§ 4. THE ANCIENT VERSIONS

The Greek version, at least as contained in א A B, is as a rule easily intelligible and probably a correct rendering of the original, but it is very hebraistic. From it were made the Syriac and the Old Latin, both of them fairly close and agreeing in general with cod. 58, as will be seen from the notes. VL is rough, often merely latinized hebraistic Greek, and sometimes misunderstands the Greek which it translates. The MSS., of which Sabatier used five for his text, have been much corrected, perhaps from different Greek MSS., so that they vary considerably in minor details, though, all derived from one text.

The Syriac version was first printed in Walton’s Polyglot. It was derived from two late MSS., now in the Bodleian Library, of which one, dated 1614, belonged to Pococke (ms. Poc. 391), and the other was copied for Ussher in 1627 (ms. Bodl. or. 141). With these a Cambridge ms. was collated and the variants are given (by Thorndyke) in vol. 6 of the Polyglot. The version has been edited by Lagarde, in his Libri V. T. apocryphi Syriace (Lipsiae, 1861), from a tenth-century ms. in the British Museum (from the Nitrian collection) with a full apparatus criticus. The Museum possesses two other MSS., of the twelfth and seventeenth century respectively.

A third version, the Vulgate, is of less value for textual purposes. Jerome’s own account of it, in his preface, is not altogether clear. He says that he found great variations in the MSS. (‘multorum codicum varietatem vitiosissimam amputavi’) and implies that he endeavoured to produce a consistent text by embodying in his work only what he found in the ‘Chaldee’. The questions which naturally present themselves are, What were these divergent MSS. and what was the ‘Chaldee’ text? The MSS. cannot have been Greek, because the Vulgate differs from that version in important particulars: e.g. 14:5–7 comes at the end of 13; 1:12b–16 and 4:3 are omitted; 4:13–15 is altered; additions are made after 14:12 and elsewhere; names and numbers often differ. In fact, if compared with the Greek, the Vulgate presents the appearance of a paraphrastic recension. On the other hand, apart from these material differences, it often follows VL closely even in diction (cf. cap. 16), and the resemblance throughout is sufficient to show that Jerome used MSS. of the VL, which he merely adapted and corrected, as he considered, by the help of his ‘Chaldee’ text. It is evident from his own remarks (‘huic unam lucubratiunculam dedi, magis sensum e sensu, quam ex verbo verbum transferens’) that he spent very little time or trouble on it, and for this reason its style is less like Jerome’s than the rest of the Vulgate.

As to the ‘Chaldee’ text, we have no other evidence. It will be remembered that he speaks in the same way of a Chaldee text of Tobit, and that an Aramaic recension of that book was actually found and published by Neubauer (Oxford, 1878). No such text of Judith is now known, but as Jerome’s statement is explicit with regard to both books, we have to inquire what the text was. Probably the answer is to be found in a sentence in the preface to Judith, ‘Chaldaeo tamen sermone conscriptus inter historias computatur.’ If historias represents מעשיות, he means that the story of Judith was regarded as a מעשה, such as we find embodied in midrashim, or even composed separately for use on special occasions. Later forms of the story, in Hebrew (see § 8), were composed and so used, and in Neubauer’s midrashic ms. the story of Tobit is called as a matter of course מעשה טוביה. We may therefore conclude that Jerome, finding no Hebrew text of the book, used an Aramaic מעשה (historia) containing a free treatment, not a translation, of the story, derived probably from the Greek. He evidently attached more importance to it than to VL, since he included in his own work only what he found in the Chaldee, but in language he was naturally influenced by VL where the two coincide. Thus the Vulgate of Judith is a hurried version of an Aramaic midrash containing a free presentation of the story, rather than a translation of any given text. It omits about one-fifth of the book.