Theology and Philology in Biblical Translation according to Franciscus Titelmans (1502–1537) on the Example of the Book of Job

Abstract Franciscus Titelmans (1502–1537) is known to scholars of biblical humanism as a critic of Erasmus’ Novum Instrumentum . His own biblical works have been, however, little studied. This article discusses his approach to humanist methodology on the example of his commentary to the Book of Job. It demonstrates that he used original languages of the Bible to correct copyists’ mistakes and elucidate the meaning of ambiguous passages. Nevertheless, the application of philological tools had strict limits for him: the Church’s dogma. The Vulgate could be corrected where no doctrinal issue was at stake, but whenever an important proof text of the Vulgate differed from the Hebrew and Greek versions, the ancient Latin translation was to be preferred. Titelmans went as far as to claim that it was the Vulgate, which expressed fully the true meaning of the Word of God, the meaning that the Hebrew and Greek texts contained in a hidden from.