Commentaries on the Twelve Prophets E-Book

Jerome

• Herausgeber: IVP Academic
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Serie: Ancient Christian Texts
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Seitenzahl: 1119

Beschreibung

Jerome (c. 347-419/20), one of the West's four doctors of the church, was recognized early on as one of the church's foremost translators, commentators and advocates of Christian asceticism. Skilled in Hebrew and Greek in addition to his native Latin, he was thoroughly familiar with Jewish traditions and brought them to bear on his understanding of the Old Testament. Beginning in 379, Jerome used his considerable linguistic skills to translate Origen's commentaries and, eventually, to translate and comment on Scripture himself. In 392, while preparing his Latin Vulgate translation of the Bible, Jerome wrote his commentary on Nahum, the first in a series of commentaries on five of the twelve minor prophets. Micah, Zephaniah, Haggai and Habakkuk soon followed. He was interrupted in 393 by the Origenist controversy, after which he became a vocal critic of Origen of Alexandria—a controversy he referred to in his commentaries on Jonah and Obadiah in 396. This Ancient Christian Texts volume, edited and translated by Thomas Scheck in collaboration with classics students from Ave Maria University, includes these seven commentaries. The second volume contains Jerome's commentaries on Zechariah, Malachi, Hosea, Joel and Amos, all of which were written in 406, completing the group of twelve prophets. Throughout these commentaries Jerome displays his familiarity with both Hebrew and Greek texts. His spiritual exegesis relies heavily on the exegetical work of Origen. Jerome looks beyond the nationalistic sentiments of the prophets to see a wider message about God's mercy and justice. His commitment to the truthfulness of the Scriptures as the Word of God is exemplified by his defense of the historicity of Jonah. He finds the fundamental message of the prophets to be the intent to console the saints, so that they may disdain the things of this world and prepare themselves for the day of judgment. Ancient Christian Texts are new English translations of full-length commentaries or sermon series from ancient Christian authors that allow you to study key writings of the early church fathers in a fresh way.

Leseprobe

ANCIENT CHRISTIAN TEXTS

COMMENTARIES ON THE TWELVE PROPHETS

VOLUME 1

Jerome

EDITED BY

THOMAS P. SCHECK

SERIES EDITORS

THOMAS C. ODEN AND GERALD L. BRAY

CONTENTS

General Introduction

Volume Editor’s Introduction

Abbreviations

Commentary on Nahum

Commentary on Micah

Commentary on Zephaniah

Commentary on Haggai

Commentary on Habakkuk

Commentary on Jonah

Commentary on Obadiah

Bibliography

Notes

General Index

Index of Holy Scripture

Praise for Ancient Christian Texts

About the Editors

Ancient Christian Texts

More Titles from InterVarsity Press

IVP Academic Textbook Selector

Copyright

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

Ancient Christian Texts (hereafter ACT) presents the full text of ancient Christian commentaries on Scripture that have remained so unnoticed that they have not yet been translated into English.

The patristic period (AD 95–750) is the time of the fathers of the church, when the exegesis of Scripture texts was in its primitive formation. This period spans from Clement of Rome to John of Damascus, embracing seven centuries of biblical interpretation, from the end of the New Testament to the mid-eighth century, including the Venerable Bede.

This series extends but does not reduplicate texts of the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture (ACCS). It presents full-length translations of texts that appear only as brief extracts in the ACCS. The ACCS began years ago authorizing full-length translations of key patristic texts on Scripture in order to provide fresh sources of valuable commentary that previously were not available in English. It is from these translations that the ACT series has emerged.

A multiyear project such as this requires a well-defined objective. The task is straightforward: to introduce full-length translations of key texts of early Christian teaching, homilies and commentaries on a particular book of Scripture. These are seminal documents that have decisively shaped the entire subsequent history of biblical exegesis, but in our time have been largely ignored.

To carry out this mission each volume of the Ancient Christian Texts series has four aspirations:

1. To show the approach of one of the early Christian writers in dealing with the problems of understanding, reading and conveying the meaning of a particular book of Scripture.

2. To make more fully available the whole argument of the ancient Christian interpreter of Scripture to all who wish to think with the early church about a particular canonical text.

3. To broaden the base of the biblical studies, Christian teaching and preaching to include classical Christian exegesis.

4. To stimulate Christian historical, biblical, theological and pastoral scholarship toward deeper inquiry into early classic practitioners of scriptural interpretation.

For Whom Is This Series Designed?

We have selected and translated these texts primarily for general and nonprofessional use by an audience of persons who study the Bible regularly.

In varied cultural settings around the world, contemporary readers are asking how they might grasp the meaning of sacred texts under the instruction of the great minds of the ancient church. They often study books of the Bible verse by verse, book by book, in groups and workshops, sometimes with a modern commentary in hand. But many who study the Bible intensively hunger to have available as well the thoughts of a reliable classic Christian commentator on this same text. This series will give the modern commentators a classical text for comparison and amplification. Readers will judge for themselves as to how valuable or complementary are their insights and guidance.

The classic texts we are translating were originally written for anyone (lay or clergy, believers or seekers) who wished to reflect and meditate with the great minds of the early church. They sought to illuminate the plain sense, theological wisdom, and moral and spiritual meaning of an individual book of Scripture. They were not written for an academic audience, but for a community of faith shaped by the sacred text.

Yet in serving this general audience, the editors remain determined not to neglect the rigorous requirements and needs of academic readers who until recently have had few full translations available to them in the history of exegesis. So this series is designed also to serve public libraries, universities, academic classes, homiletic preparation and historical interests worldwide in Christian scholarship and interpretation.

Hence our expected audience is not limited to the highly technical and specialized scholarly field of patristic studies, with its strong bent toward detailed word studies and explorations of cultural contexts. Though all of our editors and translators are patristic and linguistic scholars, they also are scholars who search for the meanings and implications of the texts. The audience is not primarily the university scholar concentrating on the study of the history of the transmission of the text or those with highly focused interests in textual morphology or historical-critical issues. If we succeed in serving our wider readers practically and well, we hope to serve as well college and seminary courses in Bible, church history, historical theology, hermeneutics and homiletics. These texts have not until now been available to these classes.

Readiness for Classic Spiritual Formation

Today global Christians are being steadily drawn toward these biblical and patristic sources for daily meditation and spiritual formation. They are on the outlook for primary classic sources of spiritual formation and biblical interpretation, presented in accessible form and grounded in reliable scholarship.

These crucial texts have had an extended epoch of sustained influence on Scripture in­terpretation, but virtually no influence in the modern period. They also deserve a hearing among modern readers and scholars. There is a growing awareness of the speculative excesses and spiritual and homiletic limitations of much post-Enlightenment criticism. Meanwhile the motifs, methods and approaches of ancient exegetes have remained unfamiliar not only to his­torians but to otherwise highly literate biblical scholars, trained exhaustively in the methods of historical and scientific criticism.

It is ironic that our times, which claim to be so fully furnished with historical insight and research methods, have neglected these texts more than scholars in previous centuries who could read them in their original languages.

This series provides indisputable evidence of the modern neglect of classic Christian exegesis: it remains a fact that extensive and once authoritative classic commentaries on Scripture still remain untranslated into any modern language. Even in China such a high level of neglect has not befallen classic Buddhist, Taoist and Confucian commentaries.

Ecumenical Scholarship

This series, like its two companion series, the ACCS and Ancient Christian Doctrine (ACD), is an expression of unceasing ecumenical efforts that have enjoyed the wide cooperation of distinguished scholars of many differing academic communities. Under this classic textual umbrella, it has brought together in common spirit Christians who have long distanced themselves from each other by competing church memories. But all of these traditions have an equal right to appeal to the early history of Christian exegesis. All of these traditions can, without a sacrifice of principle or intellect, come together to study texts common to them all. This is its ecumenical significance.

This series of translations is respectful of a distinctively theological reading of Scripture that cannot be reduced to historical, philosophical, scientific, or sociologi­­cal insights or methods alone. It takes seriously the venerable tradition of ecumenical reflection concerning the premises of revelation, providence, apostolicity, canon and consensuality. A high respect is here granted, despite modern assumptions, to uniquely Christian theological forms of reasoning, such as classical consensual christological and triune reasoning, as distinguishing premises of classic Christian textual interpretation. These cannot be acquired by empirical methods alone. This approach does not pit theology against critical theory; instead, it incorporates critical historical methods and brings them into coordinate accountability within its larger purpose of listening to Scripture.

The internationally diverse character of our editors and translators corresponds with the global range of our audience, which bridges many major communions of Christianity. We have sought to bring together a distinguished international network of Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox scholars, editors and translators of the highest quality and reputation to accomplish this design.

But why just now at this historical moment is this need for patristic wisdom felt particularly by so many readers of Scripture? Part of the reason is that these readers have been longer deprived of significant contact with many of these vital sources of classic Christian exegesis.

The Ancient Commentary Tradition

This series focuses on texts that comment on Scripture and teach its meaning. We define a commentary in its plain-sense definition as a series of illustrative or explanatory notes on any work of enduring significance. The word commentary is an Anglicized form of the Latin commentarius (or “annotation” or “memoranda” on a subject, text or series of events). In its theological meaning it is a work that explains, analyzes or expounds a biblical book or portion of Scripture. Tertullian, Origen, John Chrysostom, Jerome, Augustine and Clement of Alexandria all revealed their familiarity with both the secular and religious commentators available to them as they unpacked the meanings of the sacred text at hand.

The commentary in ancient times typically began with a general introduction cover­ing such questions as authorship, date, purpose and audience. It commented as needed on grammatical or lexical problems in the text and provided explanations of difficulties in the text. It typically moved verse by verse through a Scripture text, seeking to make its meaning clear and its import understood.

The general Western literary genre of commentary has been definitively shaped by the history of early Christian commentaries on Scripture. It is from Origen, Hilary, the Opus imperfectum in Matthaeum, John Chrysostom and Cyril of Alexandria that we learn what a commentary is—far more so than in the case of classic medical, philosophical or poetic commentaries. It leaves too much unsaid simply to assume that the Christian biblical commentary took a previously extant literary genre and reshaped it for Christian texts. Rather it is more accurate to say that the Western literary genre of the commentary (and especially the biblical commentary) has patristic commentaries as its decisive pattern and prototype.

It is only in the last two centuries, since the development of modern historicist methods of criticism, that modern writers have sought more strictly to delimit the definition of a commentary so as to include only certain limited interests focusing largely on historical-­critical method, philological and grammatical observations, literary analysis, and socio-political or economic circumstances impinging on the text. While respecting all these approaches, the ACT editors do not hesitate to use the classic word commentary to define more broadly the genre of this series. These are commentaries in their classic sense.

The ACT editors freely take the assumption that the Christian canon is to be respected as the church’s sacred text. The reading and preaching of Scripture are vital to religious life. The central hope of this endeavor is that it might contribute in some small way to the revitalization of religious faith and community through a renewed discovery of the earliest readings of the church’s Scriptures.

An Appeal to Allow the Text to Speak for Itself

This prompts two appeals:

1. For those who begin by assuming as normative for a commentary only the norms considered typical for modern expressions of what a commentary is, we ask: Please allow the ancient commentators to define commentarius according to their own lights. Those who assume the preemptive authority and truthfulness of modern critical methods alone will always tend to view the classic Christian exegetes as dated, quaint, premodern, hence inadequate, and in some instances comic or even mean-spirited, prejudiced, unjust and oppressive. So in the interest of hermeneutical fairness, it is recommended that the modern reader not impose upon ancient Christian exegetes modern assumptions about valid readings of Scripture. The ancient Christian writers constantly challenge these unspoken, hidden and indeed often camouflaged assumptions that have become commonplace in our time.

We leave it to others to discuss the merits of ancient versus modern methods of exegesis. But even this cannot be done honestly without a serious examination of the texts of ancient exegesis. Ancient commentaries may be disqualified as commentaries by modern standards. But they remain commentaries by the standards of those who anteceded and formed the basis of the modern commentary.

The attempt to read a Scripture text while ruling out all theological and moral assumptions—as well as ecclesial, sacramental and dogmatic assumptions that have prevailed generally in the community of faith out of which it emerged—is a very thin enterprise indeed. Those who tendentiously may read a single page of patristic exegesis, gasp and toss it away because it does not conform adequately to the canons of modern exegesis and historicist commentary are surely not exhibiting a valid model for critical inquiry today.

2. In ancient Christian exegesis, chains of biblical references were often very important in thinking about the text in relation to the whole testimony of sacred Scripture, by the analogy of faith, comparing text with text, on the premise that scripturam ex scriptura explicandam esse. When ancient exegesis weaves many Scripture texts together, it does not limit its focus to a single text as much modern exegesis prefers, but constantly relates them to other texts, by analogy, intensively using typological reasoning, as did the rabbinic tradition.

Since the principle prevails in ancient Christian exegesis that each text is illumined by other texts and by the whole narrative of the history of revelation, we find in patristic comments on a given text many other subtexts interwoven in order to illumine that text. In these ways the models of exegesis often do not correspond with modern commentary assumptions, which tend to resist or rule out chains of scriptural reference. We implore the reader not to force the assumptions of twentieth-century hermeneutics upon the ancient Christian writers, who themselves knew nothing of what we now call hermeneutics.

The Complementarity of Research Methods in this Series

The Ancient Christian Texts series will employ several interrelated methods of research, which the editors and translators seek to bring together in a working integration. Principal among these methods are the following:

1. The editors, translators and annotators will bring to bear the best resources of textual criticism in preparation for their volumes. This series is not intended to produce a new critical edition of the original-language text. The best urtext in the original language will be used. Significant variants in the earliest manuscript sources of the text may be commented upon as needed in the annotations. But it will be assumed that the editors and translators will be familiar with the textual ambiguities of a particular text and be able to state their conclusions about significant differences among scholars. Since we are working with ancient texts that have, in some cases, problematic or ambiguous passages, we are obliged to employ all methods of historical, philological and textual inquiry appropriate to the study of ancient texts. To that end, we will appeal to the most reliable text-critical scholarship of both biblical and patristic studies. We will assume that our editors and translators have reviewed the international literature of textual critics regarding their text so as to provide the reader with a translation of the most authoritative and reliable form of the ancient text. We will leave it to the volume editors and translators, under the supervision of the general editors, to make these assessments. This will include the challenge of considering which variants within the biblical text itself might impinge upon the patristic text, and which forms or stemma of the biblical text the patristic writer was employing. The annotator will supply explanatory footnotes where these textual challenges may raise potential confusions for the reader.

2. Our editors and translators will seek to understand the historical context (including socioeconomic, political and psychological aspects as needed) of the text. These understandings are often vital to right discernment of the writer’s intention. Yet we do not see our primary mission as that of discussing in detail these contexts. They are to be factored into the translation and commented on as needed in the annotations, but are not to become the primary focus of this series. Our central interest is less in the social location of the text or the philological history of particular words than in authorial intent and accurate translation. Assuming a proper social-historical contextualization of the text, the main focus of this series will be upon a dispassionate and fair translation and analysis of the text itself.

3. The main task is to set forth the meaning of the biblical text itself as understood by the patristic writer. The intention of our volume editors and translators is to help the reader see clearly into the meanings that patristic commentators have discovered in the biblical text. Exegesis in its classic sense implies an effort to explain, interpret and comment upon a text, its meaning, its sources and its connections with other texts. It implies a close reading of the text, using whatever linguistic, historical, literary or theological resources are available to explain the text. It is contrasted with eisegesis, which implies that interpreters have imposed their own personal opinions or assumptions upon the text. The patristic writers actively practiced intratextual exegesis, which seeks to define and identify the exact wording of the text, its grammatical structure and the interconnectedness of its parts. They also practiced extratextual exegesis, seeking to discern the geographical, historical or cultural context in which the text was written. Our editors and annotators will also be attentive as needed to the ways in which the ancient Christian writer described his own interpreting process or hermeneutic assumptions.

4. The underlying philosophy of translation that we employ in this series is, like the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, termed dynamic equivalency. We wish to avoid the pitfalls of either too loose a paraphrase or too rigid a literal translation. We seek language that is literary but not purely literal. Whenever possible we have opted for the metaphors and terms that are normally in use in everyday English-speaking culture. Our purpose is to allow the ancient Christian writers to speak for themselves to ordinary readers in the present generation. We want to make it easier for the Bible reader to gain ready access to the deepest reflection of the ancient Christian community of faith on a particular book of Scripture. We seek a thought-for-thought translation rather than a formal equivalence or word-for-word style. This requires the words to be first translated accurately and then rendered in understandable idiom. We seek to present the same thoughts, feelings, connotations and effects of the original text in everyday English language. We have used vocabulary and language structures commonly used by the average person. We do not leave the quality of translation only to the primary translator, but pass it through several levels of editorial review before confirming it.

The Function of the ACT Introductions, Annotations and Translations

In writing the introduction for a particular volume of the ACT series, the translator or volume editor will discuss, where possible, the opinion of the writer regarding authorship of the text, the importance of the biblical book for other patristic interpreters, the availability or paucity of patristic comment, any salient points of debate between the Fathers, and any special challenges involved in translating and editing the particular volume. The introduction affords the opportunity to frame the entire commentary in a manner that will help the general reader understand the nature and significance of patristic comment on the biblical text under consideration and to help readers find their critical bearings so as to read and use the commentary in an informed way.

The footnotes will assist the reader with obscurities and potential confusions. In the annotations the volume editors have identified Scripture allusions and historical references embedded within the texts. Their purpose is to help the reader move easily from passage to passage without losing a sense of the whole.

The ACT general editors seek to be circumspect and meticulous in commissioning volume editors and translators. We strive for a high level of consistency and literary quality throughout the course of this series. We have sought out as volume editors and translators those patristic and biblical scholars who are thoroughly familiar with their original language sources, who are informed historically, and who are sympathetic to the needs of ordinary nonprofessional readers who may not have professional language skills.

Thomas C. Oden and Gerald L. Bray, Series Editors

VOLUME EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION

In the thirty-eight volumes of the Ante-Nicene, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, the great series of English translations that was first published in the nineteenth century, with few exceptions the Scripture commentaries of the church fathers were excluded, due to their excessive length. This was particularly unfortunate for St. Jerome (347–419/20), since his commentaries on Scripture are considered to be his most learned and important theological works. M. Hale Williams has recently written: “The greatest achievement of Jerome’s career as a biblical scholar was his commentaries on the Hebrew Prophets. No other patristic writer, either in Greek or in Latin, came close to equaling the comprehensiveness of Jerome’s exegesis of the Prophets.”1 A similar assessment was made by Erasmus of Rotterdam in his 1516 edition of St. Jerome’s writings, an edition that is credited with establishing the great St. Jerome renaissance of the sixteenth century. In the fifth of Erasmus’s nine-volume edition, the Amerbach brothers, his collaborators on the project, describe St. Jerome’s Commentaries on the Prophets as follows:

These commentaries are so outstanding that it can be said of Jerome what he himself said about Origen and his commentary on the Song of Songs: In his other works he has surpassed everyone; in these commentaries on the prophets he has surpassed himself. For his [Jerome’s] learning had already matured with prolonged study. And indeed the Old Testament seems almost to have been neglected by the Greeks since they were more inclined to the New, written as it was in Greek. But Jerome joined the two cherubim together on an equal footing and united deep to deep.2

Though well known during the Latin Middle Ages (though not nearly as dominant as St. Augustine), and most certainly during the crucially important sixteenth century, Jerome has been far less familiar in the twentieth and twenty-first. It seems that the lack of easy accessibility by means of English translations is one of the reasons for this. St. Jerome’s name is usually associated only with his translation of the Bible known as the Latin Vulgate. He is not well known today as a biblical interpreter.

It is therefore a boon to theological studies that InterVarsity Press is endeavoring to remedy this deplorable situation by their Ancient Christian Texts series. I am happy to contribute two more volumes to this series—namely, St. Jerome’s Commentaries on the Twelve Prophets—in the role of volume editor and cotranslator. Jerome’s first seven commentaries will be presented in this volume, and the remaining five in the second—in the chronological order in which Jerome wrote them, not in the order in which the Twelve Prophets appear in the Bible or in which they originated historically from the respective Old Testament prophets. The following chart illustrates this.

Table 1. Order of the Twelve (Minor) Prophets

Number

Septuagint

Hebrew

St. Jerome’s Commentaries

1

Hosea

Hosea

Nahum (392–393)

2

Amos

Joel

Micah (392–393)

3

Micah

Amos

Zephaniah (392–393)

4

Joel

Obadiah

Haggai (392–393)

5

Obadiah

Jonah

Habakkuk (392–393)

6

Jonah

Micah

Jonah (396)

7

Nahum

Nahum

Obadiah (396)

8

Habakkuk

Habakkuk

Zechariah (406)

9

Zephaniah

Zephaniah

Malachi (406)

10

Haggai

Haggai

Hosea (406)

11

Zechariah

Zechariah

Joel (406)

12

Malachi

Malachi

Amos (406)

Survey of Jerome’s Life and Scholarly Career

Jerome was probably born in 347 and was baptized in Rome during Lent 367. He then traveled to Gaul, where he made copies of some works by St. Hilary of Poitiers (d. 368), whose theological and exegetical formation had been influenced by the writings of Origen of Alexandria (185–254). In his work On Famous Men Jerome reports that Hilary had imitated the Greek Origen in his commentaries on the Psalms but also added some original material (100). Moreover, in his Commentary on Job Hilary had translated freely from the Greek of Origen’s commentary. In the preface to book two of his Commentary on Micah in the present volume, speaking in his own defense to the accusation that he had compiled Origen, Jerome explicitly refers to Hilary’s precedent. In many of his early writings Jerome adopted the same irenic stance toward Origen that had been represented by churchmen, such as St. Pamphilus the Martyr, Eusebius of Caesarea, St. Hilary, Didymus, St. Ambrose, Rufinus, St. Gregory Nazianzus and St. John Chrysostom. Throughout his career Jerome will continue to encounter theologians and exegetes of untainted orthodoxy who adopted an irenic attitude toward Origen and recognized that he was the ancient church’s exegete par excellence.

Origen’s great zeal in studying Scripture was famous and appreciated. While it was acknowledged that Origen had made some mistakes, Jerome later remarked that he would gladly trade his knowledge of the Bible with Origen, who “knew the Scriptures by heart.”3 He describes Origen as the “greatest teacher of the Church after the apostles,” a man endowed with “immortal genius,” who was of “incomparable eloquence and knowledge.” Origen “surpassed all previous writers, Latin or Greek.”4 It is also noteworthy, but not very well known, that even in his translations of Origen, Jerome endeavored to protect Origen’s reputation from malicious misrepresentation, especially against the anachronistic charge of proto-Arianism. Jerome did this by glossing his translations of Origen, removing passages that might be subject to misunderstanding in the post-Nicene church, and by adding clarifications directly into his translation of Origen’s text.5 When Rufinus of Aquileia called attention to Jerome’s method as the model for his own in public disputation with Jerome during the Origenist controversy, he would earn Jerome’s everlasting resentment.6

In 374 Jerome began living as a hermit in the desert of Chalcis, a region located slightly east of Syrian Antioch.7 During this period he made the acquaintance of a converted Jew named Baranina, who introduced him to the Hebrew language. From this point onward Jerome developed the ambition to use this knowledge in combination with his fluency in Greek to advance the Latin church’s understanding of Holy Scripture. He aimed by means of newly composed exegetical works to transmit to the Latin world the erudition of both the Hebrews and the Greeks. By assimilating and compiling the learning of rabbinic Judaism and of Greek Christian writers from earlier centuries, Jerome would instruct and edify the Latin-speaking church of the West.

Jerome went to Antioch in 379 and was ordained to the priesthood by Bishop Paulinus. From there Jerome went to Constantinople, where he became a pupil of St. Gregory Nazianzus (d. 389), whose eloquence he respectfully mentions in his Commentary on Isaiah at 3.3. This saintly Cappadocian father likewise encouraged Jerome to combine Bible study with the assimilation of Origen’s spiritual exegesis of Scripture. At this time Jerome completed translations of Origen’s Homilies on Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Isaiah.8 He also translated Eusebius of Caesarea’s Chronicle of World History around 381. Eusebius of Caesarea was another Greek Christian author deeply appreciative of Origen’s works. Thus both directly and indirectly Jerome was being formed theologically and exegetically under Origen’s massive influence on ecclesiastical literature.

Jerome translated Origen’s Homilies on the Song of Songs, which he dedicated to Pope Damasus. Again he praised Origen to the skies in the preface. At about this time he also wrote his Commentary on Ecclesiastes, a work that essentially reproduces Origen’s interpretation of this book.9 Returning to Rome in the early 380s, Jerome undertook important scholarly activity under the patronage of Pope Damasus. In 385 Jerome settled in Bethlehem, where he set up a type of monastery and guesthouse for pilgrims to the Holy Land. Being within range of Caesarea, he traveled there frequently to consult its magnificent library, which included a copy of Origen’s Hexapla, in which the entire text of the Old Testament was displayed in at least six columns in the Hebrew and various Greek versions.10 This work assisted Jerome enormously in his biblical translations and commentaries, since he could consult its Greek versions for assistance in translating and comprehending the Hebrew text. Although Origen’s massive work does not survive, hundreds of its readings are preserved in Jerome’s Old Testament commentaries. In order to give the reader a mental picture of Origen’s Hexapla, the following chart, originally transcribed in Swete’s standard work on the Septuagint, is here presented.11

The first column of Origen’s Hexapla contained the Hebrew version of the Old Testament. Indications are that Origen’s Hebrew text is in substantial agreement with the Masoretic Text, which is the medieval Hebrew text on which modern versions of the Hebrew Old Testament are based. This text was transliterated into Greek in the second column. Aquila’s Greek version occupied the third column. Aquila was a Jewish scholar of the second century who published a slavishly literal Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament intended to replace the Septuagint that was in use by the Christians. He was a native of Sinope in Pontus (though some modern scholars conjecture that he was Palestinian) and lived under Emperor Hadrian (117–138). Jerome and Origen admitted the fidelity of his translation to the Hebrew. The fourth column was occupied by Symmachus’s version. According to Epiphanius, Symmachus lived in the time of Emperor Severus (193–211) and was a Samaritan who became a Jewish proselyte. Eusebius (Hist. Eccl. 6.16-17), on the other hand, claims that he was an Ebionite Christian. Jerome follows Eusebius (Vir. ill. 54). Symmachus’s rendering is more literary than Aquila’s. Jerome judged that he aimed to express the spirit of the Hebrew rather than the letter.

Table 1. Psalm 45:1-31

The fifth column of Origen’s Hexapla was occupied by a recension of the Septuagint itself. The Greek Septuagint (from the Latin septuaginta, meaning “seventy,” and frequently referred to by the Roman numerals LXX) is the Alexandrian Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible that was begun in the third century BC and that became the Bible of the Jewish Diaspora. It was translated into Latin and became the “common version” in use in Christian churches in Latin-speaking regions prior to Jerome’s day. Jerome would eventually edit and produce a new version of Scripture based directly on the Hebrew, which in time became one of his most famous achievements (the Latin Vulgate), although it took centuries for Jerome’s version to come into common use. Finally, the sixth column of Origen’s Hexapla was occupied by the version of Theodotion, whose translation was completed during the reign of Commodus (180–192). Jerome calls him an Ebionite (Vir. ill. 54) and a “half-Christian,” whereas Irenaeus makes him a proselyte at Ephesus (Adversus Haereses 3.21.2). Theodotion’s translation is a revision of the Septuagint, harmonized with the Hebrew text. It is of unique importance for the book of Daniel because it contains the deuterocanonical portions of the book translated from Hebrew into Greek. Theodotion’s version of Daniel was in use in the Christian churches of Jerome’s day. In his commentaries Jerome also mentions a Fifth and Sixth Version in the Hexapla. By this he means fifth and sixth columns in addition to the four translations: Aquila, Symmachus, Theodotion and the LXX. Jerome cites readings from these columns as well. I will say a bit more about Jerome’s text-critical theories at the end of this introduction.

Jerome copied and otherwise obtained important manuscripts of the Scriptures and the writings of Origen and other Greek writers. In the early Bethlehem period, Jerome completed commentaries on Ephesians, Philemon, Galatians and Titus.12 In 398 he published his influential Commentary on Matthew.13 It should not surprise us to learn that all of these New Testament commentaries as well are heavily indebted to Origen’s Greek exegesis. The following chart shows the approximate length (in columns of J.-P. Migne’s Patrologia Graeca) of Jerome’s translations of Origen’s homilies and of his own commentaries on Scripture. (Only Jerome’s exegetical works are included here.)

Table 2. Length of St. Jerome’s Translations of Origen’s Homilies and of Jerome’s Own Commentaries on Scripture

Date

Title

Dedicatee(s)

Length (PG 11-17, PL 22-30)

379–382

Origen’s 9

Homiliae in Isaiam

—

35

Origen’s 14

Homiliae in Jeremiam

—

96

Origen’s 14

Homiliae in Ezechielem

Vincentius

96

383–384

Origen’s 2

Homiliae in Canticum canticorum

Damasus

21

386–387

In Philemonem

Paula and Eustochium

17

In Galatas

Paula and Eustochium

130

In Ephesos

Paula and Eustochium

115

In Titum

Paula and Eustochium

45

388–389

In Ecclesiasten

Paula and Eustochium

107

392

Origen’s 39

Homiliae in Lucam

Paula and Eustochium

99

392–393

In Nahum

Paula and Eustochium

41

In Michaeam

Paula and Eustochium

79

In Sophoniam

Paula and Eustochium

50

In Aggaeum

Paula and Eustochium

29

In Habacuc

Chromatius, bishop of Aquileia

63

396

In Ionam

Chromatius, bishop of Aquileia

35

In Abdiam

Pammachius

21

397

In Visiones Isaiae

Amabilis, bishop

53

398

In Mattaeum

Eusebius of Cremona, monk

201

406

In Zachariam

Exsuperius, bishop of Toulouse

124

In Malachiam

Minervius and Alexander, bishops

37

In Osee

Pammachius

131

In Ioelem

Pammachius

41

In Amos

Pammachius

107

407

In Danielem

Pammachius and Marcella

93

408–410

In Isaiam

Eustochium

661

410–414

In Ezechielem

Eustochium

475

414–416

In Hieremiam

Eusebius of Cremona

223

The Origenist Controversy

Jerome’s series of commentaries on the Twelve Prophets was interrupted by the Origenist controversy in the mid-390s. He alludes to this in the preface to Jonah when he mentions his own Apology (against Rufinus) and his treatise On the Best Method of Translating (which was a defense of his Latin translation of Epiphanius’s Greek invective against Bishop John of Jerusalem). These particular works were the direct byproduct of the controversy. Since Jerome presumes that his readers are familiar with what had gone on, I will briefly summarize the events. Epiphanius, bishop of Salamis, entered Palestine in 393 and accused Jerome’s bishop, John of Jerusalem, as well as the monk Rufinus of Aquileia, of being “Origenist” heretics, because they refused to sign a petition circulated by a monk named Atarbius declaring Origen to be a heretic. Jerome signed the petition, reversing his earlier irenic approach and even defensiveness toward Origen. A quarrel ensued, which led Epiphanius to introduce a schism in Palestine by ordaining Jerome’s brother Paulinian to the priesthood. John of Jerusalem responded by excommunicating Jerome and his monks. A bitter controversy ensued. Reconciliation was temporarily achieved in 397, through the mediation of St. Melania, and Jerome was reinstated, but an even worse controversy over Origenism was soon to break out in Rome and Constantinople. The best primary sources of information are the respective apologies written by Rufinus and Jerome.14

In the midst of this controversy Jerome changed from being one of Origen’s most vocal advocates and defenders into Origen’s most immoderate and violent accuser. To me it appears that Jerome was caught in disingenuous behavior during the Origenist controversies and that Rufinus was largely correct in observing that Jerome was inconsistent and even untruthful with respect to his attitude toward Origen. This is not to say that Jerome ever advocated Origen’s theological errors or innovative speculations, but he did report them without reproach in his early writings and at first strove to see Origen treated fairly. He later abandoned such irenicism and moderation and became Origen’s accuser. In any case, in spite of his intermittent outbursts against Origen’s alleged heresies, Jerome continued his reliance on Origen’s spiritual exegesis. In an interesting and most relevant passage for the present volumes, Jerome admits as much in On Famous Men 75, where he reports that he possessed Origen’s twenty-five-book Commentary on the Twelve [Minor] Prophets, transcribed by the hand of the martyr St. Pamphilus himself, “which I hug and guard with such joy, that I deem myself to have the wealth of Croesus.” Since Jesus had said: “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Mt 6:21), we can assume that Jerome’s heart was found in the possession of Origen’s commentaries. His preface to book two of Micah is another outstanding testimony to this admission of massive exploitation of Origen’s writings. P. Courcelle summarizes the influence of Origen’s writings on Jerome’s corpus this way:

The range of his reading in Origen is therefore extensive and his knowledge of this writer far exceeds our own, since the majority of Origen’s works are lost. To Jerome, Origen appears as the indispensable source. If he writes a commentary on a book or merely on a verse of Scripture, Jerome searches out a corresponding homily by Origen on such a book or verse. If by chance he cannot find such a homily, for instance in commenting on a passage of Psalm 126, he apologizes, saying that Pamphilus no longer possessed the homily. But he regrets the thought that Origen did write it and that time destroyed it. Similarly, he notes that the twenty-sixth of Origen’s thirty books on Isaiah cannot be found. . . . If Jerome knows that Origen did not make any particular commentary on a book of Scripture, for instance the Book of Daniel, he looks for explanations in another of Origen’s works, namely the Stromateis. But he feels particularly satisfied when he has at his disposal for a single subject (as in the case of the Psalms, Isaiah, and Hosea) a large amount of Origen’s works to compile. It is therefore not surprising that Jerome’s contemporaries were even then charging him with compiling Origen.15

Clearly Origen’s exegetical writings underlay Jerome’s and are the principal source of Jerome’s commentaries. Below I will say a few words about some of the points in Origen’s theology that Jerome eventually came to repudiate.

Introduction to Jerome’s Commentaries on Nahum, Micah, Zephaniah, Haggai, Habakkuk, Jonah and Obadiah

St. Jerome’s Commentary on Nahum was written around 392, while he was in the midst of preparing his Latin Vulgate translation of the Bible. This commentary was the first in a series of commentaries on five of the Minor Prophets, Nahum, Micah, Zephaniah, Haggai and Habakkuk, that were written in the space of one year. This initial series of five was interrupted by the Origenist controversy, as he mentions in the preface to Jonah. It was then followed by commentaries on the seven remaining Minor Prophets and then the Major Prophets. There is no evident reason why Jerome chose Nahum for his first commentary at this time.16 He was clearly aware that Nahum was not the first prophetic book written and that it is found in the first place in neither the Septuagint nor the Hebrew ordering of the Scriptures.

The seven commentaries contained in this volume have a wealth of material and exegesis that is interesting from a number of perspectives. In terms of the history of Jerome’s involvement in the Origenist controversy, only with Jonah and Obadiah do we begin to observe Jerome distancing himself from some of Origen’s controversial views. Jerome’s Commentaries draw on two main sources. He mentions repeatedly and rather proudly that he was instructed in the meaning of the prophetic text by “Hebrews.”17 It is typical of Jerome’s exegetical style to offer the Jewish interpretations of the Old Testament Scriptures, although not always with a receptive attitude. A second source for Jerome’s exegesis was of course the work of Origen of Alexandria. There is no extant text from Origen’s commentaries of the Twelve Prophets, so it is not possible to directly compare parallels. Nevertheless, as mentioned above, Jerome is known to have possessed a copy of Origen’s Commentaries on the Twelve Prophets.18 There are many echoes of Origen’s thought in Jerome’s commentaries on the Twelve Prophets. Jerome often failed to mention his reliance on Origen’s works, even before his 393 embroilment in a controversy over the orthodoxy of the fine points of Origen’s theology. Therefore it is almost beyond doubt that Origen’s exegesis was a major source of the material found in Jerome’s explications.

A prominent feature of Jerome’s exegesis is the abundance of scriptural quotations from both the Old and New Testaments. Jerome clearly understood all of Scripture to be a unity, so that the first and best commentary on the doctrine contained in any one part of the Scriptures was the teaching contained in other verses. Often Jerome weaves in his Scripture references very skillfully to produce a smooth text, but in a few places he seems to have taken less care. Sometimes, as with Origen’s exegetical method, his list of quotations centers on a particular word. This results in an explanation that is more like a concordance than a commentary.

Jerome’s commentaries have the homiletic style of most ancient commentaries, but they are also works of exegesis, which focus on illuminating the text of the prophecy from the perspective of the paschal mystery, which throws an entirely new light on the Old Testament. Jerome describes the prophecies as having a meaning applicable to Christians today. He says, for example, that Nahum’s intent is “to console the saints, so that they may disdain whatever they see in the world as things passing away and perishing, and may prepare themselves for the Day of Judgment, when the Lord will be the avenging enemy to the true Assyrians” (Nahum pref). Here Jerome surpasses some modern commentators, who find it difficult to see past the intensely nationalistic sentiments of the Prophets to a wider message.

Jerome emphasizes the truthfulness of the Scriptures as the Word of God. This theme is a major thrust of Jerome’s explication of the historical sense of the prophecy. A striking example is his defense of the historicity of Jonah. He carefully unravels the meanings of the various details in order to show that they truly were fulfilled. The painstaking care that Jerome takes in considering varying translations and possible meanings of the Scriptures stems from his reverence for Holy Scripture as the Word of God.

Jerome strongly stresses the justice and mercy of God in his care for his people. This theme applies to all the commentaries contained in this volume. In the exposition of the literal sense, Jerome points out that God shows care for his people Israel by bringing punishment on the enemy Assyrians or Babylonians, who took the tribes of Israel and Judah into captivity. Jerome also emphasizes the justice brought about in Christ’s advent, through the casting out of demons and mercifully making a renewed heart available to humankind. Dealing with issues of Christian life in the contemporary church, Jerome calls on Christians to draw on God’s aid and to live a just life, being justified through God’s gift. On this level of interpretation, Jerome aims a large amount of invective against heretics. This becomes tiresome, but it is also noteworthy that he gives almost an equal amount of space to offering the same heretics the possibility to repent. In interpretations that I believe stem originally from Origen, prophecies of destruction against the Assyrian and Babylonian kings on the literal level become, on the tropological level, invitations to the heretics to allow heresy to be killed in them so that they may obtain the peace that passes all understanding. The force with which Jerome denounces heretics is not mere personal anger (though he has plenty of that!), but he realizes that a heretical alienation from the truth of Christ is a grave misfortune that only God’s good mercy can heal. Finally, Jerome points out the justice that will come on all the earth at the consummation of the world, a justice that will bring punishment to sinners but will mercifully end the siege the people of God endure.

Compiling Origen

In his preface to book two of Micah, Jerome defends himself from the attacks of his detractors who were accusing him of compiling from ancient writers, mostly from Origen, and then of defiling those compilations by adding to or subtracting from them according to his style. In response he inveighs against his accusers by openly declaring that their accusation, instead of being an insult, is a compliment, for he wants to imitate one who, without a doubt, is pleasing to his readers. He notes that if by drawing from Origen he is guilty of contaminari (plagiarizing), then the writings of the ancients are equally guilty of this fault. He supports his claim by saying that the great Roman writers Ennius, Plautus, Statius and Terence, the immortal Roman poet Virgil, the most illustrious Roman orator Cicero, and the venerable father of the church Hilary of Poitiers also drew much of their writing from Greek authors. This preface strikes me as a remarkable and extremely important apologia for Jerome’s exegetical method that merits further discussion.

Jerome plainly admits to having written his commentaries according to the model of classical authors who make use of contaminari, which he understands not in the sense of “adulterating” the writings of others, of which his detractors had denounced him, but in the sense of a harmonious “blending.” Jerome refers to Rome’s greatest Latin playwright, Terence, whom he read with great delight, who was in need of defending himself in his own prologues against those who assailed him with the same accusation. In brief Jerome seeks refuge against his accusers by drawing from Terence’s prologues to his plays The Lady of Andros and The Brothers either verbatim statements or very closely paraphrased sentences. Following Terence’s pattern set forth in the prologue to The Lady of Andros, Jerome states that he is responding to his enemies, just as Terence had used respondere as the base verb that discloses the reason for which he is engaging his detractors. Elsewhere Jerome borrows almost verbatim from the prologue to Terence’s play The Brothers. The comparison shows that Jerome, indeed, is fully aware of practicing contaminari (blending) in the way that Terence and the other ancient authorities whom Jerome mentioned had practiced it. Jerome’s genius rests not only on his vast scholarship, his knowledge of languages and his saintly desire to be faithful to the utterances of the Holy Spirit, but also on his docile spirit, which he allowed to be illuminated by Origen, the brilliant luminary of the ancient church.

Reflections on Jonah

I must admit to agreeing with J. Kelly that certain of Jerome’s interpretations in the Commentary on Jonah miss the essential point of the book. For example, Jerome twists Jonah’s distress at Nineveh’s conversion to signify Christ’s weeping over Jerusalem. “As a result the original message of the book, and the delicate irony with which the author depicts God as chiding Jonah’s narrow religious outlook, are totally lost on Jerome.”19 Jerome’s culpability in this (mis)interpretation may be mitigated somewhat when we consider that his source was Origen, who was locked in combat with heretics and pagans who had accused Jesus of moral blemishes based on the distress he displayed in the Garden of Gethsemane. Jonah was interpreted along the same overly defensive lines as Jesus had been explained. I discussed this subject briefly in the introduction to my translation of St. Jerome’s Commentary on Matthew.

The Commentary on Jonah (at 3:6-9) contains another remarkable passage in which Jerome fiercely repudiates the Origenian idea that all rational creatures, including the devil and his angels, will eventually be saved (the apocatastasis). Jerome does not deny that God is mild and that the justice of God is surrounded by mercy. He knows that God’s judgment spares so that it may judge, and it judges so that it may show mercy. But Jerome denies that God’s clemency means that all rational creatures will end up on the same level. This would essentially entail the destruction of free choice and of merit, both of which are thoroughly biblical concepts. If there ends up being a single ranking for all the soldiers who engage in the Christian battle, “what difference shall there be between virgin and prostitute?” “Shall Gabriel and the devil be the same? Shall the apostles and the demons be the same? Shall prophets and false prophets be the same? Shall martyrs and persecutors be the same?” Jerome says, if the end for everyone is the same, the entire past counts for nothing. It appears to me that Jerome’s assessment, which to my knowledge has been officially embraced by the Catholic dogmatic tradition, deserves a careful hearing today, especially since the views he opposes and repudiates are very much alive today and represented by highly respected theological voices.20

Use of the “Hebrew Truth”

Finally, I wish to illustrate the principles Jerome adopts in the field of textual criticism. I will cite only one passage, from his Commentary on Zephaniah 2:5-7. Referring to Zephaniah 2:7 Jerome says:

But that which is read in the Septuagint: “from the face of the sons of Judah,” we have marked with an obelus, for it is found neither in the Hebrew nor in any of the translators, and it disturbs the context and meaning of the section; not that it will be difficult to put the thought together, howsoever it came to be placed there. But we have once and for all decided to follow the truth of the translation, and of the educated reader, rather than the judgment of the populace (vulgi).

In the fifth column of the Hexapla, Origen, using critical signs adapted from great Homeric critic Aristarchus, marked with an asterisk (*) words or lines lacking in the Septuagint but present in the Hebrew (as attested by the other Greek versions); he marked with an obelus (†) words or lines that were lacking in the Hebrew. Origen did not himself advocate for a new text of Scripture based on this reconstructed text, but by means of his critical marks desired merely to show to Christians which readings were obtained among the Jews. Origen, unlike Jerome, was wary of displacing the old Bible (the LXX) with a new version. Yet his “corrected” text of the Septuagint was transmitted to posterity as the fifth column of the Hexapla. Eusebius of Caesarea believed that Origen’s revised LXX was the original authentic text. He reproduced and published it, aided by St. Pamphilus, around 307, at first with the critical signs included, but eventually they were deleted. The result was to circulate a version that was not the original text of the LXX and that in reality consisted of a mixture of the LXX with Aquila and Theodotion. This is called the Hexaplaric recension of the LXX.

In the passage from Zephaniah cited above, Jerome is reflecting his adoption of Origen’s critical signs. At first glance Jerome seems to be presenting himself as the great Christian defender of the Hebrew original over against later corruptions. He thinks that all educated Christians will concur that the truth of the Hebrew text should be followed, not dubious additions made in the Septuagint version, even though he almost unfailingly explicates the Septuagint readings as well. However, a closer inspection of the passage reveals a more complicated picture.

Thanks to his acquaintance with Origen’s Hexapla, Jerome rightly recognizes that the Greek Septuagint (and hence the Old Latin version that is a translation of the LXX) contains lines that are not found in the later Hebrew manuscript that appears in the first column of the Hexapla (which corresponds roughly with the Masoretic Text). Jerome assumes that the original Hebrew version used by the Septuagint translators is the same Hebrew text known to him from the Hexapla. The Jewish translators Symmachus, Theodotion and Aquila, whose Greek translations are displayed in the other columns of the Hexapla, used a Hebrew text that approximates the Hexaplaric Hebrew text. Yet the modern science of textual criticism can assist us in seeing the inadequacies in Jerome’s reasoning. Jerome does not seem to envision the possibility that lines that are missing from or added to the LXX accurately reflected the far more ancient Hebrew manuscripts used by the LXX translators. If that were in fact the case, then the LXX version would be providing a superior witness to the original Hebrew version; thus to defend the LXX in its Old Latin version would be essentially a defense of the original Hebrew. Jerome’s text-critical theory appears defective because he vastly underestimated the value of the Greek Septuagint as a witness to the original Hebrew text. M. Hale Williams writes the following:

Although modern textual critics of the Hebrew Bible are far from according the Septuagint the inspired status it enjoyed among Jerome’s Christian contemporaries, they hold it in much higher esteem than did Jerome. Jerome’s privileging of the Hebrew text used by the Jews, together with its attendant traditions of interpretation, as the ultimate sources of biblical truth was by no means a simple recognition of scientific fact. Rather, it was an idiosyncratic insight, which allowed Jerome to construct for himself a unique position as an authority on the scriptures.21

I am not certain about the latter postmodern judgment according to which Jerome is seeking to enhance his own authority by his arguments. But it does seem clear to me that Jerome’s persistent advocacy of the “Hebrew truth” was not an uncomplicated and purely scientific quest aimed at recovering the original Hebrew Vorlage of Scripture. Instead, Jerome presumes that that Vorlage is visible in the first column of Origen’s Hexapla, and that divergences between that particular Hebrew text and the LXX translation must be explained by faulting either the LXX or its transmission.

On the other hand, it is not my intention to find excessive fault with Jerome on this point. For these are precisely the kind of mistakes that pioneers in a field inevitably make, and Jerome and Origen were very much pioneers in the field of introducing Hebrew scholarship and textual criticism to the Christian world. As historical-critical mistakes they are not very blameworthy, nor do they really diminish Jerome’s spectacular exegetical achievement, which was largely based on his knowledge of the Hebrew text and of Greek exegetical sources. Nor is this discussion intended to give too much credit to Jerome’s Catholic critics (such as Rufinus and Augustine) who sometimes wrote uncharitably and unjustly from their own standpoint as Christian defenders of the Septuagint/Old Latin. Often Jerome’s critics offensively and harshly rebuked him for his criticisms of the LXX, thus provoking him; yet, they were equally in the dark about the real reasons for the incomparable value of the LXX as a text, which they attributed to some sort of mystical divine inspiration of the Alexandrian Jewish translators. In any case these reflections do tend to complicate the question of the precise meaning of Jerome’s campaign on behalf of the “Hebrew truth.” Was he really defending the primacy of the “Hebrew truth” in the abstract, or of one particular Hebrew text known to him from Origen’s Hexapla?

Text and Translations

Six of the seven commentaries contained in this volume were initially translated by graduate students (Surmansky, Cazares, Garland) or advanced undergraduate students (Beller, Whitehead, DeTar-Gonzalez) at Ave Maria University. This was done with my intensive collaboration. I received the students’ work and carefully vetted these translations, endeavoring to conform them to a uniform style. (The commentaries on Nahum and Micah were originally printed as MA theses in the students’ own names. I have revised and annotated these translations even more extensively for the present volume.) In this volume only Habakkuk is my own unaided piece of work, though even for that commentary I received assistance from John Audino, an Ave Maria University classics major, for the first third. John entered seminary and left the remainder of the work to me.

These translations have been made from the Latin text found in S. Hieronymi Presbyteri Opera: Commentarii in Prophetas Minores, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 76, 76a (Turnholt: Brepols, 1969–1970). For the commentary’s lemmata (the passage from the Twelve Prophets cited in the cue heading of each section) and for Jerome’s biblical citations that seem to reflect his own Vulgate edition of the Old and New Testament, we have used either the online (www.drbo.org) or printed version of the Douay-Rheims English translation of the Latin Vulgate as our base translation. When Jerome cites at length from the Septuagint, either in the lemmata or in the body of his commentary, we have used either the online (www.ellopos.net) or printed version of Sir Lancelot Brenton’s nineteenth-century English translation of the Septuagint. But we have not adopted either of these modern versions in a slavish manner. We have always updated the archaic English and endeavored to follow Jerome’s wording as carefully as possible. I have endeavored to impose some measure of consistency in translation choices from the various contributors. For most of the names of persons and places, we have endeavored to use those of the RSV Catholic edition. Scripture citations are given in the footnotes solely according to their locations in the RSV, even in cases when the LXX and the Hebrew have a different versification from the RSV.

As volume editor, for convenience I have frequently provided in parentheses a standard meaning of the Greek terms used by Jerome, especially when he does not provide an explanation in his immediate comments. Often we have simply transliterated Greek rhetorical terms into English. Another important convention I have tried to employ consistently pertains to the use of italics and quotation marks. Jerome’s translation of the Hebrew lemma is given in bold. When he also provides the Septuagint (Old Latin) lemma, it is presented in regular font between quotation marks. When Jerome’s comments below the lemma seem to reflect the wording of his own translation of the Hebrew, I have indicated this by placing the words in italics. When he seems to be reflecting the wording of the Septuagint (Old Latin) version, I have used quotation marks to indicate this. All other citations from Scripture beyond the lemma are indicated by using quotation marks. This convention is intended to assist the reader in recognizing Jerome’s use of Scripture. To me it appears that Jerome normally cites Scripture in the Old Latin version, not according to his new version based directly on the Hebrew, which he does not seem to have regarded as some sort of sacrosanct version. The Old Latin was the Bible he grew up with. Moreover, the Septuagint was the Greek version used by his main exegetical source, Origen. Thus Jerome normally reflects the wording of that version in his explanations. I fear that, due to my own negligence and to the incompleteness of the CCSL critical apparatuses, numerous scriptural allusions have been overlooked. Jerome and Origen require translators/critical editors who know Scripture by heart, as they did, but such persons are not forthcoming.

ABBREVIATIONS

Ant.

Josephus,

Jewish Antiquities

bk

book

Comm. Eccl

.

Jerome,

Commentarii in Ecclesiasten

Comm. Ezech

.

Jerome,

Commentariorum in Ezechielem libri XVI

Comm. Gal

.

Jerome,

Commentariorum in Epistulam ad Galatas libri III

Comm. Isa

.

Jerome,

Commentariorum in Isaiam libri XVIII

Ep

.

Epistula (Epistle)

fl.

floruit

Hist. Eccl.

Eusebius,

Historia ecclesiastica

Nom. hebr.

Jerome,

De nominibus hebraicis (Liber nominum)

J.W.

Josephus,

Jewish War

Jdt

Judith

PG

Patrologica Graeca. Edited by J.-P. Migne. 162 vols. Paris, 1857–1886.

PL

Patrologia Latina. Edited by J.-P. Migne. 217 vols. Paris, 1844–1864.

pref

preface

Sir

Sirach (Ecclesiasticus)

Vir. ill.

Jerome,

De viris illustribus

Wis

Wisdom of Solomon

COMMENTARY ON NAHUM

Translated and annotated by Sr. Albert Marie Surmanski, OP, and Thomas P. Scheck

Preface of the Commentary on the Prophet Nahum