https://www.facebook.com/groups/purebible/posts/602650806493479/
Lorenzo Valla - Bible scholarship from 1440 to Erasmus
Greetings. In James White's book he writes about Lorenzo Valla (1405/1407 -1457) on p. 14 and p. 15 of the 1995 edition, p 36-38 of 2009.
No source is given for his Valla "scholarship", although he references Mangan and Bainton for Erasmus. It would take a while to check if he is mangling one of those authors.
James White
"While the Latin Vulgate had sufficed for centuries, now men were seeking to examine the basis upon which the Vulgate had been translated. In the fifteenth century Lorenzo Valla, an Italian humanist who was far ahead of his time in the scholarly realm, began to study the text of Jerome's work. He discovered that the text in the currently circulating editions of the Bible differed in a number of places from what he found in Jerome's commentaries on the Bible. He reasoned that since Jerome's commentaries were seldom read and hence seldom copied, they would be less likely to have suffered the normal changes that take place when a document is copied by hand than the text of the Bible, which was constantly being copied. As a result, he produced a corrected version of Jerome's work, one that was, in point of fact, much closer to Jerome's original than the text in use in his day in the Roman church."
The information is interesting, and gives a good window for some of the skewed understanding of the contras. (And, to be fair, also some AV defenders who do not understand the rcc Bible scholarship from 1440-1540.)
First note, despite the sense of White, Valla did not produce a Vulgate edition, he wrote commentary and annotations on the text.
Next, James White is very off on his scholarship, since Valla extensively referenced the Greek mss and patristics, a fundamental point about which White appears clueless. Valla had some references to the Vulgate commentary of Jerome (from which distinctions to the Vulgate text Valla conjectured that maybe Jerome did not author the Vulgate).
Valla had access to Greek manuscripts and also Greek patristic writings and commentaries likely from the Vatican. And also from Cardinal Bessarion, who was a Byzantine theologian. His notes frequently use the Greek to comment on the Latin text, in terms of phrase variations, vocabulary and grammatical precision.
The rcc was actually rather interested in the use of the Greek Bible for the understanding and correction of the Vulgate texts right up to the time of the counter-reformation of Trent, around 1545. At that time they circled their horses in opposition to the pure Reformation Bible from the Greek Received Text. (Even after that the Greek remained a secondary factor in trying to make a sensible Vulgate edition.)
Valla is very interesting because of his exposure of the Donation of Constantine as a forgery. Interestingly, that had a political point for his patrons, and it appears to have been done as excellent scholarship. And Valla faced a heresy accusation (one question was his idea that the Apostle's Creed was not from the Apostles, another was a work he did on the Holy Spirit.) where King Alfonso V of Aragon intervened in his behalf. Valla's Latin textual interpretations and perceived criticisms of Jerome were attacked by Poggio Bracciolini (no slouch) ... however the results of all that were simply the spirited discourse of the times. Valla even ended up with a position with the curia.
Here is a small example to start, later I hope to add more. One note, Giannozzo Manetti (1396–1459) might also be considered the first significant Biblical scholar of the Renaissance.
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Biblical Humanism and Scholasticism in the Age of Erasmus
edited by Erika Rummel
http://books.google.com/books?id=A6tvzRBSkFsC&pg=PA17
"Criticism of Biblical Humanists in Quattrocentro Italy"
John Monfasani
"Lorenzo Valla was the first significant biblical scholar of the Renaissance. He set himself the task of comparing the Vulgate to the Greek text of the New Testament during his amazingly fruitful period 1435-1448, at the south ltalian court of King Alfonso the Magnanimous."
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I'll thank James White for encouraging me to look more closely at Valla, since when I read his paragraph above it did not pass the smell test. However most of my earlier background was through the lens of the Erasmus edition. It is not hard to come up to speed on the basics of the times and rather fascinating. I'll plan on posting some urls later, since different scholars approach the questions from different angles.
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A short secondary White comment is here:
http://vintage.aomin.org/erasmus.html
"in 1504, he ran across Lorenzo Valla’s Notes on the New Testament in the Praemonstratensian Abbey of Parc near Louvain. So taken was he with Valla’s work that he published it at Paris the same year. This was a risky undertaking, for Valla certainly is not remembered as a saint, and his emendations of the Vulgate text could bring nothing but attack from conservative Catholics. Valla’s scientific comparison of texts, however, pierced to Erasmus’s heart, and would eventually be seen twelve years later in his New Testament."
Actually Valla ended up as part of the curia, and they wanted him to write a history, when he passed away. Not a saint, but he was well respected.
