Saint Jerome, Complete Works, Vol. I

works. There is, moreover, a double class and genus of them; for some are those which he composed in his own sense and in the Latin tongue, others are those which he gave to the men of his own tongue by translating from other authors, especially the Greeks. Of this kind are, to bring some forward as an example, the work of immense labor, the interpretation of the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, one of which he rendered from the Greek, and the other he translated according to the Hebrew. Then the most noble parts of the works of Origen, nearly seventy homilies—which even his enemy Ruffinus objects to—the book of Hebrew names, and likewise another περὶ Ἀρχῶν On First Principles, of which, however, age has begrudged the Latin interpretation along with the Greek copy itself, and many other ἀποσπασμάτια fragments from the fruits of his genius, in which he took the greatest delight. From Didymus, he also explained in Latin the book on the Holy Spirit, the archetype of which the antiquity of years has not preserved: from Theophilus of Alexandria, the Paschal letters, and that most excellent synodical letter primarily against Origen, first discovered by us, and many other epistles and books against John Chrysostom. From Eusebius of Caesarea, likewise, the Chronicle of all history, that treasure indeed of all time before, most brilliant by far, necessary above all for sacred and secular studies alike: furthermore, the book of places of divine scripture, and their situation and distances, a most noble part of ancient geography, then many other things of this kind excerpted from the most approved authors, such as Epiphanius, Theodore, Nazianzen, and Apollinarius, whose more excellent dogmas he inserted into his own commentaries. For it is most true that no one among the Greek writers who excelled by merit of eloquence and doctrine was unknown to Jerome, so that he frequently excused himself from any fault, if his adversaries noted it and objected to it in his books, with this one argument: that he had spoken according to the opinion of the Greek expositors, confessing it as his own and being ready to deprecate it if they had not found it in their commentaries.

16. The second kind. — But the lucubrations which he himself forged with his own genius, and which it pleases me to call primary, for the most part concern the interpretation of the sacred scriptures. Holding the first place, of those which survive, are the questions on Genesis, replete with Hebrew traditions and sentences, then those which approach most closely to their sense, the commentaries on Ecclesiastes and the prophets. Furthermore, the wonderful books which he poured out almost αὐτοσχεδιαστὶ extemporaneously on Matthew, and those which he composed on the four Epistles of Paul with such varied and manifold erudition. There are also others which were written for the Christian cause, either to defend against heretics or to amplify among the faithful. The former attack Helvidius, Jovinian, Vigilantius, and sects of men, the Luciferians and Pelagians; the latter, both by recounting the deeds of the holiest monks as an example for piety, and by epistolary discourse, invite men to a life properly instituted. This is the view of the Hieronymian works in general, exposed in almost the same manner in which one measures the immense spaces of the heavens and the sites of the lands on a small map. One thing, moreover, or another, it is better to advise regarding both kinds of writing: the Greek works which he proposed to explain in Latin are those which held the first rank among the most learned fathers, which he gave to the Roman ears, making excellent Latin from good Greek. In which matter, indeed, the greatest of his praises seems to me to be this, that by the merit of his industry we enjoy some writings of the most distinguished men, whose ancient Greek copies have perished through the injury of time. As for the primary lucubrations, they have so far carried the suffrages of all ages and doctors that, from the immense choir of Latin fathers, he has been gifted by the judgment of the Church—than which there is none more genuine and secure—with the prerogative of Greatest Doctor.

17. The method of the non-extant, and first concerning the emendation of the Scriptures from the Greek. — Now indeed, of the works which no longer exist, by which they may nevertheless be distinguished, some account must also be taken. I divide them again into two classes, as it were, of which the one comprises those which truly perished, the other those about which it may be allowed to doubt whether they ever existed. I say nothing of the supposititious, which are too many, and whose review will pertain to the preface of the final volume, into which they are being amended. Here, the first labor occurs by reason of its dignity, which he expended in amending the old Latin interpretation of the LXX the Septuagint from the Greek. "I remember," he says toward the end of the preface to the book of Chronicles, "that I once gave to our people the edition of the seventy translators amended from the Greek." And in Epist. LXXI to Lucinus: "I do not doubt that you have the edition of the seventy interpreters, and many years ago I handed it over to the studious, most diligently amended." What kind of emendation this was, and in what manner it was elaborated, we learn from the epistle in our review CXII to Augustine, where he gives the reason why it was distinguished by asterisks and obeli. A specimen of that work is also supplied by the commentaries on Ecclesiastes, and especially on the major, as they are called, and minor prophets, in which he often compares that Latin version recognized by himself with that which he later elaborated according to the Hebrew exemplar. Indeed, two books of his work still survive intact, Job and the Psalter, which we will place in the second part of the divine library after Martianaeus, and they will be sufficient argument, so that it is not necessary to wander further, as to what that use of signs was. The rest perished long ago, for while Jerome himself was still alive, he complains of having lost most of his earlier labor due to the fraud of someone. It may also have easily happened, as is accustomed to happen elsewhere, that the Latin version according to the Hebrew truth, which later obtained, gradually extruded that earlier emendation, which was encumbered by the difficulties of the signs. Wherefore it is surprising that Cassiodorus reports in Divine Institutions, ch. 13, that it was stored by him in the Archive: "The third division," he says, "is among others in a larger codex, written in a clearer letter, which has ninety-five quaternions, in which the translation of the Seventy Interpreters of the Old Testament is contained in forty-four books. To which are subjoined the twenty-six books of the New Testament, and they are together seventy books... this text, varied by the translation of many, the Father Hiero-"