Do we still have the original Latin Vulgate translated by St. Jerome?
In a sense, unfortunately no. For one thing, the situation with the Latin Vulgate is quite similar to that of the Greek New Testament: first and foremost of all, we don’t have the original autographs penned by St. Jerome. Among the earliest manuscripts we have testifying to the text are Codex Fuldensis, dating between 541 and 546 (which actually has the four gospels combined into one narrative, a la the Diatessaron) and the Codex Amiatinus (ca. 716), the earliest complete copy we have. We’ll also need to consider human errors (misspellings, omissions, additions, etc.) and well-intentioned ‘corrections’ and accidents along the way: marginal notes were sometimes erroneously interpolated into the text and at other times, readings from Vetus Latina translations were introduced into the text. Just like the Greek New Testament manuscripts, the Vulgate text has evolved into various text-types. To quote from this article (well worth a read): The best “local” text is considered to be the Italia
