Philology: The Antwerp polyglot, 1568-73

Polyglot Bibles. The most important text in the early age of print was, without doubt, the Bible. Textually, the most complex books produced in this era were the ‘polyglot’ editions of the Bible, which reproduced the sacred text in multiple languages, using multiple scripts, on the same page.

The Antwerp polyglot. A prime example is the Biblia Polyglotta published in Antwerp between 1568 and 1573 by Christopher Plantin in eight folio volumes, and also known as the Plantin Polyglot, the Antwerp Polyglot, and the ‘Biblia Regia’, due to the financial support of Philip II.

• Volumes 1-4 contain the text of the Old Testament. Pride of place is given to the Hebrew original and a Latin translation of it, printed in parallel columns on the left-hand page. The Septuagint (the earliest extant Greek translation from the Hebrew) is provided with a facing Latin translation on the right-hand page. Below them are reproduced the parallel text of the Targum Onkelos (the Jewish Babylonian Aramaic translation of the Torah) and a Latin translation of it.
• Volume 5 reproduces the text of the New Testament in Greek and Syriac with their respective Latin translations, and a transliteration of Syriac in Hebrew characters.
• Volumes 6-8 contain the apparatus needed for further study, including grammars, dictionaries, and ‘treasures’ of the various languages ​​used; eighteen treatises on linguistics and archaeology, and collections of variants and critical notes.

The work was printed in 1,200 copies on paper and 12 copies on parchment. As a vehicle for advancing the study of the sacred text, this arrangement immeasurably surpassed anything available during the age of script. The beautifully preserved Plantin printing house is now a museum.
 
Other polyglot Bibles. Plantin’s work was neither the first nor the last of its kind.

• Platin's work built on the accomplishment of the Complutensian polyglot, assembled by Cardinal Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros between 1502 and 1517 and published by Complutense University in Alcalá de Henares, Spain in six volumes of Hebrew, Latin, Greek and Aramaic.
• Plantin’s version was followed by the London Polyglot, published in six volumes between 1654 and 1657, which included texts in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac, Arabic, Persian, Ethiopic, and Samaritan.

These three great works of scholarship can be compared on the Newberry’s Library’s website, ‘Polyglots: The Bible in Multiple Tongues, 1502-1657’.  For context, see Alastair Hamilton, ‘In Search of the Most Perfect Text: The Early Modern Printed Polyglot Bibles from Alcalá (1510-1520) to Brian Walton (1654-1658),” in The New Cambridge History of the Bible, vol. 3: From 1450 to 1750, ed. Euan Cameron (Cambridge, 2016), pp. 138-156.

Commentary. Howard Hotson (April 2019)