Expert: Fr. Michael - 5/4/2004

Question
I've been a Catholic all 23 years of my life, but was never interested very much in the Bible until I started reading the Greek New Testament this year.  The text I use is the 4th Edition of "The Greek New Testament" edited by Barbara Aland, Kurt Aland, et al.  I was curious whether this Greek edition was approved by the Catholic Church.  If not, what is the approved edition?  I was thinking that it might be St. Jerome's Latin translation, seeing that Latin is the language of the Church.  Any help clearing up my confusion would be greatly appreciated!

Answer
The only text accepted as authentic by the Roman Catholic Church is St. Jerome's Vulgate.  This is held to be free of error in faith and morals by the dogmatic Council of Trent.  St. Jerome, in addition to speaking, reading, and writing all three Sacred Languages (as no scholar of today can), had access to Greek manuscripts of the New Testament that are lost to modern scholars.

There is no Greek version of the New Testament that is particularly accepted over any other.  Certainly, the Aland version is one well-known modern edition.  The version I use is the one from the Pontifical Biblical Institute, edited by Merk, entitled Novum Testamentum Graece et Latine, in the version issued before Vatican Council II (1962-1965), when Modernist scholars started tampering with traditional texts.

As to the Vulgate texts, be sure that you get the authentic version.  The best is usually called Sixto-Clementine, after the popes under whom textual errors that had crept in were corrected.  There is a "Nova Vulgata" issued in 1983, but that has been tampered with in the period following on Vatican II, so should be avoided.

The Greek Old Testament, in the version known as the Septuagint, is generally held to have the authority equivalent to that of St. Jerome's Latin.  This arises from the fact that Our Lord quotes from it in the New Testament.