JEROME’S PREFACES. xxi

Jerome refers to his "rivals" or "envious ones" who criticized his decision to translate directly from Hebrew rather than relying on the traditional Greek Septuagint.
We have passed over these things: for all of them, we await the curses of our rivals, to whom I must respond in each individual work. And it is more difficult to read and sound out the Chaldean The language we now call Aramaic, which Jerome refers to as Chaldean. language than the Hebrew. I mention this because every day, someone writes something new that provokes the malice of the envious, claiming that the Hebrews do not possess the history of Susanna.

The same author’s preface to Ezekiel.

The prophet Ezekiel was led captive into Babylon with King Jehoiachin of Judah. There, he prophesied to those who had been captured with him—those who were repentant because they had surrendered to their adversaries according to Jeremiah’s prophecy, yet saw that the city of Jerusalem still stood, though he had predicted its fall. In the thirtieth year of his age, and the fifth year of his captivity, he began to speak to his fellow captives. At that same time, though later, Jeremiah prophesied in Judea while Ezekiel did so in Chaldea. His speech is neither overly eloquent nor particularly rustic, but a middle temperament of both. He was a priest himself, just like Jeremiah. The beginnings and the end of his volume are involved in great obscurities. Jerome refers to the "Vision of the Chariot" at the start and the "New Temple" at the end, which were traditionally considered so difficult that young students were forbidden from reading them. Yet his common edition does not differ much from the Hebrew. Therefore, I wonder what the reason was that, if we have the same translators for all the books, they translated the same way in some and differently in others. Read this, therefore, according to our translation; since it is written by phrases and clauses Jerome used a system called "per cola et commata" to make the text easier to read aloud by breaking it into rhythmic units., it provides a clearer sense to the readers. But if my friends mock this one too, tell them that no one compels them to write. But I fear that what is said more significantly in Greek might happen to them: that they be called phagesidimoi original: "φαγεσίδιμοι", meaning "devourers of fame" or "fame-eaters.", which is to say, those who consume the reputations of others.

The same author’s preface to Daniel.

The Churches of the Lord Savior do not read the prophet Daniel according to the Seventy translators The Septuagint., but use the edition of Theodotion; why this happened, I do not know. Whether it was because the language is Chaldean and differs from our speech in certain properties, and the Seventy translators did not wish to preserve those same linguistic traits in translation; or whether the book was published under their name by someone else who did not know the Chaldean language well enough; or for whatever other reason, I cannot say. This one thing I can affirm: that it differs greatly from the truth and was rightly rejected. It should be known that Daniel and Ezra especially were written in Hebrew letters but in the Chaldean tongue, as was one passage of Jeremiah; Job also has much in common with the Arabic language. Finally, when I was a young man, after the reading of Quintilian and Tully Cicero. and the flowers of rhetoric, when I had shut myself up in the "grinding mill" of this language, and with much sweat and much time I could barely manage to sound out the panting and screeching words—walking as if through a dark crypt with only a rare light from above—I eventually stumbled into Daniel. I was struck with such weariness that, in sudden desperation, I wanted to despise all my old labor. However, a certain Hebrew encouraged me, repeating to me in his own language that "Persistent labor conquers all." And so I, who seemed a little scholar to myself, began again among the Hebrews.

...for you compel me. Otherwise, to shorten the evil, it would have been better to put a limit to their furies with my silence. For every day, among the Hebrews, they do not have the history of Susanna, nor the song of the three youths, nor the fables of Bel and the Dragon. These are the "deuterocanonical" or "apocryphal" parts of Daniel found in Greek bibles but not the Hebrew Bible. These we have added, marked with a spit original: "veru", a critical mark (obelus) used to indicate text not in the original Hebrew., so that we would not seem among the unlearned to have cut out a large part of the volume. I heard one of the Jewish teachers, when he was mocking the story of Susanna and saying it was composed by a Greek, use the same argument that Africanus opposed to Origen: that these etymologies because he saw her under a mastic tree, he would be cut in two original: "ὁποῦ τὸ σαχὶν ἐχὶ σαχιν" (corrupted Greek). Jerome is referring to a famous pun: "schinos" (mastic tree) sounds like "schisai" (to cut/split). descend from the Greek tongue. We can give our people an understanding of this thing: as if, for example, we said of an "oak" tree that he would "croak," or of a "lentil" that he would "relent," or "not slowly" [lente] perish. Jerome is inventing English/Latin equivalents to show how the original Greek pun (mastic/split and holm-oak/saw) only works in Greek, suggesting the story was originally written in Greek, not Hebrew. Then, was there so much leisure for the three youths in the furnace that they could invite every creature to praise God in order? Or what miracle or sign of inspiration was there in the dragon, or the priests’ trickery being caught with pitch and fat—things which are performed more by a man's cleverness than by a prophetic spirit? When it comes to Habakkuk, who was snatched from Judea into Chaldea Referring to the story in Bel and the Dragon where an angel carries the prophet Habakkuk by his hair to feed Daniel in the lions' den., he wondered where we had read in the whole Old Testament of any saint having crossed such a space of land in an instant with a heavy body. When one of ours, quite ready in speech, brought up Ezekiel and said he was carried from Chaldea to Judea...

2 Cor.

...it is divided into the Law, the Prophets, and the Hagiographa The "Holy Writings," the third section of the Hebrew Bible.; that is, into five, and eight, and eleven books—but that is not for this time. As for what Porphyry A Neoplatonist philosopher who attacked the authenticity of the Book of Daniel. objects against this prophet, Methodius, Eusebius, and Apollinarius are witnesses; they responded to his madness with many thousands of lines, though I do not know if they satisfied the curious reader. Therefore, I beseech you, O Paula and Eustochium, pour out prayers to the Lord for me, that as long as I am in this little body, I may do something pleasing to you, useful to the Church, and worthy for posterity. Indeed, I am not much moved by the judgments of the present, who fall into either love or hatred on either side.