Complete Works of Saint Jerome, Vol. X

your steps so that you may depart from here: for I see that its iniquity will bring an end to it.

But it happened after the death of his mother, Tobias departed from Nineveh with his wife, and children, and children’s children, and returned to his parents-in-law. And he found them safe in a good old age: and he took care of them, and he himself closed their eyes: and he received the entire inheritance of the house of Raguel; and he saw the fifth generation, the children of his children’s children. And having completed ninety-nine years in the fear of the Lord, they buried him with joy.

Moreover, all his kindred, and all his generation, remained in a good life and in holy conversation, so that they were acceptable both to God and to men, and to all dwelling upon the earth.

JEROME’S PREFACE TO THE BOOK OF JUDITH.

Among the Hebrews, the Book of Judith is read among the apocrypha original: "inter apocrypha legitur" 1: whose authority is judged to be less suitable for strengthening those things which come into contention 2. Nevertheless, written in the Chaldean language, it is counted among the histories 4. But because the Nicene Synod 5 is read to have counted this book among the number of the Holy Scriptures, I have acquiesced to your request, or rather your exaction: and putting aside the occupations by which I was heavily constrained, I have given one brief study to this, translating more sense for sense 6 than word for word.

1 We have also reviewed this book with the prologue to the same in the manuscripts of the Vatican Library, one Palatine no. 24, another of the Queen of Sweden, no. 7, which we praised in the review of the above book of Tobias. Martianay used no manuscripts, just as he had done in publishing that one.

2 The same manuscript codex of the Bibles of the Charterhouse of Villeneuve near Avignon, already praised above in the preface to the book of Tobias, consistently reads apocrypha, not hagiographa, as the printed books and almost all manuscripts have. The manuscript copy of the Holy Bibles of the Avignon College of the Society of Jesus, which in the above prologue retained the depraved reading hagiographa, represents this place as pure and genuine, namely that which we restored to the faith of those two manuscripts: supported especially by the authority of St. Jerome, who, while he circumscribes and defines the number of hagiographical and canonical books among the Hebrews in his prefaces to the volumes of Kings, Daniel, and Chronicles, makes no mention of Tobias or Judith, unless when he decides that these books, separated from the number of twenty-four or twenty-two, are to be placed among the apocryphal writings. Origen also taught this before Jerome, in his letter to Africanus, where he testifies that the Jews do not use the books of Tobias and Judith; nor are they held among them except in the apocrypha: "Concerning which we ought to know," he says, "that the Hebrews do not use Tobias, nor Judith. For they do not have them except in the apocrypha in Hebrew, as we have learned from them by learning from them." We pass over many conjectures because we have proposed manifest testimonies and arguments for the present matter, or to clearly confirm our edition. MART.

We have perhaps said more than enough about the truth of this reading above at the twin place of the prologue to Tobias. So badly do our other Queen’s manuscript and the long-published editions read hagiographa. You may also see Origen, letter to Africanus.

3 Refer here that which is in the prologue to the books of Solomon: "The Church reads for the edification of the people, not for strengthening the authority of ecclesiastical dogmas." Elsewhere he uses a slightly harsher clause, as in Epistle LIV, to Furia, no. 16: "If, however, it pleases anyone to receive this book." And in chapter I of Haggai: "If anyone wishes to accept the book of a woman." He praises it highly elsewhere, however, as in the letter to Principia: "Ruth, Esther, and Judith are of such glory that they have names in the sacred volumes."

4 Through the injury of time, that Chaldean copy which Jerome praises has been lost; nor does the Greek version, which survives as the most ancient of all, seem to be expressed from that copy.

5 Not by a published new canon of Scriptures, or a peculiar decree for the sake of this book; but, as learned men commonly assume, it is said that the Nicene synod received it because its Fathers took testimonies and examples even from that book. Those who agreed with this opinion compile a long series of even the Ante-Nicene Fathers, by whom that history of Judith is sometimes praised. And I do not deny that a large number, and from almost every age of the Church, can be brought forward for this matter: but I do not think that this was Jerome's mind: but that he called it a certain and written definition of the synod, even though it was spurious and falsely attributed to the Nicene Fathers. For there once existed in the times of Jerome lists of sacred books under the name of the Nicene Council and also the Chalcedonian, which, although they consisted of pious fraud, were nevertheless commonly circulated and obtained authority. We collect this clearly from Cassiodorus, Institutiones, ch. 14, where, after he had spoken about the Hieronymian interpretation of Scripture, and about its division, and the number of books, he adds: "Whence although many Fathers, that is, St. Hilary, and Rufinus, and Epiphanius, and the NICENE synod, and the Chalcedonian did not contradict, but differed; yet all nevertheless adapted the divine books to the appropriate sacraments through their divisions." Therefore, documents of the Nicene synod, as well as the Chalcedonian, existed long before, which wove the order of the Scriptures differently and computed the books.

6 Perhaps with the same care with which he had recently adorned the version of Tobias, so that what had been written in Chaldean, with another rendering it into Hebrew, he himself might refound into Latin, diligently pursuing the truth of the history rather than the series of meanings and words. Although there are not lacking learned men who, comparing this Latin version with the Greek, profess they do not know what was the rationale of each, and with what mind Jerome himself said that he had translated more by sense than word for word. Indeed, they even doubt whether this is the interpretation of Jerome, since it teems with phrases that smack more of the Greek than the genius of the Chaldean text. We will weigh what are at least of greater moment in their own places.