Well, we are about to celebrate the feast of Janus for who January is named after and his festival took place on January 9, the Agonium. Some try to argue January was named after Juno. But when the calendar was changed, it is more likely that January is named after Janus and June is named after Juno. Janus is usually depicted as having two faces since he looks to the future and to the past. Janus was the god of all beginnings. He was invoked as the first of any gods in regular liturgies among the Romans and he dates back to even the founding of Rome. The beginning of the day, month, and year, both calendrical and agricultural, were sacred to him.

Therefore, when we say goodbye to 2018 and look to the future of 2019, remember one thing. This is a very, very, very old tradition.

Happy New Year

Many people argue about various theories of the Bible. There is one major issue that is rarely ever discussed. The original Bible was written primarily in Hebrew with some portions in Aramaic. It was first translated into Greek, which even in Roman times many believed was the superior language. The Bible was then translated into Latin but it appears there was no full version until that undertaken by Saint Jerome (347 – 420). There have been passages translated into Latin prior to St Jerome that appear to include up to 27 different versions of slightly different translations. These are generally known as Vetus Latina.

The Biblia Vulgate, “Common Bible” Earlier translations were made mainly obsolete by St. Jerome‘s Vulgate version of the Bible. Jerome knew Hebrew and revised and unified the Latin Bibles of the time to bring them into conformity with the Hebrew as he understood it.

Martin Luther’s real accomplishment in this field was translating the Bible from Latin to German. This was a major step ending the Dark Age, for now, people would be able to actually read the Bible itself. Recent research has shown that an obscure monk in Austria actually had translated the Bible to German almost 200 years before Luther.