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Article: Translations and Editions
- Article from:
- Europe, 1450 to 1789: Encyclopedia of the Early Modern World
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CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2004 The Gale Group Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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TRANSLATIONS AND EDITIONS
The New Testament was written in Greek. The Hebrew Bible (to Christians, the Old Testament) also reached the earliest known world in Greek, in a translation known as the Septuagint (from the Latin
septuaginta,
'seventy', because it was traditionally thought to be the work of seventy-two Jewish scholars). The spread of the power of Rome led to the circulation in the Roman Empire of various translations into Latin of the Greek of both Testaments. St. Jerome's fourth-century Latin version (with the Old Testament translated from the original Hebrew) over time became the common one and was eventually christened the Vulgate (from the Latin
vulgata,
'popular'). That it ...