03 November 2011

"Discoveries" in the Vulgate

It was preschool mom's night out last night, so the obvious thing for me to do was spend some quality time with online versions of the Vulgate Bible. It was shocking and thought-provoking to see the word "holocaust" (and its Latin equivalents) used all over Vayikra (Leviticus). Part of me now wants to start using "Shoah" instead, at least in contexts where people would know what I'm talking about. Or maybe "Nazi genocide"?

On a lighter note (well, almost anything would be lighter than that), I really enjoyed the Vulgate (well, Duoay-Rheims) translation of Kohelet (Ecclesiastes) 1:15:
The perverse are hard to be corrected, and the number of fools is infinite.
As opposed to, for example, the King James:
That which is crooked cannot be made straight: and that which is wanting cannot be numbered.