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- Herausgeber: IVP Academic
- Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
- Serie: Ancient Christian Texts
- Sprache: Englisch
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. Jerome began writing commentaries on the twelve minor prophets in 392 while preparing his Latin Vulgate translation of the Bible. After completing Nahum, Micah, Zephaniah, Haggai, and Habakkuk, he was interrupted in 393 by the Origenist controversy, after which he became a vocal critic of Origen of Alexandria. He finished his commentaries on Jonah and Obadiah in 396. These seven commentaries are available in volume one. The Origenist controversy and his commentary on Matthew occupied his time for the next several years. He finally completed the rest of the twelve prophets in 406. This Ancient Christian Text volume, edited and translated by Thomas Scheck in collaboration with classics students from Ave Maria University, includes those final five commentaries on Zechariah, Malachi, Hosea, Joel, and Amos. Throughout these commentaries Jerome refers frequently to the work of previous commentators, and his spiritual exegesis relies heavily on the exegetical work of Origen—though he acknowledges that "I have not followed them in everything." Jerome hears in these texts God's judgment and mercy not only on Israel but especially on the Christian community. In Amos, for example, he says that "whatever we have said about Judah refers to the church." He wrestles especially with the scandalous message of Hosea, which he refers to as drowning with Pharaoh during the crossing of the Red Sea. But he trusts that "the ways of the Lord are the reading of the Old and New Testament, the understanding of the holy Scriptures." Jerome's magisterial commentaries help us walk more faithfully in God's ways. 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.
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ANCIENTCHRISTIANTEXTS
COMMENTARIES ON THE TWELVE PROPHETS
VOLUME 2
EDITED BY
THOMAS P. SCHECK
SERIES EDITORS
THOMAS C. ODEN AND GERALD L. BRAY
CONTENTS
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
Jerome’s Exegetical Method
A leading Jerome scholar assesses Jerome’s most important contribution to biblical studies as follows:
Jerome’s major achievement as an expositor of scripture is his set of commentaries on the Old Testament Prophets. He wrote on all sixteen of them, the twelve Minor and the four Major Prophets. The project occupied him for the last thirty years of his life, from around 392 until his death. He would later refer to it as his opus prophetale (Comm. Ezech., preface). He clearly had a sense of its tremendous scope, for, in the prefaces to the commentaries on Isaiah, Ezekiel and Jeremiah, he enumerates the number of books he has completed, as though tracking his own progress. He also knew that it was his last project, and felt a great need to complete it before his death (Comm. Isa. 14, preface; Comm. Ezech. 14, preface). He fell just short.1
It is good to see scholars recognizing Jerome’s underappreciated commentaries on Scripture as the great scholarly achievement of his lifetime. I believe that with the publication of this volume all of Jerome’s commentaries on the Prophets will be available in English translation and accessible for research and study.
Jerome understood the purpose of a commentary as to elucidate what is unclear. This is the reason he gives for reporting the views of many exegetes and indicating how they have understood the text. The reader will then be able to choose which interpretation is preferable. Jerome does not always feel compelled to weigh in on the truth or reliability of the interpretations provided. For him that is the task of the reader. Robert C. Hill has observed that Didymus the Blind similarly shows considerable flexibility in allowing his readers to choose from the smorgasbord of interpretations he has provided: “His only norm for selection is guidance from a trusty mentor.”2 This seems close to Jerome’s approach to exegesis, and in fact Didymus might be an important source for Jerome’s method. Hill criticizes Didymus for his failure to provide precise hermeneutical principles. I suppose the same criticism could be leveled at Jerome, though I think that for both Jerome and Didymus the most important hermeneutical principle is Jesus Christ and reading all texts in the light of the Paschal mystery.
At the beginning of this second volume of Jerome’s Commentaries on the Twelve Prophets, I wish to remind the reader of an important text from Jerome’s work On Famous Men, section 75, where he says that he was in possession of Origen’s twenty-five-book Commentary on the Twelve [Minor] Prophets, transcribed by the hand of the martyr Pamphilus himself, “which I hug and guard with such joy, that I deem myself to have the wealth of Croesus.” Croesus was the famous sixth-century BC king of Lydia described by Herodotus whose wealth was fabulous and proverbial. Jerome felt that he was the wealthiest man on earth due to his possession of Origen’s exposition of the Twelve Prophets in a manuscript copied by a martyr. In many passages in Jerome’s commentaries, he states that his general aim as a commentary writer is to render into Latin the Jewish and Greek-Christian interpretations that had preceded him. Obviously the Hebrew interpretations would apply only to the Old Testament books, since Jews would not be writing commentaries on the New Testament. Origen was one of the most important of these sources on the Christian side. In the previous volume, I called attention to Jerome’s important words in the preface to book two of his Commentary on Micah, where he says that it is not only not reproachful but actually praiseworthy to blend Origen’s interpretations into his Latin works, since this is what the best of his illustrious Christian predecessors had done, such as Ambrose and Hilary of Poitiers; and moreover this method follows in the footsteps of the great founding figures of Latin literary culture, Ennius, Virgil, Cicero, Terence, Plautus and others, who drew extremely heavily on the Greek tradition in their Latin writings.
Often Jerome’s method follows this pattern. After supplying his own new Latin translation of the Hebrew lemma, followed by the Old Latin version of the Septuagint, Jerome records the contemporary Jewish interpretation of the text. He views this as applicable mainly to the historical or literal sense of the passage. At the same time he provides Christian historical interpretations, especially if they differ from what the Jews say. Then, based primarily on the Old Latin version of the Septuagint, he provides a spiritual interpretation of the passage based chiefly on Greek-Christian sources, but he also mentions Jewish spiritual and messianic applications of the text. To describe this spiritual interpretation in its Christian exemplification, Jerome uses the terms tropology, anagogy and allegory. These terms do not bear the systematic distinctions in meaning that they acquired during the Scholastic period but are demonstrably interchangeable for Jerome.3
One observes that Jerome does not cleanly and rigidly distinguish either the two versions of Scripture he has provided in the lemma or the two basic senses of interpretation. He blends the language of both versions into both interpretations. Moreover, when the Septuagint reading differs from the Hebrew, Jerome nevertheless still offers a historical interpretation of it. For example, he clarifies both readings of Zechariah 5:1, “flying scroll” (Hebrew) and “flying sickle” (Septuagint). Jerome was writing his commentaries for an audience for whom the Old Latin version was sacrosanct, since it was a translation of the Greek Septuagint, the Bible used by the apostles and early Greek-speaking church. On the other hand, if he is firmly convinced that the Septuagint reading is incorrect, he advises his readers not to be persuaded by the various attempts of Christian commentators to explain the erroneous reading (cf. Zech 7:2). Thus Jerome can be both deferent to and critical of the LXX. In a very learned treatment, Adam Kamesar depicts Jerome’s stance as follows:
It must be remembered that despite his belief in the centrality and priority of the Hebrew text, Jerome was a member of a Church in which the LXX was the accepted version. That he was quite aware of this fact is clear from his own statements. Since all theological and exegetical discussion took place on the basis of that translation, he was not about to burn his LXX and cut himself off from the rest of the Christian world. In fact, there is an abundance of evidence to show that it was not his policy to pretend that the LXX did not exist. For example, he appears to have normally employed it in his sermons. In writings from all periods of his career he often cites the Bible according the LXX/VL.4 Therefore, his statement to Rufinus that he could not forget what he learned in his youth (Ruf. 2.24) is an accurate reflection of the situation.5
In the previous volume’s introduction, I endeavored to clarify a problem with Jerome’s theory of Hebrew textual criticism, namely his tendency to undervalue the Septuagint as a witness to the original Hebrew readings. He was a pioneering scholar who lived before the science of Hebrew textual criticism had been discovered, and he might have made some of the kinds of mistakes that pioneers inevitably make. This does not tarnish his achievement as a Christian with expertise in the Hebrew language.
To illustrate Jerome’s general method of exegesis as it is found in these commentaries, consider what he says under the lemma to Hosea 7:5-7. Jerome provides an historical interpretation of the verses and then writes: “We have said these things more boldly than knowledgeably according to the tradition of the Hebrews, leaving the question of the reliability of the statements to the authors.” Jerome admits that he is transcribing Judaic interpretations and does not always approve of them. Using very similar wording, in the preface to book 3 of the Hosea commentary, Jerome says, “I am hammering out a most difficult little work of the Twelve Prophets, at least that it is overlooked by the Latins, and it may prove our boldness rather than show forth our knowledge.” It seems that his boldness is shown by his endeavor to make an abundance of Greek and Hebrew exegesis available to Latin readers. Knowledge would be claimed if the interpretations were written entirely in his own name and with his unequivocal dogmatic endorsement. Similarly, in his Commentary on Zephaniah 1:2-3 one can again notice the lack of will to offer dogmatic exegesis or to unqualifiedly endorse the interpretations he is making available. After providing a spiritual exegesis of the passage, Jerome concludes: “These things have been said according to tropology. For we ought to record the interpretation of our forefathers. It will now be left to the reader’s choice and will to sound out with severity or clemency in response to the things that have been said.” Jerome does not set himself up as the judge of all the views he provides. The result of this effort is that Jerome’s commentaries provide a deep and broad reservoir of Hebrew and Greek-Christian interpretation of Scripture that in many cases is decades, even centuries, older than Jerome. By and large he presents the exegesis because he agrees with it, finds that it stands in harmony with Scripture and ecclesiastical tradition, and does not want it to perish and be consigned to oblivion.
The method can be criticized for not being dogmatic enough. Julian, bishop of Eclanum, severely criticized Jerome’s commentaries in the preface to his own Commentary on Hosea, Joel and Amos.6 Julian claims that Jerome was not careful enough in pursuing the overall coherence (consequentia) of the texts; his exegesis was simply a compilation of the allegorical interpretations of Origen and the “mythical traditions” of the Jews. Jerome’s commentaries provide erudition, said Julian, but not insight. There might be a measure of validity in Julian’s criticism, which Jerome himself might have recognized. The reverse side of this critique, however, is that Jerome’s work selflessly has preserved for posterity a witness to Jewish and Greek-Christian interpretation of Scripture. At the end of this introduction I will explore an even more scathing critique of Jerome’s scriptural exegesis that stemmed from Augustine of Hippo.
In his exegesis of Zechariah 4:11-14 Jerome writes: “We have said these things as we are able, and as our men of genius were able to report, briefly making mention of the various opinions both of the Hebrews and of our people. If anyone speaks better, or rather, truer, we too shall willingly assent to what is better.” Jerome is by intention tentative and exploratory, not dogmatic. Of the Jewish reservoir of interpretation, under the lemma of Zechariah 6:9-15, Jerome declares:
Once for all I have resolved to reveal to Latin ears the secrets of Hebrew scholarship and the recondite instruction of the teachers of the synagogue, at least that which agrees with Holy Scripture. For this reason in the most obscure passages I need to trace an outline of the history and then to make public what I have received from men of the church. I leave it to the reader’s choice what he ought to follow.
The evidence found in Jerome’s Commentaries on the Twelve Prophets (and much more could be cited) corresponds very well with his self-defense against Rufinus’s criticisms, where Jerome said (Ruf. 1.16):
What is the function of a Commentary? It is to interpret another man’s words, to put into plain language what he has expressed obscurely. Consequently, it enumerates the opinions of many persons, and says, Some interpret the passage in this sense, some in that; the one try to support their opinion and understanding of it by such and such evidence or reasons: so that the wise reader, after reading these different explanations, and having many brought before his mind for acceptance or rejection, may judge which is the truest, and, like a good banker, may reject the money of spurious mintage. Is the commentator to be held responsible for all these different interpretations, and all these mutually contradicting opinions because he puts down the expositions given by many in the single work on which he is commenting?7
The implied answer is “No.” Jerome’s method in the Commentaries on the Twelve Prophets seems quite similar to what he later articulated in his attack on Rufinus. I have not rehearsed these passages in Jerome in order to invalidate all of Rufinus’s criticisms of Jerome. On the contrary, it appears to me that Rufinus convincingly demonstrates a number of glaring inconsistencies in Jerome’s application of his exegetical method, especially the way he completely reversed his course in connection with his earlier irenic reception and transmission of some of Origen’s interpretive speculations. In this brief introduction, I have only wanted to display Jerome’s enterprise of making Jewish and Greek-Christian interpretation accessible to his readers. His commentaries were not aimed at being absolutely definitive and dogmatic on all points of interpretation, as, for example, one finds to be frequently the case in the Scripture commentaries of Thomas Aquinas; but Jerome’s follow a classical model and are therefore wide-ranging and fertile in their scope.8 It seems to me that Jerome’s exegetical works greatly enriched the Latin Middle Ages and beyond, at least insofar as they were consulted, in view of the sources he used.
Didymus the Blind and Jerome’s Commentary on Zechariah
The first commentary in this second volume is the longest of Jerome’s Minor Prophets commentaries. It provides the reader with a golden opportunity to observe firsthand the extent of Jerome’s indebtedness to the Greek exegetical tradition, since in this case his exemplar’s commentary happily survives (unlike the majority of Origen’s writings). Didymus the Blind (313–398) was a monk and the head of the catechetical school of Alexandria.9 When only four or five years old he lost his sight from disease. As a result he was never taught the usual elements of learning, but through an intense thirst for knowledge he overcame this disability. In addition to praying for interior illumination, he studied, learning the alphabet by touch from engraved wooden tablets and learning words and syllables by attentive listening. By this means he mastered various disciplines of knowledge and attained an extraordinary familiarity with the Scriptures. St. Athanasius (296–373) made the blind scholar head of the catechetical school, in spite of his lack of ordination. In his earlier manhood, Didymus was visited by St. Anthony (251–356) in Alexandria and enlisted to support the Catholic cause against the Arians.10 Didymus became an important pro-Nicene theologian of the fourth century. A hundred years ago, J. Chapman observed that Didymus was perfectly orthodox in his trinitarian and christological doctrine; “one might even say that he is more explicit than St. Athanasius as to the Unity in Trinity and the Divinity of the Holy Ghost.”11 In our day I. Ramelli essentially concurs on this point, writing: “It is meaningful that Athanasius, the anti-Arian who admired Origen surely also because of Origen’s anti-subordinationism, appointed Didymus the head of the catechetical school, the Alexandrian Didaskaleion, in a time in which it fell under the bishop’s control. Didymus, who opposed Arianism himself, directed the school for half a century.”12 I believe that Didymus’s trinitarian orthodoxy would have been a leading reason for Jerome’s admiration of him.
Rufinus of Aquileia (345–411) was for six years a pupil of Didymus and greatly admired him. Palladius visited him four times. Sozomen says that in arguing for the Nicene faith, Didymus was successful by his extreme persuasiveness. Isidore of Pelusium and Libanius also speak of his great ability. Jerome stayed for a month at Alexandria in 386, mainly to see Didymus and have Scripture difficulties explained by him. Jerome writes affectionately of him: “In many points, I give him thanks. I learned from him things which I had not known; what I did know, his teaching has helped me to retain.”13 Jerome frequently refers to Didymus as his old teacher and affectionately describes him as “my seer,” an allusion to the contrast between his physical blindness and his keenness of spiritual and intellectual perception. So great was his esteem for Didymus that Jerome translated into Latin Didymus’s treatise On the Holy Spirit and prefixed a prologue, in which he spoke of the author as having “eyes like the spouse in the Song of Songs,” as “unskilled in speech but not in knowledge, exhibiting in his very speech the character of an apostolic man, as well by luminous thought as by simplicity of words.” In the majority of passages Jerome seems to have highly regarded Didymus’s sanctity and orthodoxy.14
Didymus himself admired and was deeply indebted to Origen’s writings, since Origen had been his catechetical predecessor in Alexandria.15 Centuries after his death this association with Origen had the unfortunate result of posthumously damaging Didymus’s own reputation when Origenism fell under the church’s condemnation. When in the sixth century Origenism was condemned at the fifth general council, in AD 553, Didymus was not named in the Acts. However, the condemnation of Origen’s theory about the preexistence of souls and the future restoration of all rational creatures (apokatastasis), in that synod’s eleventh anathema, was somewhat largely construed as carrying with it, by implication, the condemnation of other writers more or less identified with Origen’s school of thought, and Didymus was one of these. Apparently the result of this was that Didymus’s extant Greek writings were largely destroyed.16 This seems ironic when we compare such treatment with the way his contemporaries viewed him and used and even translated his writings. Didymus’s posthumous fate was similar to Origen’s.
In 392 Jerome wrote the following entry on Didymus in his work De viris illustribus:
Didymus, of Alexandria, becoming blind while very young, and therefore ignorant of the rudiments of learning, displayed such a miracle of intelligence as to learn perfectly dialectics and even geometry, sciences which especially require sight. He wrote many admirable works: Commentaries on all the Psalms, Commentaries on the Gospels of Matthew and John, On the Doctrines, also two books Against the Arians, and one book On the Holy Spirit, which I translated in Latin, eighteen volumes On Isaiah, three books of commentaries On Hosea, addressed to me, and five books On Zechariah, written at my request, also commentaries On Job, and many other things, to give an account of which would be a work of itself. He is still living, and has already passed his eighty-third year.17
It is Didymus’s Commentary on Zechariah that interests us here. Not only did Jerome apparently inspire its composition, but also he used it extensively when writing his own Latin commentary on this same prophet. Didymus’s commentaries were thought to be lost. However, in 1941 his Greek commentaries on Genesis, Job and Zechariah were discovered among papyri at Tura near Cairo. Attribution to Didymus was confirmed by its exegetical correspondence with Jerome’s Latin Commentary on Zechariah. Didymus’s Commentary on Zechariah was translated into French by L. Doutreleau in the Sources Chrétiennes series in the 1960s, and Robert C. Hill has recently made Didymus’s Commentary on Zechariah available in English translation in the Fathers of the Church series. The reader of the present volume is well advised to obtain Hill’s translation (or Doutreleau’s French edition) and compare it carefully with Jerome’s commentary. The exegetical agreement between these two texts is unbelievable and in modern times would probably be described as plagiarism. I was greatly aided in following the train of Jerome’s thought and translating it by first simply reading the interpretation Didymus had offered. I have provided the reader only with hints of Jerome’s use of Didymus in the notes. I suspect that Origen’s nonextant exegesis of Zechariah lies underneath both Didymus and Jerome, especially the concordance-like compilations of biblical references that are invoked to explain Zechariah’s text. In any case Jerome’s massive use of Didymus now presents a great opportunity for future study and comparison.18 Jerome has kept his word about assimilating and transposing the thoughts of the Greek exegetes for his Latin readers. Yet I do not report this in order to disparage Jerome or to minimize his own contribution to the Christian exegesis of the prophet Zechariah. Jerome has added an abundance of original material, supplementing his Greek sources with the addition of Hebrew traditions and with his own exegetical insights. The resulting commentary far surpasses that of his predecessors.
Jerome’s Commentaries on Malachi, Hosea, Joel and Amos
Jerome’s interpretation of Malachi is noteworthy for the way he endorses the Jewish interpretive tradition that identifies the prophet Malachi with the person of Ezra (see 3:7b-12). In the preface he explicitly rejects Origen’s view that the book is an allegory about the fall of souls from heaven. This is one of the few passages where explicit polemic against Origen’s heterodoxy can be found in Jerome’s Commentaries on the Twelve Prophets.
Under the lemma to Malachi 1:2-5 is provided an interpretation of the “Jacob I loved, Esau I hated” passage that marvelously (in my opinion) preserves freedom of choice and includes foreseen merits and demerits as the grounds for God’s election. In a note I indicate how Erasmus of Rotterdam made productive use of such passages in Jerome to oppose predestinarianism in his polemics with Martin Luther in the sixteenth century. It appears to me that Jerome’s robust understanding of free will and his means of explaining texts that speak of predestination are more in line with the Greek tradition of interpretation with its relentless opposition to gnostic determinism. Jerome’s views stand in dramatic tension with Augustine’s late doctrines, which were assimilated into medieval Scholasticism and by and large came to be identified with Catholic orthodoxy. I believe that Jerome’s powerful witness to an alternate explanation of the Jacob/Esau dialectic from what we find in Augustine and Aquinas, for instance, helped to keep alive within Catholic theological circles an alternative to the Augustinian explanation of these issues, as we find in Molinism, for instance.
From this same commentary on Malachi, I also note Jerome’s striking depiction of divine punishment as purgatorial and remedial in its nature (Mal 3:2-6). I would assess this as a scarlet thread that runs through all of Jerome’s commentaries on the Prophets. Jerome concedes that the devil and his demons, heretics, apostates and impious sinners will undergo eternal punishments, but he seems to provide some basis for hoping that Christian sinners, even impious ones, will eventually receive a more moderate sentence. This is based on Jesus’s assurance that “everyone who lives and believes in me will not die forever” (Jn 11:26).19
Jerome thinks that the basic storyline of Hosea, in which the prophet was commanded by the Lord to take a prostitute for a wife, should be interpreted typologically, not literally. In the preface to book one of Hosea, he reveals important information about Origen’s and Didymus the Blind’s exegesis of Hosea and Zechariah, again showing the productive links between these three ancient scholars. There is strong polemic against chiliasm in this and in the other commentaries found in this volume and the previous one.20 In the introduction to Jerome’s Commentary on Isaiah, I have expressed my opinion that Jerome distorts the views of his opponents on this subject, especially when he tries to depict early Christian chiliasts as Epicureans and hedonists. I also find it noteworthy to observe that Jerome’s commentaries provide abundant evidence to show that the Judaism of his epoch was wide open to the chiliastic interpretation of their prophets. Jews objected to the Christian identification of Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah, and to the idea that the Messiah’s mission was one of vicarious suffering for the nation, but not to the hope of a future earthly messianic kingdom.
The commentary on Joel begins with a discussion of the arrangement of the Twelve Prophets in the Bible. Jerome transmits etymologies of their names, probably deriving his information from Origen. At Joel 1:4 it appears that Jerome does not accept the plague of locusts as an historical event but interprets it as an allegory of the four disturbances according to Stoic doctrine. This will doubtless ruffle the feathers of modern readers who have not yet acquired a taste for allegory. In a note I call attention to a passage from Joel 2:1-11 that in the past has been used to attempt to prove coherence and system in Jerome’s eschatology, where on deeper analysis none is found. The commentary on Joel in particular appears to rely heavily on Origen’s for the polemic against heretics. Under the lemma to Joel 3:9-11, Jerome expresses more openness than is usual for him to positing a literal future fulfillment of apocalyptic prophecy.
In the preface to book two of his commentary on Amos, Jerome elegantly paints what seems to be an autobiographical portrait of himself in his old age. At Amos 5:3 he quotes exactly from Galen the physician, which if it does not throw light on Amos’s text at least shows Jerome’s familiarity with Greek literature. Likewise the citation from Aratus at Amos 5:7-9 impresses the student of classical literature, as does the citation from Xenocrates at Amos 7:7-9 (an explanation of the adamant stone).
Augustine’s Reception of St. Jerome’s Exegesis
In what might be my final opportunity to introduce a work of St. Jerome (since I plan to move on to other Latin writers in my translation work), I thought I might devote a part of this introduction to discussing his disputation with Augustine of Hippo (354–430), who to my knowledge was the most vocal public critic of Jerome’s exegesis during his lifetime.21 My hope is to clarify some of Jerome’s exegetical principles and to compare and contrast him with Augustine. In 394 the forty-year-old Augustine instigated a public controversy with Jerome by penning him a letter that circulated widely in Italy and elsewhere for many years before it reached Jerome in Bethlehem.22 At the time Augustine was merely a priest and had not yet been appointed to the episcopal rank, whereas Jerome was a far senior scholar in both age and literary achievement. He had been the former secretary to Pope Damasus and was now residing in Bethlehem and carrying out his translation and commentary work on the Hebrew Bible. Augustine’s intention in this letter (Ep. 28) was to contentiously accuse Jerome’s interpretation of the epistle to the Galatians of turning the apostle Paul into a liar and a deceiver, and indeed of undermining the authority of the whole Bible. Augustine says that he is very upset that Jerome should claim that Paul committed a dangerous act of deceit and lying. (In his response Jerome denies that Augustine has understood him correctly.) Augustine sarcastically requests that Jerome “give us some guidelines as to when it is right to lie and when it is not, but if you do this, I beg you not to use false or dubious arguments in your explanation.”23 Clearly Augustine is presenting himself as the champion of truth telling, over against Jerome, the advocate of public deception and barefaced lies. Jerome evidently needs to brush up on his catechism and reread especially the eighth commandment.
Although the proper interpretation of Galatians 2 may appear distant from the concerns of Jerome’s Commentaries on the Twelve Prophets, it seems to me that the principles that underlie this bitter disputation shed valuable light on the differing modes of exegesis and theology of these two church fathers. Since Jerome has found few defenders in the history of scholarship, I should like to weigh in on his behalf. From what I can determine, Jerome’s scriptural exegesis did not impress Augustine at all, nor did it significantly influence the theology and exegesis of Scholastic theologians, who to my knowledge were partisans of Augustine.24 For instance, St. Thomas Aquinas, in his own commentaries on those biblical books on which Jerome also left behind detailed commentaries, namely Romans, Galatians, Ephesians, Titus and Isaiah, appears to bypass Jerome’s exegesis almost completely, and yet the theological premises of these commentaries are completely informed by Augustine’s theological views. What W. Sanday and A. C. Headlam observed of Aquinas’s Exposition of Paul’s Epistles appears to me to be true:
His [Thomas Aquinas’s] commentary works out in great detail the method of exegesis started by St. Augustine. No modern reader who turns to it can fail to be struck by the immense intellectual power displayed, and by the precision and completeness of the logical analysis. Its value is chiefly as a complete and methodical exposition from a definite point of view. That in attempting to fit every argument of St. Paul into the form of a scholastic syllogism, and in making every thought harmonize with the Augustinian doctrine of grace, there should be a tendency to make St. Paul’s words fit a preconceived system is not unnatural.25
Aquinas’s scriptural exegesis is acquiring an ever-growing body of admirers.26 These scholars are confirming, not refuting, my conviction that the substructure of Aquinas’s exegesis is Augustine’s theology, not Jerome’s exegesis.27 Aquinas’s expositions of Scripture take the form of Augustinian dogma supplemented by Aristotelian and Pseudo- Dionysian metaphysics and philosophy that appear to owe little to St. Jerome’s genius. It is true that proof texts from Jerome’s writings are sometimes sprinkled cosmetically into Aquinas’s works, but more often than not these proof texts are taken from medieval glosses, and the substance of Jerome’s exegesis is not authentically assimilated or even engaged.28 It appears to me that it was the Catholic humanists, such as Erasmus, and not the Scholastic theologians, who recovered and made productive in the Catholic Church Jerome’s exegesis and theology.29
Jerome’s method of Scriptural exegesis is distinct from Augustine’s in at least two respects. First, Jerome’s exegesis is based explicitly on the original languages of Scripture, Hebrew and Greek, whereas Augustine bases his on the Old Latin. As such, Jerome’s explanations of Scripture allowed him to delve into the meaning behind the original inspired words, and not merely, as Augustine did, provide a commentary on a Latin translation of Scripture that relied on interpreting the words of Scripture in translation and at their plain-language surface value. Second, as we have seen above, Jerome’s Latin exegesis draws heavily on the antecedent Hebrew and Greek-Christian tradition of exegesis. Augustine had no access to or interest in such sources, at least not in his practice, whatever he might say at the theoretical level. It is true that this makes Augustine a far more original exegete than Jerome. No one could ever accuse Augustine of plagiarizing another author. Had the Hebrew rabbis and the Greek Fathers not written commentaries on Scripture, Augustine’s exegesis probably would not have been much affected. In contrast Jerome’s body of exegetical work is simply unthinkable without the Hebrews and Greeks. Augustine generated many scriptural explanations out of whole cloth based on a translation, while Jerome looked to the sensus fidei, the mind of the church in the original languages of the Bible.
It seems somewhat ironic that Augustine opens his very first letter to Jerome (Ep. 28) by claiming to approve of Jerome’s translations of Origen’s exegesis. Indeed he encourages him to continue in that task and to devote care and labor to the translation of Origen’s books.30 The irony of this piece of advice is that Origen was the principal source of Jerome’s explanation of Galatians 2 that Augustine claimed turned Paul into a liar and the whole Bible into a book of falsehoods. Is Augustine sincere in his request? Does he truly want access to more of Origen’s exegesis in Latin translation? It seems difficult to believe that he had any real esteem for Origen in light of the content of this letter and the mockery of Origen’s and Jerome’s exegesis that is found there. Moreover, it is demonstrable that in the composition of his own works until the end of his life, Augustine did not use Latin translations of Origen, whether done by Jerome or Rufinus. In his penultimate work on the Hexateuch, for example, Augustine completely ignores Rufinus’s translations of Origen’s Homilies on the Hexateuch, to which he had complete access.31 It is true that now and then Augustine responds to Origen’s comments (without naming him), for instance, regarding the trees and fruits of paradise in his first homily, On the Literal Meaning of Genesis. Other fragmentary references to Origen can be found. But on the whole Augustine’s exegesis and theology was not formed or informed by Origen’s exegesis. He operated relatively independently of antecedent ecclesiastical sources.
In Ep. 28 Augustine requests of Jerome to produce a new Latin translation of the Hexaplaric text of the Septuagint, as he had already done for the book of Job, carefully indicating by signs and markers for Greek-less readers like himself where the Hexaplaric text differs from the Septuagint. It seems that Augustine is chiefly interested in employing Jerome as a sort of research assistant. Augustine makes it very clear that he sees no point to Jerome’s translating the Old Testament directly from the Hebrew. For, “I would be very surprised if anything could still be found in the Hebrew texts which had escaped the notice of all those [the Hexapla] translators who were such experts in that language.”32 In other words, what could Jerome’s new Christian version of the Hebrew Bible possibly add to those of the Greek-speaking Jewish and heretical translators of the Old Testament? This seems to be a strange preference, and Jerome will take note of it in his response.33 Augustine states that in any case it is the Septuagint itself, and not the Hexaplaric recension of it, that “should without doubt be accorded preeminent authority in this field.”34 So, while seeming to approve of a new translation of the Hexaplaric recension, it is to the Septuagint that Augustine ascribes the chief authority. Jerome finds Augustine’s suggestions to him and his whole train of thought incoherent. He writes in response:
Do you wish to be a true admirer of the Septuagint? Then you should not read what is preceded by an asterisk—in fact you should delete such passages from your copy, to prove yourself to be a supporter of the ancient translators. But if you were to do this, you would be forced to condemn all church libraries for only one or two copies are to be found which do not contain these passages.35
Without question Augustine exhibits elegance and charm in his Latin diction in this opening salvo. Consider this sentence: “I say nothing of the Seventy for I would not dare to give any kind of decisive answer to the question of whether they possessed a greater harmony of wisdom or of inspiration than one man could have.”36 In spite of the elegant Latin periods, the modern reader is somewhat jolted by the impertinence of Augustine’s offering scholarly advice to the far-senior Jerome on what ecclesiastical projects he should undertake. One wonders what would motivate a priest who was unfamiliar with the biblical languages to offer such advice to a senior ecclesiastical scholar like Jerome, who knew at least five languages and had been in the employ of Pope Damasus. Moreover, the incoherence of Augustine’s position stands out. He does not seem to understand what he is requesting. In his follow up letter to Jerome, Ep. 71, Augustine repeats that he wishes Jerome would make a new Latin translation of the Greek Septuagint, not of the Hebrew text.37
Jerome’s responses to these unsolicited criticisms are forceful and effective.38 In the second longer response (as I have already indicated above), Jerome writes that he is surprised that Augustine has praised Jerome’s translation of the Hexaplaric recension of the Septuagint version, while disparaging his new translation directly from the Hebrew.39 For the former is not the original form of the Septuagint, a version to which Augustine attributes supreme authority. If Augustine wishes to be a true admirer of the Septuagint he should bypass Origen’s Hexaplar recension altogether. Jerome suspects that Augustine does not really understand these matters at all.40 He conjectures, as his friends have suggested, that Augustine is simply trying to show off his erudition by publicly attacking a well-known ecclesiastical scholar.41 The modern reader gains the same impression from reading Augustine’s first letter.
Second, Jerome turns the tables on Augustine in a brilliant way. In his effort to dissuade Jerome from translating the Bible directly from the Hebrew, Augustine had used the following syllogism: the passages that the Seventy translated were either obscure or plain. If they were obscure, one must believe that Jerome’s new version is just as likely to be mistaken. If the passages were plain, it is not believed that the Seventy could have been mistaken. So how could Jerome’s contribution be anything but redundant or erroneous? Jerome replies to this syllogistic logic (not without sarcasm) as follows: A whole series of Greek and Latin writers have composed commentaries on the Psalms; Augustine too has published a work on the Psalms. Jerome asks: Why, after all the labors of so many competent interpreters, does Augustine differ from them in his exposition of some passages? If the Psalms are obscure, it must be believed that he is as likely to be mistaken as the others; if they are plain, it is incredible that these others could have fallen into mistakes. In either case Augustine’s exposition of the Psalms has been an unnecessary labor, and on his principles, no one would ever dare to speak on any subject after others have pronounced their opinion. Jerome draws the sensible conclusion: Why does Augustine grant himself the liberty to contribute to the church’s exegetical tradition of the Psalms, but he is intolerant of Jerome’s effort to make a new Christian Latin translation of Scripture directly from the Hebrew? Jerome writes: “No, it should rather be your duty, as a civilized human being, to show the same indulgence to others as to yourself.”42
Jerome says that he has not attempted to do away with the works of his predecessors by his fresh work on the Hebrew text. Jerome then adds, if Augustine is averse to reading Jerome’s version, no one is compelling him to read it against his will. Let him drink with satisfaction the old wine, but Augustine should not despise Jerome’s new wine. In spite of the sarcastic and seemingly impatient tone of this response to Augustine, the modern reader (or at least I) feels a large measure of sympathy for Jerome’s point of view. It seems difficult to admire the young Augustine for his effort to dissuade Jerome from translating the Hebrew Bible, since he has clearly fabricated arguments that have no validity.43
So much for Augustine’s critique of Jerome’s translation work and Jerome’s response to that unsolicited provocation. In these same letters, Augustine also scathingly and publicly denounces the content of Jerome’s exegesis, specifically, his interpretation of an important section of the book of Galatians. As usual, Jerome had based his interpretation of Galatians on his Greek predecessors, specifically in this instance on Origen and Didymus, who in turn had been followed by John Chrysostom. Partly in response to Porphyry’s indictment of Christianity, who had branded Peter with error and Paul with impudence, but chiefly based on the historical information about Peter and Paul that is provided in the book of Acts, Origen evidently had explained that the confrontation between Peter and Paul that is recounted in Galatians 2:11-21 must have been a diplomatic encounter intended to reconcile warring factions within the early church. For the book of Acts makes it abundantly clear that Peter was no Judaizer and that Peter and Paul did not stand in theological opposition to each other in their principles of living out the gospel among Jews and Gentiles. Indeed, Peter was responsible for receiving the first Gentiles into the church (cf. Acts 10–11), and he opposed the Judaizing heresy at the Council of Jerusalem with Paul present (cf. Acts 15:1-35). Paul had become like a Jew to win the Jews and avoided giving offense to the Jews. Peter did not require Gentile converts to adopt the law of Moses and circumcision in order to be saved. The incident described in Galatians 2 constitutes the only exception to the rule that Paul’s own letters testify that he and Peter shared the same Christian faith.
