[The_Reader_David]

Interesting. In the East, they were always in the canon once it was fixed at Chalcedon. Of course, we didn't have translators getting into the act, since most everyone spoke Greek, and there were individual translations of Greek originals into Syriac, Coptic, etc. almost from the composition of the original (of course it is possible that there was an Aramaic original to Matthew translated into both Greek and Syriac--the latter being about like translating Danish into Swedish.)

[RobbyS]

It was just one of those things. Jerome's first langauge was Greek; he had worked with a famous grammarian; the Old Latin Versions were not very consistent with the Greek; he was handed the project by the pope and did part(most?) of it in a couple of years. He used the Hebrew canon because he was one of the few who knew the language. In short. his version was what Jerome would produce. The Medieval Vulgate wss not officially established until the time of Constantine. I think it was Alcuin who was reponsible. By that time even Jerome's Latin were sufficently old that his readers did not mind the archisms in the books he had not translated.