The Vulgate and other ancient versions

After the exile many Jews spoke Aramaic, and readings in the synagogue came to be followed by an Aramaic rendering; these free, explaining translations were called targums. Many scholars think Nehemiah 8:8 describes this practice. The Targum of Onkelos on the Law took its standard form about the 2nd or 3rd century AD. Syriac-speaking Christians had Tatian’s Diatessaron, a blend of the four Gospels made about AD 170, and later the Peshitta, “the simple” version, revised about the end of the 4th century.

In the West the Old Latin, translated from the Greek, was in use by about AD 250. In 382 Pope Damasus asked the scholar Jerome to revise the Gospels; later, near Bethlehem, Jerome translated most of the Old Testament from Hebrew, about 390–405. Criticized at first, his work became the Vulgate, the “common” Bible; in 1546 the Council of Trent made it the official Latin Bible of the Catholic Church. Other peoples received the Bible in their own tongues, sometimes with a new alphabet: Coptic in Egypt by about the 3rd century, Gothic by Ulfilas in the 4th, Armenian in the 5th, Ge’ez in Ethiopia, and Slavonic by the brothers Cyril and Methodius in the 9th.