2. The Relation of Jerome's Commentary on Ephesians to Origen's
19 See Jerome's prologue to Book I below (543-4, Vall.). The commentaries of both
Apollinarius and Didymus have perished. A few brief remarks in Jerome's commentary can be identified as derived from Apollinarius but none can be identified as coming from Didymus.
There were also two earlier commentaries on Ephesians in Latin which Jerome either ignored or of which he had no knowledge. He ignored the Latin commentary Gaius
Marius Victorinus had written on the epistle sometime after ad 360. In the prologue to book 1 of his commentary on Galatians, which was written immediately before that on Ephesians, 20 20 See the prologue to Book I below (539-40, Vall.).
Jerome notes that Victorinus had 'published commentaries on the apostle' but dismisses them because they show no knowledge of the Bible. 21
21 PL 26.369-70 (Vall.). A. Souter, The Earliest Latin Commentaries on the Epistles of St Paul (Oxford, 1927), 9. Victorinus' commentaries on Ephesians, Galatians, and Philippians are extant. Souter thinks Victorinus was probably the first Latin commentator on these three Pauline epistles (ibid. 21). For the text of Victorinus' commentaries see
Marius Victorinus Pars II: Opera exegetica, ed. F. Gori, CSEL 83.2 (Vienna, 1986).
Jerome appears to have been ignorant of the Latin commentary on the Pauline epistles produced between ad 366 and 384 and known under the name Ambrosiaster. 22
22 See A. Souter, Latin Commentaries, 44-9, 107. This author, whose identity is unknown, wrote commentaries on Romans-Philemon. For the text of his commentaries see Ambrosiastri qui dicitur Commentarius in epistulas Paulinas Pars I: In epistulam ad
Romanos; Pars II: In epistulam ad Corinthios; Pars III: In epistulas ad Galatas, ad
Efesios, ad Filippenses, ad Colossienses, ad Thessalonicenses, ad Timotheum, ad Titum, ad Filemonem, ed. H. J. Vogels, CSEL 81.1-3 (Vienna, 1966, 1968, 1969). end p.4
2. The Relation of Jerome's Commentary on Ephesians to Origen's Jerome notes in the prologue to Book I of his commentary on Ephesians that he has followed Origen, Apollinarius, and Didymus in his own work and, especially, that he has followed Origen. In the prologue to his translation of Origen's De Principiis done in ad
398 Rufinus remarks that Jerome had translated (transtulisset in Latinum) more than seventy of Origen's homilies and some of his commentaries on Paul's epistles (aliquantos
. . . de tomis in apostolum scriptis) and that he had polished and altered the offensive elements in these writings of Origen in such a way that a Latin reader would not be offended by them. 23
23 Princ., Praef. Ruf. 2.
We have seventy-eight homilies of Origen translated by Jerome on Isaiah, Jeremiah,
Ezekiel, Canticles, and Luke. Since the commentaries on Philemon, Galatians, Ephesians, and Titus are the only commentaries on Paul that Jerome produced, Rufinus' remark must refer to these four commentaries. C. Bammel has noted that Jerome refers to these remarks of Rufinus in his Apology (1. 8) and that he does not deny that he has translated many of Origen's commentaries (multa de tomis) into Latin. As none of Jerome's Biblical commentaries are presented as translations of Origen's commentaries we can only conclude that some, at least, of the commentaries which bear Jerome's name are translations of Origen. Jerome's only reply to Rufinus' assertion that he translated some of
Origen's Pauline commentaries is that his translations had not stirred up trouble in Rome. 24
24 Apol. 1. 8; C. P. Bammel, 'Die Pauluskommentare des Hieronymus: Die ersten wissenschaftlichen lateinischen Bibelkommentare?', Cristianesimo Latino e cultura
Greca sino al sec. IV, SEAug 42 (Rome, 1993), 191. In the second book of his Apology
Jerome says, 'I myself . . . translated seventy homilies of Origen and parts of his Tomes'
[i.e. commentaries] (2.14; tr. NPNF, 2nd ser. iii.508). In referring to Rufinus' attack on his translations of Origen in Apol. 3. 12 Jerome tacitly admits that his commentary on Ephesians is one of the commentaries on Paul which he had translated.
This tacit admission of Jerome to translating Origen's commentaries on Paul should not be taken, however, to suggest that we have anything like either a word-for-word translation of Origen's Greek text or even a paraphrastic translation of the whole. Jerome explained his approach to translating in a letter to Pammachius. Except in translating the Bible, where even the order of the words has significance, he translates sense for sense and not word for word (Ep. 57. 5). He cites a passage from the end p.5
prologue of Cicero's translation of the orations of Aeschines and Demosthenes to support this manner of translating. Cicero says,
I have rendered them not as a translator but as an orator, keeping the sense but altering the form by adapting both the metaphors and the words to suit our own idiom. I have not deemed it necessary to render word for word but I have reproduced the general style and emphasis. I have not supposed myself bound to pay the words out one by one to the reader but only to give him an equivalent in value. 25
25 Ep. 57.5; tr. NPNF, 2nd ser. vi.114.
Jerome's alteration of texts of Origen, however, involved more than free translation. It also involved the omission and modification of controversial materials. Writing to Vigilantius, Jerome admits that Origen was a heretic, at least on certain points of his theology, but argues that he interpreted the Scriptures brilliantly in many places. He then defends his translations of Origen's expositions of Scripture by saying that he has
'translated what is good in him' and has 'either omitted or corrected or passed over in silence what is bad'. 26
26 Append. A, Ep. 61.2.
Furthermore, Jerome insists that his commentaries, and that on Ephesians in particular, contain material from various earlier commentators, 27
27 See Append. B, 16 and his reiteration of this statement in relation to his commentary on Ephesians in the preface to his commentary on Jeremiah written late in his life (tr. in NPNF, 2nd ser. vi.499). although I will point out later that this assertion must be treated with great caution. 28
28 See below, §3.3.
Taking these points into consideration we may, nevertheless, safely assume that Jerome's commentary on Ephesians closely follows Origen's in all of its major lines of thought.
Jerome's admission that he followed Origen's commentary on Ephesians noted above and the exchange between Rufinus and Jerome about the latter translating some of Origen's
Pauline commentaries bear this out. The juxtaposition of the catena fragments with