This is a significant question, the answer will have to be lengthy in order to do justice to understanding what should be a practical choice beyond personal preference. We first examine some history.
Beginning with the Catholic Church, the common language of Rome from 510 BC to the end of the Roman Empire which is sometimes placed at 4 September 476 AD, when the last emperor of the Western Roman Empire, Romulus Augustus, was deposed and not replaced was Vulgar Latin, not Hebrew or Greek. At the third Council of Tours in 813, priests were ordered to preach in the vernacular language, either in the Vulgar Latin, or in the Germanic vernaculars, since the common people could no longer understand formal Latin.
Formal Latin was referred to as Ecclesiastical Latin (sometimes called Church or Classical Latin) refers to the Latin language as used in documents of the Roman Catholic Church and in its Latin liturgies. Though its pronunciation differs slightly from that of Classical Latin, it is not a distinct language or dialect, but only the Latin language used for ecclesiastical purposes.
As a language no longer in common use, Latin has the advantage that the meaning of its words have less likelihood of changing radically from century to century. This helps to ensure theological precision and to safeguard orthodoxy. Accordingly, recent Popes have reaffirmed the importance of Latin for the Church and in particular for those undertaking ecclesiastical studies.
At one time only the Priest, Pharisees, Sadducees, Sanhedrin or the rich who could afford an education could read Latin, which made the scriptures unavailable to the common public. Not to mention the availability of any translations.
Consider, man is inherently curious, I believe God puts curiosity in us in part, so that we would desire to seek him.
When a man is curious and can neither find the information he is looking for, nor understand what information is given to him because the word is so complicated, confusing or controversial, the masses will give up the quest and lean to their own understanding. He tends to go back to what he knows, his own nature, Sin.
Part of what makes the exercise easier for man to do what he wants is the disconnect between the truth of who God is, and mans watered downed, compromising offering of who God is.
One effort that has attempted to thwart Gods reconciliation of man is the confusion of Gods word by the conflicting writings and the lack of honesty and availability of honorable men entrusted with the word of God inspired in their hearts in the pulpits of the world.
The majority of these modern day Pastors, preachers, evangelist and teachers are selling a watered down version of the Word for a profit.
They are more concerned about not offending the paying masses, and maintaining the status quo than they are spreading the Gospel for what it is on its face.
The introduction of the internet has vastly improved the access of information overall, unfortunately the internet is an un-policed environment, so to date, the information on the internet is subjective. Anyone can post information at anytime true or false, without validity or context. It is a place for ALL information. Which means it is difficult to find reliable information one way or another in the area of God and Faith, this is an expanded truth. There is no one trusted source for information beyond the purchase of a Bible or other writings. Exposes’ are at the very least again, subjective.
Part of the intention of this writing is to share another perspective about what exist and what the Christian Church does NOT openly share with its parishners i.e. the Apocrypha, the Septuagint, the Vulgate, Polyglot Bible, Dead sea scrolls and the like. These writings are not claimed as any authority above or equal to the Bible itself by me in this writing, but merely an effort to expose the 800 pound gorilla in the room, the Christian church purposely ignores.
Not because it is a secret or a denial of these writings, but because the Christian faith believes that these things are confusing and you have enough to worry about just reading your Bible.
But we should offer some clarification to understand the background of the Bible and the other books that have been written and used as a means of study and teachings of God. Many of these books, other than the Bible have been the center of confusion and manipulation of the church over the centuries. This summary of these books is intended to share a point of view in the overall scheme of what the proper perspective of the writings are from a Christians point of view.
The basis of the research on the Bible in this writing is to get some historic background on who actually translated the Bible and to shed some perspective on the companion pieces written over the years.
The Bible has been translated into English a number of times, in 1380 John Wiclif, was the first to translate the entire Bible into English. But, he did it using the Latin Vulgate. Tyndale in 1534, Cranmer in 1539, Geneva in 1557, the Puritan Bible, written by William Whittingham & Anthony Gilby, this Bible which the Queen Mary of England did NOT want translated into English had margins with over 300,000 notes to help in the understanding of the scriptures. This Bible was printed from 1560-1644.
The King James in 1611 - Best Choice and best translation
This translation was done using the original scrolls in Hebrew and Greek and commissioned by King James Charles Stuart who was born on June 19, 1566 at Edinburg Castle in Scotland.
There have been a number of other English translations since the KJV, but most of them have borrowed from the KJV.
THE CANONS
The term Bible refers to the collections of canonical religious writings of Judaism and of Christianity.
Canonical, this word is used by theologians and canon lawyers to refer to the canons of the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Anglican Churches adopted by ecumenical councils.
In the 20th century, the Roman Catholic Church revised its canon law in 1917 and then again in 1981 into the modern Code of Canon Law.
This code is no longer merely a compilation of papal decrees and councilor legislation, but a more completely developed body of international church law. It is analogous to the English system of Statute law.
Canonical can also mean "part of the canon", i.e., one of the books comprising the biblical canon, as opposed to apocryphal books. Canonization is the process by which a person is recognized as a saint.
Canon law is the term used for the internal ecclesiastical law which governs various churches, most notably the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Churches and the Anglican Communion of churches.)
The books that are considered “CANON” in the Bible vary depending upon the historic tradition using or defining it. These variations are a reflection of the range of traditions and councils that have convened on the subject.
The Jewish version of the Bible, the Tanakh, or Torah, is divided into three parts: the Teaching, the Prophets, and the Writings.
The Christian version of the Bible includes books of the Tanakh, but includes additional books and reorganizes them into two parts:
The books of the Old Testament primarily sourced from the Tanakh (with some variations), and the 27 books of the New Testament contain books originally written primarily in Greek.
Some versions of the Christian Bible have a separate Apocrypha section for the books not considered canonical by the tradition or sometimes the publisher.
As of 2016, the Bible, or some portion of it, has been translated into more than 2,300 languages or dialects, most all of which are born from the original translation of the KJV.
ALL KJV BIBLES PUBLISHED BEFORE 1640 INCLUDED THE APOCRYPHA.
In 1826, the British and Foreign Bible Society decided to only distribute Bibles containing the Apocrypha in special cases. Since then most modern editions of the Bible and re-printings of the King James Bible omit the Apocrypha section. Many modern re-printings of the Clementine Vulgate and Douay-Rheims version no longer contain the Apocrypha section. Many of the more modern translations and revisions do not contain an Apocrypha section at all.
There are some exceptions to this trend, however. Some editions of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible include not only the Apocrypha, but also the third and fourth books of the Maccabees, and Psalm 151; the RSV Apocrypha also lists the Letter of Jeremiah (Epistle of Jeremy in the KJV) as separate from the book of Baruch, following the Orthodox tradition.
Jerome rejected the Deuterocanonical books when he was translating the Bible into Latin circa 450 CE. This was because no Hebrew version of these texts could be found, even though they were present in the Greek Old Testament (the Septuagint).
They eventually were accepted by the Church, and most of them remained part of the Bible. Protestants rejected these books during the Reformation as lacking divine authority. They either excised them completely or placed them in a third section of the Bible.
OTHER SIGNIFICANT WRITINGS
THE POLYGLOT BIBLE - Best in Choice
The Complutensian (A city near Madrid) Polyglot Bible is the name given to the first printed Polyglot of the entire Bible, initiated and financed by Cardinal Francisco Jimenez de Cisneros (1436-1517). It includes the first printed editions of the Greek New Testament, the complete Septuagint, and the Targum Onkelos. (the official eastern (Babylonian) interpretation of the Torah) Of the 600 printed, only 123 are known to have survived to date.
The Polyglot Bible displays the text of the Hebrew, Septuagint Greek, New Testament Greek, Vulgate Latin, and King James Versions of the Bible in columnar format.
The Complutensian Polyglot Bible was published as a six-volume set. The first four volumes contain the Old Testament. Each page consists of three parallel columns of text: Hebrew on the outside, the Latin Vulgate in the middle, and the Greek Septuagint on the inside. On each page of the Pentateuch, the Aramaic text (the Targum Onkelos (or Unkelus), is the official eastern (Babylonian) targum to the Torah. However, its early origins may have been western, in Israel. Its authorship is attributed to Onkelos.) and its own Latin translation are added at the bottom. The fifth volume, the New Testament, consists of parallel columns of Greek and the Latin Vulgate. The sixth volume contains various Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek dictionaries and study aids.
The New Testament was completed and printed in 1514, but its publication was delayed while work on the Old Testament continued, so they could be published together as a complete work. In the meantime, word of the Complutensian project reached Desiderius Erasmus in Rotterdam, (Desiderius Erasmus was a classical scholar who wrote in a "pure" Latin style. Although he remained a Roman Catholic throughout his lifetime, he was critical of what he considered the excesses of the Catholic Church.) who produced his own printed edition of the Greek New Testament. Erasmus obtained an exclusive four-year publishing privilege from Emperor Maximilian and Pope Leo X in 1516. Erasmus' text became known as the Textus Receptus, and later editions were the basis for the King James Version of the New Testament.
THE SEPTUAGINT (LXX)
The Septuagint is a collection of Jewish scriptures, largely the Hebrew Bible, in Koine Greek, (Koine Greek "common Greek", is the popular form of Greek which emerged in post-antiquity c.300 BC – AD 300), and marks the third period in the history of the Greek language. Other names for Koine Greek are Alexandrian, Hellenistic, Common, or New Testament Greek.
Koine is important not only to the history of the Greeks for being their first common dialect, but also for its impact on Western culture as a common language for the Mediterranean.
It was also the original language of the New Testament of the Christian Bible as well as the medium for the teaching and spreading of Christianity. Koine Greek was unofficially a first or second language in the Roman Empire. The Septuagint was translated in stages between the 3rd and 1st centuries BC in Alexandria.
It incorporates the oldest of several ancient translations of the Hebrew Bible into Greek. The word Septuagint means "seventy" in Latin and derives from a tradition that states seventy-two Jewish scholars (seventy being the nearest round number) translated the Pentateuch (or Torah) from Hebrew into Greek for one of the Ptolemaic kings, Ptolemy II Philadelphus, 285–246 BC. Since Alexander the Great (356-323 BC), Greek had become the common language of the eastern Mediterranean.
The Septuagint includes some books that are not in the Hebrew Bible. Many Protestant Bibles follow the Jewish canon and exclude these books. Eastern Orthodox Christians use the Septuagint itself.
The Septuagint was held with great respect in ancient times; Philo and Josephus ascribed divine inspiration to its authors. Besides the Old Latin versions, the LXX is also the basis for the Slavonic, Syro-Hexaplar (but not the Peshitta), Old Armenian, Old Georgian and Coptic versions of the Old Testament.
It is of significance for all Christians and for bible scholars, the LXX is quoted by the Christian New Testament and by the Apostolic Fathers. While Jews have not used the LXX in worship or religious study since the second century AD, recent scholarship has brought renewed interest in it in Judaic Studies. Some of the Dead Sea scrolls attest to Hebrew texts other than those on which the Masoretic Text was based. The oldest surviving codices of LXX (Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus) date to the fourth century AD.
The Codex Vaticanus is one of the oldest and most valuable extant manuscripts of the Greek Bible. It is likely slightly older than Codex Sinaiticus, both of which were probably transcribed in the 4th century. It is written in Greek, on vellum (Calf skin), with uncial letters. Because it was not often used, it has survived to the present day in very good condition.
Jewish scholars first translated the Torah into Greek in the third century BC. Further books were translated over the next two centuries. It is not altogether clear which was translated when, or where; some may even have been translated twice, into different versions, and then revised.
The quality and style of the different translators varied considerably from book to book, from the literal to paraphrasing to interpretative. According to one assessment "the Pentateuch is reasonably well translated, but the rest of the books, especially the poetical books, are often very poorly done.
The work of the translation progressed gradually, and new books were added to the collection, the compass of the Greek Bible came to be somewhat indefinite.
The Pentateuch always maintained its pre-eminence as the basis of the canon; but the prophetic collection changed its aspect by having various writings incorporated into it.
Some of the newer works, those called Apocrypha in Greek, are not included in the Hebrew canon. Among these books are Maccabees and the Wisdom of Ben Sira. Also, the Septuagint version of some works, like Daniel and Esther, are longer than those in the Masoretic Text. Some of the later books (Wisdom of Solomon, 2 Maccabees, and others were composed in Greek.
The Septuagint did not include other well-known Jewish documents such as Enoch or Jubilees or other writings that are now part of the Pseudepigrapha. Apocrypha that is considered to be falsely attributed works.
It is not known what principles were used to determine the contents of the Septuagint beyond the Law and the Prophets.
Modern scholarship holds that the LXX was written during the 3rd through 1st centuries BC. But nearly all attempts at dating specific books, with the exception of the Pentateuch (early- to mid-3rd century BC), are tentative and without consensus. Lastly, the Septuagint has a 151st Psalm which is not contained in any of the other versions.
THE VULGATE
The Vulgate is an early 5th century version of the Bible in Latin, which is largely the result of the work of Jerome.
Jerome 347 – September 30, 420 is best known as the translator of the Bible from Greek and Hebrew into Latin. He also was a Christian apologist. Jerome's edition of the Bible, the Vulgate, is still an important text of the Roman Catholic Church. He is recognized by the Roman Catholic Church as a canonized Saint and Doctor of the Church.
DEAD SEA SCROLLS
The scrolls were found in 11 caves, ranging in distance of 125m (Cave 4) to about 1000m (Cave 1) from the settlement at Qumran, located 1km off the northwest shore of the Dead Sea. None of them were found at the actual settlement. It is generally accepted that a Bedouin goat- or sheep-herder by the name of Mohammed Ahmed el-Hamed (nicknamed edh-Dhib, "the wolf") made the first discovery toward the beginning of 1947.
The Dead Sea scrolls consist of roughly 900 documents, including texts from the Hebrew Bible, discovered between 1956 and 1979 in eleven caves in and around the Wadi Qumran (near the ruins of the ancient settlement of Khirbet Qumran, on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea) in the West Bank.
They include practically the only known surviving copies of Biblical documents made before 100 AD, and preserve evidence of considerable diversity of belief and practice within late Second Temple Judaism.
The Great Isaiah Scroll has been carbon dated to a range of 335 BC-107 BC. It is the second largest scroll found in Qumran, spanning 22 feet in length. The Isaiah scroll is also one of the most important of the scrolls found in Qumran, considering 18 copies of the scroll have been found in the caves.
The Nash Papyrus from Egypt, containing a copy of the Ten Commandments, is the only other Hebrew document of comparable antiquity.
While some of the scrolls were written on papyrus, a good portion were written on a brownish animal hide that appears to be Gevil. (type of animal hide Moses wrote on). The scrolls were written with feathers from a bird and the ink used was made from carbon black and white pigments. One scroll, appropriately named the Copper Scroll, consisted of thin copper sheets that were incised with text and then joined together.
About 80% to 85% of the Dead Sea Scrolls are written in one of three dialects of Hebrew: Biblical Hebrew (also known as Classical Hebrew), "Dead Sea Scroll Hebrew", or proto-Tannaitic Hebrew, as in the Copper Scroll and the MMT (or 4QMMT) text 4 meaning Cave 4, and Q meaning Qumran, MMT is the abbreviation of the Hebrew words, Miqsat Ma'aseh ha-Torah. Biblical Hebrew dominates in the Biblical scrolls, and DSS Hebrew in scrolls which some scholars believe were composed at Qumran. Also some scrolls are written in Aramaic and a few in Koine Greek.
The fragments span at least 800 texts that represent many diverse viewpoints, ranging from beliefs resembling those anciently attributed to the Essenes, to ideas which would appear to represent the tenets of other sects. About 30% are fragments from the Hebrew Bible, except the Book of Esther and the Book of Nehemiah. About 25% are traditional Israelite religious texts that are not in the canonical Hebrew Bible, such as the Book of 1 Enoch, the Book of Jubilees, and the Testament of Levi.
Another 30% contain Biblical commentaries or other texts such as the Community Rule, also known as "Discipline Scroll" or "Manual of Discipline", The Rule of the Congregation, The Rule of the Blessing and the War of the Sons of Light Against the Sons of Darkness (1QM, also known as the "War Scroll") related to the beliefs, regulations, and membership requirements of a Jewish sect, which some researchers continue to believe lived in the Qumran area. The rest of the fragments (about 15%) remain unidentified.
The Copper Scroll is one of the Dead Sea Scrolls found at Khirbet Qumran, but differs significantly from the others. Whereas the other scrolls are written on leather or papyrus, this scroll is written on metal: copper mixed with about 1% tin. Unlike the others, it is not a literary work, but contains a listing of locations at which various items of gold and silver are buried or hidden. It is currently on display at the Archaeological Museum in Amman, Jordan. The treasure it describes is worth at least one billion dollars today-circa 2008.
The copper scroll was found in 1952 in Cave 3 at Qumran, the last of 15, and is thus referred to as 3Q15. Two copper rolls were discovered off by themselves in the back of the cave. The metal being corroded, they could not be unrolled by conventional means. Professor H. Wright Baker, of the College of Technology at Manchester, England, cut the sheets into strips. It then became clear that the rolls were part of the same document. Low-quality photographs of the scrolls were taken and published. Scholars have found these to be difficult to work with, and have relied on a drawing of the text by scholar Józef Milik published in 1962. Another scholar, John Marco Allegro, published his translation in 1960. The scroll was re-photographed in 1988 with clearer precision, by P. Kyle McCarter, Jr.
The style of writing is unusual, different from the other scrolls. It is written in a style similar to Mishnaic Hebrew. There is an unusual orthography, and the script has the features resulting from someone writing on copper with a stylus. There is also the anomaly that seven of the names of locations are followed by a group of two or three Greek letters. The text is a listing of sixty-four locations; sixty-three of which are treasures of gold and silver, which have been estimated in the tons. The final listing points to a duplicate document with additional details.
Some scholars believe that this document could be the Silver Scroll - a scroll which archaeologists are still searching for in the Israeli desert.
He is also recognized as a Saint by the Eastern Orthodox Church, where he is known as St. Jerome of Stridonium or Blessed Jerome ("Blessed" in this context does not have the sense of being less than a Saint, as in the West).
He was commissioned by Pope Damasus I, in 382 to make a revision of the old Latin translations.
Its Old Testament is the first Latin version translated directly from the Hebrew Tanakh rather than from the Greek Septuagint. It became the definitive and officially promulgated Latin version of the Bible of the Roman Catholic Church and ultimately took the name versio vulgata, which means simply "the published translation".
There are 76 books in the Clementine edition of the Vulgate Bible: 46 in the Old Testament, 27 in the New Testament, and 3 in the Apocrypha.
In Jerome's day, the word Vulgata was applied to the Greek Septuagint. The Latin Biblical texts used before the Vulgate are usually referred to collectively as the Vetus Latina, or "Old Latin Bible", or occasionally the "Old Latin Vulgate". (Here "Old Latin" means that they are old and written in Latin, not that they are written in Old Latin.)
The translations in the Vetus Latina were accumulated piecemeal over a century or more; they were not translated by a single person or institution, nor uniformly edited. The individual books varied in quality of translation and style, and different manuscripts witness wide variations in readings. Jerome, in his preface to the Vulgate gospels, commented that there were "as many translations as there are manuscripts."
The Old Testament books were translated from the Greek Septuagint, not from the Hebrew. The older Latin version remained in use in some circles even after Jerome's Vulgate became the accepted standard throughout the Western Church. Some in Gaul continued to prefer the Vetus Latina version for centuries.
Jerome did not embark on the work with the intention of creating a new version of the whole Bible.
He had been commissioned by Pope Damasus in 382 to revise the Old Latin text of the four Gospels from the best Greek text, and by the time of Damasus' death in 384 he had thoroughly completed this task, together with a more cursory revision from the Greek Septuagint of the Old Latin text of the Psalms.
How much the rest of the New Testament he then revised is difficult to judge today, but little of his work survived in the Vulgate text. In 385 Jerome was forced out of Rome, and eventually settled in Bethlehem, where he produced a new version of the Psalms, translated from the Hexaplar (the term for an edition of the Bible in six versions.) Greek text. He also appears to have undertaken further new translations of other Septuagint books into Latin; but again, these are not found in the Vulgate text.
But from 390 to 405 Jerome switched to translating directly from the Hebrew, and began a new translation of all 39 books in the Hebrew Bible, including a further, third, version of the Psalms, which survives in a very few Vulgate manuscripts.
In his prologues, Jerome described those books or portions of books in the Septuagint that were not found in the Hebrew as being non-canonical: he called them Apocrypha, but they are found in all complete manuscripts and editions of the Vulgate.
Of the Old Testament text not found in the Hebrew, Jerome translated Tobit and Judith from the Aramaic; and from the Greek, the additions to Esther from the Septuagint, and the additions to Daniel from Theodotion. The others, Baruch, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, 1 and 2 Maccabees, 3 and 4 Esdras and the Prayer of Manasses, retain their Old Latin renderings in the Vulgate manuscripts.
Their style is still markedly distinguishable from Jerome's. In the Vulgate text, Jerome's translations from the Greek additions to Esther and Daniel are recombined with his separate translations of these books from the Hebrew.
A number of early manuscripts of the Vulgate still survive today.
THE CODEX AMIATINUS
Dating from the 8th century, the Codex Amiatinus is the earliest surviving manuscript of the complete Bible in the Latin Vulgate version. It dates to the turn of the 8th century and is considered to be the most accurate copy of St. Jerome's text.
THE CODEX FULDENSIS
The Codex Fuldensis is a manuscript based on the Latin Vulgate made between 541 and 546. It contains the 27 canonical books of the New Testament, the Epistle to the Laodiceans, and a copy of Jerome's Prologue to the Canonical Gospels. The codex dates from around 545, contains most of the New Testament in the Vulgate version, but the four Vulgate gospels are harmonized into a continuous narrative, also referred to as Diatessaron.
Over the course of the Middle Ages, the Vulgate had been victimized by human error in the countless copies made of the text in monasteries across Europe.
Not one copy was the same as the other as scribes added, removed, misspelled, or mis-corrected verses in the Latin Bible.
About 550, Cassiodorus (Flavius Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus, Senator c. 485 - 585), commonly known as Cassiodorus, was a Roman statesman and great writer, serving in the administration of Theodoric the Great, king of the Ostrogoths.) Cassiodorus made an attempt at restoring the Vulgate to its original purity.
Alcuin of York oversaw efforts to make a corrected Vulgate, which he presented to Charlemagne in 801. Similar attempts were made by Theodulphus, Bishop of Orléans (787-821); Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury (1070-1089); Stephen Harding, Abbot of Cîteaux (1109-1134); and Deacon Nicolaus Maniacoria (about the beginning of the 13th century). The University of Paris assembled lists of approved writings where variants had been noted. Unfortunately, many of the writings recommended are now known to be interpretations.
Though the advent of printing greatly reduced the potential of human error and increased the consistency and uniformity of the text, the earliest editions of the Vulgate merely reproduced the manuscripts that were readily available to the publishers.
Of the hundreds of early editions, the most notable today is Mazarin edition published by Johann Gutenberg and Johann Fust in 1455.
In 1504 the first Vulgate with variant readings was published in Paris. One of the texts of the Complutensian Polyglot was an edition of the Vulgate made from ancient manuscripts and corrected to agree with the Greek.
Erasmus Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus sometimes known as Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam (October 27, 1466/1469 – July 12, 1536) was a Dutch humanist and theologian.) published an edition corrected to agree better with the Greek and Hebrew in 1516.
Other corrected editions were published by Pagninus in 1518, Cardinal Cajetan, Steuchius in 1529, Clarius in 1542, and others. In 1528, Robertus Stephanus published the first critical edition, which formed the basis of the later Sistine and Clementine editions.
The critical edition of John Hentenius of Louvain followed in 1547. In 1550 Stephanus fled to Geneva where in 1555 he issued his final critical edition of the Vulgate, which was the first complete Bible with full chapter and verse divisions, and which became the standard Biblical reference text for the late 16th century of Reformed theology.
After the Reformation, when the Catholic Church strove to counter the attacks and refute the doctrines of Protestantism, the Vulgate was reaffirmed in the Council of Trent as the sole, authorized Latin text of the Bible.
To reinforce this declaration, the council commissioned the pope to make a standard text of the Vulgate out of the countless editions produced during the Renaissance and manuscripts produced during the Middle Ages.
The actual first manifestation of this authorized text did not appear until 1590. It was sponsored by Pope Sixtus V (1585-90) and known as the Sistine Vulgate. It was based on the edition of Robertus Stephanus corrected to agree with the Greek, but it was hurried into print and suffered from many printing errors. It was soon replaced by a new edition by Clement VIII (1592-1605) who immediately ordered corrections and revisions to be made.
This new revised version was based more on the Hentenian edition. It is called today the Sixto-Clementine Vulgate, or simply the Clementine, although it is Sixtus' name which appears on the title page. Clement published three printings of this edition, in 1592, 1593 and 1598.
The Clementine differed from the manuscripts on which it was ultimately based in that it grouped the various prefaces of St. Jerome together at the beginning, and it removed 3rd and 4th Esdras and the Prayer of Manasses from the Old Testament and placed them in an appendix.
The Psalter of the Clementine Vulgate, like that of almost all earlier editions, is the Gallicanum. The Versio Gallicana or Psalterium Gallicanum was Jerome's second revision, which he made from the Greek of the Hexapla ca. 386-391.
This became the psalter of the Vulgate bible, and the basis for the Gregorian chant. It became the standard psalter used in the liturgy throughout the West from the time of Charlemagne until it was replaced in the 2nd edition of the breviary by the Versio Nova Vulgata in 2000. It is still used today by indult (permission or privledge) in some monasteries and churches and by traditionalist Catholics.
The Clementine Vulgate of 1592 became the standard Bible text of the Roman Rite of the Roman Catholic Church until 1979, when the Nova Vulgata was promulgated.
STUTTGART EDITION
This Vulgate was first published in 1969 (5th edition, 2007) by the German Bible Society (Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft), based in Stuttgart. This edition, alternatively titled Biblia Sacra Vulgata or Biblia Sacra iuxta vulgatam versionem is a "manual edition" in that it reduces much of the information in the big multi-volume critical editions that preceded it into a single compact volume. It seeks to reconstruct an early Vulgate text closer to that which Jerome produced 1,600 years ago. It is based on earlier critical editions of the Vulgate
NOVA VULGATA
The Nova Vulgata (Bibliorum Sacrorum nova vulgata editio, is currently the typical Latin edition published by the See of Rome and approved for use in the liturgy. The Second Vatican Council in Sacrosanctum Concilium mandated a revision of the Latin Psalter in accord with modern textual and linguistic studies, while preserving or refining its Christian Latin style.
In 1965 Pope Paul VI appointed a commission to revise the rest of the Vulgate following the same principles. The Commission published its work in eight annotated sections, inviting criticism from Catholic scholars as the sections were published. The Latin Psalter was published in 1969; the New Testament was completed by 1971 and the entire Nova Vulgata was published in 1979.
A second edition was published in 1986.