The term "celt" seems to have come about from a copyist's error in many medieval manuscript copies of
Job 19:24 in the Latin
Vulgate Bible, which became enshrined in the authoritative
Sixto-Clementine printed edition of 1592. Where all earlier versions (the
Codex Amiatinus, for example) have
vel certe (the Latin for 'but surely'), the Sixto-Clementine has
vel celte. The Hebrew has לעד (
lā‘aḏ) at this point, which means 'forever'. The editors of the
Oxford English Dictionary "[incline] to the belief that
celtis was a phantom word", simply a misspelling of
certe. However, some scholars over the years have treated
celtis as a real Latin word. From the context of Job 19:24 ("Oh, that my words were inscribed with an iron tool on lead, or engraved in rock forever!"), the Latin word
celte was assumed to be some kind of ancient
chisel. Eighteenth-century
antiquarians, such as , adopted the word for the
stone and bronze tools they were finding at prehistoric sites; the
OED suggests that a "fancied etymological connexion" with the
prehistoric Celts assisted its passage into common use. ==See also==