Complete Works of Saint Jerome, Vol. IX

It is firmly established for all that the Hebrew volumes of the Old Testament have always held the highest authority in the Church of God, which, having been rendered into Latin, were dedicated to the churches through the efforts of a host of the handmaidens of Christ, learned men, and most holy bishops.

As for the detractors of these same translations, if you except Augustine, there is no one among them who did not, spurred by envy, strive to attack the holy work and detract from Jerome. For this reason, in the preface to Ezra, he said of his rivals: Added to this is the zeal of the envious, who think everything we write is to be censured; and sometimes, against their own conscience, they publicly tear apart what they read in private: to such an extent that I am compelled to cry out and say (Ps. 119:2): "O Lord, deliver my soul from lying lips, and from a deceitful tongue." Nothing has more clearly betrayed the insanity of those envious men than what is read at the end of the second book of the Apology Against Rufinus, where there is a sufficiently abundant discussion concerning a letter falsely attributed to Jerome: A Brother Eusebius writes, says St. Jerome, that he found among the African bishops, who had come to the court for ecclesiastical causes, a letter written, as it were, in my name: in which I would do penance, and attest that I was led by the Hebrews in my youth to translate Hebrew volumes into Latin, in which there is no truth. Hearing this, I was stunned... He who dared to do this, what would he not dare? It is well that malice does not have as much strength as it has desire. Innocence would have perished if power were always joined to wickedness; and whatever calumny desires, it would prevail. And again: "What is safe in man, if innocence is criminal? While the master of the house was sleeping, an enemy came and sowed tares" (Matt. 13:25). "The boar from the wood has wasted the vineyard, and a singular wild beast has devoured it" (Ps. 80:14). I am silent, and letters that are not mine speak against me. I am ignorant of the crime, and I confess the crime in the whole world. Woe is me, my mother, why did you give birth to me, a man to be judged and discerned by all the earth? Inflamed by these torches of envy and instructed in the arts of wickedness, certain scoundrels attacked Jerome's Hebrew translations. The standard-bearer of them was Rufinus, even though he swore he had not written the letter to the Africans under Jerome's name, in which the latter confesses he was induced by the Jews to translate lies. Among the cohorts of the same Rufinus, Jerome also had an opponent in Palladius; for he mentions him himself in the preface to the Dialogues Against the Pelagians, saying: Palladius, of servile wickedness, you tried to restore the same heresy and to construct a new calumny of Hebrew translation against me, etc. O happy are the labors of the holy Doctor, who, never sparing heretics, acted with all zeal so that the enemies of the Church would also become his own enemies! Nor would the Origenists have devised so many calumnies for the ruin of the holy man if he had not first publicly refuted their errors and broken their pride with his writings. But although the hydra hissed and the victor Sinon threw fires: B he was provoked to study more by the charity of holy men than deterred by the detraction and hatred of the envious. However, both Jews and malevolent Christians were so tormented with jealousy because of the Hebrew translation that they would have liked to remove Jerome from their midst. Hence Bede, in his apologetic letter, remembering such envy, says: Indeed, he who, in so necessary a translation of Divine Scripture, was almost crushed by stones from both Latins and Hebrews alike. From the Hebrews, because the occasion for mocking Christians and slandering them for corrupt codices was taken away from them; from the Latins, however, because new and unusual things, although better, were being thrust upon them in place of the old and accustomed ones. These words agree with what is read in Jerome himself in the preface to the book of Joshua: C For what utility is there for the listener or reader if we sweat in laboring and others labor in detracting; if the Jews are grieved that the occasion for slandering and mocking Christians is taken away; and if men of the Church despise, nay, tear apart that which causes the adversaries to be tormented?

St. Augustine was moved by a completely different intention when he sometimes deterred Jerome from the interpretation of the Hebrew volumes, with that spirit, of course, which does not displease the eyes of God in brotherly love. What, therefore, was the cause for deterring Jerome from the begun work of Hebrew translation? The same Augustine suggested to him in the most friendly way in Epistle 71, where he says: D I, for my part, would rather you interpret for us the Greek canonical Scriptures, which are called those of the Seventy Interpreters. For it will be very difficult if your interpretation begins to be read more frequently in many churches, because the Latin churches will disagree with the Greek churches; especially since a contradictor is easily convinced by producing the Greek book, that is, the most well-known language. Whoever, however, is moved by something unusual in that which is translated from the Hebrew and alleges the crime of falsehood, the Hebrew testimonies by which the objection is defended will hardly or never be reached. And if they were reached, who could bear for so many Latin and Greek authorities to be condemned? To this is added that the consulted Hebrews can also answer otherwise: so that you alone might seem necessary, who can also convince them: but yet, by what judge it is a wonder if you could find one. These were the arguments with which the saintly man impelled the saintly man toward the interpretation of the Greek codes of the Seventy, passing over the sources of the Hebrew volumes; because for Latin men there was difficult or no access to verify the Hebrew testimonies. But soon Augustine recognized the utility of the Hebrew translation, having received Jerome's response to those posed difficulties. Whence, although he approved of its use in the churches very little, to avoid the disturbance of the Christian multitude, he nevertheless confesses that in many places the version of the Scriptures from the Hebrew is more useful and excellent than that which had been edited first according to the Greek codes: Concerning your interpretation, he says to Jerome in epistle 82, you have already persuaded me with what utility you wished to translate the Scriptures from the Hebrews: namely, so that those things which were omitted or corrupted by the Jews might be brought into the middle... I desire your interpretation of the Seventy for this reason: so that we may lack the ignorance of so many Latin interpreters, who, such as they are, have dared this, as much as we can; and so that those who think I am envious of your useful labors may at last, if it is possible, understand that I do not want your interpretation from the Hebrew to be read in the churches, lest, by bringing forth something new against the authority of the Seventy, we disturb the crowds of Christ with a great scandal, whose ears and hearts have been accustomed to hear that interpretation which has even been approved by the apostles. The same was felt by Jerome himself, who is found in agreement with the already cited words of Augustine in the letter to Sunnia and Fretela, when he says: From which it is clear that we must chant as we have interpreted. And yet it must be known what the Hebrew truth holds. For that which the Seventy translated is to be chanted in the churches because of its antiquity, and that is to be known by the learned because of the knowledge of the Scriptures. And to Sophronius in the preface to