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Building the Bible

Early Translations and Transcriptions

What is the Vulgate?

This is the Latin translation of the Bible done (mostly, some scholars say) by St. Jerome around 400 C.E. The Old Testament was translated from the original Hebrew. The New Testament was translated from the original Greek. Because Jerome translated the Old Testament from the original Hebrew and not from a later Greek translation, he determined that certain books were not found in the Hebrew Scriptures of the Jews. Jerome believed that if Jews did not see the necessity of adding books to the Old Testament canon, then neither should Christians. Accordingly, people started arguing about which books were canonical. In 1546, at the Council of Trent, the Vulgate was deemed the official Bible of the Church.