...they find fault; but I offer my best effort to the tongues of men (even those who disparage my work), so that in place of the Greek Hexapla original: "ἑξαπλοις"; the Hexapla was a massive scholarly edition of the Old Testament compiled by Origen, featuring six parallel versions of the text which was very expensive and difficult to produce., which requires great expense and labor, they may have our edition. And if they should ever doubt the reading of the ancient volumes, by comparing these texts, they may find what they seek: especially since among the Latins there are as many versions as there are books; each person has added or subtracted whatever seemed right to them according to their own judgment, and surely that which disagrees cannot be the truth.

Therefore, let the "scorpion" Jerome frequently referred to his critics as scorpions or dogs. cease to rise up against us with his curved sting, and let him stop picking at this holy work with a venomous tongue, either accepting it if it pleases him, or despising it if it displeases him; let him remember those verses:
Psalm 49

Your mouth has abounded with malice, and your tongue framed deceits. Sitting there, you spoke against your brother, and you laid a scandal against your mother’s son; these things you did, and I was silent. You thought, O wicked man, that I would be like you: I will convict you, and set the charges before your face. For what use is it to the listener or the reader for us to sweat with labor while others labor at disparaging us? Is it not a grief that the Jews lose the opportunity to mock and insult Christians, while men of the Church despise or even tear apart the very work that would torment our adversaries?

If the old translation The Septuagint, the ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament. alone pleases them—which does not displease me either, and I think nothing beyond it should be received—why then do they read and neglect those things which have been either added or cut away under the markings of asterisks and daggers? These were symbols used by scholars to indicate additions or deletions in the text. Why have the Churches accepted Daniel according to the translation of Theodotion? Why do they admire Origen and Eusebius Pamphili, who show that all editions differ from one another? Or what folly was it, after they had spoken the truth, to then put forward what is false? Furthermore, how can they prove the testimonies used in the New Testament which are not found in the old Greek books?

I say these things so that I do not appear to remain entirely silent against my detractors. For the rest, after the passing of Saint Paula Saint Paula (347–404 AD) was a wealthy Roman widow and a close collaborator/patron of Jerome., whose life is an example of virtue, and for these books which I could not deny to the virgin of Christ, Eustochium Paula’s daughter, who continued her mother’s work with Jerome., I have decided, as long as the spirit governs these limbs, to apply myself to the explanation of the Prophets, and to resume the work I had long omitted, as if returning home from exile; especially since that admirable and holy man Pammachius A Roman senator and friend of Jerome. demands this same thing by letter: and we, hurrying toward our homeland, must pass by the deadly songs of the Sirens with a deaf ear.

THE PREFACE

If the edition of the Seventy Interpreters The Septuagint. remained pure and exactly as it was translated by them into Greek, it would be superfluous for you, Chromatius—holiest and most learned of bishops—to urge me to translate the Hebrew volumes into the Latin tongue for you. For what had once occupied the ears of men and strength-

ened the faith of the nascent Church, it would be right for us to approve by our silence. But now, since different versions are circulated according to the variety of regions, and that original and ancient translation has been corrupted and violated, you think it belongs to our judgment either to judge what is true among the many, or to forge a new work within the old work, and so—as the saying goes—"pierce the eyes of the crows" A Latin idiom meaning to outwit the experts or do the impossible. while the Jews look on mockingly.

Alexandria and Egypt praise Hesychius as the author of their "Seventy." Constantinople as far as Antioch approves the versions of Lucian the martyr. The provinces between these read the Palestinian codices, which Eusebius and Pamphilus published after they were worked upon by Origen: and thus the whole world struggles against itself with this triple variety. And certainly Origen not only composed the examples of the four editions, writing out each word in a column so that one disagreement might immediately be proven by the others agreeing among themselves: but, what is a matter of greater boldness, he mixed the edition of Theodotion into the edition of the "Seventy," marking with asterisks those things that were missing, and with small lines Called "obeli" or daggers. those things that seemed to have been added superfluously.

If, therefore, it was permitted to others not to hold to what they had once received; and after the "seventy cells" Referring to the legend that the 72 translators were shut in separate cells and produced identical translations by miracle. (which are commonly talked about without an author), to open individual cells, and that which the Seventy did not know is now read in the churches; why should my Latins not accept me? For I have preserved the old edition inviolate and established a new one in such a way that I can prove my labor by the authority of the Hebrews and, what is greater, the Apostles.

I recently wrote a book on the best kind of translating, showing that those passages from the Gospel—
Matt. 2

Out of Egypt I have called my son; and,
John 19

Because he shall be called a Nazarene; and,
1 Cor. 2

They shall look upon him whom they have pierced; and that of the Apostle: What eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man, what things God has prepared for those who love him—and other things similar to these, are found in the books of the Hebrews. Certainly the Apostles and Evangelists knew the Seventy Interpreters: but where did they get these things which are not held in the Seventy Interpreters? Christ our Lord, the founder of both Testaments, says in
John 7

the Gospel according to John: He who believes in me, as the Scripture says, rivers of living water shall flow from his belly. Surely it is written, because the Savior testifies that it is written. But where is it written? The Seventy do not have it; the Church does not know the apocrypha. Therefore, we must return to the Hebrews, from whom the Lord speaks and the disciples take their examples.

I say this with peace toward the ancients, and I respond only to my detractors who gnaw at me with a dog’s tooth, disparaging me in public and reading me in corners, acting as both accusers and defenders, since they approve in others what they reprove in me: as if virtue and vice were not in the things themselves, but changed with the author. Furthermore, I remember that I once gave our people a version of the Seventy translators corrected from the Greek: and I should not be considered an enemy of those whose work I always explain in the assembly of the brothers. And the fact that I have now translated Words of the Days original Hebrew: "דברי הימים" (Divrei ha-Yamim); this is the Hebrew title for the Books of Chronicles. (that is, Chronicles): I did so in order that I might more clearly arrange, by verse and section, the inextricable delays, the forest of names (which are confused by the fault of scribes), and the barbarism of meanings—singing for myself and my own like Ismenias, even if the ears of everyone else are deaf.