Vulgata + Vetus Latina Project aims to produce an online edition of the Latin Vulgate and Vetus Latina (also known as Old Latin Bible or Vetus Itala) with a comprehensive critical apparatus, and a new English translation. We seek to collate and transcribe all extant ancient manuscripts of the Vulgate and Old Latin Bible and publish them available at Vulgate.Net.
Most editors of the Greek New Testament take the evidence of the early versions seriously and this is especially true of the Old Latin Bible and St. Jerome’s Vulgate.
Vulgate.Net’s Goals
- A new critical text of the Vulgate that is as close as possible to the original text.
- Collate Vulgate manuscripts to build a comprehensive critical apparatus.
- Transcribe all the manuscripts of the Old Latin Bible.
- A new English translation for the Vulgate and Vetus Latina.
- Collate Biblical citations made by Latin Church Fathers.
- Produce a Greek text of the New Testament that is close to the vorlage used by Jerome.
- A PDF version of the Vulgate and Vetus Latina that will be made available for download.
Vetus Latina
In the early days of Western Christianity there was no one acknowledged Latin version, but that every one who had any real or supposed competency (or at least, many such persons) made versions for themselves, and that these were pretty extensively used. Among the confusion of Latin versions there was one known and recognised by the name of the Itala, and that this possessed some characteristic excellence. It has been concluded (even though it is quite inconsistent with the other deductions) that the different forms in which the Old Latin has come down to us, might properly be called the Itala, and thus this name, or the Vetus Itala, has been allowed to occupy a place in critical nomenclature, and to it have the different Latin texts been referred that have been discovered or published.