B Bible, Editions, and Translations in the Renaissance Grantley McDonald Faculty of Music, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK Abstract The invention of printing in the mid-fifteenth century greatly encouraged the dissemination and study of the bible in the original Hebrew and Greek, in ancient translations (most impor- tantly the Latin Vulgate), and, from the 1520s onward, a bewildering variety of translations into the European vernaculars. Increased access to the bible encouraged philological improvement of the text and new ways of read- ing and interpreting it, with profound implica- tions for philosophy and theology of all kinds. The Hebrew and Christian Scriptures from Antiquity to the Middle Ages While the bible was a centrally important text in the Middle Ages, its direct readership was limited to those who could understand the languages in which it was recorded and transmitted. Through- out Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and Renaissance, most Jews read or heard the Hebrew Bible either in its original language, in the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible and most of the intertestamental books (the Septuagint), or in one of several early Aramaic translations (the “Targums”). In Late Antiquity, many Christian readers on the northern edge of the Mediterranean could understand Greek, which permitted them to read the Septua- gint (which they called the Old Testament) and the Greek New Testament. In North Africa, knowl- edge of Greek was less widespread, and from the second and third centuries, parts of the Old and New Testaments were translated into Latin at dif- ferent times and places. These early translations are known collectively as the Old Latin (“Vetus Latina”). The Vetus Latina and the other early translations into various eastern languages pro- vide valuable evidence of the state of the Hebrew and Greek texts in the early centuries of Christian- ity (Barrera 1998). Encouraged by Pope Damasus and others, the Christian scholar Jerome under- took to retranslate some books (notably the Gos- pels) into better Latin, and to revise other portions of the Vetus Latina. His Greek manuscripts were evidently similar, but not identical to Codex Sinaiticus (א) and Codex Vaticanus (B); his Hebrew ones presented something similar to the Masoretic text. The result, later dubbed the Vul- gate, was not transmitted faithfully; some scribes reintroduced familiar features of the Vetus Latina or made small alterations to reflect doctrinal developments. Cassiodorus, Charlemagne, Theodulf of Orléans, Lanfranc, and others all attempted to restore Jerome’ s text. The Vulgate was not prescribed as the official Latin translation © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 M. Sgarbi (ed.), Encyclopedia of Renaissance Philosophy , https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02848-4_993-1