Les Nouvelles de Jérusalem - Numéro 105 - Printemps 2023

Bible studies
Bible and latin language
Fr. Giambrone recalls of his Greek and
Latin studies and presents Fr. Kevin
Zylberberg, explaining the purposes of
his stay at the École biblique this year.
One of the visible trends in biblical
studies today is a lively engagement
with the so-called “ancient versions,”
translations of the Jewish scriptures
made in antiquity. The Septuagint is
by far the most famous of these. As
the legend recounts it, this work of
rendering of the Hebrew Bible into
Greek took place in Alexandria in
Egypt at the time of King Ptolemy II
(third century BC), when seventy
scholars independently all landed
upon the exact same translation. Today,
obviously, a more nuanced story
is told; but the immense interest of the
Greek translation remains. Through
the enormously widespread use of the
Greek language in the ancient world,
the Septuagint became the specific
form of the Bible known to most people
and thereby the base for a whole
family of both Jewish and later Christian
revisions. If recent scholarship
has accordingly shown an increasing
interest in studying this important ancient
version on its own terms, other
ancient translations are also of major
interest. The Latin Bible is certainly
among the most important.
As with the Greek, the story of the
Latin is more complicated than often
supposed. Before Jerome’s famous
Vulgate appeared—itself a complicated
affair—the Vetus Latina, or Old
Latin translation already existed, for
instance. While Jerome often made a
point of translating directly from the
Hebrew, the earlier Latin text was
made from the Greek. This naturally
puts the Latin at a certain remove.
Yet, at times the Greek preserves
even older readings than our present
Hebrew, and at times the Latin
version provides our only access to
Greek readings that have since perished,
lost behind later textual corruptions.
From another perspective,
the Latin also attests quite simply to
interpretative traditions among early
Christian readers in the west, a matter
of interest in its own right.
Following the guidelines of the Pontifical
Biblical Commission in Rome,
doctoral students at the École biblique
are all expected to pass special
exams on all the ancient versions.
This includes not only the Masoretic
Hebrew and Septuagint Greek texts,
therefore, but also the Aramaic Targums
and, of course, the Latin Bible
tradition. The Bible in Its Traditions
project is naturally also highly invested
in these same ancient versions,
consciously advancing a polymorphic
vision of the Church’s scriptures. In
this connection, under the leadership
of fr. Olivier-Thomas Venard, the
BEST team has in fact undertaken a
large-scale work to produce the first
French translation of the Vulgate at its
medieval height (as edited by Robert
Weber and slightly revised by Roger
Gryson for the Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft,
Stuttgart, 2007). Prior to
its post-tridentine editions, this text
inspired many centuries of literary
and artistic creation, and is therefore
the necessary basis for an annotation
in the history of its reception.
In this broad context, the decision
was made to invite a young specialist
in the Vetus Latina, Fr. Kevin Zilverberg,
associate professor at the University
of St. Thomas (MN, USA), to
spend a semester at the Ébaf as professeur
invité. Fr. Zilverberg’s SSD
dissertation, entitled The Textual History
of Old Latin Daniel from Tertullian
to Lucifer (Madrid, 2021), won
the Bibeau Award for the best dissertation
at the Biblicum in 2019-2020.
Fr. Zilverberg’s stay at the Ecole had
two official objectives. First, he offered
a two-hour per week course
introducing students to the tools and
techniques used in serious study of
the Latin Bible. Avidly followed by
both doctoral students and others,
this course provided a sound, initial
orientation to the subject matter. At
the same time, Fr. Zilverberg helped
co-organize a special journée d’études
at the Ecole centered on the theme
“Election in the Latin Bible.” For this
event, which took place on December
15, he was joined by two other invited
scholars: José Manuel Cañas Reíllo
and Pablo Toribio, both researchers
at the CSIC (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones
Científicas) in Madrid.
Łukas Popko from the Ébaf was the
fourth speaker. Each speaker made a
very fine contribution, approaching the
subject from some strikingly different
perspectives. Together with several
other solicited studies, these papers
will ultimately be edited and published
in the series Études bibliques.
Fr. Anthony Giambrone, OP
Vice Director
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Nouvelles de Jérusalem - N° 105 - Pâque 2023