Is there really any dispute about Jerome's authorship of the Vulgate Prologue?

[Steven Avery]

Here is a short summary. It is planned for tweaking.

Through the middle ages, Jerome's authorship was unquestioned, and the Prologue was mentioned, eg. by the Glossa Ordinaria.

In the Reformation era, the authorship was again unquestioned. Erasmus was greatly embarrassed by the evidence when he was trying to justify the omission of the heavenly witnesses. Erasmus ended up essentially accusing Jerome of having invented the heavenly witnesses. In that economy, the Vulgate Prologue would be like a "two-fer" supporting work by Jerome to support his heavenly witnesses handiwork. This was one of the most absurdists positions ever taken by Erasmus, especially as he normally was a fan of Jeromes!

In the late 1600s there were some dabbles to doubt authenticity. A major point was that it did not seem to show up until the 800s, but now we know it is in the earliest Vulgate manuscript, Codex Fuldensis.

Martianay and the Benedictine Maurists came up with a group of reasons for doubting authenticity. Five, I think. Each one weaker than the next. However, this became the standard rallying cry. The reasons were all roundly refuted, from Genoud, who called them frivilous, through to Charles Forster.

 

[Steven Avery]

The latest one to claim that there were other authors of the Vulgate Prologue is on the BVDB forum, a JW named matt13weedhacker.
https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/bib...ss-county-new-york-world-clas-t5868-s230.html

"*He*" (actually "we", but don't let the facts get in your way either) the writers (originally anonymous, but successive generations of copyists began adding the psuedonym "*Jerome*" to the manuscripts) actually wrote the Latin word "committentes" (I'll put that in capitals Steven so you can't miss it "COMMITTENTES") with a C, (not an O), and with a double M, and a double T.

/// And EVEN IF "*Jerome*" really did write this text for argument's sake (i.e. the Vulgate Canonical Epistles Prologue), then Avery needs to come completely clean with his reader's and acknowledge openly the very real corruption (retrospective-editing) of the key word "committentes" by later copyists - not withstanding either - ALL THE REST OF THE VARIANTS in the manuscript copies of this text (to which he is totally - and/or willfully - ignorant of).

The committentes issue was discussed with Grantley McDonald, and I have some here.
https://www.purebibleforum.com/index.php?threads/vulgate-prologue-super-evidence.56/page-2#post-6818

Since Matt does not even offer an alternative translation, this all goes nowhere. The context clearly is the omission of the heavenly witnesses.

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Matt should expound on this theory.

the writers (originally anonymous, but successive generations of copyists began adding the psuedonym (sic) "*Jerome*" to the manuscripts)

Let him bring over his ideas here, or a Facebook group like PureBible or Textus Receptus Academy, or CARM, or anywhere that is capable of real discussion.

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[Steven Avery]

Here is Grantley McDonald putting the “committentes” issue to rest.
https://forums.carm.org/threads/syriac-peshitta-kjvo-pure-line-and-the-comma.9270/page-5#post-693149

https://thefathersmonarchy.wordpres...ologue-to-the-catholic-or-canonical-epistles/

Grantley McDonald
Your interesting observation raises many questions about the practices of the editors of this text in the past. That they should have missed this reading in so many manuscripts staggers belief.

However, I doubt that “committentes” is the correct reading. The author – incidentally, I don’t believe that it was Jerome – claims that some scribes or translators write down (“ponentes”) the water, spirit and blood, but miss out the Father, Word and Spirit. The only possible sense I can wrest from “committentes” is that some scribes or translators “commit to writing” the testimony of the Father, Word and Spirit. “Committentes” would thus mean the same thing as “ponentes” – but then of course the author’s pointed contrast disappears. He is unhappy that some authors leave out the Father, Word and Spirit, not that they also commit these words to the page. Arguing simply from the sense of the passage, I think “omittentes” must be the correct reading.

There are several possible ways in which the “o-” could have been read as “com-”. Once this had happened in one manuscript copy, it was likely transmitted to further copies unless later scribes intervened. It would be interesting to trace the variants in the entire text of the prologue in the various manuscripts to see if this variant could be isolated to a particular textual family. Of course, such an error could have happened independently more than once.

Firstly, the “c-” might have crept in through visual similarity with the “o-”. But this still leaves some details unexplained.

Alternatively, it is possible that Fuldensis (or its archetype) was copied from a defective exemplar in which this word was illegible or damaged (a real possibility if the archetype was written on papyrus). The scribe of Fuldensis might then simply have guessed at the missing letter or letters.

A third possibility is perhaps the most plausible: it is possible that an early scribe mistook the “o” for an abbreviation. The Tironian sign for “con-” or “com-”, preserved as an abbreviation in many different kinds of Latin hands through the middle ages, looks like a reversed “c”, which is easily confused with an “o”. (See Ulrich Friedrich Kopp, Tachygraphia veterum 2 [= Palaeographia critica vol. 2.2], p. 52). This would explain the misreading quite economically.

Then, as you have shown in some of the manuscripts, some later readers corrected “committentes” to “omittentes”, because they clearly realised that “committentes” just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

I’m so glad that you brought this to our collective attention. Even if we seem to be dealing with a rogue reading, you are quite right to ask what the absence of this variant from any critical edition says about editorial standards in the past. It is possible that the judgement of the editors of yesteryear was compromised by short library opening hours, poor lighting or failing eyesight. (Those filthy splotches in Fuldensis are caused by a reagent used in the nineteenth and early twentieth century to bring out faded letters, which shows that an early editor was really struggling to read this page.) However this oversight might have happened, I hope your discoveries encourage us to do better in the future.

I doubt that “committentes” is the correct reading.

Arguing simply from the sense of the passage, I think “omittentes” must be the correct reading.

they clearly realised that “committentes” just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.