Entire New Testament has now been released in Latin

A few weeks after the original planned October release date, Faith Comes By Hearing now has a Latin version of the New Testament (go here, scroll to the bottom and do a search for Latin). The Latin version is halfway between the non-drama and drama New Testaments they have there, with various voices for various characters, but none of the same music and sound effects one hears in the other dramatic versions. However, each book and letter begins with some Gregorian chant.

And with that you should be able to guess what kind of Latin it was recorded in: it's ecclesiastical Latin, not classical. That means that v is like the English v, c before e and i is ch, g before e and i is like g in giraffe, t before e and i is ts, ae is e, gn is ny, there don't seem to be any long vowels, etc.

The Latin text used is the Nova Vulgata, which you can select here along with a ton of other languages next to it for comparison.


And in other news: starting tomorrow the entire Roman Catholic church will be using a new missal (in English at least, not sure about other languages). By pure coincidence I happened to attend a church last Sunday for the baptism of a friend's baby, so I was able to hear the current missal for the last time. There were a lot of mentions during the service about how this was the end of the current missal, and that the next one would begin the next week. What makes the next missal different from the current one is that the translation is more literal in relation to the original Latin.

One of the most obvious changes is explained here, the change from "and also with you" to "and with your spirit":

‘And with your spirit’ is the literal translation of what we find in the Latin text, ‘et cum spiritu tuo’. This translation is already found in other languages, for example, German, Italian, French and Spanish.

Scripture is very much the source for this dialogue between priest and people. In four letters of St Paul he uses the following greetings: Galatians 6:18 – ‘May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit’; Philippians 4:23 – ‘The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit’; 2 Timothy 4:22 – ‘The Lord be with your spirit’; Philemon 25 – ‘The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit’. Similar greetings can be found in the Old Testament.