VERSIONS FROM THE SEPTUAGINT

(1) The "Vetus Itala" or Old Latin

The origin of the oldest Latin version or versions is involved in much uncertainty. Some contend that there was but one primitive version, others show with strong arguments that there were several.

It is generally admitted that long before the end of the second century, Latin translations, though rude and defective, of Tobias, I and II Machabees, and Baruch were in use and that towards the close of the same period, there existed at least one version of the whole Bible, based on the Septuagint and on Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. This was the Vetus Itala, or Old Latin.

Its New Testament is possessed complete in some thirty-eight manuscripts, but its Old-Testament text has survived only in parts. As it contained both the protocanonical and the deuterocanonical books and parts of books of the Old Testament, it figured importantly in the history of the Biblical Canon.

It exercised a vast influence on the Vulgate and through it on modern translations and the Church language. In the latter part of the fourth century, the text of the Itala was found to have variant readings in different parts of the Church.

Pope Damasus therefore requested St. Jerome to undertake its revision. Guided by old Greek manuscripts, he corrected its mistakes and emended such translations as affected the true sense of the Gospels, and probably followed the same method in revising all the books of the New Testament, which he put forth at Rome about 383.

In that year, working from the commonly received text of the Septuagint, he made a cursory revision of the Psalter, which was used in the Roman Church until the time of St. Pius V, and is still retained at St. Peter's, Rome, in the Ambrosian Rite at Milan, and in the Invitatory psalm of Matins in the modern Breviary.

About 388, using the Hexaplar text as a basis, he revised the Psalter more carefully and this recension, called the Gallican Psalter from becoming current in Gaul, is now read in the Breviary and in the Vulgate. From the same sources he later corrected all the Old-Testament books that he judged canonical, but even in his own day all this revision, excepting the book of Job was lost. The unrevised text of the greater part of the Old Latin Version continued in use in the Western Church until it was supplanted by the Vulgate.

From: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15367a.htm -- Reformatted for easier reading.