more modern, fancy translation. The Coverdale Psalter continues to be honored in the Anglican experience today, surviving intact even through the liturgical changes of the last century. Go into an Anglican cathedral today for Evensong, and you will likely hear the Coverdale Psalter being chanted.

This story from Jerome, and its more modern corollary, remind us obliquely that laypeople can act as a conservative force in the Church, and they can sometimes check or shape brisk attempts at clerical reforms. It reminds us too that the prayers of a white-haired grandmother (or of a chorister, for that matter) can have a profound effect on the shape of belief and of worship for future generations.

Justin