Jerome Produces the Vulgate

By the third century A.D. you could get a Greek Bible (the Septuagint) or one in Greek and Hebrew.

But perhaps you didn't read Greek, let alone Hebrew. The only language in which you knew your way around was Latin. And since most educated people were in the same situation, the pope commissioned a scholar named Jerome to translate the Bible into Latin. This translation, done between A.D. 385 and 405, is called the Vulgate (from the Latin vulgatus meaning "usual" or "common") because it was in the common or "vulgar" tongue of the people. It became the official translation of the Roman Catholic Church.

There is one interesting effect that this translation had on later Church history which illustrates the problem of translating the Bible. The Greek word used in Matt. 4: 17 is metanoite, which we would translate in English as "repent, turn about, begin again, get a fresh start." ("Repent, and believe in the gospel.") The Latin which Jerome used was poenitentiam agite, which cart be translated "repent" but which can also be translated "do penance," and it was in this latter sense that Jesus' command was understood in medieval Christendom. Jesus' words thus became, "Do penance and believe in the gospel," and they are so translated to this day in the Douay (Roman Catholic) New, Testament. Around this notion the sacrament of penance developed, and the belief that we must do certain things in order to secure God's forgiveness. When Protestant scholars went back to the original Greek, instead of stopping at the Latin, they found that there was no clear basis for the sacrament of penance in this verse, and it was abolished from Protestant practice.