Accordingly, we have two sources for our pronunciation of Hebrew proper names: one which dates from about the sixth or seventh century of the present era, when the Hebrew had become a dead language; and another, made about _nine hundred years earlier_ by Jewish rabbis, who spoke the language perfectly well, and who could _express the pronunciation of proper names_ accurately because they wrote in a language which had _written_ vowels, and with which they were as conversant as with their own, the Hebrew.
Furthermore, we have other versions, made long before the Masoretic Doctors invented their vowel-points in order to fix the Hebrew pronunciation as they conceived it. Among these is the Latin Vulgate which, like the Greek of the Septuagint, should give us the correct pronunciation--because it was made by St. Jerome, who had studied the Hebrew and Chaldee in Palestine under a Jewish rabbi. He knew, therefore, the pronunciation of the Jews in his day (331-420), and there was no reason why he should not give it to us in his several different translations, whilst there might have been some cause why the Masoretic Jews who lived two or three centuries later should dislike to accept either the Greek or the Latin versions for an authority, because both versions were used and constantly cited by the Christians as proof that the Messiah had come.
Incidentally, the late archeological finds confirm this. Thus the name of Nabuchodonosor (IV. Kings xxiv. 1) (Protestant, Nebuchadnezzar), mentioned above as an example, reads in the cuneiform inscription of the Assyrian monument Nebukudursur, which is evidently the same form of vowel pronunciation as that employed in the Catholic version.
In comparing the two versions thus far little has been said as to the peculiar character or merits of the English Catholic version commonly called the Vulgate English or Douay Bible. But the main purpose of the present chapter has been attained by the necessary inference which the reader must have drawn, namely, that the old Catholic version is the more faithful, and that, after all, the Bible is not a safe guide without a Church to guard its integrity and to interpret its meaning.
But let me say just a word about the Vulgate. The Catholic Vulgate is practically the work of St. Jerome, and our English Catholic edition is made as literally as may be from this Latin Vulgate, "diligently compared with the Hebrew, Greek, and other editions in divers languages." The copies, most in use now, were made from an edition published by the English College at Rheims in 1582, and at Douay in 1609, revised by Dr. Challoner.