The production of Latin translations of the Bible and of early Christian writings, originally composed in Greek, flourished in the West in order to make these works accessible to Latin speakers: numerous biblical translations were produced, and this process culminated in the fourth-century revision known as the Vulgate. The study of these sources is essential to cast light on their textual tradition, ‘popular’ Latin and bilingualism in Late Antiquity as well as on the translation techniques employed by the authors of these versions. B.’s Index aims to be a tool for such an important task. Although not explicitly stated, it is a reprint of his ‘reverse index’ of Latin and Greek words and phrases of the Vulgate New Testament published in 1991, with the addition of the Apostolic Fathers (1 and 2 Clement, Barnabas, Didache, Shepherd of Hermas, Ignatius and Polycarp). The entries are taken from A. Schmoller's Handkonkordanz zum griechischen Neuen Testament and H. Kraft's Clavis Patrum Apostolicorum, which list the Greek words and their Latin equivalents as attested in the Vulgate New Testament and in the Apostolic Fathers respectively. The Index is organised in alphabetical order of Latin, as in the previous edition, with the Latin words followed by the corresponding Greek terms, which are accompanied by the references to the pages of Schmoller's (siglum ‘N’) and Kraft's (siglum ‘F’) editions in which they can be found. A distinction between Schmoller's editions published before and after 1985 is also made, but B. does not provide the reader with any indication of which edition of the many included in the bibliography is preferred for consultation. It would also be worth specifying the Greek and Latin texts on which the Index is based: two editions both of the standard Nestle–Aland Greek text and the Stuttgart Vulgate have appeared since 1985, but it remains unclear which sources were used for the biblical text.

In the brief introduction B. emphasises the interdisciplinary value of the book, useful for Classicists, scholars of religion and medievalists. In order to demonstrate the importance of the Vulgate from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages, he writes that the Vulgate New Testament ‘became normative soon after its completion’ (p. viii). This is not entirely true: the Vetus Latina was still in use after the accomplishment of the Vulgate and was often mixed with the Vulgate, which only fully replaced the Vetus Latina in the ninth century. One of the aims of the Index is the comparison between the Vulgate and the text of the Apostolic Fathers, deemed by B. to be an Old Latin source. However, the presence of genuine New Testament references in the Apostolic Fathers continues to be debated, and it is also unclear whether they should be identified as Old Latin witnesses. If biblical citations were freshly translated with the rest of the text, as often seems to have been the case in such works, then they stand apart from the Old Latin Bible itself. The appendix to the previous edition, the Index of Latin Lexical Equivalences Characteristic of ‘African’ and ‘European’ Old Latin Versions of the New Testament, was a more precious resource for those interested in comparing the Vulgate and the Vetus Latina, but it is not included here.

The presentation of the Index is accurate overall, but some concerns should be raised about the methodology and the organisation of the material. First, it seems to be inconsistent that, on the one hand, B. stresses the value of the Index as a collection of Greek words attested in ancient sources, and, on the other, encourages the use of the Index ‘intelligently to reconstruct plausible Greek Vorlagen’ (p. viii) of texts now lost, which may lead to the creation of an artificial text. Second, B. affirms that the Index contains a limited number of words, but does not explicitly explain the criteria followed by his sources, Schmoller and Kraft, when making this selection: we learn from Schmoller's preface that the choice of words was made for ‘their merit and their history and for the light they throw on the Greek text’, but this seems to be a rather arbitrary criterion.

The major problem of the Index is that it is not convenient or efficiently organised in that it requires the consultation of the other two books to identify in what texts and passages the words are attested. Surely it would not have been too demanding to add biblical references or indications of the other sources. As it is, the book cannot be used without Schmoller or Kraft to hand as well. The reconstruction of the Greek Vorlage is straightforward if a single Latin word corresponds to a single Greek word, but is less immediate when a Latin word has been used to translate numerous Greek terms. For instance, operatio can render four Greek nouns (ἐνέργεια, ἐνέργημα, ἐργασία, ἔργον): which of these is the underlying Greek for operatio in James 3:13? The Index itself does not give the answer, and only on consulting Schmoller's edition is it possible to know that the word is ἔργον. As far as the Vulgate New Testament is concerned, the same result can be achieved in a quicker and more convenient way by using biblical software that presents the Nestle–Aland Greek text and Stuttgart Vulgate in parallel columns: the Greek words underlying the Latin text in a selected passage will appear with the click of a mouse.

Indexes were indispensable resources for scholars in past centuries, but they appear to be anachronistic in the digital age: the time spent fetching and comparing books and passages could be more profitably used for new research. B.’s work would benefit from making fuller use of modern technology. If the Index were converted into a database, it could be combined with Schmoller's and Kraft's concordances in order to provide not only the correspondences between Latin and Greek but also between Greek and Latin, and give the necessary references to the writings and passages in which the words are attested. As it is, it is hard to imagine that many will have recourse to this volume especially when, for a similar price, they could purchase software enabling them to make more exhaustive searches on more up-to-date texts.