St Jerome

[Dr. John E. McLaughlin and Michelle R. Sutton]

Peter &/or Graham wrote:

> Sheila mentions Jerome's Latin style, and names:
> (a) the choice of Greeek text to translate:
> >It is a pious work but dangerously presumptive to pick the one right text
> >from all the possible texts,

> (b) the problems of introducing new translations which are different from
> those already in existence:
> >cry out that I am a sacrilegious forger because I have dared to add,
> >change or correct anything in the old books?

> (c) the need for the stress to be on the message, not the beauty of style:
> >  A translation for the Church, even if it has beauty of style, ought to
> >hide and even shun it,

> None of this has anything to do with the actual language.

It sounds more like Sheila got one to many raps on the knuckles from the nun
in her parochial school and has another agenda.  I agree.  No matter one's
religious affiliation or attitudes, this has got nothing to do with language.
Were it not for Bible translation and the efforts of the Summer Institute of
Linguistics and Wycliffe Bible Translators we would know virtually nothing
about hundreds of languages of New Guinea, South and Central America, Asia and
Africa.  Christian evangelization has probably been one of the greatest boons
to linguistic knowledge in history (note our only record of Gothic, etc.).

John McLaughlin
Utah State University