Galey in his ArchBook entry on "The Opening" makes the case that in many ways, it is
the opening, not the single page, that should be considered the basic reading
surface of the printed book. The page
opening as reading interface is essential to the great polyglot Bibles of the
16th and 17th centuries,[1]
which in their fullest development required two full pages to present all of
the parallel texts in one view to the reader.
This fact of publication is important, yet strangely (though as Galey
suggests, perhaps not surprisingly) overlooked by a recent scholar of the
London polyglot who describes this book as a “triumph of technology” for “being
the first Bible to print all the versions side-by-side on the same page” (Miller, 467 my emphasis). Indeed, it is an essential feature of these
publications that the opening, not
the page, constitutes the full
reading interface.
The basic form of the polyglot
Bible was established by the first of these,[2]
the Complutensian polyglot (Alcalá, 1514-1517), which presents the Hebrew,
Latin Vulgate, and Greek Septuagint (interlined with a Latin translation) in
parallel columns across the top three-quarters of the page, with (for the Pentateuch only) Onkelos’s
Chaldee/Aramaic targum (i.e. paraphrase)[3] together
with an accompanying Latin translation across the bottom. The recto and verso each contain a full set
of texts, but they are presented in mirror-image to each other: moving from
left to right across the opening, Hebrew, Latin Vulgate, and Greek Septuagint
on the verso, then in reverse, Greek, Latin, Hebrew on the recto; similarly,
along the bottom of the opening, the Aramaic, in Hebrew characters, with a Latin
translation (verso), and then the Latin followed by the Aramaic (recto). In this polyglot, the full set of parallel
texts fits on a single page, but the mirrored image of these from verso to
recto implies that the full opening—verso and recto together—is the basic
interface of this book. The centrality
of the Latin Vulgate in this page layout is curious but easy to explain. The theological rationale is articulated by
James Lyell:
The position of honour given to the Vulgate ... is emphasised in [this
bible’s] Second Preface, where it is stated that as our Lord was crucified between two thieves, so the Latin Church stands between the
Synagogue and the Greek Church (29).
This explanation is based on
ecclesiological (the pre-eminence of the Latin church) rather than textual
grounds, for the whole project was undertaken with the conviction that biblical
scholarship must go back to a study of the primary languages (Lyell, 27,
29). The centrality of the Latin Vulgate
text on the page might also be rationalized on the basis of the reading
environment. For scholars of the period,
the Latin Vulgate was the familiar version of the Bible, the centre of their
textual knowledge. Even for many
theologians and humanist scholars of the period, the original languages existed
on the margins of their understanding, so the Vulgate remained the central
reference point. It is less easy to
explain why the Hebrew and Greek are arranged in mirrour-image to each other
across the opening, but again, the layout of the page might have been a factor.
The outer margins of the pages provide root
words for the Hebrew and Aramaic texts, but not for the Greek. By keeping the Hebrew texts on the outer
edges of the page−both the verso and the recto−the printer (perhaps with input
from Cardinal Ximenes, the patron and supervising editor of the project) could
relegate the most marginal matter to the outer edges and maintain clearly
justified columns toward the centre of the opening. The layout of the page thus represents the
priority of the material with respect to the interests of the reader, with the
familiar Latin at the centre and the original-language helps on the margins. The rationale for the arrangement of the Aramaic
at the bottom of the page is less obvious: why is the Aramaic in the centre of
the opening on verso and recto, separated from the root words in the margins by
the Latin translation? It may be that
the Latin here serves a marginal function (i.e. it is not the vulgate), as a kind of gloss on the
original text. The opening is much less important in the New
Testament portion of this bible, where the principal parts are only the Greek
original and the Latin translation.
Rather than root words in the margin, the page provides marginal cross
references and, on rare occasion (only five in the whole New Testament)
marginal annotations (Lyell, 34, 44).
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figure1: The opening of Exodus 2 from the Complutensian Polyglot. Internet Archive CCL.
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 |
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figure 2: The opening of 1 John 5 in the Complutensian Polyglot,
with a rare marginalannotation in the footer. Internet Archive CCL.
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The 1569 Biblia
Sacra, Hebraice, Chaldaice, Graece et Latine, known
as the “Antwerp or Plantin’s Polyglot” (named after its printer, Christophe
Plantin) presents, across a single, full opening, four different versions in
four columns: the Hebrew; the Latin Vulgate; Arias Montano’s revision of Xantes
Pagninus’s Latin version from the Greek[4];
and the Greek Septuagint.[5]
At the bottom runs another parallel series: the Chaldean Aramaic version on the
left, with a paraphrase in Latin on the right. The antecedent languages
are easily distinguished by their character sets, and the two Latin texts are
distinguished by use of regular (Vulgate) and italics font (Arias Montano’s
version). The opening has a similar mirrored effect, with the two Latin
versions situated in the middle of the opening, even though this places them in
inverse relation to their original language antecedents.
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figure 3: The Antwerp polyglot (1569),
opening at 1 Kings (i.e. 1 Samuel).
Fisher Rare Book Library CCL.
|
The last and most mature of the great
polyglots is Brian Walton’s Biblia Sacra
Polyglotta (1655-7), commonly known as the “London Polyglot.” Like the Antwerp polyglot, it presents its
texts across the full opening, containing now (for the Pentateuch) a total of
thirteen discrete texts in one view: Hebrew
(with word for work Latin interlineated) in parallel with the Latin Vulgate, the Greek
(Septuagint) with the standard Latin translation that predated Jerome’s
Vulgate; Onkelos’s “Chaldee”
(Aramaic) targum (parphrase) with a Latin translation, [two texts of?] the Samaritan Pentateuch with Latin translation, and along the
bottom, the Syriac and Arabic versions, each with
Latin translations.[6] Again, the primacy of Latin as the familiar
language is evident in the matching of original language texts with Latin
translations. Walton’s 19th-century
biographer, Henry J. Todd, quotes in full Walton’s published description of his
planned work, where he explains the many advantages of the polyglot format:
The several languages shall be printed in several columns, whereby
they may all be presented to the reader’s view at once; whereas in the other
Editions divers great volumes must be turned over to compare them together
(42).[7]
This
multi-sectioned opening provides a maximized space that correlates by implicit
links a series of parallel texts from diverse sources, presenting a scholar’s
entire desktop in one viewing interface.
 |
figure 4: Walton’s London
Polyglot, opening at Exodus 1.
Fisher
Rare Book Library CCL.
|
As is the case
with other developments in bible technology, this innovation of the parallel
text interface grew from the demands and needs presented by the textual
material itself and the intellectual framework and methods of its readers. For Walton, as for the earlier humanists, it
was the need to purge received translations of their error and bias by having
recourse to the text in its antecedent languages for comparison across all
versions, a task that previously would have required a very large desk full of
open folios.[8]
Notes:
[1] These are the
Complutensian Polyglot (Spain, 1514-1517); the Plantin or Antwerp polyglot
(Antwerp, 1569 and 1572); and the Paris Polyglot (1645); and Walton’s London
Polyglot (Todd 34-5).
[2] Brian Walton in fact
found his ultimate source of inspiration in the idea of Origen’s Hexpala and its columnar arrangement of
different Hebrew and Greek texts in parallel, and regretted the loss of these
artefacts to history (Miller 473).
[3] Lyell calls it a
“paraphrase” (28). The genre of the
targum is ambiguous, sometimes considered translation, sometimes commentary:
“paraphrase” captures some of this ambiguity.
[4] “Versions of the Bible” in The Original CatholicEncyclopedia: “Xantes Pagninus, O.P. (d. 1541), made an inter-linear version of both the Old
and New Testaments from the original languages, which by its literal fidelity
pleased Christians and Jews and was much used by the Reformers. A revision of
this translation resulting in a text even more literal was made by Arias
Montano. His work appeared in the Antwerp Polyglot (1572).”
[5] See Elly Cockx-Indestege.
[6] The configuration of
versions and translations vary across the Bible, depending on which were
available of each section of the Bible: the Psalms, Canticles, and the New
Testament, for example, include an Ethiopic version.
[7] Todd cites this source as a pre-publication proposal, published in
1652 with the title A Brief Description
of an Edition of the bible in the Original Hebrew, Samaritan, and Greek, with
the most ancient translations of the Jewish and Christian Churches, viz. the
Sept. Greek, Chaldee, Syriac, Ethiopic, Arabic, Persian &c. and the Latin
Versions of them all: a new Apparatus, &c. This
echoes Walton’s
expressed vision (in manuscript) for
an edition in the
originall Languages, with the most auncient Translations according to better
and more authentick coppies then those of the former editions, with addition of
sundry thinges usefull wch are wanting in them all, and the same digested in
such order, whereby the severall Languages may be represented to the readers
view at once, and the whole maybe printed in a few and easy volumes, and sold
at the price aforesaid (quoted in Miller from British Library, Additional mss
32,093, fol. 333r).
In his advertisement and prospectus (reprinted by Todd) Walton is
perhaps alluding to his arrangement of the parallels texts on the page when he
refers to the benefit of having “the several languages digested in better
method,” i.e. in comparison with the previous polyglots (36).
[8] Miller notes that for
Walton, working in a period of considerable strife and conflict in the national
church, the polyglot was a way of combating sectarianism which he and others
like him believed to be driven by ignorance (470-1). The diversity of text together in one opening
might rightly be considered an emblem of erudition overcoming the divisions
caused by ignorance.
Bibliography:
Arias Montano, Benito, et al. Biblia Sacra, Hebraice, Chaldaice, Graece Et
Latine: Philippi II. Reg. Cathol. Pietate, Et Studio Ad Sacrosanctae Ecclesiae
Vsum, Christoph Plantinus Excud. Excud. Antuerpiae: Christoph Plantinus,
1569; 1572.
Cockx-Indestege, Elly. “1569 -1572 Christopher Plantin’s Biblia
regi.” Library of the University of
Amsterdam. http://cf.uba.uva.nl/nl/publicaties/treasures/text/t09.html
Harris, Fletcher.
“Milton and Walton’s Biblia Sacra Polyglotta (1657).” MLN 42.2 (Feb 1927): 84-7.
----. Milton’s Semitic Studies. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1926.
Lyell, James. Cardinal
Ximines: Statesman, Ecclesiastic, Soldier, and Man of Letters with an Account
of the Complutensian Polyglot Bible.
London: Grafton, 1917.
Miller, Peter N.
“The ‘Antiquarianization’ of Biblical Scholarship and the London
Polyglot Bible.” JHI 62 (2001): 463-82.
Todd, Henry J. Memoirs of the Life and Writings of
Walton. 2 vols. London, 1821.
“In Folio: Rare Volumes in the
Stanford University Libraries.” Stanford
University Libraries.
Saurat, Denis. Milton,
Man and Thinker. London: Jonathan
Cape, [1924].
Walton, Brian, Wenceslaus Hollar,
and Pierre Lombart. Biblia Sacra
Polyglotta: Complectentia Textus Originales, Hebraicum, Cum Pentateucho
Samaritano, Chaldaicum, Graecum, Versionumque Antiquarum, Samaritanae, Graecae
LXXII Interp., Chaldaicae, Syriacae, Arabicae, Aethiopicae, Persicae, Vulg.
Lat. Quicquid Comparari Poterat. Cum Textuum & Versionum Orientalium
Translationibus Latinis: Ex Vetustissimis Mss. Undique Conquisitis, Optim¡sque
Exemplaribus Impressis, Summƒ Fide Collatis: Quae in Prioribus Editionibus
Deerant Suppleta ...: Opus Totum in Sex Tomos Tributum. 6 vols. London:
Thomas Roycroft, 1655-1657.
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