The Vulgate New Testament outside the Gospels

Abstract

Abstract Abstract: The Vulgate Acts, Epistles, and Apocalypse are first attested in manuscripts dated around the sixth century: these texts, united with Jerome’s revision of the Gospels, have been transmitted in the manuscript tradition under the name of Jerome. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the attribution to Jerome was questioned and Pelagius was proposed as the reviser of these writings. Another hypothesis, that the reviser was Rufinus the Syrian, a member of the Pelagian circle, was advanced on the basis of the dating of the Primum quaeritur, the prologue to the Vulgate Pauline Epistles, and the correspondence of Rufinus’s citations to the Vulgate. However, this theory is founded on uncertain grounds. This chapter assesses earlier hypotheses and underlines the necessity of addressing the problem of the authorship of the Vulgate New Testament outside the Gospels from different perspectives and employing new methodologies.