Robert Weber (1904–1980)

The Latin Vulgate version of the Bible goes back to the fourth century. As with anything that old, it has developed a few problems in its long life.

Problems, as in, we don't have the original, and there are many manuscripts, and they don't agree. This means that the ideal edition of the Vulgate will include a critically established text, plus an apparatus showing the places where some of the significant manuscripts differ from that text.

The "Stuttgart Vulgate" is only the second edition to really fulfill that description (following the Wordsworth-White edition), and it is the first to do so in a reasonably portable format (Wordsworth-White was published in a series of large volumes). Thus there is truly no replacement for this edition.

On the other hand, one can only wish it were more substantial. The critical text doesn't feel all that strong to me. On the other hand, it's hard to be sure -- because the apparatus is simply too small. You can't reasonably reconstruct the text of any of the manuscripts from it, because none of them -- not even the astounding Codex Amiatinus, the best Vulgate manuscript in existence -- is shown in full. Taking Luke 1 as a sample, I count only 38 points of variation in the apparatus. That's in eighty verses! By contrast, Augustine Merk's edition has 40 points of variation in the Latin, the Nestle-Aland Greek edition has 64 variants, and Merk's Greek side has 80 variants. And only about a dozen manuscripts are cited at any given point, and several of those are part of the same family. The bottom line is, a textual critic (that is, one who wishes to reconstruct the text of the Vulgate independently) simply doesn't have enough data to work with. The only choice is Wordsworth-White -- now more than a century old. The urgent need for a full-scale new Vulgate edition remains.

There is no reason to think that it will happen any time soon. So don't hesitate to buy this edition. Just be aware that it isn't "the last word."… (més)