By George Desnoyers
One of the more interesting alterations of Scripture that have appeared through the centuries happened in the Latin Vulgate version originally prepared by Jerome. Jerome had been commissioned to prepare an authoritative Latin version of the Bible in 382 AD, and it was completed by the end of the 4th century. The version turned out to be very important in the church’s history. It was the standard Bible used throughout Europe for more than a thousand years.
Jerome had recommended that certain books which the Catholic Church calls “deuterocanonical books,” meaning “books of the second canon,” not be included in the new Latin version he was preparing. For the most part, he did so because he believed they had not originally been written in Hebrew. (It’s now known that at least many of them were originally written in Hebrew.) However Pope Damasus wasn’t satisfied with only one or two opinions. He canvased those he thought were the leading theologians of the period to get their opinions. Most of those canvased wanted the books included, so the Pope ordered Jerome to put them in. They were included, and they’ve been in Catholic Bibles ever since. The deuterocanonical books are usually not included in Protestant Bibles, and when they are, they are grouped together, usually in the back, and referred to as “the Apocrypha.”
One of the deuterocanonical books is a very interesting little book called Tobit. Tobit contains some good stories. In one, Sarah had married seven husbands. Each one of the seven had died on his wedding night after going in to Sarah. Then Sarah was given by marriage contract to Tobias, the nearest kinsman to the other husbands, and also a relative of Sarah’s. After the door to their bedroom was closed, Tobias and Sarah prayed and then fell asleep without making love. Unlike the previous seven husbands, Tobias didn’t die. Sarah’s father had prepared a grave for Tobias, but was pleasantly surprised when the door to the bedroom was opened and Tobias and Sarah were both found to be alive.
One of the alterations of Scripture that entered via the Vulgate was a change in this little story. It was altered to make it three nights before Tobias and Sarah consummated their marriage, instead of just one night. And when Tobias did finally approach Sarah romantically after three days of prayer, The Vulgate put these words into the mouth of Tobias: “And now, Lord, you know that I am not taking this sister of mine out of lust, but only out of love for offspring.” In recent years the Catholic Church has recognized the tampering that was done in the Vulgate, possibly even by Jerome, and has changed its newer translations to reflect the original version of the story.
The Vulgate’s version of Tobit was important through a long period of the church’s history. For one thing, the story of Tobias and Sarah was used to support the church’s long-held contention that the purpose of sex is procreation, and not pleasure. For centuries the Church insisted that newlyweds wait three days before consummating their marriage, following the example of Tobias and Sarah. The purpose of the requirement to abstain from sex for three days was to demonstrate to God that the man and woman were in control of their passions, and that they were only going to have marital relations for the purpose of having children.
For those of you who are thinking that this teaching could not possibly have been effective in controlling the marital behavior of newlyweds, you are wrong. The three days of abstention, called “Tobias days,” became a practice that was regularly followed by newlywed couples. Tobias days were honored by some newly married couples right into the 19th century. Fortunately, however, for those unable to obey, many bishops and pastors granted dispensations from the requirement in return for a donation to the church. Donations made to obtain waivers of the requirement for three days of abstaining were of course larger than the church would have gotten for waivers of a requirement for only a one-day abstention.
The Roman Catholic Church did not totally remove from Canon Law the idea that procreation is a necessary purpose of marriage until 1977. During the time when the Church had accepted the idea that procreation was a necessary purpose of marriage, it had sometimes forbidden marriage to people who were unable to have children. And it also, at times, condemned and punished people who had relations during a part of the woman’s cycle thought to be unfruitful. The assumption was made that those who had marital relations during that portion of the cycle must be doing so for the wrong reason, for pleasure rather than procreation. The Church also taught that, if a child did result from a union during the forbidden portion of the woman’s cycle, the child would be stillborn, leprous, epileptic, or possessed by the Devil. Jerome himself wrote, “When a man has intercourse with his wife at this time, the children born from this union are leprous and hydrocephalic; and the corrupted blood causes the plague-ridden bodies of both sexes to be either too small or too large” (Jerome’s Commentary on Ezekiel 18:6).
Christians through the centuries have generally had a high opinion of Jerome. But, as the above-mentioned alterations in the Book of Tobias show, we cannot exactly regard Jerome’s version of Scripture, the Latin Vulgate, as the Word of God.
It’s interesting that the Latin Vulgate did become the basis for a few portions of the Textus Receptus. In some places where the Greek versions used by Erasmus were too variable and unclear, and in some places where the Vulgate had text that was omitted in his Greek texts, Erasmus relied on the Vulgate. He was criticized for this reliance, and Erasmus himself admitted that it was poor scholarship on his part. But he had been under great pressure to hurry his work. The pressure was applied by his publisher who was anxious to produce the first complete printed Greek text. Some of Erasmus’ reliance on the Vulgate is still recognizable in versions of the Bible commonly used today. For example, 1 John 5:7 (see the King James Version, heavily influenced by the Textus Receptus) was in the version of the Vulgate that Erasmus used, one thought to have been produced after the eighth century.
The source for much of what I have written above regarding Tobias days is a wonderful little book called, Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven – Women, Sexuality, and the Catholic Church. The book, by Uta Ranke-Heinemann, has been condemned by at least one high official in the RC Church. That’s a shame because it’s a very scholarly book on an interesting and important topic.
Another source on Tobias days is a book about fishing, Fishing from the Earliest Times, by William Radcliffe and published in 1921. You may be wondering why a book on fishing would mention Tobias days. Well, Radcliffe wanted his book to be comprehensive (it runs to nearly 500 pages), and there’s another cute story in Tobit that involves a fish.