Complete Works of Saint Jerome, Vol. IX

A the Hebrew Psalter: Nor do I say this to bite at my predecessors, or because I think anything should be detracted from them, whose most diligently emended translation I long ago gave to the men of my tongue; but because it is one thing to read the psalms in the churches of those who believe in Christ, and another to answer the Jews who slander individual words. It is, therefore, well agreed between Jerome and Augustine that the interpretation of the Seventy Elders is to be read and chanted in the churches of Christ because of the older customs by which the faith of the nascent Church was strengthened. They knew, however, that the Hebrew translation was more excellent for the understanding of the Scriptures; wherefore, answering Audax, Augustine calls it more perfect in epistle 261: I do not have the Psalter, he says, translated by St. Jerome from the Hebrew. We have not translated it, but we have emended some errors of the Latin codes from Greek copies. Wherefore perhaps we have done something more commodious than it was, yet not such as it ought to have been. For even now, if readers note things that perhaps escaped us then, we emend them by comparing the codes. Thus, that which is perfect, we, too, seek with you. Even more clearly in book IV of Christian Doctrine, chapter 7, number 15, where he is found admitting this about the excellence of the Hieronymian interpretation: Not, however, according to the Seventy Interpreters, who themselves, interpreting by the Divine Spirit, seem to have said some things otherwise for this reason, that the reader's attention might be more urged to search for the spiritual sense, whence even some of their things are more obscure because they are more tropical, but as they were translated from the Hebrew into Latin eloquence, by the presbyter Jerome, who was skilled in both languages. You see, by Augustine's testimony, the version of the Seventy Interpreters is more obscure; but that which has been edited for us by Jerome, and which we call Hebrew because it is derived from the Hebrew source, is clearer and more accommodated to understanding. Now, if you turn the books of Questions on the Heptateuch by the same Augustine, six hundred places will occur to you in which he prefers the version from the Hebrew to the Seventy Interpreters, whether because it has greater light, or because of the purer context of the Scripture, which the Seventy interpolated with many additions. For example, in question 19 on Judges, when he had brought forward many things about Pharaoh from the LXX translation, which are clearly recognized as interpolated, he wished to solve the difficulty thus: B Which we ought to understand as having been said about King Pharaoh: since this history is believed to have been written in those times in which those deeds were recent. What great thing, however, could be chosen that would be said prophetically when past things are narrated, and future, greater, and most necessary things are passed over in silence? Therefore, it is rather to be thought that the Seventy Interpreters, who are said to have interpreted by prophetic authority through that very wonderful consensus, added these things, not as foretelling the future, but because they were in that time C in which they remembered they had been done and had read in the books of Kings. For indeed the Kingdom was made in those times. Which therefore seemed more credible to us, because we inspected the interpretation which is from the Hebrew, and we did not find this there: just as neither that which was said about Jericho, etc. D Whence it appears to have been interposed by the Seventy, who knew it had been done. He prudently excuses such interpositions and disturbances of the sacred context in the Seventy; but he ingenuously admits that many things were added by them which they had seen completed in their own time: even if they were not found placed there by the hagiographical authors. Therefore, to solve any questions proposed to him from the canonical books, he everywhere brings forward as a witness the Hieronymian interpretation, which is from the Hebrew. Wherefore you may often hear him arguing thus: But neither is this question solved by any Hebrew truth: and in the same place, quest. 152 on Genesis: Who are all numbered as sixty-six men, with whom Jacob is said to have entered into Egypt, even according to the Hebrew truth. He calls the Latin translation of the same, prepared according to the Hebrew volumes, the Hebrew truth with Jerome. And Augustine followed this with such faith in his Speculum Mirror that he gathered absolutely nothing into it except the very words that are read in the Latin interpretation of the Old Testament edited by Jerome according to the Hebrew truth. Dom Thomas Blampin (to whom we gratefully attribute the new edition of the works of St. Augustine) is to be heard on this matter. For he warned the reader in the book of the Speculum, saying: Furthermore, since the holy Doctor prepared this pious work for the use of the common people, he did not want anything to be included except the precepts which are easier to understand. By which counsel we also believe he was led to use a version not from the Greek LXX, which he was accustomed to follow, but from the Hebrew, because he had discovered that this was indeed clearer in many places. For on this account he praises it several times in his final books of Questions on the Heptateuch, etc. Who now, with a contentious brow, will deny that St. Jerome's Hebrew translation was praised by Augustine and eventually preferred to the Seventy Interpreters? But since we are to speak again about the use of the Hieronymian version among the Africans and about St. Augustine's Speculum, we will add nothing more about them here.