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Jerome was responsible for at least three slightly different versions of the Vulgate. The Romana Vulgate was the first, but it was soon replaced by later versions except in Britain, where it continued to be used until the Norman Conquest in 1066. Next was the Gallicana Vulgate, which Jerome produced a few years later. It had some minor improvements, especially in the Old Testament. This became the standard Bible of the Roman Catholic Church a few decades after it was produced. The Hispana Vulgate is largely identical to the Romana except for the Book of Psalms, which Jerome re-translated from the Hebrew for this version. (In the other Vulgates the Psalms were mostly translated from Greek, but were checked against Hebrew and Aramaic sources; this was done since they were already very familiar to the worshippers in this form and a completely new translation of the Psalms was felt to be too radical a change.)
The Latin Bible used before the Vulgate and usually known as the Vetus LatinaVetus Latina is a collective name given to the Biblical texts in Latin that were translated before St Jerome's Vulgate bible became the standard Bible for Latin-speaking Western Christians. The phrase Vetus Latina is Latin for Old Latin and the Vetus Lati, or "Old Latin", was not translated by a single person or institution, nor even uniformly edited. The individual books varied in quality of translation and style -- modern scholars often refer to the Old Latin as being in "translationese" rather than standard Latin. Jerome did not completely re-translate the original Greek and Hebrew and exactly how much revision he did is unclear. He certainly translated the Old Testament from the Hebrew and the Gospels from the Greek. Whether he translated other parts of the New Testament or just revised them from Old Latin translations is not known with certainty. At first, Jerome did not want to include the Deuterocanonical booksThe deuterocanonical books are the books that Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Oriental Orthodoxy include in the Old Testament that were not part of the Jewish Tanakh. Their acceptance among at least some early Christians is generally well-testified, a. However, Augustine of HippoAurelius Augustinus Augustine of Hippo ( 354 430) is a saint and the pre-eminent Doctor of the Church according to Roman Catholicism; he was the eldest son of Saint Monica. In the Eastern Orthodox Church, which does not accept all of his teachings, he is argued for their inclusion, and Pope Damasus insisted on it, so these books were included and the Old Testament canonA Biblical canon is an exclusive list of books written during the formative period of the Jewish or Christian faiths; the leaders of these communities believed these books to be inspired by God or to express the authoritative history of the relationship b of the Vulgate was mostly the same as that of the Septuagint, which was at that time the translation most widely used by Greek-speaking Christians. However, since Jerome regarded the Deuterocanonical booksThe deuterocanonical books are the books that Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Oriental Orthodoxy include in the Old Testament that were not part of the Jewish Tanakh. Their acceptance among at least some early Christians is generally well-testified, a of secondary importance to the books found in the Hebrew canon, he left most (except for Tobit and parts of Judith) unrevised and untranslated from the Septuagint, hoping that would ensure their eventual refutation. After Jerome passed away however, these less than polished Old Latin renderings of the deuterocanonical books crept back into the officially sanctioned Vulgate, where their style can still be markedly distinguished from Jerome's.