Page:The ancient Irish church.djvu/136

 question arises. It is as to whether there existed a translation of the Bible peculiar to the Irish or Celtic Church. All the Irish Biblical manuscripts of the eighth century are, it is true, copies of the Vulgate; yet in many places they have readings peculiar to themselves. The subject is still one that awaits fuller investigation. Up to the present the Irish manuscripts have been regarded as the special possession of the archæologists. The Biblical critics do not seem to have thought of taking them in hand and collating them with other manuscripts of the same age. Their importance in this respect has, however, been partly realized, and Dr. Westcott says concerning them, that 'they stand out as a remarkable monument of the independence, the antiquity and the influence of British (Irish) Christianity.'

Haddan and Stubbs have collected for us a large amount of evidence bearing on this point. They have taken the different quotations from Scripture to be found in the earliest Latin works written by Celtic authors; and they have compared them one with another, as well as with the Vulgate and with the old Latin translations which were in use in Africa and Italy before the time of Jerome. The conclusion they arrive at is that Saint Patrick was not acquainted with Jerome's Vulgate, but that after his time it gradually made its way in the Celtic Churches—traces of the old Latin being found as late as the tenth century. They say also that the evidence is 'exceedingly strong,' that the version thus gradually superseded was a special British and Irish revision of the old Latin.