Julian

I don't know the answers to all of these but I can get it started...
The LXX and the septuagint are one and the same. It is a Greek translations of the Old Testament. The translation dates back at least 2000 years, probably quite a bit more. It is not entirely certain what was translated when and where. The LXX is generally the source of NT quotations of the OT.

The vulgate is a latin translation made in the early 5th century by Jerome. It is translated mostly directly from the Hebrew and not the LXX.

The Masoretic is a Hebrew OT compiled between the 7th and 10th centuries.
As for most reliable, well, that is hard to know. All of them show the same problems that face us in the NT. They shows signs of alteration and scribal problems. The DSS (Dead Sea Scrolls) represent the oldest manuscripts as far as I know. Someone else can probably give you better information than I.
They contain the OT except for the Latin Vulgate, which contains 73 books, both the OT and NT.

As for which books specifically, someone else has to answer that.
I have no idea. Anyone?

Julian

markfiend

Maybe it's a silly question, but I'd quite like a pronunciation guide to some of the names I've seen here in BC&H: Eusebius seems like it has to be "you-SAY-be-uss" but is Marcion "MARK-ee-on" or "MAR-see-on" or something else?

Other names too, not just those two. Pretty please.

Diogenes the Cynic

Like Julian said, the LXX and the Septuagint are the same thing. It's a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible (also called the Old Testament or the Tanakh). Septuagint means "seventy" (LXX in Roman numerals) This comes from a tradition that 72 translators worked on the initial translation of the Torah into Greek sometime in the 2nd or 3rd Century BCE. Originally, the LXX was probably only the Pentateuch (the first five books of the OT) but more and more books were gradually translated over the next couple of centuries.

Julian pretty much covered it with the Vulgate. It's a Latin translation of both the Old and New Testaments made by St. Jerome which became the definitive Church Bible for 1000 years.
Of those texts you mentioned, the LXX is the oldest. The oldest OT manuscripts known are fragments found in the Dead Sea Scrolls (including an almost complete rendering of Isaiah). The DSS fragments do not fully support either the LXX or the MT.
Most English versions of the OT are based on comparisons between both the MT and the LXX.

Diogenes the Cynic

Eusebius would be Ay-oo-SAY-bee-us in Greek but Modern English pronuciations tend towards variants of Yoo-SEE-bee-us or Yoo-SAY-bee-us.

In Classical Latin, the letter C always has a K sound. so Marcion is MAR-kee-on.

What other names are you curious about?

S.C.Carlson

I pronounce Eusebius as "you-SEE-be-us" and Marcion as "MAR-shun".

YMMV

S.C.Carlson

A web page with English pronunications of Biblical and other names and terms is http://www.betterdaysarecoming.com/bible/pronmain.html

(Even though the author appears to be sympathetic to the Jehovah's Witnesses, the list does not appear sectarian (e.g. there is an entry for pronouncing Yahweh) and generally accords with what I've heard.).

triffidfood

I have the exact same problem ~ http://www.answers.com/ is really useful for this, as they always include phonetics with each entry & sometimes also an audio pronounication (see for instance http://www.answers.com/Marcionism%20 to hear the pronounciation of "Marcionism").

According to answers.com, "Marcion" is pronounced mar-shan (much as in extra terrestrial biological entities from Mars, tho presumably he wasn't) and "Eusebius" is pronounced yoo-SEE-bee-us.

Diogenes the Cynic

Those would be modern pronunciations rather than Classical but I guess it doesn't really matter. People don't go around pronoincing Caesar as KY-sar any more either.

triffidfood

Going back to the previous question, what exactly was the Old Latin Vulgate then?

http://www.ecclesia.org/truth/nt_manuscripts.html (linked to from another topic at IIDB) refers to:

... which confused me, since I thought the earliest "Bible" versions (Bible as in Old & New Testaments) dated to the middle of the 4th century?

Diogenes the Cynic

The Old Latin and the Vulgate are two different things (though, sometimes the Old Latin is called the "Old Latin Vulgate" just to complicate things).

Old Latin doesn't really designate a single version of the Bible but refers to any of a variety of Latin translations which existed before Jerome. The disparity and corruption of Old Latin Texts was the reason that Jerome was commissioned to make a standardized Latin Bible.