Gnomon 37(1965) 777-781 -- Review by Robert A. Kraft of Biblia Sacra iuxta Latinam vulgatam versionem ad codicum fidem iussu Pauli Pp. VI. cura et studio monachorum abbatiae pontificiae Sancti Hieronymi in Urbe ordinis Sancti Benedicti edita. 12: Sapientia Salomonis. Liber Hiesu Filii Sirach. Cum praefationibus et variis capitulorum seriebus. Romae: Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, 1964. XXIII, 375 S. 4o. 6500 L. Almost 60 years have passed since, in 1907, Pope Pius X commissioned the Benedictine Fathers to prepare an up to date critical edition of the Latin Vulgate Bible. The original aim of the commission, as enunciated by its first president, F. A. Gasquet, was <> ("Vulgate, Revision of", Catholic Encyclopedia 15, 1912, 516). The procedures followed in launching the project are summarized by Gasquet (art. cit.), and some of the subsidiary results are embodied in the project's series "Collectanea Biblica Latina" (1912 ff). The first part of the new edition appeared in 1926 (Genesis), surrounded by a considerable amount of controversy over the textcritical procedures of Cardinal Gasquet's successor, H. Quentin. Already in 1922, in his Me(/)moire pour l'e(/)tablissement du texte de la Vulgate I: Octateuque ("Coll. Bib. Lat. " 6), Quentin had argued that all of the witnesses to the Vulgate Octateuch represent 3 main families (Spanish, Alcuinian, Theodulfian), that each of these families is best represented by a single MS, and that these 3 representative MSS all derive from a single Vulgate archetype of the 5th/6th century. Thus, for the Octateuch at least, Quentin defined the present goal of the project as determining the text of this lost archetype, which was not Jerome's original edition, but had itself already become somewhat corrupted in the process of transmission. Almost without exception, [778] he argued, for any given variant within the 3 main families, the text of the lost archetype is preserved by the consensus reading of the 3 representative MSS (Quentin's <> -- a majority principle of a sort). Despite widespread criticism not only from outsiders (e.g., F. C. Burkitt, JThS 24, 1922/23, 406- 14; E.K. Rand, HarvThR 17, 1924, 197-264) but also from some of his former Benedictine collaborators (e.g., D.J. Chapman, RBe(/)ne(/)d 37, 1925, 5-46 and 365-403), Quentin defended his procedures in Essais de critique textuelle (Ecdotique), 1926, and the remaining volumes of the Octateuch (1929, 1936, 1939) continued to be based on his principles even after his death in 1935. Apart from such methodological forebodings, however, it was acknowledged on all sides that the new Benedictine Vulgate provides an excellent and much needed collection of materials from which Vulgate textual study can now proceed with greater convenience and accuracy. In the subsequent volumes (Samuel 1944. Kings 1945. Chronicles 1948. Ezra, Tobit, Judith 1950. Esther, Job 1951. Psalms 1953. Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Canticles 1957), there has been a tendency to include more editorial judgment than Quentin's Octateuch principles would have permitted, although in the main, his goal of recovering the supposed 5th/6th century Vulgate archetype has remained. The fact that different MSS do not necessarily contain the same groups of books, and that text- critical problems often differ from book to book, undoubtedly contributed to the modification of Quentin's procedures. As P. Katz noted in his review of the Psalms volume for this journal 28, 1956, 637: <> In the volume under review, Sapientia and Sirach (not "Ecclesiasticus" --see IX n. 1), the Benedictine editors have been faced with a new and different set of problems. Hitherto they have published portions of the OT which clearly formed part of Jerome's edition -- books which Jerome claims to have translated from a Semitic language, or for which he revised the extant Latin form )Psalms), or in which he admittedly supplemented his edition with an extant Latin version (Esther 10,4--16,24). But there is no evidence that Jerome did any extensive work on Sapientia or Sirach -- in fact, at one point he expressly declines the task, despite the admission that he knows of the existence of a Hebrew form of Sirach (Praef. in libros Salomonis). Thus the two books of Sapientia and Sirach have this much in common: they both were frequently catalogued among the Solomonic collection (note the ancient title under which Sirach sometimes appeared -- "liber Ecclesiasticum Salomonis"), and they both seem to have been bypassed by Jerome in his critical endeavors. The two books have very little else in common. Sapientia almost certainly was composed originally in Greek, probably at Alexandria, while Sirach was written by a Palestinian in Hebrew (and was translated into Greek some decades later). The Latin version of Sapientia is a fairly straightforward literal rendering of our preserved Greek text, and seems to have been the work of a single translator (late 2nd century [?], North Africa), while the Latin of Sirach is a hodge-podge of diverse elements in which the hands of at least three different translators can be distinguished along with frequent doublet readings, glosses, etc., which cannot always be explained on the basis of known texts of Sirach in other languages (Hebrew, Greek, Syriac; see below). Thus the text-critical task in Sapientia is relatively simple, but in Sirach it is a nightmare. [779] The Benedictine edition of these two books is based on 28 relatively complete Latin MSS (only 27 include Sirach) dating from the 5th to the 8th centuries (Sapientia is represented in 8, Sirach in 7), 8 editions of the Vulgate dating from 1452 to 1592, 2 late medieval sets of corrections, and occasional material from Patristic and other sources. In addition, there has been a significant amount of cooperation between the Benedictines and both the Go(%)ttingen Septuagint project (ed. J. Ziegler; Sapientia 1962. Sirach 1965) and the Beuron Vetus Latina editors (neither of the books has yet appeared in this series). After a short prolegomena discussing the various witnesses and the procedures of the edition (IX-XXIII), the materials for the texts of Sapientia (19-104) and Sirach (141-375) are presented along with critical editions of such closely related items as the brief prologue to Sapientia found in a few MSS (2-3) and the various series of capitula for each book (5-15, 107-137). The reconstructed text of each book is printed stichometrically without punctuation, and is provided with a three fold critical apparatus: (1) materials concerning the relationship between the supposed Vulgate archetype which the editors are attempting to reconstruct (see below) and the <> (Old Latin) from which the archetype developed -- since the Old Latin readings often must rest on conjecture, the editors have attempted to throw additional light on the situation by noting affinities between various Latin and Greek (and in Sirach, Hebrew and Syriac) forms of the text; (2) the variations contained in the Latin codices and the editions consulted, excluding simple orthographical differences; and (3) the various major and minor text divisions noted in the MSS (punctuation of a sort). The system of notation used is relatively standard and easy to follow, and a full listing of sigla is prefixed to each book as well as being provided separately on a "supplement" card. On each page of text, the user is informed if any of the main codices contain lacunae an if any of the fragmentary MSS include that particular section. In Sirach, the normal Latin versification is followed, supplemented by the usual Greek numbering (in parentheses, based on Swete's edition) where it differs; a special symbol also is used to designate Latin passages for which there are no Greek parallels in Swete's text (although many of these are paralleled in the Greek form of Sirach edited by J.H.A. Hart, 1909, which also is included in the apparatus to Rahlfs' 1935 edition), and an attempt is made in the first apparatus to identify doublets. On the whole, the critical materials are clearly and usefully presented. The first apparatus is the most susceptible to criticism, especially in Sirach, because it is so largely dependent on conjecture and because references to the Greek, Hebrew, and Syriac from of Sirach are seldom specific enough or consistent enough to be of real assistance in themselves. Similarly, too little use is made of Patristic quotations in this apparatus, especially in connection with the conjectured Old Latin base. The standard of printing accuracy seems relatively high, although the following typographical [780] errors were noted: p. X. n. 4, read 7, 13 [?] not 7, 33. p. XI line 18, read G(L) [?] not G(B). p. XII last line, read XI not XII. p. 23 apparatus two, the listing of evidence for the Title of Sapientia is somewhat confused. p. 227 top, read XIX not XVIII. Since the reviewer did not have access to the actual MSS, the standard of accuracy in collating and transcribing the evidence could not be checked; occasional conflicts with the claims of earlier critics, however, sometimes were noticed. The goal of this edition, as of the earlier Benedictine volumes, is not to determine the "original" Latin form of the Vulgate text (in this case, the "original" would be the Old Latin), but to recover as nearly as possible a presumed 5th/6th century archetype from which the extant MSS derive. The editors judge that the best single MS preserved for this task is the early 9th century codex Paris Bib. Nat. lat. 11553 ( = G; Sapientia , 1, 1-9, 19 is lacking). The other codices fall into several categories (XVII ff), notably the Spanish and Italian families (led by MSS S and A respectively). A few of the MSS (including the oldest fragmentary MS, from the last part of the 5th century) preserve a <> and some MSS also introduce Old Latin readings into the Vulgate text (especially MS X). In their attempt to determine the text of the "archetype", the Benedictine editors do not follow any mechanical procedures such as Quentin's <>, but often forsake the majority of MSS or the leading MSS (including G) to follow a reading supported by intrinsic probability. This reviewer did not notice any passages, however, in which the editors adopted a reading which had no MS support (i.e., a conjectural reading). This is not the place to discuss at length the validity or helpfulness of the hypothesis of a single, 5th/6th century archetype behind the Vulgate MSS of Sapientia and Sirach (Quentin's original archetype suggestion in 1922 applied only to the Octateuch). The editors claim support for the theory (X nn. 3-4) from the fact that (1) certain 5th century Fathers who quoted from the "Vulgate recension" for most of the Bible still used the Old Latin for Sapientia and Sirach -- thus these books could not yet have been included in the Vulgate; and (2) in many passages (noted in the first apparatus) all the Latin MSS of Sapientia and Sirach attest a reading best explained as a corruption of the Old Latin base -- thus all the MSS must derive from the same archetype (agreement in error). On the other hand, the editors admit that already in the late 5th century there was a "Vulgate recension" in circulation which had characteristic differences from the supposed archetype (see above), and their handling of the complicated problems of the Latin Sirach raises several questions about their archetype hypothesis. In Sirach, the following sections clearly derive from different Latin translators, all of whom also differ from the translator of Sapientia: (1) chapters 1-43 and 51-52, (2) chapters 44-50 (Laus Patrum), and (3) the Prologue. The translator of (1) probably lived in North Africa around the year 200, while the translators of (2) and (3) apparently worked later, and probably in a different location. In addition to these main sections, there are numerous doublets, glosses, and other "secondary" elements that have found their way into the Latin text of Sirach (especially chapters 1-43) during its long and complicated evolution. All of the MSS used by the Benedictine editors contain all of the main sections listed above (one codex lacks the prologue). Nevertheless, with reference to sections (2) and (3), the editors argue that <> (XII). They note that many ancient Latin Fathers (and codex A) [781] attribute Sirach to Solomon, which would be inexplicable if they knew of the prologue written by the author's grandson. Furthermore, no Latin Father prior to Isidore of Seville (early 7th century) cites from Sir. 44-50, although this material often appears in liturgical texts, and an early MS of excerpts (x, form 8th century) gives passages from Sir. 44-50 separately in one place, while materials from the "Vulgate recension" of Sapientia and Sir. 1-43 are found in a later section of the MS. <> (XII). Although the editors print chapters 44-50 in continuous text with the rest of the book, the following note appears in the first apparatus to Sir. 44, 1: <>. Thus the editors have opened up several basic questions with reference to their archetype theory: If we assume that there was a "Vulgate archetype" in which Sir. 44-50 did not appear, must there not also have been a later archetype which included this material (since all the MSS have it)? Is it possible that chapters 44-50 (and the Prologue_ became joined to the various Latin codices and families at different times and places so that it is by sheer coincidence that all MSS now contain them? In any event, archetypes must have existed (separately or included with the whole of Sirach) for the Prologue, and for chapters 44-50 -- what is the relationship of these to the various Vulgate recensions? The doublets in Sirach raise similar problems since some of them occur in all MSS< others in only some of the MSS. Hopefully this confusing situation will come into clearer focus when the Beuron Vetus Latina edition becomes available for the older form(s) of Sapientia and Sirach. In the meantime, whatever one's attitude to the archetype hypothesis, it must be acknowledged that the Benedictine edition has taken a long and solid step in the right direction in providing materials for the continuing discussion of the text-critical problems of the Latin Bible. University of Pennsylvania Robert A. Kraft [[end]]