Introduction: The Life and Works of St. Jerome (347–420)

Introduction: The Life and Works of St. Jerome (347–420)

INTRODUCTION: THE LIFE AND WORKS OF ST. JEROME (347–420)

[I desire] … to pursue vigorously the explanation of Holy Scripture and to transmit to the Latin world the erudition of the Hebrews and the Greeks.11

—St. Jerome The above quotation comes from St. Jerome's final written work and may have been written shortly before his death. It seems to capture well what he must have regarded as the chief purpose of his life: to instruct and edify the Latin-speaking church of the West by means of newly composed exegetical works that had assimilated and compiled the learning of rabbinic

Judaism and of Greek Christian writers from earlier centuries.22 Jerome was not the first

Christian theologian to rely heavily on Greek sources, such as Origen (185–254), in his own Latin exegesis; he was preceded by Sts. Hilary of Poitiers and Ambrose of Milan. But in the novel enterprise of incorporating Hebrew learning into Christian scholarship, Jerome had no Latin predecessor. Without an intensive and extensive knowledge of his sources, it is difficult to appreciate adequately Jerome's learning. He was quite controversial in his own lifetime and to some extent marginalized. Moreover, he was a man with character defects, such as his irascible criticisms, sometimes exaggerated, of those with whom he argued. Yet in spite of these flaws, the medieval Catholic Church would eventually recognize him, more than eight centuries after his death, as one of the four great Doctors of the Latin church, alongside St. Augustine (354–

430), St. Ambrose (d. 397), and Pope St. Gregory the Great (d. 604).33 In 1516 a great St. Jerome renaissance was inaugurated throughout Europe by the scholarly work of the Catholic priest and Doctor of Sacred Theology Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466–1536).44 Erasmus's deservedly famous complete edition of St. Jerome's works made Jerome's writings productive and easily accessible throughout the century. This culminated in their being consulted heavily by the bishops of the Council of Trent (1545–63), who spoke of St. Jerome as "the greatest doctor in explaining the Sacred Scriptures."55 Jerome would later become the subject of Pope Benedict XV's encyclical

1 Jerome, In Ieremiam 3, praef. (CCSL 74, 119). There is a close parallel in Com in Zach 6:9–5.

2 Cf. P. Courcelle, Late Latin Writers and Their Greek Sources (Cambridge, MA: Harvard

University Press, 1969), 50–1.

3 This was formally ratified by Pope Boniface VIII on September 20, 1295.

4 See Desiderius Erasmus, Patristic Scholarship: The Edition of St. Jerome, ed. J. Brady and J.

Olin, CWE 61 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992); L. Halkin, Erasmus: A Critical

Biography, trans. John Tonkin (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993).

5 Doctor Maximus in Exponendis Sacris Scripturis; cited by F. X. Murphy, "Saint Jerome,"New

Catholic Encyclopedia, 2nd ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967–6), 7:759. To verify the large-scale

Spiritus Paraclitus in 1920, which echoes Trent in speaking of Jerome as "one whom the Catholic

Church recognizes and venerates as the greatest doctor divinely given to it for explaining the Sacred Scriptures."66 His writings would be energetically commended by Pope Pius XII in Divino

Afflante Spiritu (1943). These exhortations indicate that Catholic scriptural scholarship has much to reap from St. Jerome.

Jerome was probably born in 347, though important scholars like J. N. D. Kelly, following the evidence of Prosper of Aquitaine, still date his birth to 331. If the latter year is correct, he would have been approaching ninety at the time of his death. He was born in Stridon, a village in the western Balkans under northern Italian influence. Jerome was not baptized as an infant, in keeping with a common custom of the time of postponing baptism until the adult years.77 His parents were wealthy, and, from this circumstance, Sutcliffe infers that they were apparently

"not particularly zealous in their attachment to their religion," since they were "in easy circumstances."88 On the other hand, J. Gribomont conjectures that they may have been devout

Christians, based on the fact that three of their children later entered religious life. 99 This is all speculation. What is certain is that Jerome's parents sent him to Rome, probably at around the age of twelve, to complete his literary studies. Over the next eight years, he acquired a thorough education, studying under Aelius Donatus, the most famous teacher of literature of the period.110 Jerome honed his skills as a young scholar by transcribing a great number of Latin authors for his personal library.111 His own skill in Latin prose composition was perfected to the point that Jerome's letters would come to rank alongside the epistolary collections of Cicero, exploitation of Jerome' writings at Trent, see the indices of Concilium Tridentinum, ed. S. Merkle

(Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1911). J. Reumann, "Anglicans, Lutherans, and St.

Jerome,"Lutheran Forum 33, no. 2 (1999): 29–6 (31) says that in the sixteenth century, the authority of Jerome was so well respected that the Council of Trent did not assert the distinctiveness and superiority of the episcopate over the priesthood, as some participants wished. "t remained for Vatican II to say that 'he fullness of the Sacrament of Orders is conferred by episcopal consecration'(Lumen Gentium

)."

6 Acta Apostolicae Sedis 12 (1920): 385–22 (385). "uem Doctorem Maximum sacris Scripturis explanandis divinitus sibi datum catholica agnoscit et veneratur Ecclesia."

7 Rufinus of Aquileia, Basil the Great, Gregory Nazianzus, Ambrose, John Chrysostom, and Augustine, all born of Christian parents, were baptized as adult believers. F. X. Murphy, Rufinus of Aquileia (345–11): His Life and Works (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press,

1945), 6, describes this as " sad, if not cynical, concession of the day to the follies of youth."

8 E. Sutcliffe, "Jerome,"in The Cambridge History of the Bible, vol. 2, The West from the Fathers to the Reformation, ed. G. Lampe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), 80.

9 J. Gribomont in J. Quasten, Patrology, 4 vols. (Utrecht-Antwerp: Spectrum), 3:195.

110 Aelius Donatus' two treatises on Latin grammar dominated European learning until the twelfth century. He also wrote commentaries on Terence and Virgil. See G. Conte, Latin

Literature: A History (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), 627–8.

111 The influence of Latin classical authors on Jerome is the subject of the book by H. Hagendahl,

Latin Fathers and the Classics: A Study on the Apologists, Jerome and Other Christian Writers

(Göteborg, Sweden: Almquist & Wiksell, 1958).

Seneca, and Pliny the Younger as the most celebrated in Latin literature.112 In Rome Jerome also acquired the rudiments of Greek, though his eventual mastery of the Greek language was attained later after he had lived in the East for many years.

Prior to his baptism, Jerome may have allowed himself some experience of sensuality. 113

Though some of his medieval hagiographers ascribed virginity to him, Jerome himself, through cryptic allusions, seems to have denied that he was a virgin.114 A. Cain concludes: "This certainly would help to explain why Jerome, as an adult monk, idealized virginity and displayed such contempt for human sexuality."115 In any case, Jerome did not break off his ties with his Christian friends with whom he was accustomed on Sundays to visit the tombs of the apostles and martyrs.116 At the age of eighteen or nineteen, Jerome requested baptism, in Lent 367, possibly from Pope Liberius. Later that year he traveled to Gaul, where, in Trier, he made a decision to pursue the monastic life. Here he made copies of some works by St. Hilary of Poitiers (d. 368).117

This appears to be the beginning, at least retrospectively,118 of Jerome's theological formation from the writings of Origen of Alexandria (185–254).119 The influence of Origen on Jerome deepened over time and is evident in several of Jerome's works. Jerome briefly describes Origen's life and literary output in very admiring fashion in De viris illustribus

( On

Famous Men

) 54

, as a complement to his summary in E E p. 33

. In V V ir Ill

, Jerome reports that Hilary had imitated Origen in his commentaries on the Psalms but also added some original material. Moreover, in his Commentary on Job, Hilary had translated freely from the Greek of Origen. Repeatedly, Jerome will encounter theologians and exegetes of untainted orthodoxy who adopted an irenic attitude toward Origen of Alexandria and recognized that he was the early church's exegete par excellence. In addition to his antiquity and to his Spirit-filled fidelity to New Testament modes of Old Testament interpretation, Origen's word-perfect knowledge of 112 This, at least, is the assessment of one of their English translators. Cf. Select Letters of St.

Jerome, trans. F. A. Wright, Loeb Classical Library 262 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,

1991), xiii. The other great English translator of Jerome' letters is The Principal Works of St.

Jerome, trans. W. Fremantle, NPNF2 6 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1893). In French, there is Saint

Jérôme Lettres, ed. J. Labourt, 8 vols. (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1949–3).

113 J. Gribomont, in J. Quasten, Patrology, 3:213.

114 Ep.

48.20

to Pammachius (NPNF2 6:87); Ep.

7.4

to Chromatius, Jovinus, and Eusebius (NPNF2 6:9).

115 St. Jerome, Commentary on Galatians, trans. A. Cain, FOTC 121 (Washington, DC: Catholic

University of America Press, 2010), 4.

116 In Hiez. 12.244–3 (commenting on Ezek 40:5–3).

117 Cf. St. Hilary of Poitiers, Commentary on Matthew, trans. D. H. Williams, FOTC 125

(Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2012).

118 M. Hale Williams, The Monk and the Book: Jerome and the Making of Christian Scholarship

(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 45, thinks that Jerome "iscovered"Origen at a later date, while under the influence of Gregory Nazianzus in Constantinople.

119 For full documentation, see P. Courcelle, Late Latin Writers and Their Greek Sources, 100–7.

EEp.

Epistle VVir Ill

Jerome' De viris illustribus

the Greek Bible was famous. Jerome later remarked that he would gladly trade his knowledge of Scripture with Origen, who "knew the Scriptures by heart, and he toiled day and night in the study of their meaning.… Who can fail to admire his enthusiasm for the Scriptures?" 220 Indeed, the twenty-eight years of labor Origen had invested in the Hexapla, a six-column edition of the Old Testament that will be described more fully below, left an indelible impression on subsequent Christian scholars who became aware of Origen's indefatigable research.

In his early writings, Jerome adopted the same irenic stance toward Origen that had been represented by men such as St. Pamphilus the Martyr, Eusebius of Caesarea, St. Hilary, Didymus,

St. Ambrose, Rufinus, St. Gregory Nazianzus, and St. John Chrysostom. For example, Jerome described 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."221 The young Jerome attributed Origen's bad reputation to the envy of his detractors, who could not endure his eloquence, not to any defect in his orthodoxy. Even in his translations of Origen at this early stage of his career, Jerome endeavored to protect Origen's reputation from careless 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.222

Jerome moved to Aquileia in northeastern Italy, where he continued to study Scripture and theology and lived as an ascetic for seven years. In 374 he began living as a hermit in the desert of Chalcis, a region located slightly east of Syrian Antioch.223 During this period Jerome made the acquaintance of a converted Jew named Baranina, who introduced him to the Hebrew language. There had always been a large supply of Jewish converts to Christianity who were fluent in the Semitic languages. Jerome's uniqueness was in his being the first Latin Christian scholar who, on his own initiative, endeavored to master the original languages of the Old

Testament and make productive use of these languages in his scholarly works. He would eventually attain competence in both Hebrew and Aramaic (which he also calls Chaldean or Syrian). A famous incident in his life occurred at Chalcis. Jerome dreamed that he was standing before the judgment seat of Christ. In a vision he was condemned for being a Ciceronian rather than a Christian. He was sentenced to a scourging, in the midst of which he begged Christ for mercy and vowed never again to touch pagan literature. Jerome recounts the experience in EEp.

22.30 to Eustochium. The interpretation of this incident and its actual influence on Jerome's life

220 Ep.

84.8

221 Jerome, Hebrew Names, preface; Vir Ill

54.8

; Ep.

33.4

to Paula; Jerome' preface to his translation of Origen' Homilies on Song of Songs.

222 See my English translation of Origen' Homilies on Isaiah, found in appendix 1, for further discussion and illustration of Jerome' earliest translation methods.

223 For a study of the letters Jerome wrote during this period, see A. Cain, The Letters of Jerome:

Asceticism, Biblical Exegesis, and the Construction of Christian Authority in Late Antiquity

(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).

EEp.

Epistle

are a complex matter.224

Jerome went to Antioch in 379 and was ordained to the priesthood by Bishop Paulinus. He heard lectures there from Apollinaris of Laodicea, an Alexandrian grammarian, who had mastered Greek literature and philosophy and had written an important apologetic work in thirty books, Against Porphyry. Although Apollinaris's work does not survive, it had a formative influence on Jerome. In E E p 84.3

, Jerome said that he had learned biblical interpretation from Apollinaris, though he distanced himself from Apollinaris's heterodox understanding of the incarnation.225 Modern scholarship sometimes distinguishes the ancient schools of exegesis into "Antiochene typology" (good) and "Alexandrian allegory" (bad). It seems ironic that Jerome admits to learning Alexandrian methods of exegesis in Antioch. In any case, the modern categorization is faulty and misleading.226

From Antioch Jerome went to Constantinople, where he became a pupil of St. Gregory

Nazianzus (d. 389), whose eloquence he respectfully mentions in the present work at 3.3. This saintly Cappadocian father likewise encouraged Jerome to combine Bible study with the assimilation of Origen's scriptural exegesis.227 Jerome continued to do so in emulation of his orthodox predecessors. More than that, Jerome would adopt Origen's comprehensive pattern of life, scholarship, and asceticism as a model for his own.

Jerome's fluency in Greek at this point in his life is demonstrated by the fact that he undertook translations of Origen's Homilies on Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Isaiah.228 He also translated Eusebius of Caesarea's Chronicle of World History. These projects were completed around 381. Eusebius was another Christian author deeply indebted to Origen's works, as will be discussed in greater detail below. Thus, both directly and indirectly, Jerome was being

224 Cf. Hale Williams, The Monk and the Book, 26–7.

EEp Epistle 225 Apollinaris said that the Son of God did not fully assume human flesh, but that the divinity itself took the place of the human mind and spirit.

226 Cf. J. Behr, Formation of Christian Theology

, vol. 2,

The Nicene Faith

, part 1

(Crestwood: St.

Vladimir' Seminary Press, 2004), 12: "ot surprisingly, given our own concern for history, investigations into patristic exegesis have usually proceeded by drawing up an opposition between Antiochene typology, based in a Semitic sense of history (and therefore good) and Alexandrine allegory, based in a Platonic escape from the history represented in the text (and therefore bad). Again, it is increasingly realized that such facile contrasts say more about our own prejudices and that they are simply inadequate as models for understanding patristic exegesis. This is also paralleled, and strengthened, by an increasing dissatisfaction among scriptural scholars with the historical-critical methodologies that so fascinated twentiethcentury scriptural scholarship."

227 See C. Beeley, Re-Reading Gregory of Nazianzus: Essays on History, Theology, and Culture

(Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2012).

228 Cf. Origen, Homilies on Jeremiah, trans. John Clark Smith, FOTC (Washington, DC: Catholic

University of America Press, 1998); Origen, Homilies 1–4 on Ezekiel, trans. Thomas P. Scheck,

ACW (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2010). In an appendix to this volume, I have provided a new

English translation of Jerome' Latin version of Origen' Homilies on Isaiah.

formed theologically and exegetically under Origen's influence on ecclesiastical literature.

Jerome also translated Origen's Homilies on the Song of Songs, which he dedicated to Pope

Damasus.229 At about this time, he also wrote his Commentary on Ecclesiastes, a work also heavily indebted to Origen.330

Returning to Rome in the early 380s, Jerome undertook important scholarly activity under the patronage of Pope Damasus. However, he also became embroiled in controversy with his brother monks and priests in part as a result of the insulting, contentious, and defamatory style of his polemical writings, as well as for the excesses of his brand of asceticism.331 When the young St. Blesilla, daughter of the Roman noblewoman Paula and sister of Eustochium, died from excessive fasting, Jerome was widely blamed, since he was her spiritual director. After the death of his patron, Pope Damasus, in December 384, the situation became so serious that an official ecclesiastical inquiry was conducted. Jerome was condemned for contentiousness and slander in a formal judgment that was delivered orally, and he was requested to leave the city altogether.332 Having been banished by the "senate of the Pharisees," as he calls the priestly council of Rome, he traveled to Palestine and visited the holy sites. Jerome also made a brief visit to Egypt, where he stayed for thirty days with Didymus the Blind (d. 398). Soon he would publish his own Latin translation of Didymus's Greek Treatise on the Holy Spirit. Jerome was well aware that Didymus had been immersed in the writings of Origen as well, and he wanted to make this material available to Latin readers.333 Unfortunately, Jerome was inspired to translate

Didymus partly by a base motive: he aimed to show Latin readers that St. Ambrose, bishop of Milan, whom he intensely disliked, had plagiarized much of his own book on the Holy Spirit from Didymus. Rufinus of Aquileia would later expose Jerome's ill will and come to Ambrose's defense in his Apology against Jerome 2.22–25.334

62 The Hexapla, and the Hexaplaric and other Recensions Ps. 45(46):1–311 229 These are available in ACW.

330 See the new translation by R. J. Goodrich and D. J. D. Miller in ACW.

331 For commentary on these controversies, see Rufinus, Apology against Jerome 2.38–9.

332 Cf. J. N. D. Kelly, Jerome: His Life, Writings, and Controversies (New York: Harper & Row,

1975), 113; A. Cain, The Letters of Jerome, 99–28.

333 See R. A. Layton, Didymus the Blind and His Circle in Late-Antique Alexandria (Urbana:

University of Illinois Press, 2004).

334 Cf. NPNF 3:470–1. For an assembly of passages in Jerome that attack Ambrose, see D.

Hunter, Marriage, Celibacy, and Heresy in Ancient Christianity: The Jovinianist Controversy

(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 234–6. There is now a fine translation of St. Ambrose'

Exposition of the Holy Gospel according to Saint Luke with Fragments on the Prophecy of Isaias, trans. Theodosia Tomkinson, 2nd ed. (Etna, CA: Center for Traditionalist Orthodox Studies, 1998,

2003).

1Cf. Un palimpsesto Ambrosiano dei Salmi Esapli (Giov. Mercati) in Atti d. R. Accademia d.

Scienze di Torino, 10 Apr. 1896; and E. Klostermann, die Mailänder Fragmente der Hexapla, The MS. does not supply the Hebrew column.

HEBREW.

HEB. TRANSLITERATED.

AQUILA.

[למנצחλαμανασση τῷ νικοποιῷ· לבני קרח[λ]αβνηκορ τῶν υἱῶν Κόρε על עלמותαλ. αλμωθ ἐπὶ νεανιοτήτων שירσιρ ἆσμα.

אלהים לנוελωειμ. λανου*2 [ὁ θεὸς ἡμῖν (?)] מחסה ועזμασε. ουοζ ἐλπὶς καὶ κράτος, עזרהεζρ βοήθεια בצרותβσαρὠθ ἐν θλίψεσιν נמצא מאדνεμσα μωδ εὑρέθη*3 σφόδρα.

על כןαλ. χεν· ἐπὶ τούτῳ לא ניראλω. νιρα οὐ φοβηθησόμεθα בהמירβααμιρ ἐν τῷ ἀνταλλάσσεσθαι ארץααρς γῆν, ובמוטουβαμωτ καὶ ἐν τῷ σφάλλεσθαι הריםαριμ ὄρη בלבβλεβ ἐν καρδίᾳ 2In the MS. λανου appears in the third column, where it has displaced Aquila' rendering.

The Hexapla, and the Hexaplaric and other Recensions. 63

Ps. 45(46):1–3.

L4XX.

THEODOTION.15

SYMMACHUS.

ἐπινίκιος· εἰς τὸ τέλος· τῷ νικοποιῷ*6· τῶν υἱῶν Κόρε ὑπὲρ τῶν υἱῶν*7 Κόρε τοῖς υἱοῖς κόρε ὑπὲρ τῶν αἰωνίων ὑπὲρ τῶν κρυφίων ὑπὲρ τῶν κρυφίων ᾠδή. ψαλμός. ᾠδή*8. ὁ θεὸς ἡμῖν ὁ θεὸς ἡμῶν†9 ὁ θεὸς ἡμῶν πεποίθησις καὶ ἰσχύς, καταφυγὴ καὶ δύναμις, καταφυγὴ καὶ δύναμις, βοήθεια βοηθὸς βοηθὸς ἐν θλίψεσιν ἐν θλίψεσι ἐν θλίψεσιν εὑρισκόμενος σφόδρα. ταῖς εὑρούσαις ἡμᾶς‡10 εὑρέθη†11 σφόδρα. σφόδρα. διὰ τοῦτο διὰ τοῦτο διὰ τοῦτο οὐ φοβηθησόμεθα οὐ φοβηθησόμεθα οὐ φοβηθησόμεθα ἐν τῷ*12 συγχεῖσθαι ἐν τῷ ταράσσεσθαι ἐν τῷ ταράσσεσθαι 4Septuagint 5Or Quinta? Cf. H. Lietzmann in G. G. A. p. 332: "ie letzte Columme ist nicht, wie man anfangs glaubte, Theodotion, sondern die Quinta mit Interlinearvarianten."

6With marginal variants εἰςτὸτέλος ψαλμός (LXX.).

7With interlinear variant τοῖςυἱοῖς (Th.).

8With marginal variants εἰςτὸτέλος ψαλμός (LXX.).

9MS. 1a manu ἡμῖν (? Aq. Sym.).

10With interlinear variant εὑρεθήσεταιἡμῖν.

11With interlinear variant ταῖςεὑρούσαις ἡμᾶς (LXX.).

12MS. ταῖς

γῆν τὴν γῆν τὴν γῆν καὶ κλίνεσθαι καὶ μετατίθεσθαι καὶ σαλεύεσθαι‡13 ὄρη ὄρη ὄρη ἐν καρδίᾳ ἐν καρδίᾳ ἐν καρδίᾳ θαλασσῶν. θαλασσῶν. θαλασσῶν.

In 385 Jerome settled in Bethlehem, where he set up a monastery. Being within range of Caesarea, he traveled there frequently to consult its magnificent library, 335 which included a copy of Origen's Hexapla in which the entire text of the Old Testament was displayed in six columns in the Hebrew and various Greek versions.336 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 meaning of the Hebrew text. Jerome copied and otherwise obtained important manuscripts of the Scriptures and the writings of Origen and other Greek writers. It was at this time, in the early Bethlehem period, when Jerome completed commentaries on Ephesians, Philemon, Galatians, and Titus.337 In 398 he published his famous

Commentary on Matthew.338 All of these New Testament commentaries are heavily indebted to Origen's Greek exegesis.339 The remaining period, during which Jerome lived in Bethlehem until

13With interlinear variant μετατίθεσθαι (LXX.).

335 For a description of the library, see the article on "Disciples of Origen"in the Westminster

Handbook to Origen, ed. J. McGuckin (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004). For a description of Jerome' own library, see Hale Williams, The Monk and the Book.

336 For a reconstruction of Origen' Hexapla on Isaiah, see PG 16:2, 1611–986, and Origenis

Hexaplorum Quae Supersunt, tomus II, ed. Fridericus Field (Hildesheim: Olms, 1964).

337 See The Commentaries of Origen and Jerome on St Paul' Epistle to the Ephesians, trans. R.

Heine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002); St. Jerome' Commentaries on Galatians, Titus, and Philemon, trans. Thomas P. Scheck (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010). Of the Galatians commentary, a second translation, independent and very erudite, has now appeared: St. Jerome, Commentary on Galatians, trans. Cain.

338 See St. Jerome, Commentary on Matthew, trans. Thomas P. Scheck, FOTC 117 (Washington,

DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2008).

339 A. Harnack, Der kirchengeschichtliche Ertrag der exegetischen Arbeiten des Origenes

(Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1919), 65, complained of the lack of studies on Jerome' commentaries to determine Origen' influence upon them. In an appendix to the same work, Harnack himself undertook an examination of Jerome' commentaries on Galatians, Titus, and Philemon for this purpose. I have endeavored to integrate Harnack' conjectures and conclusions in the notes to my translation of St. Jerome' Commentaries on Galatians, Titus and Philemon.

his death in 419/420, was also very productive. Jerome continued his famous epistolary exchanges and later combated the Pelagian heresy in his Dialogue against the Pelagians and his

Commentary on Jeremiah.

THE ORIGENIST CONTROVERSY

During the decade of the 390s and beyond, Jerome became embroiled in "Origenist" controversies, which began in Palestine and spread to Rome and Constantinople. The Palestinian controversy was instigated by St. Epiphanius, bishop of Salamis, who, for all his orthodoxy, was one of the most tragically contentious and disruptive churchmen of the epoch.

He is also one of the theological fathers of iconoclasm, having written three treatises against making and venerating images, whether of Christ, the Virgin, martyrs, angels, or prophets. He rejected such usages and called images forgeries and idolatry.440 Epiphanius entered Palestine in 393 and accused Jerome's bishop, John of Jerusalem, as well as the monk Rufinus of Aquileia, of being "Origenist" heretics. This was because they refused to sign a petition circulated by a monk named Atarbius (described memorably by F. X. Murphy as a "credential-less nonentity") declaring Origen to be a heretic. At this point, Jerome reversed his earlier irenicism toward

Origen and obsequiously signed the petition. A quarrel ensued that led Epiphanius to violate canonical norms by ordaining Jerome's brother Paulinian to the priesthood in Palestine. John of Jerusalem responded by excommunicating Jerome and his monks. A 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.441 In the latter city, Epiphanius and his cobelligerent Theophilus of Alexandria intrigued against St. John Chrysostom, which led ultimately to John's exile from his bishopric in Constantinople.442 Jerome was complicit in this action, having translated Theophilus's violent invective against Chrysostom into Latin.443

What charges did Jerome raise against Origen's orthodoxy during his anti-Origen period? He does not hesitate to tell us. Origen had identified the two seraphim of Isaiah 6:2 with the Son and the Holy Spirit in his Homily on Isaiah

1.2

(which was translated into Latin by Jerome himself), and in his Commentary on Isaiah. Significantly, however, Origen reports that this interpretation was not original to himself, but that he had learned it from a Hebrew convert to 440 Cf. Quasten, Patrology, 3:391.

441 The best primary sources of information are the respective apologies written by Rufinus and Jerome. Good secondary discussions are found in H. de Lubac, Medieval Exegesis, trans. M.

Sebanc and E. M. Macierowski, 3 vols. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998–009), vol. 1; Kelly,

Jerome, and F. X. Murphy, Rufinus of Aquileia. See also my introductions to St. Jerome'

Commentary on Matthew

and St. Pamphilus,

Apology for Origen, With the Letter of Rufinus on

the Falsification of the Books of Origen, trans. Thomas P. Scheck, FOTC 120 (Washington, DC:

Catholic University Press, 2010).

442 The tragic tale is explained well by D. Attwater, St. John Chrysostom: Pastor and Preacher

(London: Harvill, 1959), 106–5.

443 Cf. Kelly, Jerome, 260–3.

Christianity.444 Under the pressure exerted by Origen's contemporary episcopal accusers, such as Theophilus and Epiphanius, Jerome came to believe that this interpretation anticipated

Arianism, the heresy condemned at the Council of Nicaea in 325 that asserted that the Son of God was a creature subordinate to the Father. During the Origenist controversy, Jerome expressed the opinion that his seraphim interpretation constituted the gravest error of all in Origen's theology. In 396 Jerome writes to Vigilantius:

Origen is a heretic, true; but what does that take from me who do not deny that on very many points he is heretical? He has erred concerning the resurrection of the body, he has erred concerning the condition of souls, he has erred by supposing it possible that the devil may repent, and—an error more important than these—he has declared in his commentary upon Isaiah that the Seraphim mentioned by the prophet are the divine

Son and the Holy Ghost.445

Thus, in the assessment of St. Jerome of Stridon, Origen's most serious theological error was his suggestion that the seraphim of Isaiah 6:2 represent the Son and the Holy Spirit. From a modern standpoint, Jerome's accusation actually bodes well for the case of Origen's fundamental ecclesiastical orthodoxy. For modern critical scholarship has demonstrated that Origen's interpretation did not at all have the "impious" and "blasphemous" character that Jerome would later ascribe to it. The assimilation of the Word and the Spirit (Wisdom) to the cherubim and seraphim came from Judeo-Christian sources and was already found in the work of St.

Irenaeus,

D D em 10

.446 Thus if the interpretation menaces Origen's orthodoxy and turns him into a proto-Arian, it simultaneously menaces the orthodoxy of Irenaeus, a step no modern or ancient scholar would wish to take. Consequently, Jerome's indictment proves too much. The other reproaches Jerome raises against Origen concern his doctrine of the preexistence of souls, the devil's restoration, and the nature of resurrection bodies. However, these conjectures were speculative and tentative in nature, not dogmatic assertions made by Origen. In fact, the question about the origin of souls was not decided by the church until the fifth century. This would make it illegitimate to accuse Origen of heresy on a point that had not yet been decided by church authority.447

It appears that Jerome lacked the patience and expertise to judge fairly with respect to Arian matters. This has been shown by T. C. Lawler, who describes Jerome's handling of the technical terms used by his contemporary Greek orthodox theologians as "not brilliant."448 For instance,

Lawler observes that Jerome seems to have been unaware of the fact (or perhaps chose to 444 Cf. De Principiis

1.3.4

445 Cf. Ep.

61.2

to Vigilantius; NPNF2, 6:131–2.

DDem

Irenaeus' The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching, ed. A. Robinson, DD (New York:

The Macmillan Co., 1920) 446 Cf. H. de Lubac, Medieval Exegesis, 1:255.

447 Cf. B. P. Blosser, Become Like the Angels: Origen' Doctrine of the Soul (Washington, DC:

Catholic University of America Press, 2012).

448 T. C. Lawler, "Jerome' First Letter to Damasus,"in Kyriakon: Festschrift Johannes Quasten, ed.

P. Granfield and J. Jungman (Muenster: Aschendorff, 1970), 2:550.

ignore it) that the Alexandria Synod of 362, which had been presided over by Athanasius, had admitted that the term hypostasis could be used in the meaning of "person," and that therefore one could rightly speak of three hypostases.449 Yet in his letter to Damasus, Jerome had claimed that such a formulation was alien to the Christian faith. Lawler concludes that Jerome's criticisms of his contemporaries "must be taken as irrelevant or exaggerated."550 It appears to me that this sort of modern expert assessment could be applied to Jerome's critique of Origen's treatment of the seraphim. The interpretation Origen has handed down does not need to imply

Arianism. I shall discuss this matter further in the introduction to my translation of Jerome's translation of Origen's Homilies on Isaiah 1–9 in appendix 1.

Many other modern writers have analyzed Jerome's attitude toward Origen during the Origenist controversies, in which he changed sides from being one of Origen's most vocal advocates and defenders into being Origen's most immoderate and violent accuser. In a very learned treatment, F. X. Murphy concluded that, in spite of Jerome's inflamed rhetoric about his alleged repudiation of the "heretic" Origen, Jerome did not really differ from his orthodox contemporaries in his deep reverence for Origen as the church's exegete par excellence. Murphy writes: "It was a needless controversy. In reality, the two men [Jerome and Rufinus] were agreed on their attitude toward Origen. Their misunderstandings were due to the machinations of their friends."551 I agree that it was a needless controversy, but I would perhaps place more direct responsibility on Jerome's impatience and contentious personality than Murphy does, since, independently of his friends, Jerome continues to rage against both Origen and Rufinus until the day of his death. The worst and most slanderous of Jerome's anti-Rufinus polemic is found in his

Commentary on Jeremiah, which is his final work and was written long after Rufinus's death. In any case, most of Jerome's accusations of Origen applied to a handful of doctrinal speculations, not dogmatic assertions. They certainly did not touch Origen's basic principles for the Christian exegesis of Scripture.

H. de Lubac says that Jerome's rhetoric against Origen and Rufinus during the Origenist controversy is "somewhat untruthful," since he makes a distinction between Origen the dogmatist and theologian, whom he allegedly repudiated, and Origen the exegete and philosopher, whom he allegedly admired.552 De Lubac thinks that this distinction was both artificial and facile, and that Jerome was well aware of this, since he proposed other defensive tactics to explain his volte-face. De Lubac queries that, assuming that all interpreters can make some mistakes, how could Origen simultaneously be so blameworthy in Jerome's eyes? Besides, did not Jerome quite often depend on Origen's doctrine? Was theology not, in fact, identically the science of scriptures? Praising Origen as an interpreter did not mean that reference was made only to his critical erudition. It meant that one talked of his homilies and his commentaries, not merely of the Hexapla or the scholia. De Lubac consequently calls into question the consistency of Jerome's statements respecting Origen:

449 Cf. ibid., 551.

550 Ibid.

551 Murphy, Rufinus of Aquileia, 110 552 H. de Lubac, Medieval Exegesis, 1:177.

How, therefore, are we to understand that so faithful an interpreter of all the Scriptures had at the same time corrupted them, to the point of becoming a heterodox purveyor of doctrine? And, as Rufinus had long before objected to Jerome: "Who that was once

Master of the Churches could be said to have been a heretic?" [R R uf Apol

1.21

].553

The point I wish to make here is that the best of modern critical scholarship now recognizes that much of Jerome's rhetoric in the Origenist controversies was irrelevant and exaggerated, and that Rufinus's position by and large deserves to be vindicated. Jerome's inconsistency and even untruthfulness with respect to his attitude toward Origen is further shown by the way he would eventually find fault with Rufinus's method of translating Origen, when it was directly from Jerome that Rufinus learned the method.554 Until the day of his death, Jerome resented Rufinus as the one who had exposed to the world Jerome's own inconsistency with respect to Origen and for other matters that will be discussed below. To conceal all this, Jerome endeavored to darken both Origen's and Rufinus's reputation to posterity. He was largely successful in throwing dust into the eyes of his readers during the centuries in which genuine historical criticism of the issues was asleep. One of the unfortunate results of Jerome's misleading rhetoric was that Origen would eventually be listed among the heretics by the Emperor Justinian at the Fifth

Council of Constantinople in 543. As a result, his Greek writings would mostly be destroyed.

Jerome and Epiphanius were culpable in this affair, since it is they who planted the seeds for Origen's ruin. Had Jerome not vacillated, the outcome might have been different.

THE LATIN VULGATE

During the final three decades of his life, Jerome played a fundamental role in the translation of the Bible that came to be known as the Latin Vulgate. This project began as an official commission to Jerome from Pope Damasus (d. 384) to revise the existing Latin versions of the four Gospels and the Psalter. Incidentally, Jerome's revision of the Gospels is of extreme text-critical importance, because it represents in Latin the text of Greek codices that were already ancient in the late fourth century and therefore much closer in time to the archetypes than any complete Greek manuscripts now extant.555 Although he sometimes misleadingly laid claim to it, the rest of the Vulgate New Testament does not appear to be St. Jerome's work, but comes from earlier Latin translators to whom he himself ascribes it in his commentaries.556

Souter has even shown, by means of a careful study of Jerome's use of the text of Matthew's

Gospel in his own Commentary on Matthew, that this text is not identical with the Vulgate revision made by Jerome himself (and critically edited by Wordsworth and White). Souter reports that of 104 incidental quotations, only thirty-three harmonize with the Vulgate text

RRuf Apol

St. Jerome' Apology against Rufinus 553 Ibid., 177–8.

554 See appendix 1.

555 Cf. Sutcliffe, "erome,"84.

556 Cf. Kelly, Jerome, 88; F. Cavallera, "Saint Jérôme et la Vulgate des Actes, des Épîtres, et de l'pocalypse,"Bulletin de literature ecclésiastique (1920): 269–2.

while the other seventy-one are definitely different. The situation is the same with respect to Jerome's use of the other Gospels. Souter draws the following conclusion: "From all this it is clear that Jerome had no particular respect for his own revision … even when he was writing a commentary on a Gospel."557 It would require centuries for Jerome's New Testament version to obtain any official or exclusive authority in the Catholic Church, and when it did obtain such exclusive and sacrosanct authority among some Catholic scholars and theologians, it did so in contradiction to Jerome's own attitude toward his translation.558

It was through private scholarly and apologetic interests, rather than official ecclesiastical sanction, that Jerome continued the project by newly translating the entire Old Testament directly from the Hebrew and Aramaic originals.559 His whole intention, clearly stated in the preface to the Vulgate Isaiah,660 was to prevent the Jews once and for all from being able to scoff at Christians, "and to refute them on their own ground by appealing, when controversy arose, to a version which they had to acknowledge as indisputably accurate and which nevertheless spoke unmistakably of the coming of Christ."661 He repeats this precise justification of the Vulgate in his Apology against Rufinus

3.25

,, where he tells Rufinus that he had first translated Origen's Hexaplaric recension of the LXX for native Latin speakers; then he began a new translation directly from the Hebrew, the purpose of which he describes as follows:

And, for the confutation of the Jews, to translate the actual copies of the Scriptures which they confess to be the truest, so that when a dispute arises between them and the Christians, they may have no place of retreat and subterfuge, but may be smitten most effectually with their own spear.662

Jerome's translation of the Old Testament directly from the Hebrew was thus intended to facilitate Jewish evangelization and Christian apologetics; the Latin Vulgate was not originally destined for public liturgical use in Christian churches. In fact, in the prologue to the Vulgate

Ezra, Jerome begs the dedicatees, Domnio and Rogatianus, not to make the translation known to the public, but to be content to read it privately, since he knows that his translations are causing controversy when used publicly. Augustine had, in fact, discouraged Jerome from translating the Old Testament from the Hebrew after trying unsuccessfully to use a portion of it in the liturgy.663 Eventually, Augustine became persuaded of the value of Jerome's new

557 A. Souter, "Notes on Incidental Gospel Quotations in Jerome' Commentary on St. Matthew'

Gospel,"JTS 42 (1941): 12–8 (13).

558 This point is exemplified well in the controversy generated by Erasmus of Rotterdam' new translation of the New Testament in 1516. See his Ep. 337 to Martin Dorp.

559 For a succinct account of Jerome' work on the Vulgate, see H. Sparks, "Jerome as Biblical

Scholar,"in The Cambridge History of the Bible, vol. 1, From the Beginnings to Jerome, ed. P.

Ackroyd and C. Evans (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 510–1.

660 PL 28:774.

661 Cited by Kelly, Jerome, 160.

,LXX Septuagint

662 NPNF2, 3:532.

663 Cf. Augustine,

Ep.

28.2

translation from the Hebrew, but only in the capacity of an auxiliary version to the Old Latin.664

Whatever were Jerome's original aims, after many centuries, the resulting version of the Bible, completed in 404, was destined to become a theological classic in the West. By the seventh century, Jerome's version of the Hebrew Scriptures was accepted for public use in the West, though it did not receive the name Vulgate till the sixteenth century.665 While embroiled in controversy with Protestants, the Council of Trent (1545) decreed the Latin Vulgate to be the "authentic" version of the Bible in the Latin church. The great modern expert on the Council of Trent, H. Jedin, concluded that there was no room for any doubt that the Tridentine decree on the "authenticity" of the Vulgate was not intended to restrict the study of the original languages of the Bible, still less to stop it. Rather, the intention was to declare that the Latin translation of the Bible in use in the Roman Church was free from any dogmatic error.666 In 1943 Pope Pius XII concurred in an official interpretation of the Tridentine decree that the church was testifying and affirming that the Vulgate may be "quoted safely and without fear of error in disputations, in lectures and in preaching; and so its authenticity is not specified primarily as critical, but rather as juridical."667

In conclusion to this brief summary of Jerome's life and works, one can say that Jerome was undoubtedly one of the most learned of the Latin fathers. His work VVir Ill offers the reader a glimpse into the range and depth of Jerome's reading.668 It is true that in this pioneering work of patrology, Jerome depends heavily upon, some would say plagiarizes, notices found first in Eusebius of Caesarea's Ecclesiastical History and Chronicle.669 Yet the work still makes clear that Jerome's ambition even as a young man was to master and transmit to the West knowledge of the antecedent Greek and the Latin exegetical traditions. Moreover, Jerome knew well the biblical languages, Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic, a linguistic aptitude that distinguishes him sharply from his contemporary Augustine, who knew well only the Latin language and had no access to the Greek tradition of exegesis and theology except by means of Latin translations, which, even when they were available, he tended not to use.770 Augustine was a far more influential theologian in the Western church, because of his rank as a bishop, his greater interest and skill in philosophy, and his more systematic and dogmatic approach to theological topics,

664 Cf. Ep.

82.3405

; Civ 18.43

665 Cf. E. Sutcliffe, "erome,"99. It is interesting to note that for Jerome, the term vulgate edition of the Bible does not refer to his new vernacular translation from the Hebrew, but to the Old

Latin versions, which were Latin translations of the Greek Septuagint in common use in the churches of his day.

666 H. Jedin, A History of the Council of Trent, 2 vols. (St. Louis: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1961

[first published as Geschichte des Konzils von Trient (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1957)]), 2:92,

96.

667 Divino Afflante Spiritu

VVir Ill Jerome' De viris illustribus 668 For English translations, see NPNF 3:359–4 and St. Jerome, On Illustrious Men, trans. T.

Halton, FOTC 100 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1999).

669 Cf. P. Courcelle, Late Latin Writers and Their Greek Sources, 90.

770 See ibid., 149–23.

which eventually gave birth to medieval scholasticism. However, Jerome's legacy as an exegete was greater, for obvious reasons.

Jerome's intention in his Latin exegetical writings was to make the Greek tradition of exegesis and theology productive in the Latin West, as well as the learning of the Hebrews.

Courcelle puts it nicely: "The purpose of his life, he said, was to transmit to the Latin world the erudition of the Hebrews and the Greeks."771 This endeavor to transmit what came before him is, in my judgment, Jerome's greatest contribution to Christian theology. He is a witness of fundamental importance to the mind of the Catholic Church in the interpretation of God's

Word. For the most part, Jerome did not want to innovate in his scriptural interpretations but to speak from the heart of the church, both Eastern and Western. Centuries later, when the Council of Trent spoke of St. Jerome as "the greatest doctor in explaining the Sacred

Scriptures,"772 it expressed the church's gratitude toward a man whose entire life had been dedicated to ecclesiastical scholarship.

ORIGEN AS THE MASTER EXEGETE

To shed more light on Jerome's hermeneutical method in his commentaries on Scripture, we can consult two ancient reports that testify to the respect in which Origen's exegesis of the Hebrew prophets was held by authoritative church leaders and future saints. The first stems from St. Gregory Thaumaturgus (213–275), a pupil of Origen himself. He describes his teacher's method and influence on him in these terms:

And he [Origen] became the interpreter of the prophets to us, and explained whatsoever was dark or enigmatical in them … and set them in the light, as being himself a skilled and most discerning hearer of God, who alone of all men of the present time with whom I have myself been acquainted, or of whom I have heard by the report of others, has so deeply studied the clear and luminous oracles of God, as to be able at once to receive their meaning into his own mind, and to convey it to others.… To speak in brief, he was truly a paradise to us after the similitude of the paradise of God.773

Notice how Gregory calls attention to Origen's divinely inspired ability to explain the prophets according to their divine meaning. Origen was so attentive to the voice of the Holy Spirit, he had so carefully studied the divine scriptures, that he was able to comprehend their meaning and communicate it to others.

A remarkably similar report concerning the first attempts in Christian learning of the great

Cappadocians Gregory Nazianzus and Basil of Caesarea is preserved by Rufinus of Aquileia (345–

411) in his translation of Eusebius of Caesarea's Ecclesiastical History. This translation was carried out at the request of his patron, Bishop Chromatius of Aquileia. To the work Rufinus appended his own additions in order to bring the work up to date and cover the eighty-year

771 Ibid., 50–1, citing Jerome, In Ieremiam 3, praef. (PL 25:757 B).

772 Doctor Maximus in Exponendis Sacris Scripturis; cited by Pope Benedict XV,

Spiritus

Paraclitus

1 (1920).

773 Gregory Thaumaturgus, Panegyric to Origen 15 (ANF 6:36).

period between Eusebius's final redaction and Rufinus's day. In 11.7, Rufinus writes:

[Gregory Nazianzus] removed Basil from the professor's chair which he was occupying and forced him to accompany him to a monastery, where for thirteen years, they say, having put aside all the writings of the worldly pagans, they gave their attention solely to the books of holy scripture, the understanding of which they did not presume to derive from themselves but from the writings and the authority of those of old, who were themselves known to have received the rule of understanding from apostolic tradition.

They sought the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden in these vessels of clay by examining their commentaries on the prophets in particular.774

The italicized sentences refer chiefly to Origen's exegetical writings on the prophets, which were the most celebrated of the ancient commentaries. Rufinus is testifying to the fact that the Cappadocians—and we should recall that St. Jerome studied for a time directly under Gregory

Nazianzus—believed that the church's scriptures could not be separated from her most ancient interpreters, who were transmitters of apostolic tradition and modes of exegesis. Rufinus's summary of the Cappadocians is strikingly parallel with the words of Gregory Thaumaturgus cited above. Indeed, M. Hale Williams has insightfully noticed how in the latter passage

Rufinus's description of Gregory Nazianzus and Basil resonates on several levels with aspects of St. Jerome's career.

First there is a renunciation of pagan literature in favor of the Bible and Christian exegesis.… Then, there is the Cappadocians' deference toward their illustrious predecessors. Rufinus's understanding of the proper mode of Christian scholarship, based on the authority of tradition rather than on individual creativity, seems remarkably like that articulated by Jerome in his programmatic statements on the commentary.775

The last statement is verified in Jerome's Commentary on Isaiah as well, where Jerome says that it is his wish to transmit to his readers what men of the church before him have taught. 776

Jerome's exegetical procedure differs markedly from Augustine's.777

774 The Church History of Rufinus of Aquileia, books 10 and 11, trans. P. Amidon (New York:

Oxford University Press, 1997), 11.7 (70–1).

775 Hale Williams, The Monk and the Book, 130.

776 See 6.1.

777 Plumer, in Augustine' Commentary on Galatians, trans. E. Plumer (Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 2003), 53, finds it "stonishing"that Augustine did not draw upon Jerome' erudite exegesis of Galatians in his own commentary on Paul' text, though he had access to Jerome' work. "t the very least, one would have expected him to borrow some linguistic point or other from Jerome, particularly as we find Augustine very soon afterwards emphasizing the importance of linguistic expertise for the interpreter of the Bible, painfully conscious of his own lack in this regard, and (no doubt thinking primarily of Jerome) commending the work of the Hebraists to biblical interpreters [De Doctrina Christiana

2.11.16

; 2.16.23]. Yet where is the evidence of Augustine'

My conclusion from all this is that in his own scriptural commentaries, Jerome was endeavoring to carry on the legacy of the Cappadocian fathers by his reliance upon Origen's exegesis of the prophets. Jerome admits as much in V V ir Ill

, 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." Throughout all periods of his life, he recommends

Origen's works for study. In 392 Jerome responded to critics who accused him of dependence on Origen in his own exegetical writings with these words:

They say that I made excerpts from Origen's works, and that it is illegitimate to touch the writings of the old masters in such a way. People think that they gravely insult me by this. For myself, however, I see in this the highest praise. It is my express desire to follow an example of which I am convinced that it will please all men of discernment and you too.778

Origen had reflected deeply on the Christian meaning of the Old Testament, that is, its meaning in the light of the paschal mystery. He had transmitted his understanding of this meaning to posterity in his Greek writings. His successors, the Cappadocian fathers, assimilated this ancient perspective into their own works. Jerome carried the legacy forward into the Latin tradition. The range of his reading in Origen is therefore extensive and his knowledge of Origenian texts far exceeds our own (since the majority of Origen's works are lost). Courcelle summarizes the influence of Origen's writings upon Jerome's corpus this way:

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.779

Without Origen, there would have been no St. Jerome, since Origen lies underneath Jerome as the principal source of his exegesis. having taken his own advice?"

VVir Ill

Jerome' De viris illustribus 778 Commentariorum in Michaeum, libri 2, PL 25:1189.

779 P. Courcelle, Late Latin Writers and Their Greek Sources, 111–2.

It is noteworthy that, in the sixteenth century, the Catholic theologian and patristic scholar

Erasmus of Rotterdam clearly apprehended that one of Origen's greatest achievements was in his supplying an abundance of material that was received with approval in later exegesis.880

Erasmus says that Origen was an important source from which Greek writers such as Chrysostom, Theophylact, Basil, and Gregory of Nazianzus, and Latins such as pseudo-Jerome [=

Pelagius], Ambrose, Hilary, and Jerome drew their chief exegetical ideas. In his prefatory letter to his edition of St. Ambrose's writings, Erasmus writes:

It must be confessed, but not in reproach, that the greater part of Ambrose's writings were drawn from Greek commentaries, especially Origen, but in such a way that he excerpted what was sound while disguising what was incompatible with orthodox

Catholic teaching, or controversial, without adducing errors or betraying authors.881

St. Ambrose assimilated Origen without publicly reproaching him, even when Origen was in error. The early St. Jerome followed this same irenic pattern. Erasmus thinks that the irenic approach to Origen of St. Ambrose and of the early Jerome has been more helpful to the church. It is this more irenic approach to Origen that seems to be prevailing in the present day.882 In his later years, however, Jerome, according to Erasmus, "made it his business to see that the world knew about Origen's errors, but not about the sound points he made."883

JEROME'S COMMENTARY ON ISAIAH

We now turn our attention specifically to Jerome's Commentary on Isaiah, which Kelly describes as "the most successful and instructive example of his eclectic exegetical method."884

Speaking of Jerome's scriptural exegesis more generally, one recent expert has remarked: "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."885 Interestingly, in the seventeenth century, the learned Catholic Scripture scholar Richard Simon expressed the opinion that Jerome's commentaries were the most thorough and instructive of his works:

In his knowledge of Hebrew, Chaldean, Greek and Latin, Jerome possessed the necessary qualities for properly interpreting the Scriptures in a greater degree than all the other

880 Ep. 1844 (Allen [1928], vol. 7, 102): "rigenes omnibus fere Graecis scriptoribus materiam suppeditavit."Cf. In Psalmum 38 = LB 5:432B–35B: "rigen was a great doctor of the Church from whose sources the minds of nearly all the Greeks were irrigated."

881 CWE 13, Ep. 1855 (August 1527).

882 For instance, in recent catecheses on Origen, Pope Benedict XVI commends Origen' writings to Catholics.

883 Erasmus, Apology against Latomus, CWE 71:67. One can observe Jerome doing this in his

Commentary on Jeremiah.

884 Kelly, Jerome, 301.

885 Hale Williams, The Monk and the Book, 66.

Fathers. Not only had he read and examined the Greek versions in Origen's "Hexapla," but he had also frequently conferred with the most erudite Jews of his day, and he rarely took any steps in his scriptural work without first consulting them. In addition to this he had read every author, both Greek and Latin, who had written upon the Bible before him, and finally, he was well versed in profane literature.886

Simon is greatly esteemed by certain leaders in the postconciliar guild of Catholic Scripture scholarship.887 This makes his admiration of St. Jerome all the more notable when we consider the neglect of the same Jerome by the modern guild.

The following chart shows the approximate length (in Migne columns) of Jerome's translations of Origen's homilies and of his own commentaries on Scripture.888

Table 1. Length of St. Jerome's translations of Origen's homilies and of his own commentaries on Scripture Date Title Dedicatee(s) L14ength (PG 1511–17, PL 22– 30) 379–82 Origen's 9

Hom in

Isaiah —

Origen's 14

Hom in

Jer —

Origen's 14

Hom in

Ezek Vincentius

383–84 Origen's 2 Hom in Cant Damasus

386–87 In Philemonem Paula and Eustochium17 In Galatas ʺ ʺ

In Ephesos ʺ ʺ

886 Critical History of the Old Testament (1685), book 3, chap. 9, cited in A. Largent, Saint

Jerome, trans. H. Davenport with preface by G. Tyrrell (New York: Benziger, 1900), 146.

887 See JBC 70:6.

888 I have supplemented the chart found in P. Jay' L'xégèse de Saint Jérôme d'près son

"ommentaire sur Isaïe" (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1985), 49.

14Patrologia graeca, ed. J. P. Migne (Paris, 1844–4) 15Patrologia latina, ed. J. P. Migne (Paris, 1844–4)

In Titum ʺ ʺ

388–89 In Ecclesiasten ʺ ʺ

Origen's 39

Hom in Lk

392–93 In Nahum ʺ ʺ

In Michaeam ʺ ʺ

In Sophoniam ʺ ʺ

In Aggaeum ʺ ʺ

In Habacuc Chromatius, bishop of

Aquileia

In Ionam ʺ ʺ

In Abdiam Pammachius

In Visiones Isaiae Amabilis, bishop

In Mattaeum Eusebius of Cremona,

monk

In Zachariam Exsuperius, bishop of

Toulouse In Malachiam Minervius

and Alexander, bishops

In Osee Pammachius

In Ioelem ʺ ʺ

In Amos ʺ ʺ

In Danielem Pammachius

and Marcella

408–10 In Isaiam Eustochium

410–14 In Ezechielem ʺ ʺ

414–416 In Hieremiam Eusebius of Cremona 223 Jerome's Commentary on Isaiah was written between 408 and 410, immediately after the completion of his commentaries on the Minor Prophets (406) and Daniel (407).889 It is the lengthiest of his commentaries and by far his longest extant work, occupying more than 660 columns in the Migne edition. It surpasses by some two hundred columns the commentary on Ezekiel, even though the two prophetic books are of the same size. After finishing the Isaiah commentary, he turned to Ezekiel (411–414).990 Finally he wrote his Commentary on Jeremiah

(415–419), the completion of which was interrupted by his death.991

Earlier in his scholarly career, while he was a pupil of Gregory Nazianzus, Jerome translated nine homilies of Origen on Isaiah. He does not mention them in the body of his Commentary on Isaiah, but they clearly influenced his own exegesis and are of great importance from a number of perspectives. Therefore I have appended a new translation of them in appendix 1. At 3.3,

Jerome reports that he has already written a treatise on Isaiah 6. He is speaking of E E p. 18

to Damasus, a new translation of which has been given in appendix 2. Moreover, under the lemma to Isaiah 63:17–19, at 17.32, Jerome makes a passing reference to an earlier treatment he has written that explains Paul's use of Isaiah in Romans 9:14–29. In appendix 3, I have provided a new translation of this portion of E E p. 120

to Hedibia. Thus the reader is supplied in this volume with most of what St. Jerome has written or translated on the Book of Isaiah.

Jerome states at 5.1 that in 397, at the request of Bishop Amabilis, he had written a historical exposition of the ten visions of Isaiah 13–23 based on the Hebrew. And in the same preface, Jerome makes known to his readers his decision to integrate this earlier work to Amabilis unchanged into his Isaiah commentary, as the fifth book. Then in the sixth and seventh books, Jerome says that he will provide a "spiritual" interpretation of the same chapters of Isaiah (13–23) that he had previously interpreted historically. Thus, to some extent, books five through seven interrupt the system of his commentary, which normally links, and does not separate, the historical and the spiritual interpretation.992 The significance for the reader is that Isaiah 13–23 is interpreted by Jerome with "unbearable breadth."993

889 Cf. J. Quasten, Patrology, 3:234; Kelly, Jerome, 299. Jerome' Commentary on Daniel has been translated by Gleason Archer (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1958).

990 I have a new translation of Jerome' Commentary on Ezekiel under way.

991 See the new English translation by Michael Graves, Jerome: Commentary on Jeremiah,

Ancient Christian Texts (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2011).

EEp.

Epistle EEp.

Epistle 992 See preface to books 6 and 7.

Jerome makes heavy use of etymologies while explaining the meaning of the text. 994 His probable source is Origen, but I leave it to others to investigate and explain these.995 Although

Jerome's interpretive method clearly emphasizes the christological and ecclesiological application of Isaiah's text, he does not negate history. He normally operates at two levels: historical and spiritual.996 The latter term is also called anagogical, tropological, mystical, and, less frequently, allegorical, but always with the meaning of a symbolic, figurative, or typological interpretation that points the hearer upward to Christ and the church and that makes the passage religiously edifying and instructive for the baptized Christian.997 A good sample of his terminology is found at 8.1, where he equates allegory with tropology, a term he elsewhere identified with anagogy. Sutcliffe agrees that there are generally two senses of exegesis for Jerome, the literal and the spiritual, and that the scriptural basis for this division is the teaching of Paul, that the letter kills but the spirit gives life (2 Cor 3:6).998

A discussion of the underlying Greek terms may be illuminating. In Lampe's Patristic Greek

Lexicon, the first meaning given to ἀναγωγή (anagogy) is "elevation, ascent." The noun ἀναγωγεύς means "one who guides upwards." In the spiritual sense, the "ascent" occurs from sense perception and images to divine realities. The anagogical interpretation of Scripture leads the hearer upward, then, from human realities to the divine Logos. Jerome's other favorite term, τροπολογικῶς (tropologically), means "allegorically, mystically." A τροπολογία

(tropology) is a figurative expression, or an allegorical/spiritual meaning in contrast with the historical literal interpretation. The Pauline (cf. Gal 4:24) term ἀλληγορία (allegory) is used as a synonym for tropology and contrasts with the literal interpretation.

In the lemma, Jerome presents a translation of the Hebrew (i.e., a citation of the Vulgate, sometimes revised). The length of the lemma depends on the internal demands of the text and the amount of commentary he feels is necessary. If the passage is clear in meaning, he records only the Hebrew lemma, especially when there is no difference in meaning between the Hebrew and the Septuagint (10.5). He says, however, that in obscure passages, he will record both versions "so that the diligent reader may recognize the extent to which the common translation differs from the other versions and from the Hebrew truth" (3.31). Jerome erroneously assumes here, and in many passages, that his current Hebrew text is the same one

993 Grützmacher, Hieronymus: Eine biographische Studie zur alten Kirchengeschichte

, vol. 3,

Sein Leben und seine Schriften von 400 bis 420 (Berlin: Scientia Verlag Aalen, 1969), 179

("nerträglicher Breite".

994 See Jay, L'xégèse de Saint Jérôme sur Isaïe, 292–7; A. Kamesar, Jerome, Greek Scholarship, and the Hebrew Bible (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 103–5; R. Hanson, "Interpretation of Hebrew Names in Origen,"Vigiliae Christianae 10 (1956): 103–3.

995 Michael Graves has done a thorough job of this in his new translation of Jerome'

Commentary on Jeremiah.

996 Hale Williams discusses these relations with respect to Jerome' commentaries on the Minor

Prophets in her monograph, The Monk and the Book, chapter 3. Jay discusses spiritual interpretation in L'xégèse de Saint Jérôme sur Isaïe, 241–5.

997 Cf. Jay, L'xégèse de Saint Jérôme sur Isaïe, 150–92.

998 Sutcliffe, "erome,"89.

used by the Septuagint translators.

In 13.19 he adds that the reason he records both versions is so that what seems obscure in one may be disclosed by the other. He mentions zealous persons who denounce his work as incomplete unless he also discusses the version of the Septuagint (10.3)). In another passage, he refers to the Old

Latin (LXX) reading of the text, which he calls the "vulgate edition," and says:

The common translation (vulgata editio) and the Hebrew have many discrepancies between them on this passage. This is why we have briefly touched upon both versions, lest we leave behind an occasion for carping at us φιλεγκλημοσιν [to those who are fond of fault-finding]. (7.22) Where necessary, therefore, he adds the translation of the Septuagint in the Old Latin version.

He then interprets the text historically and literally.999

Jerome's originality as a Latin exegete is found in his belief that knowledge of the "Hebrew truth" was an asset to the Christian interpreter of the Old Testament. Previous exegetes largely based their commentaries on the Greek Septuagint and its Latin version (the Old Latin). Jerome was very aware of this and he wanted to display the exegesis of his Christian predecessors and its Septuagintal textual basis in his own work.1100 But Jerome was also convinced that the Latinspeaking Christian church would benefit by becoming more familiar with the Hebrew (Jewish) tradition of interpretation. At 2.42, in a comment on Isaiah 5:7, he says: "We want to introduce

Latin ears to what we have learned from the Hebrews." He then reports a remarkable word play that Isaiah has created, which is only detectable when the passage is read in the Hebrew language. "Indeed in the Hebrew language he [Isaiah] has produced an elegant construction and sound of the words."

Jerome also frequently reports how contemporary Jews interpret the text of Isaiah. Scholars have demonstrated, however, that sometimes Jerome has taken over even these reports from his Greek predecessors, such as Origen and Eusebius, who had recorded the Jewish traditions in their Greek commentaries. Erasmus of Rotterdam (d. 1536) had noticed Jerome's profound reliance on Greek sources.1101 Based in part on Erasmus, in 1706 Bernard de Montfaucon noticed that whenever Eusebius said that he had learned something from "the Hebrews" or from "a Hebrew teacher," Jerome also claimed to have learned that information from a Hebrew.1102 In an illuminating study, G. Bardy showed that Jerome took from Origen and Eusebius all of what he claimed to know firsthand from the Jews.1103 Bardy did not question

)LXX Septuagint 999 On Jerome' use and terminology for the literal sense, see Jay, L'xégèse de Saint Jérôme sur

Isaïe, 127–0.

1100 See 6.1.

1101 See his Hyperaspistes 1 and 2 (CWE 76, 77).

1102 B. de Montfacon, Praef. in Comm. in Isaiam Eusebii IV, 3; PG 24:88; cited by M. Graves,

Jerome' Hebrew Philology: A Study Based on His Commentary on Jeremiah (Leiden: Brill, 2007),

1103 G. Bardy, "Jérôme et ses maîtres hébreux,"Revue Bénédictine 46 (1934): 145–4. J.

Gribomont follows this judgment in J. Quasten, Patrology, 4.235.

Jerome's competence in Hebrew, but simply wanted to show that his statements about learning a particular exegetical tradition from the Jews cannot all be taken at face value. M. Hale

Williams has qualified some of Bardy's conclusions and faulted him for analyzing a very limited number of instances of Jerome's use of Jewish interpretation. Sometimes Bardy distorts the evidence, she says, by neglecting to notice the way Jerome adds important details to the Jewish traditions presented by Origen and Eusebius, which suggests that he had independent access to the Jewish materials.1104 Recent studies by Kamesar and Graves confirm that, in spite of the question about the integrity of Jerome's reports about personally consulting Hebrews, Jerome had a very real knowledge of Jewish textual and historical scholarship, and this formed the backbone of his own Scripture scholarship.1105

Sometimes, to avoid excessive length, Jerome displays the reading of the Septuagint only when it offers a reading that differs in significant respects from what Jerome regarded as the Hebrew Vorlage or original. But in much of the commentary, especially in the second half, he offers complete lemmata of both versions. Jerome sometimes expresses his puzzlement over the Septuagint rendering of the Hebrew; however, he does not openly contest the Septuagint's authority, but rather explains its meaning, even when he openly admits that he does not understand why it rendered the way it did. Jerome endeavors to base his Christian apologetics and scriptural exposition more directly on the Hebrew readings, yet he simultaneously expounds the ecclesiastically authoritative LXX as well. An interesting example of this can be seen at 3.16 on Isaiah 7:14:: "Behold the virgin will conceive and bear a son, and you will call his name Emmanuel." On the basis of his knowledge of Semitic languages, Jerome defends on Semitic linguistic grounds the correctness of the Christian

(Matthean) interpretation of Isaiah's prophecy, which had been based upon the LXX reading.

When accused by Christian contemporaries of sometimes disparaging the authoritative

Septuagint readings of Scripture and of preferring the Hebrew text to them, Jerome denied that this was his intention. Certainly his interpretation of Isaiah 7:14 amounts to being a dramatic defense of the Septuagint's controversial translation of the Hebrew alma by the Greek parthenos. In another work, Jerome writes: "But we neither charge the Septuagint with errors, as jealous people slander us; nor do we regard our own work as a censure of them."1106 Jerome conceived his interpretive task as constructive, private, and supplementary, not destructive and publicly dismissive of the Septuagint (i.e., the Old Latin translation of it). He himself recognizes the Old Latin as the theologically authoritative version of the Bible that was in public use in the church's liturgies. Jerome preaches his homilies based on this version.1107 In writings from all periods of his career, Jerome cites the Bible in the Old Latin and bases his exegesis and theology on it.1108 But he supplemented the church's knowledge of the Old Latin with a new translation

1104 M. Hale Williams, The Monk and the Book, 227–8.

1105 Kamesar, Jerome, Greek Scholarship, and the Hebrew Bible, 193–5; M. Graves, Jerome'

Hebrew Philology. P. Nautin had gone so far as to accuse Jerome of not even knowing the Hebrew language.

LXX Septuagint :LXX Septuagint 1106 Preface to Hebrew Questions on the Book of Genesis.

1107 Cf. Ep.

57.11

1108 Cf. Jay, L'xégèse de Saint Jérôme sur Isaïe, 92–3; S. Jellicoe, The Septuagint and Modern

Study (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), 254.

based on the Hebrew, for private and apologetic use. His own position is well summarized in RRuf

Apol 2.35

By all this it is made clear, first that the version of the Seventy translators which has gained an established position by having been so long in use, was profitable to the churches, because by its means the Gentiles heard of the coming of Christ before he came; secondly, that the other translators are not to be reproved, since it was not their own works that they published but the divine books which they translated; and, thirdly, that my own familiar friend should frankly accept from a Christian and a friend what he has taken great pains to obtain from the Jews and has written down for him at great cost.1109

Jerome validly argues for the legitimacy of his enterprise of appealing directly to the Hebrew text. Understandably, Jerome resented the animosity that his Scripture scholarship generated from fellow Christians, especially when his aims had been misrepresented. On the other hand, it seems equally understandable how traditional Christians would be incensed at Jerome's attacks on the canon of Scripture that was in use in the churches.1110

JEROME'S SOURCES

In 1.1 Jerome reviews his exegetical predecessors, both Latins and Greeks. He reports that among the Latins, Victorinus, the martyr-bishop from Pettau, has written a valuable work on Isaiah of stylistic simplicity. He adds that among the Greeks, Origen of Alexandria was the first to write a commentary on the Book of Isaiah, which he did in thirty books in accordance with the four versions (Aquila, Symmachus, the Septuagint, and Theodotion). Origen's commentary reached the vision of the four-footed creature in the desert (cf. Isa 30:6), but the twenty-sixth book of Origen's commentary is lost. In the preface to book 5, Jerome says that Origen's work abounds in allegories and interpretation of names. Jerome further reports that Origen wrote twenty-five homilies1111 as well as Excerpts, or detailed commentary notes. Jerome also relates that Didymus (the Blind), whose intimate friendship he recently enjoyed, published eighteen books, beginning from Isaiah 40:1, and continuing to the end of the book. Moreover, Apollinaris has expounded the book "in his own manner by a system of intervals bounded by short stopping points—or rather, abridgments, and flies across the distances of a long road."

At 2.58 Jerome appears to allude to an interpretation found in the commentary on Isaiah by Basil (the Great) of Caesarea. Gryson and the editors of the new critical edition have identified a number of seeming parallels to Basil's work, and I have incorporated these references into the footnotes. The authenticity of Basil's commentary was questioned by Erasmus in the sixteenth century, and modern scholars are quite divided on the matter. According to Quasten, the RRuf Apol

St. Jerome' Apology against Rufinus 1109 Cf. NPNF2, 3:517–8.

1110 See Rufinus, Apology against Jerome, 2.35. I will say more of this below.

1111 He translated nine of these himself. See appendix .

opinion prevails at present that the work is not authentic.1112 Hence, its author is often referred to as pseudo-Basil. This commentary itself borrows heavily from Eusebius's Commentary on the Psalms and Commentary on Isaiah.1113

Origen's Hexapla1114 Jerome's reference to Origen's commentary, homilies, and Excerpts confirms that, both directly and indirectly, Jerome had access to the multiple Greek versions of the Old Testament displayed in Origen's Hexapla.1115 In order to give the reader a mental picture of Origen's

Hexapla, I will transcribe a small sample of it that has been published in Swete's standard work on the Septuagint.

The Hexapla: Psalm 45(46):1–31116

Hebrew Text Hebrew

in Greek letters Aquila Symmachus Septuagint (LXX) Theodotion למנצהΛαμανοσση τῷ νικοποιῷ ἐπινίκιον εἰς τὸ τέλος τῷ νικοποιῷ The first column of Origen's Hexapla contained the Hebrew version of the Old Testament. Such a location demonstrates how Origen recognized in some sense the primacy of the Hebrew text.

This obtains in spite of what appears to be Origen's firm adherence to the divine inspiration and ecclesiastical authority of the Septuagint version. Indications are that Origen's Hebrew text is in substantial agreement with the Masoretic Text (MT), which is the medieval Hebrew text on which modern versions of the Hebrew Old Testament are based.1117 This text was transliterated into Greek in the second column. Then Aquila's Greek version occupied the third column of 1112 Quasten, Patrology, 3:219.

1113 Cf. ibid., 218.

1114 For a reconstruction of Origen' Hexapla on Isaiah, see PG 16:2, 1611–986; and Field,

Origenis Hexaplorum Quae Supersunt. A very helpful new study is Kamesar, Jerome, Greek

Scholarship, and the Hebrew Bible, 4–2.

1115 P. Nautin argued that since the Hexapla was never copied, by Jerome' day the original no longer existed in Caesarea. Therefore, Jerome could not have known it. Cf. Pierre Nautin,

Origène: sa vie et son oeuvre (Paris: Beauchesne, 1977), 326–2. This view, uncritically accepted by some scholars, has been refuted in detail by Jay, L'xégèse de Saint Jérôme sur Isaïe, 410–7 and Hale Williams, The Monk and the Book, 150–4.

1116 This chart has been transcribed from H. B. Swete, An Introduction to the Old Testament in Greek, rev. R. R. Ottley (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1989; originally published by Cambridge

University Press, 1914), 62–3.

1117 Cf. Jellicoe, The Septuagint and Modern Study, 104.

Origen's Hexapla.1118 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). Jellicoe writes: "The extraordinary feature of Aquila's version is its extreme literalness, which renders it of inestimable value to the textual critic in determining the Hebrew which underlies it."1119 Jerome and Origen admitted the fidelity of his translation to the Hebrew.1120

The fourth column of Origen's Hexapla was occupied by Symmachus's version, between Aquila's translation and the Septuagint.1121 According to Epiphanius, Symmachus lived in the time of Emperor Severus (193–211) and was a Samaritan who became a Jewish proselyte.

Eusebius (H H E 6.16ff.

) on the other hand claims that he was an Ebionite. Jerome follows Eusebius (V V ir Ill

). 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. 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).1122 Jerome calls him an Ebionite (V V ir Ill

), whereas Irenaeus makes him a proselyte at Ephesus (AAdv Haer 3.21.2). Theodotion's translation is a revision of the Septuagint, harmonized with the Hebrew text. It is of singular 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, not the Old Latin, was in use in the Christian churches of Jerome's day.

Excursus on the Greek Septuagint The fifth column of Origen's Hexapla was occupied by a recension of the Septuagint itself.1123

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

1118 See ibid., 76–3; Jay, L'xégèse de Saint Jérôme sur Isaïe, 103–.

1119 See Jellicoe, The Septuagint and Modern Study, 80.

1120 Cf. Origen, Comm on Gen 1.16; Ep.

ad Afric

2 ; Jerome,

Ep.

; Ep. ad Damas; Comm on Is 49.5–; Comm on Hos 2.16–7.

1121 Cf. Jellicoe, The Septuagint and Modern Study, 94–9; Jay, L'xégèse de Saint Jérôme sur Isaïe,

105–.

HHE Eusebius' Historia ecclesiastica VVir Ill

Jerome' De viris illustribus 1122 See Jellicoe, The Septuagint and Modern Study, 83–4; Jay, L'xégèse de Saint Jérôme sur

Isaïe, 106–.

VVir Ill

Jerome' De viris illustribus AAdv Haer Irenaeus' Adversus haereses 1123 For the place of the Septuagint in Jerome' commentary on Isaiah, see Jay, L'xégèse de Saint

Jérôme sur Isaïe, 111–6.

,LXX Septuagint

and that became the Bible of the Jewish Diaspora.1124 However, the Septuagint is more than a translation of the Hebrew Old Testament; it contains Greek additions to some books of the Hebrew Bible, as well as independent works. Some of these books, such as Sirach, Tobit, and 1

Maccabees, are Greek translations of Hebrew or Aramaic texts, while others are Greek compositions. Ancient (pre-Christian) Jews originally held the Septuagint in extremely high regard, some even claiming that it was a divinely inspired translation of the Hebrew Scriptures.

The oldest Jewish historical tradition about this is recorded in the Letter of Aristeas (100 BC), which reports that Ptolemy II Philadelphus (ruler of Egypt from 283–246 BC) wanted to provide a copy of the Hebrew Scriptures for the library at Alexandria.1125 Seventy-two Jewish translators

(six from each of the twelve tribes) were commissioned for the translation of the Pentateuch.

Working together, they harmonized their translations by mutual comparison, that is, by collating the manuscripts, in a manner apparently similar to the way the text of Homer had been standardized.

The first-century AD Jewish scholar Philo introduces to this historical tradition the important element of divine inspiration. He says that the translators were secluded on the island of Pharos off the coast of Alexandria and then came under divine inspiration, "as though dictated to by an invisible prompter."1126 The seventy-two translators allegedly produced a word-perfect identical translation of the Hebrew text of the Pentateuch. Philo does not mention Aristeas's letter.

Rabbinic tradition later added a new embellishment: that the translators worked independently in isolated cells and God inspired them individually.

The additional Greek books that were added to the Hebrew canon include Esdras, Wisdom of Solomon, Wisdom of Jesus ben Sirach (Ecclesiasticus), 1, 2, 3, and 4 Maccabees, Additions to Esther and Daniel (Susanna, Bel and the Dragon), Judith, Tobit, Baruch, and the Letter of Jeremiah. This longer list of Old Testament books is called the Alexandrian or Septuagint Canon of Holy Scripture. (Protestants refer to the books as "the Apocrypha," i.e. "things hidden away.")

In later centuries, rabbinic Judaism rejected the Septuagint in its entirety in a reaction against Christianity. It commissioned new Greek translations to be made of the Hebrew Bible, for example, those by Symmachus and Aquila. The Jewish rabbis had been in conflict with the Christians, who preferred the Septuagint translation. Christians based their apologetics upon this translation, because it had been used by the apostles and church fathers. Eventually, Jews adopted what is called the Palestinian Canon, which contains only the Hebrew books with none of the Greek additions.

Many of the earliest Christian fathers accepted Philo's version of the divine inspiration of the Septuagint.1127 St. Augustine believed that both the original Hebrew OT and the Greek

1124 Diaspora is a Greek word that means "cattering"and refers to the scattering of the Jewish people throughout the Greek-speaking Mediterranean world.

1125 See The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha ed. J. Charlesworth (Garden City: Doubleday, 1983–

5), 2:7–4; Aristeas to Philocrates (Letter of Aristeas), trans. and ed. Moses Hadas, Dropsie

College Edition, Jewish Apocryphal Literature (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1951).

1126 Philo,

De Vita Mosis

2.25–4

1127 See Justin Martyr,

Apology

1.31

; Dialogue with Trypho

, 71; Pseudo-Justin, Exhortation to the Greeks 13; Irenaeus,

Against Heresies

3.212

; Clement of Alexandria,

Stromateis

1.149

Septuagint were divinely inspired.1128 In practice Jerome's view seems similar to this, but eventually he came to reject as a legend the later embellished tradition about the translators being sequestered into seventy separate cells, a legend that was used to defend the divine inspiration of the Septuagint.1129 He cites, as evidence against this embellishment, the silence of Aristeas and Josephus regarding the cells.

Indeed, the latter scholars write that the LXX translators were assembled in a single hall and consulted with each other. Jerome seems perfectly justified in doubting on historical grounds the story about the seventy cells. However, he takes his hesitations about the LXX one step further. In some passages in his writings, Jerome rejects the canonicity of some of the books added in the Septuagint. In the "Helmeted Preface" to his version from the Hebrew of the Books of Samuel and Kings,

Jerome lists as books to be reckoned as apocryphal writings Wisdom, Sirach, Judith, Tobit, and Maccabees.1130 The fact that Jerome stigmatized both 1 Maccabees, which existed in Hebrew in his day, but was excluded from the canon of the Jews, as well as Tobit, which Jerome says he found existing in an Aramaic text, but which had also been excluded by contemporary Jews, shows that it was indeed the authority of the Jews, and not the Hebrew or Aramaic language alone, that served as Jerome's criterion of canonicity.1131 Consequently, Jerome can be fairly labeled a "Judaizer" in respect to his views on the canon of Scripture. Judaizer is the very term that he often used, along with the term half-Jews, to describe Christian chiliasts.1132 Yet, in his preferred canon of Sacred Scripture, he sided with post-Christian rabbinic Jews over against preChristian Judaism and over against the Christian church itself.

FFor his choice of the Jewish over the Christian canon, Jerome was severely taken to task by some of his contemporaries. In response to the criticism he received, Jerome backpedaled, going so far as to deny that his earlier statements in the preface to the Vulgate against the canonicity of the LXX additions to Daniel had represented his own view. In his Apology against Rufinus

2.33

, Jerome writes:

For I have not been relating my own personal views but rather what they are wont to say against us. If I did not reply to their views in my preface, in the interest of brevity, lest it seem that I was composing not a preface but a book, I believe I immediately added the remark, for I said: "This is not the time to discuss such a matter."

JJerome implies here that he personally disagrees with the contemporary Jewish rejection of the LXX's additions to Daniel. Braverman

(whose translation of Jerome was just cited) says that Jerome has certainly given a weak answer to Rufinus here. "The truth is that he never did later make time to defend the canonicity of these sections of Daniel, even in his Commentary on Daniel (407). In fact, he there indicates the Tertullian,

Apology

1128 Cf. City of God

, 18.42–4

1129 Cf. preface to the Pentateuch (Genesis). PL 28 (ed. 1845):150–1; (ed. 1889):181–3; cited by J. Braverman, Jerome' Commentary on Daniel: A Study of Comparative Jewish and Christian

Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible (Washington, DC: Catholic Biblical Association, 1978), 33.

LXX Septuagint LXX Septuagint 1130 NPNF2, 6:490. Cf. Jerome,

Ep.

53.8

; 107.12.

1131 Cf. Hale Williams, The Monk and the Book, 91.

1132 Chiliasm will be discussed below.

FLXX Septuagint JLXX Septuagint

opposite."1133 Thus Jerome did not take full ownership of his case against the Septuagint canon.

In 10.1 of the present commentary, he alludes to these controversies with bitterness and resentment. In my judgment, this bitterness is caused by the exposure of his own inconsistent statements.

Strangely enough, in his correspondence and written works, Jerome continued to cite as Scripture texts from these allegedly apocryphal writings.1134 In the present commentary at 15.24, he cites Wisdom 1:1 as "Scripture." The Old Latin translation of the Septuagint was engrained in Jerome as the version of the Bible he had learned in his boyhood.1135 Moreover, the Greek Christian sources on which his Latin exegesis was based made use of the Septuagint readings and canon. Sutcliffe thus assesses Jerome's stance: "The reader gains the impression that the lessons on the Canon which Jerome had learnt in his youth still exercised their influence, which caused them, perhaps almost unnoticed by the author, to find expression in the writings of his advanced years."1136 Thus when the Roman Catholic Church eventually sided with Jerome's critics (Augustine and Rufinus) by affirming the canonicity of the Greek writings added to the Hebrew canon, it was not being unfaithful to Jerome's actual practice, only to his theory, which in any case he did not defend with consistency. In De Margerie's assessment,

Jerome's vision of the veritas hebraica, though correct in principle, was far too narrow and too restricted to his Jewish contemporaries' grasp of the sacred text. "In particular, due to a misunderstanding of the veritas hebraica, Jerome failed to recognize that the deutero-canonical books were part of the divinely inspired Scriptures."1137

Origen's Hexaplaric Recension of the LLXX It is important to recognize that Origen's Hexaplaric text of the Septuagint is a recension that had been "corrected" by him in the following way. In the fifth column of the Hexapla, Origen, using critical signs adapted from the 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.1138 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 what

1133 Braverman, Jerome' Commentary on Daniel, 50.

1134 For the most recent discussion of Jerome' view of the canon, see E. Gallagher, "The Old

Testament 'pocrypha'in Jerome' Canonical Theory,"JECS 20, no. 2 (2012): 213–3.

1135 Cf. Sutcliffe, "erome,"95.

1136 Ibid., 93.

1137 B. de Margerie, An Introduction to the History of Exegesis

, vol. 2,

The Latin Fathers

(Petersham, MA: St. Bede, 1995), 141.

LLXX Septuagint 1138 Asterisk comes from ἀστερίσκος, a small star used as a typographical mark placed before imperfect, deficient passages. Obelus comes from ὀβελός and refers to a critical mark shaped like a spit or small dagger placed opposite suspect passages. Obelus is also rendered "belisk,"a pointed square pillar; cf. Jerome,

Epp.

, 108, 112.

readings were obtained among the Jews.1139 Origen 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.

The British Old Testament scholar S. R. Driver admired Origen's work on the Hexapla,, which he said was projected with the best intentions and became the means of preserving to posterity much of priceless value that would otherwise have perished. But Driver adds that Origen did not succeed in restoring the genuine translation of the LXX, since he (wrongly) assumed that the original

Septuagint was that which agreed most closely with the Hebrew text as he knew it. Origen was guided partly by this Hebrew text and partly by the other versions of Aquila, Theodotion, and Symmachus, which were based substantially upon it. Where the Septuagint text differed from the current Hebrew text, Origen systematically altered it to bring it into conformity with the Hebrew. Driver comments:

This was a step in the wrong direction. Where a passage appears in two renderings, the one free, the other agreeing with the existent Hebrew text, it is the former which has the presumption of being the more original: the latter has the presumption of having been altered subsequently, in order that it might express the Hebrew more closely. Origen, no doubt, freed the text of the LXX from many minor faults; but in the main his work tended to obliterate the most original and distinctive features of the Version. To discover the Hebrew text used by the translators we must recover, as far as possible, the text of the Version as it left the translators hands; and Origen's labors, instead of facilitating, rather impeded this process.1140

The important point being made here is that the modern science of textual criticism had not been discovered in Origen's day. He, or rather his followers Eusebius and Pamphilus, who published his recension, evidently did not fully grasp the principles of textual transmission. In his own scholarship, Jerome inherited these mistakes and, like Eusebius, wrongly assumed that the Hebrew text that appeared in the first column of Origen's Hexapla represented the original text on which the Septuagint version of the fifth column must have been based. In reality the Septuagint had followed a different Hebrew textual tradition that was alternative to the Masoretic Text, and at least a millennium older than the oldest Masoretic manuscripts available to modern scholars.1141 This means that when Jerome accuses the Septuagint of "adding" something to the Hebrew, following the indications of Origen's critical apparatus, he is wrongly

1139 Rufinus pointed this out to Jerome in Apology against Jerome

2.36

LXX Septuagint .LXX Septuagint LXX Septuagint LXX Septuagint LXX Septuagint ,LXX Septuagint LXX Septuagint 1140 Cited in Jellicoe, The Septuagint and Modern Study, 102–. Italics found in original.

1141 Cf. K. Jobes and M. Silva, Invitation to the Septuagint (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2000), 148.

assuming that his (Origen's) Hebrew Vorlage was identical with that used by the Septuagint translators. M. Hale Williams comments on this erroneous assumption:

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.1142

Citing an example from Jerome's textual discussion in his Commentary on Hosea 2.9.11–13, M.

Hale Williams identifies both the strength of Jerome's linguistic knowledge, and the weakness of his ability in the field of textual criticism when judged by modern standards.

He has no doubt identified correctly the alternative [Hebrew] reading that lies behind the version of the Septuagint. But his attribution of this variation to mistranslation, rather than to a different base text, is peculiar. He seems unable to imagine that the process of transmission had ever infected the Hebrew textual tradition with multiple readings.1143

M. Graves concurs with respect to Jerome's Commentary on Jeremiah: "Jerome believes that his Hebrew text always represents the original text of Jeremiah vis-à-vis the LLXX,, whereas modern scholars generally conclude that the LXX more often reflects an earlier Hebrew text."1144 Similar observations could be made of Jerome's practice in the Commentary on Isaiah. Modern scholarship now recognizes, in a way that Jerome was unable to imagine, the inestimable importance of the Greek Septuagint as a witness to an alternate Hebrew textual tradition.1145

EEUSEBIUS OF CAESAREA'S COMMENTARY ON ISAIAH

In his work On Famous Men

( V V ir Ill ) 81

, Jerome writes a very favorable entry on Eusebius of Caesarea, in which he says that Eusebius wrote a commentary on Isaiah in ten books. In the preface to book 1 of his own Isaiah commentary, Jerome says that Eusebius composed his work in fifteen books. The discrepancy is probably explained by the fact that once Jerome had the work itself in his hands, he recognized its actual length. In his own Latin commentary, Jerome appears to have made extensive use of Eusebius's Greek Commentary on Isaiah (ca. 327), which 1142 Hale Williams, The Monk and the Book, 71.

1143 Ibid., 127.

LLXX Septuagint ,LXX Septuagint 1144 Graves, Jerome: Commentary on Jeremiah, xlvii.

1145 See Jobes and Silva, Invitation to the Septuagint.

VVir Ill

Jerome' De viris illustribus

is therefore the greatest documentable source of Jerome's exposition of Isaiah.1146 Eusebius had himself relied heavily on Origen's nonextant commentary. In his Ecclesiastical History, Eusebius reports that, at Caesarea during the reign of Gordian (238–244), Origen composed a commentary on Isaiah in thirty books that was complete only up to the vision of the beasts in the desert (Isa 30:6,, LXX).1147 Origen's work on Isaiah does not survive except for two short fragments found in Rufinus's translation of Pamphilus's Apology for Origen.1148 Eusebius's commentary was known only in partial form until very recently.1149 In 1706 the Benedictine scholar Montfaucon edited a fragmentary version in the series Collectio nova Patrum et

Scriptorum Graecorum.. This edition was based on four manuscripts from Paris. In the nineteenth century, it was reprinted by Migne with Montfaucon's preface and Latin translation in PG 24.77–526. In 1933 R. Devreesse identified elements in the Migne edition wrongly attributed to Eusebius that actually belonged to Basil of Caesarea, Cyril of Alexandria, Theodoret of Cyrus, and Theodore of Heraclea. He also took note of genuine scholia from other sources of which Montfaucon was unaware.1150 In 1934 A. Möhle, while conducting research for the Isaiah volume of the Göttingen Septuagint, announced the discovery of the nearly complete version of Eusebius's commentary in the margin of a Florentine biblical codex.1151 The new material doubled what had previously been available. J. Ziegler inherited the task of editing both the commentary of Eusebius and the Isaiah volume of the Göttingen

Septuagint. He made immediate use of Möhle's discovery in his 1939 edition of Isaiah, by printing the commentary's abundant citations of the versions of Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion in a separate Hexaplaric apparatus.1152 Eusebius's commentary itself did not appear until 1975, when Ziegler published it as number 9 in the GCS edition of Eusebius's works. With that publication, the critical study of Eusebius's exegesis of Isaiah, and indirectly of Origen's and Jerome's, was placed on an entirely new foundation. In the footnotes of the present work, Eusebius's commentary is abbreviated as EEus Is.

Fortunately, in addition to the appearance of the Greek critical text, there is now also a 1146 An English translation of Eusebius' work by Jonathon Armstrong has been announced by InterVarsity Press in the series Ancient Christian Texts.

,LXX Septuagint 1147 HE 6.32

1148 Cf. St. Pamphilus, Apology for Origen, no. 116 (93); no. 137 (102).

1149 I have followed Ziegler' introduction in Der Jesajakommentar [Commentarius in Isaiam], ed.

Joseph Ziegler, GCS 9 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1975), and M. J. Hollerich, Eusebius of Caesarea'

Commentary on Isaiah:

Christian Exegesis in the Age of Constantine

(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999).

.PG Patrologia graeca, ed. J. P. Migne (Paris, 1844–4) 1150 R. Devreesse, "L'dition du Commentaire d'usèbe de Césarée sur Isaïe: Interpolations et omissions,"Revue Biblique 42 (1933): 540–5.

1151 A. Möhle, "Der Jesaiakommentar des Eusebius von Kaisareia fast vollständig wieder aufgefunden,"Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 33 (1934): 87–.

1152 J. Ziegler, ed., Isaias, in Septuaginta: Vetus Testamentum Graece 14 (Göttingen, 1939; 2nd ed. 1967).

GCS Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller

monograph on Eusebius's commentary in English; moreover, an English translation appears to be in preparation.1153 With reference to the theological content of Eusebius's work, Hollerich indicates that Eusebius avoids subordinationist theological terminology, a feature that had characterized his writings prior to the Council of Nicaea in 325. This suggests that the work should be dated after the Nicene Council. Hollerich dates it to 325–327. Also, Eusebius's commentary completely ignores discussion of heresy in the church. "It divides the world into those who are members of the godly polity and those who are not—that is, according to belief and unbelief, not orthodoxy and heresy."1154 This would seem to suggest that Jerome's pervasive discussions of heresy in his commentary derive not from Eusebius but from Origen's nonextant commentary and other sources.1155 Moreover, Hollerich indicates that Eusebius's commentary

"is devoted at tiresome length to vindicating Christianity's supplantation of Judaism."1156 Since this same theme characterizes Jerome's commentary, it seems that Eusebius could be a major source for this motif.

Eusebius's commentary itself makes frequent and direct use of Origen's Commentary on Isaiah. Origen is named as a source at least six times in his work. It is well known that Eusebius revered Origen and collaborated with St. Pamphilus the Martyr in writing an Apology for Origen.1157 He also devoted book 6 of his Ecclesiastical History to telling Origen's remarkable story. Ziegler writes that even though Origen's Isaiah commentary has been lost, it is nevertheless preserved in large measure in the commentary by Eusebius.1158 Many of Origen's discussions have been adopted in a somewhat altered form by Eusebius; yet even some of Origen's phrases and words have been literally repeated by Eusebius. Also, Ziegler observes that the text of Scripture that Eusebius cites has been taken from Origen. Until the publication of Eusebius's rediscovered commentary by Ziegler, Eusebius's dependence on Origen was assumed; now for the first time it has been proven.1159 Hollerich conjectures that Jerome seems to have drawn on Eusebius much more than on Origen, his affinity for Eusebius being based on their shared commitment to literal interpretation, however much Jerome believed Eusebius fell short of it in practice (cf. 5.86 on Isa 18:2).

EEus Is Eusebius of Caesarea' Commentary on Isaiah = Eusebius of Caesarea, Eusebius Werke IX.

Der Jesajakommentar [Commentarius in Isaiam], ed. Joseph Ziegler, Die griechische christlichen

Schriftsteller (GCS) (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1975) 1153 The monograph is Hollerich' Eusebius of Caesarea' Commentary on Isaiah.

1154 Ibid., 25. See S. Gozzo, "De Hieronymi commentario in Isaiae librum,"Antonianum 35 (1960):

194–03.

1155 My conjecture is confirmed by Grützmacher, Hieronymus, 3:181, at least with respect to Jerome' discussions of Ebion and Marcion in 7:3; 18:1.

1156 Hollerich, Eusebius of Caesarea' Commentary on Isaiah, 33.

1157 See my new translation: St. Pamphilus, Apology for Origen.

1158 Ziegler, Der Jesajakommentar, xxxi.

1159 Ibid., xxxii. My hope is that the present translation of Jerome' commentary, which is supplied with the critical edition' scores of references to parallel passages in Eusebius' Greek work, will facilitate the task of scholars who wish to analyze Jerome' use of his Greek sources.

One could hypothesize that the preponderance of Eusebian material in Jerome's commentary is just an accident of historical preservation, which has given us Eusebius's

Commentary on Isaiah but not Origen's, and that Origen was actually a common source of both. However, Jerome's frequent use of Eusebius even for Isa. 30:6–66:24 suggests that he relied on him for the whole book. Most of the unidentified references in Jerome's discussion of 30–66 have now turned up in the new edition of Eusebius' commentary.1160

My own suspicion is that Jerome would have made an even more extensive use of Origen's commentary and scholia than he did of Eusebius's commentary. This cannot be verified, of course, since Origen's works do not survive; but when Jerome's exegesis here is compared with Origen's surviving exegesis elsewhere, the conclusion is that he took a great deal from Origen. In fact, I would conjecture that Origen's exegesis stands beneath the scores of references to Eusebius that I have placed in the footnotes of the present translation.

With respect to Jerome's use of Eusebius/Origen, Ziegler adds that it is shown above all in his scriptural citations.1161 In this respect, Jerome probably did not even need to open his own

Latin Bible, but often simply took the citations in Latin form out of Eusebius's Greek original.1162

Ziegler's speculation is confirmed when one carefully observes how Jerome cites and comments on Scripture: more often than not, Jerome's Scripture citations and the language of his explanations conform to the readings of the Old Latin (LXX), even in sections of commentary where he explicitly states that he is offering explanations "according to the Hebrew."1163 I have endeavored to assist the reader in detecting this by using quotation marks for echoes of the Septuagint lemma and italics for echoes of the Hebrew lemma.

EXEGETICAL METHOD USED IN ST. JEROME'S COMMENTARY ON ISAIAH

The essence of the apostolic interpretation of the Old Testament is the conviction that all

Scripture applies to Jesus Christ and testifies to him in anticipation of the salvation accomplished by him and in him. The OT can no longer be read as the Jews read it, now that Christ has come and fulfilled it, since Christ revealed its definitive sense and deeper implications. Christ has made men pass from law to grace, from the letter to the spirit, from figures to reality. The bishops of the Catholic Church articulate these principles in the dogmatic constitution of the Second Vatican Council,

Dei Verbum

4.15–16

The principal purpose to which the plan of the old covenant was directed was to prepare for the coming of Christ, the redeemer of all and of the messianic kingdom, to announce this coming by prophecy, and to indicate its meaning through various types.… God, the inspirer and author of both Testaments, wisely arranged that the New Testament be hidden in the Old and the Old be made manifest in the New. For, though Christ

1160 Hollerich, Eusebius of Caesarea' Commentary on Isaiah, 56–7.

1161 Ziegler, Der Jesajakommentar, xlviii.

1162 Ibid., xlviii.

LXX Septuagint 1163 E.g., 14.10 (51:9).

established the new covenant in His blood, still the books of the Old Testament with all their parts, caught up into the proclamation of the Gospel, acquire and show forth their full meaning in the New Testament and in turn shed light on it and explain it.1164

Thus in the Catholic understanding, the writings of the OT are prophetic and point forward to the coming of Christ. God has providentially arranged for the NT to be hidden in the OT, and for the OT to be revealed in the NT.

Jerome's method of exegesis is consonant with these principles. In the preface to book 1,

Jerome says that he wants to demonstrate that Isaiah was not only a prophet, but an evangelist and an apostle. This recalls the way the New Testament writers received the prophecies of Isaiah. All four Gospels claim that John the Baptist's ministry fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah 40:3

(cf. Matt 3:3; Mark 1:3; Luke 3:4; John 1:23). Matthew announces the fulfillment of Isaiah 7:14 in the virgin birth of Christ (Matt 1:22–23) and of Isaiah 9:1–2 in Jesus's Galilean ministry (Matt

4:14–16). Matthew 12:17–21 identifies Jesus as the "servant" predicted in Isaiah 42:1–4. In the synagogue in Nazareth, Jesus inaugurated the good news publicly by proclaiming that his presence on earth signaled the fulfillment of the prophecy of Isaiah 61:1–2 (cf. Luke 4:16–21).

According to Jesus, Isaiah had foreseen his miracles (cf. Matt 8:17; 11:4–5; Isa 35:5–6; 53:4) as well as the blindness and hypocrisy of the Pharisees (Matt 13:14; 15:8–9; cf. Isa 6:9–10; 29:13).

The passion narratives in all four Gospels are told in language that reflects the language of Isaiah's prophecies about the Suffering Servant (Isa 53). John quotes Isaiah 6:10 as having been fulfilled in Jesus's ministry and then declares: "Isaiah said this because he saw his glory and spoke of him" (John 12:41). Moreover, Paul says that Isaiah 28:11–12 is being fulfilled in his churches (cf. 1 Cor 14:21), and he applies Isaiah 26:16 to Jesus Christ (cf. Rom 9:33; 10:11), as does St. Peter (1 Pet 2:4–6). In response to Paul's citation of Isaiah in Romans 9:27–29, Jerome writes at 4.9: "Therefore, when the authority of such a great man has preceded, let every other interpretation cease." Jerome takes as decisive the Christian interpretation of Isaiah as embodied in the New Testament. Like Origen and Eusebius before him, he endeavored quite simply to sit at Jesus' feet, as a disciple, and to learn from him and from his earliest disciples how to read and interpret the Old Testament.

Regrettably, these Catholic and Christian principles of exegesis have been largely ignored in the postconciliar period, as D. Farkasfalvy has observed:

There is something ironic in the uncontentious ease with which chapter 4 of Dei Verbum, a surprisingly short summary of the Christian outlook on the Jewish Scriptures, was accepted and integrated into the document. The content of the chapter reflects, once again, a largely patristic point of view that modern biblical scholarship, both inside and outside Catholic circles, has not been able to integrate fully into contemporary exegesis. In fact, while the pre-conciliarpatristic ressourcement proclaimed the "unity of the two Testaments" as central, Old Testament scholars were much less enthusiastic about joining ranks with a "Christian reading" of the Bible.1165

1164 W. H. Abbott, SJ, ed., The Documents of Vatican II, trans. J. Gallagher, chap. 4 (New York:

Guild Press, 1966), 122.

When Farkasfalvy speaks of Dei Verbum's principles not being "integrated fully" into contemporary Catholic exegesis, he is speaking tactfully, to say the least. The reality is far more discouraging. R. E. Brown, for example, openly critiques the treatment of the OT in Vatican II as weakened by its "overemphasis on the importance of the Christian dimension in the OT." He thinks that such formulae as Dei Verbum uses are "too scholastic to survive" and "may well belong to a passing era." "It would be salutary if we would recognize the need to think of the OT books as old. They were primarily written for their contemporaries to teach them how to live in the love of God; they were not primarily written to prepare for the coming of Jesus Christ."1166

Thus, according to the undisputed leader of American Catholic exegesis in the postconciliar era,

Dei Verbum 4 simply got it wrong. Similarly the OT scholar J. McKenzie, SJ, disclaims any employment of "prediction, fulfillment, foreshadowing, revelation, allegory, typology, spiritual sense, fuller sense, or other similar techniques derived from the New Testament and the Fathers of the church," asserting that such interpretive techniques are outdated.1167 The great error of these scholars, of course, is their aspiration to read the Old Testament as if Christ and the church did not exist.1168

In response to the contemporary Catholic aversion to prediction, foreshadowing, and allegory, the reader should be reminded that St. Paul himself inaugurated the term allegory and used it to bolster his argument in Galatians 4:21–31. When St. Paul and the author of Hebrews interpret passages from the Old Testament, Jerome bows before their authority and accepts their interpretive framework. He does not accuse them of using outdated and fundamentalist modes of exegesis. In 13.22, when Jerome observes that Paul in 2 Corinthians 6:2 cites Isaiah

49:8 as having been fulfilled in the first advent of Christ, he responds: "Let us too follow in the tracks of his explanation, and trace his letters the way children trace the shadowy outlines of their teacher." Programmatic texts for Jerome's Christian hermeneutics of the Old Testament are: Hebrews 10:1, 1 Corinthians 10:11, Romans 15:4, and 2 Timothy 3:16–17.

It is also important to clarify that when Jerome offers a spiritual (Christian) interpretation of a passage, which he interchangeably calls the tropological or anagogical sense, he is not calling into question the historicity of the original passage. On the contrary, Jerome assumes that the Old Testament events occurred in history. The spiritual interpretation must be built upon the foundation of history. Jerome's principles are the same as Origen's in this regard; and as H.

Crouzel intelligently reminds us, "In spite of the spontaneous reactions of many modern scholars it must not be concluded from the fact that Origen allegorizes a story that he does not 1165 D. Farkasfalvy, Inspiration & Interpretation: A Theological Introduction to Sacred Scripture

(Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2010), 190–1.

1166 "he Problems of the Sensus Plenior,"Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses 43 (1967): 468.

Italics added.

1167 A Theology of the Old Testament (Garden City: Doubleday, 1974), 339–0.

1168 For a critique of McKenzie, see Guillermo V. Villegas, The Old Testament as a Christian Book:

A Study of Three Catholic Biblical Scholars: Pierre Grelot, John L. McKenzie, Luis Alonso Schökel

(Manila: Divine Word Publications, 1988), 192–3. For a critique of certain trends in modern

Catholic Scripture scholarship, see L. Ayres and S. E. Fowl, "Misreading the Face of God: The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church,"Theological Studies 60 (1999): 513–8.

believe in the historicity of the literal account, which is perfectly compatible with the quest for a spiritual meaning."1169 Similarly, Tillemont writes an assessment of Origen that can be applied to Jerome as well:

[Origen] has been blamed for having, throughout his writings, explained the whole of Scripture through allegory without following the letter. If he had claimed that the events reported by Scripture had not happened, he would assuredly have been worthy of blame. But if, assuming these events to be true, he tried to find in them more spiritual and elevated meanings by relating them to Jesus Christ and to the Church, he was only doing what Saint Paul taught through his words and through his example, and what Saint

Augustine, Saint Gregory the Great, and nearly all the other Fathers tried to do after him.1170

In other words, with very few exceptions the church fathers assume the literal factuality of the Old Testament narratives, but in the context of providing homiletical edification to Christians, they wish to supplement the literal and historical meaning by the addition of spiritual meanings that point to Christ and the church and that bring encouragement and exhortation to Christians.

When Jerome allegorizes a passage, he does not claim finality for his spiritual interpretations, and in fact he often offers more than one. Frequently, he challenges his hearers to pursue their own investigations into the mystical meaning. What he insists upon is that allegorical interpretations be pious and edifying (4.5).

Yet, what does Jerome mean when he says in 7.11: "Moreover, in this and in other passages of the Scriptures, very many things are recorded which cannot stand in accordance with history, so that we are compelled by the necessity of the facts to look for a deeper understanding"?

There are statements like this in Origen's writings as well. The context of Jerome's statement concerns the Christian interpretation of predictions made by the prophets of Israel. The New

Testament claims that Isaiah saw Christ's glory and wrote of it (cf. John 12:41). Yet, Jerome admits that Isaiah wrote many prophecies that did not receive a historical fulfillment in every detail in the life of Christ. For instance, Jesus claimed that Isaiah 35:5–6 was fulfilled literally in his healing ministry (cf. Matt 11:5; Luke 7:22). Yet Isaiah 35:6b–7 speaks of waters breaking forth in the desert and the parched haunts of jackals turning into swamps. Do such details also require a literal / historical fulfillment in order to verify Christ's claims? Jerome would say certainly not. Where it is not possible to confirm the fulfillment of a prophetic detail in history, in a prophecy that generally does relate to Christ, the Christian interpreter may probe the prophetic texts for deeper symbolic meaning and find the messianic and ecclesiastical fulfillment on that level. This seems to be Jerome's meaning.

Doubtless, the fact that the followers of Marcion denied that the Old Testament narratives had any use whatsoever played a role in inspiring Jerome and his predecessors to find a practical and spiritually edifying use even for seemingly insignificant details in the text of the Old Testament. At 3.12 and 7.9, Jerome refers to Marcion as the accuser of the God of the Old

1169 H. Crouzel, Origen, trans. A. S. Worrall (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1989), 63.

1170 Cited by H. de Lubac, History and Spirit: The Understanding of Scripture according to Origen, trans. A. Nash (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2007), 81–2.

Testament. Jerome is ready to defend passages that Marcion accuses of inferiority. However, of much more fundamental importance was the influence of St. Paul, who had confronted the way the Jews and the Judaizing Christians sought to hold Christians to the literal observances of circumcision, Passover, unleavened bread, rules about food and drink, feasts, new moons, and the Sabbath. The Judaizing opponents of Paul did so by means of a literalistic interpretation of certain passages in the Old Testament. Such Jews and Judaizers saw no meaning more profound than the immediate one in the Old Testament ceremonial law.

Allegorical interpretation, inaugurated by Jesus and St. Paul, equipped the Christian reader to handle Jewish objections like this. Indeed, P. Martens, in a penetrating recent study, has shown that Origen's principal objection to Jewish literal exegesis of Scripture focuses on two issues in particular: the obligation to continue to adhere to Jewish ceremonial law (Sabbaths, sacrifices, food laws, etc.) and the identity of Jesus as the Messiah.1171 In other words, Origen's critique of Jewish exegesis is not general or abstract, nor is it categorically dismissive of Jewish interpretive procedure; rather it is particular and focused on these specific dogmatic issues.

Martens's insights can be applied to Jerome's exegesis, which follows the lines drawn by Origen.

SIGNIFICANT THEOLOGICAL THEMES IN ST. JEROME'S COMMENTARY ON ISAIAH

Free Choice, Divine Foreknowledge, and Predestination Many topics could be discussed at this time, but I shall call attention to two themes that seem theologically important and that have proven interesting to me over the years. Jerome draws much of his anti-Gnostic material from Origen, as Harnack's valuable study has pointed out with respect to Jerome's New Testament commentaries.1172 A significant byproduct of the anti-Gnostic polemic is Jerome's strong defense of the freedom of the human will in the process of salvation and damnation (cf. 14.14). Jerome repeatedly says that the human being makes a meritorious contribution to his salvation and damnation; the divine foreknowledge of an individual's fate does not cause that person's destruction (5.74). The prophet Isaiah presupposes the existence of free choice of the will in Isaiah 1:19–20,, where he says: "If you be willing, and will hearken to me, you shall eat the good things of the land. But if you will not, and will provoke me to wrath, the sword shall devour you" (DRB). Jerome comments on this passage: "He preserves free choice, so that in both directions there is either punishment or reward, not on the basis of the predetermination of God, but on the basis of the merits of individuals" (1.26). At 13.19 he says:

All this is said in order that the human being's free choice may be shown; for it is God's to call, and ours to believe. And God is not immediately without ability, if we ourselves do not believe, but he leaves his power to our choice, so that [our] will justly obtains its reward.

1171 Cf. P. Martens, Origen and Scripture: The Contours of the Exegetical Life (Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 2012), 140–8.

1172 Cf. A. Harnack, Der kirchengeschichtliche Ertrag der exegetischen Arbeiten des Origenes.

,DRB Douay Rheims Bible

Notice how Jerome presupposes that the grace of the divine call can be resisted by the human will; it is not forced upon man and does not inevitably prevail.

On the other hand, Jerome is aware that there are some (Origen) who extend freedom so far as to grant the hope of future repentance even to the devil, and who say that even that fallen angel can be purified; but Jerome firmly rejects this view (6.29). He says that limiting freedom in the case of the devil will not immediately expose the church to the Valentinian heresy, which asserts that there are different kinds of natures, and that there is one nature that never receives healing (6.29; cf. 7.8; 10.3). Jerome claims in 16.3 that Isaiah refutes the Valentinian views.

This is said against those who want there to be diverse natures [of souls], one that is lost and evil and cannot be saved, and another that is good and cannot perish. For if, as they think, the "sons of perdition" are evil by nature, how has that which was previously lost been found? After all, in the parables of the penitent ones, both the sheep that was lost from the hundred sheep [cf. Luke 15:4], and the drachma which had been lost from the ten [cf. Luke 15:8], are found again; moreover, the lost son is found, concerning whom the father had said to the one older by birth: "This brother of yours was lost, and has been found, he was dead and has come to life again" [Luke 15:32]. For nothing is ever lost except what was previously safe, and nothing ever dies but what was formerly alive.

Therefore those who are now being called "sons of perdition" or of iniquity and wickedness, abandoned God through their own fault, and they began to be "sons of perdition" from being the Lord's sons. For this same prophet says to them: "You have forsaken the Lord and provoked to anger the Holy One of Israel" [Isa 1:4].

These formulations are strikingly reminiscent of Origen and of the Greek theological tradition.

Jerome is acquainted with the texts in Isaiah that seem entirely to take away free will in human beings, for instance, Isaiah 63:17, which appears to blame God for hardening human hearts. The passage reads: "O LORD, why dost thou make us err from thy ways and harden our heart, so that we fear thee not?" In Jerome's commentary at 17.32, he explains the language as figurative, not literal: "It is not that God is the cause of human straying and hardness, but that his patience, which waits for our salvation, while he does not correct those who transgress, appears to be the cause of error and hardness." Likewise at 15.17 he says that Matthew 7:18 ("A good tree cannot produce bad fruit" [NASB]) "does not refer to the peculiar property of its nature, as the heretics think, but to the choice of the mind. After all, he adds: 'Either make a tree good, and its fruit is good' [Matt 12:33]. From this it is clear that it is by one's own will that each person makes his own soul a good or evil tree whose fruit is varied." Likewise, at 5.74

Jerome explains that even a divine verdict decreeing the destruction of a nation does not nullify human freedom or make the destruction inevitable. "It is not that the foreknowledge of God offered the cause of the devastation, but that the coming devastation was foreknown by the majesty of God."

These are precisely the sorts of explanations of such passages used by Origen and the

Cappadocian fathers in their writings.1173 One important corollary to such a robust understanding of human freedom is that the divine will for human salvation extends to all without exception. At 17.29 Jerome asks why many are not saved. The answer is because they have refused to believe. "And he is not immediately at fault if the majority refused to believe, but the will of the one who came was that everyone would believe and be saved." In light of his assimilation of Greek exegetical sources on passages such as these, it should come as no surprise that Jerome's understanding of predestination, foreknowledge, and free will is more in line with the emphasis of the early Greek theologians than with late Augustinian views (which in any case were developed in the decade following Jerome's death with a very fragile basis in the antecedent Christian exegetical tradition). Even in his treatise against Pelagius, Jerome did not reproach Pelagius's equation of predestination with foreknowledge, which was quite in line with the Greek theological tradition to which Jerome himself adhered.1174 Referring to Jerome's

Dialogue against the Pelagians, Jerome's great nineteenth-century Anglican translator, W.

Fremantle, observed: "It cannot fail to appear that Jerome is not like Augustine, a thoroughgoing predestinarian, but a 'synergist,'1175 maintaining the co-existence of free will, and that he reduces predestination to God's foreknowledge of human determination (see the Dialogue, especially 1.5, 2.6, 3.18)."1176 J. Ferguson confirms this conclusion when he writes, with respect to Jerome's views articulated in his Dialogue against the Pelagians, that Jerome does not hold the extreme predestinarian views of Augustine.

He is rather a synergist, holding that God's grace and man's free will come together in the work of salvation, and equating predestination with prescience, that is to say, interpreting the doctrine not in terms of an arbitrary fiat of the Almighty that A shall be saved and B damned, but to mean that God having in His Almighty perfection complete knowledge of past, present and future, foreknows that A will so live as to be saved, and B will so live as to be damned.1177

Clearly Jerome understands the nature of the Pelagian heresy in a more delimited way than the late Augustine, who in the decade following Jerome's death, developed a doctrine of arbitrary

1173 Cf. H. Crouzel, "Theological Construction and Research: Origen on Free-Will,"in Scripture,

Tradition and Reason: A Study in the Criteria of Christian Doctrine: Essays in Honor of Richard P.

C. Hanson, ed. R. Bauckham and B. Drewery (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1988), 239–5.

1174 See Thomas P. Scheck, Origen and the History of Justification: The Legacy of Origen'

Commentary on Romans (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2008), chapter 2;

Scheck, "Pelagius' Interpretation of Romans,"in Handbook on St. Paul in the Middle Ages, ed. S.

Cartwright (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 79–13.

1175 Synergism is merely a transliteration of the Greek term συνεργέω, which means

"ooperation"(from cooperor) or "orking together."The term is scriptural (cf. Mark 16:20; Rom

8:28; Jas 2:22) and indicates that God and humanity collaborate or work together in the process of salvation.

1176 "ieronymus,"A Dictionary of Christian Biography, ed. W. Smith and H. Wace (London, 1877–

7), 3:46.

1177 John Ferguson, Pelagius (Cambridge: W. Heffer & Sons, 1956), 79–0.

predestination and denied the universality of the divine will for salvation. For Jerome the gist of Pelagius's error is his belief that Christians can attain perfection in this life apart from the assistance of divine grace.1178 Pelagius's error does not, for Jerome, embrace his explanation that predestination in Holy Scripture equates to divine foreknowledge of free human choices.

This latter view was a consensus position in Greek theology to which Jerome himself subscribed.

Jerome's more delimited understanding of Pelagius's errors has proved offensive to the Protestant writer H. von Campenhausen, who claims that the modern reader of Jerome's

Dialogue against the Pelagians must conclude that "Jerome had not the slightest understanding of the real issue in the controversy, and stood much nearer in his attitude in the matter to Pelagius than to his alleged confederate Augustine!"1179 Von Campenhausen is correct in seeing the similarity between Jerome and Pelagius on the issue of free will and predestination. But he is wrong in his assumption that it is the late Augustine alone who defines the scope of Pelagius's errors. It appears that for some streams of Protestant theology, and possibly for hyperAugustinian schools of Catholic theology, the scope of the Pelagian heresy must be defined by Augustine alone rather than by the Catholic Church. Any dissent from the late Augustine is deemed "Pelagian," "proto-Pelagian," or "semi-Pelagian." This way of thinking is anachronistic and dogmatically reductionist, since the late Augustine defined as "Pelagian" views that went far beyond what the Catholic Church had articulated as the scope of Pelagius's errors.

Excursus on Augustine's Theological Innovations P. Burns summarizes the problematic nature of Augustine's later position on grace and free will, saying that for all the cogency of his arguments for the predestination of the elect and the working of their salvation, Augustine failed to meet the issue his opponents were pressing, the implied reprobation of the nonelect. "Predestination according to foreknowledge of God's own action seemed to entail reprobation according to God's foreknowledge of his own inaction."1180

Burns observes that Augustine implicitly recognized the cogency of the arguments being used against him by his attempt to rationalize God's decision through its good effect among the saints. Similarly, in a very thorough investigation D. Ogliari concludes that Augustine's treatise

De dono perseverantiae has lost the balance between the agency of man and that of grace that was present in De gratia et libero arbitrio.

Free will and human agency, at this stage, seem to have become mere "instruments for expressing the outworking of grace." … The line of argument taken by the bishop of Hippo clearly emerges as a continual and intransigent insistence on the predestinarian

"logic" of his theological construction on grace. So much so that the overriding role of divine agency overshadows, if not de facto replaces, a healthy form of libertarianism whose role in the process of the economy of salvation should not be underrated.1181

1178 See the discussion by Graves, Jerome, Commentary on Jeremiah, xxxi.

1179 H. von Campenhausen, The Fathers of the Church (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2000), 169.

1180 The Development of Augustine' Doctrine of Operative Grace (Paris: Etudes Augustiniennes,

1980) 177, citing De corrept. et grat

. 13, 40

; De dono persev

., 8, 19

Ogliari defines "libertarianism" to mean "the ability of human beings to act with free will and moral responsibility, with the proviso, however, that such ability is free of any determination caused by anything outside the agent, and with the guarantee that the agent could have acted otherwise."1182 According to Ogliari, Jerome holds that the initium fidei (beginning of faith) belongs to humanity. Citing a series of early Greek theologians followed by Jerome's

Dial contra

Pelag

3.1

and Comm on Isa

13.19

(on Isa 49:1–4), Ogliari summarizes:

It is up to the latter to pray, whereas God bestows what has been prayed for. Man begins and offers and God brings to fulfillment what man cannot accomplish. It must be noticed that all these witnesses, with the exception of Jerome, precede the advent of Pelagianism and the controversy with Augustine. This shows that before the new elaboration of the theology of grace by the bishop of Hippo, the synergetic context in which the initium fidei was understood reflected the commonly held and professed doctrine of the Church in general, and that of the Eastern Fathers and theologians in particular.1183

Some modern scholars reproach Jerome with the label "Semipelagian."1184 To me this seems dangerous and anachronistic.1185

1181 Gratia et Certamen: The Relationship between Grace and Free will in the Discussion of Augustine with the So-Called Semipelagians, Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum

Lovaniensium 169 (Louvain: Peeters, 2003), 183.

1182 Ibid., n429 1183 Ibid., 296.

1184 For instance Louis Saltet, "t. Jerome,"Catholic Encyclopedia (1909). See http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08341a.htm.

1185 To my knowledge, the term Semi-Pelagian is first used in a Christian creedal statement in the Lutheran Formula of Concord (1580), Art. 2, 3, to condemn what are clearly Catholic understandings of grace. The term was then picked up by Dominican theologians of the early seventeenth century and used to condemn views of Jesuit theologians. Yet the magisterial orthodoxy of the Jesuit views is evidenced in the papal constitution Unigenitus, issued on 8

September 1713, in which Pope Clement XI condemned 101 propositions culled from the works of the French Jansenist Pasquier Quesnel. The condemnations contained within this constitution were confirmed by Clement XI in the Bull Pastoralis Officii, issued on 28 August 1718, by a decree of Innocent XIII, by Benedict XIII and the Roman Synod in 1725, and by Benedict XIV in the encyclical Ex omnibus Christiani orbis regionibus, published on 16 October 1756. See

Heinrich Denzinger, Sources of Catholic Dogma, 30th ed. (Kansas City, MO: Angelus Press, 1957),

1351–451; A. McGrath, "Justification: Barth, Trent, Küng,"Scottish Journal of Theology 34

(1981): 517–9. McGrath points out (527–8) that H. Küng has completely neglected to discuss the Catholic magisterial doctrine in his discussion of Karl Barth' theology. See also M. Parmentier,

"Pelagius as the Bogeyman of Catholics and Protestants in the Seventeenth Century,"Augustiniana 53 (2003): 147–8.

Jerome's Repudiation of Chiliasm (Millennialism)1186 Defining the "heresy" of chiliasm is a more complicated matter than the mere explication of the name would suggest. The term derives from the Greek word for one thousand (chilias), which Latins for the same reason call millenarianism (mille = one thousand). It is linked by Eusebius (H H E 3.28.1–6

) and Augustine (Haer 8) to the heretic Cerinthus in the second century; however, there does not appear to be any historical basis for that linkage. In spite of its name, it cannot be said that the most fundamental error of chiliasm is its belief in a thousand-year reign of Christ on earth, since this is a scriptural teaching. Revelation 5:9–10 predicts that Christ and his ransomed martyrs will reign together "on earth." Those who persevere unto death through the final great tribulation instigated by the antichrist will wash their robes in the blood of the Lamb and reign with him (Rev 7:14–15). And in Revelation 20:4–6 the duration of the reign of Christ on earth with his victoriously martyred saints is identified as a period of one thousand years, a term that occurs six times in Revelation 20:1–7. Revelation 20:4–5 states:

Also I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for their testimony to Jesus and for the word of God, and who had not worshiped the beast or its image and had not received its mark on their foreheads or their hands. They came to life, and reigned with Christ a thousand years. The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended.

According to this text, the resurrection of the martyrs of the final persecution of the antichrist is separated by a thousand years from the resurrection of the rest of the dead. Even if the "thousand years" are interpreted nonliterally, the affirmation of a thousand-year reign of Christ on earth with his martyred saints is a Christian truth affirmed by Scripture, not a heretical doctrine. It affirms the important Catholic dogma of the unique merit that accrues to those who are martyred for Christ's sake. The millennial reign of Christ with these special saints is therefore no Jewish tradition or fable, unless we repudiate the canonicity of the Apocalypse of John.

In fact, many orthodox Christians of the early centuries were guided by the conviction that the Apocalypse was penned by the apostle John, son of Zebedee. Relying on Revelation 20, they believed fervently that there would be an earthly reign of the Messiah before the end of time, in which there will be a first resurrection of martyrs on the earth for one thousand years.

According to Daniélou the essential affirmation of the early and orthodox form of chiliasm is

Of an intermediate stage in which the risen saints are still on earth and have not yet entered into their final state. Nothing, however, is said about the nature or duration of this stage, for this is one of the aspects of the mystery of the last days which has as yet 1186 For a detailed discussion of millenarianism, see J. Daniélou, A History of Early Christian

Doctrine,

vol. 1:

The Theology of Jewish Christianity

, trans. and ed. John A. Baker (Chicago: The Henry Regnery Company, 1964), 377–08. I have aimed to conform my present treatment of this issue to Daniélou', though I do not think he takes adequate account of the degree to which Jerome' treatment distorts his opponents'views.

HHE Eusebius' Historia ecclesiastica

to be revealed.1187

Noteworthy here is that the Christian representatives of the original chiliastic doctrine did not even insist on the literalness of the thousand years in terms of duration of time. They clearly avoided a crassly materialistic interpretation of Christ's future reign on earth. Nor did they dispute the primacy of the spiritual fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies in the church. 1188

What they insisted on was the unique merits and rewards owed to Christian martyrs and the fulfillment of these promised rewards during a literal reign of Christ on earth, subsequent to his second coming, but prior to the inauguration of the final state.

Millenarianism or chiliasm was a very widespread doctrine among early orthodox Christian writers. It was advocated in slightly different forms by Papias, Ps-Barnabas, St. Justin Martyr, St.

Irenaeus, Tertullian, St. Methodius of Olympus, St. Victorinus of Petau, Lactantius, Apollinaris, and the early Augustine. This is an impressive list of representatives, considering that Papias was bishop of Hieropolis and a direct heir to apostolic teaching; Irenaeus was the most important Catholic theologian of the second century; Methodius and Victorinus were martyrs.

Tertullian, it is true, eventually exited from the Catholic Church and became a Montanist, but his views on the millennium were traditional and had been inherited from his Catholic forebears.

Indeed, chiliasm has a strong claim to being the consensus position of Christian theologians of the first two centuries, although Sts. Justin and Irenaeus admit that some disagreed with them.1189 Augustine says that he entertained the spiritual form of chiliasm early on but then changed his mind.1190 Furthermore, it is noteworthy that several orthodox opponents of the doctrine who arose in the third and fourth centuries, such as Eusebius and Dionysius of Alexandria, also openly contested the apostolic authorship of John's Apocalypse. Thus opposition to chiliasm was initially linked with opposition to the apostolicity and canonicity of John's Apocalypse.

In light of the historical evidence that exists for the antiquity of this doctrine, Daniélou traces chiliastic views at least as far back as the Christian community of the first century. He says that "this accounts for the respect in which they were held by a man of the stature of Irenaeus."1191 Daniélou does not explain why he thinks that these teachings cannot be attributed to Christ. It appears to me, on the contrary, that it was precisely from Christ that these firstcentury Christians received their convictions. In Matthew 19:28, Jesus promised his apostles:

"Truly, I say to you, in the new world, when the Son of man shall sit on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel." It

1187 Cf. ibid., 379.

1188 Ibid., 386: "renaeus does not exclude this exegesis in terms of the period of the Church, acknowledging that it is legitimate to apply the prophecy of the reconciliation of the animals to the union of the nations in the Christian body (V, 33:4). But he affirms that this allegorical interpretation does not exhaust the meaning of the prophecy, for God is rich in all things (V,

33:4), nor would the ecclesiological interpretation account for the whole prophecy (V, 35:1)."

1189 Cf. Justin,

Dial

1190 Cf. City of God

20.7

1191 Cf. J. Daniélou, The Theology of Jewish Christianity, 383.

seems difficult to argue, as the late Augustine does, that the "new world" here refers to the historical Catholic Church.1192 The early Christian adherents of chiliastic doctrine did not deny that there was an initial spiritual fulfillment of prophecies in the church Christ founded, but they insisted upon a future literal fulfillment of them when Christ returned to earth. Of the earliest saints, martyrs, and doctors who supported the doctrine of chiliasm, none of them apparently made any explicit reference to the continuance of procreation during the messianic reign, though this idea is present in Lactantius and Justin.1193 Yet Lactantius speaks of marriage during the millennium only among those who are still alive at that time and not among the risen saints.1194 Irenaeus and Tertullian do not speak at all of marriage during the millennium; moreover, the reintroduction of Jewish practices, such as circumcision, is not proposed by the above-mentioned authors as a feature of the millennium. So a Judaizing form of chiliasm was excluded from the start.

Daniélou admits that in general the doctrine of millenarianism contains a truth that is a part of the common stock of Christian teaching, and that occurs in the New Testament in 1 and 2

Thessalonians, in 1 Corinthians, and in Revelation, namely, the truth of the Parousia, Christ's return to earth at the end of time to establish his kingdom.1195 Marcion had attacked the church's doctrine of Christ's second coming to earth in judgment, and he was rightly refuted by Tertullian (Adv Marc

3.24

). To that core dogmatic truth articulated by Daniélou, I would add that of the special status of the Christian martyrs and the unique merits that accrue to them by reason of their divinely graced perseverance unto death, since Revelation 20:4–5 makes this explicit. It appears to me that the materialistic form of "chiliasm" condemned by St. Augustine in City of God

20.7

is not that form represented either by Revelation 20 or by orthodox writers including himself in his early years. Instead, Augustine rightly condemned the heretical ideas that after Christ's return to earth, Christians, after the resurrection, would enjoy sensual pleasures, material feasts, and even procreation during Christ's thousand-year kingdom. In addition it condemned the idea that Jewish law would be reinstituted in that period.

Into modern times the Catholic Church maintains its opposition to "millenarianism"

(Catechism of the Catholic Church

).1196 Yet a careful reading of that paragraph of the 1192 B. Daley, The Hope of the Early Church: A Handbook of Patristic Eschatology (Cambridge,

UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 134, says, "n thus translating the millenarian vision of Apoc 20 into ecclesiastical terms, Augustine undoubtedly laid the foundation for the widespread tendency of later Latin theology to identify the Kingdom of God, at least in its first stage of existence, with the institutional Catholic Church."

1193 Cf. J. Daniélou, The Theology of Jewish Christianity, 394.

1194 J. P. O'onnell, The Eschatology of St. Jerome, Dissertationes ad Lauream 16, Pontificia

Facultas Theologica Seminarii Sanctae Mariae ad Lacum (Mundelein, IL, 1948), 70–1.

1195 J. Daniélou, The Theology of Jewish Christianity, 377.

1196 "he Antichrist' deception already begins to take shape in the world every time the claim is made to realize within history that messianic hope which can only be realized beyond history through the eschatological judgment. The church has rejected even modified forms of this falsification of the kingdom to come under the name of millenarianism, especially the 'ntrinsically perverse'political form of a secular messianism."This repudiation of "illenarianism"is

Catechism shows that the church's primary concern today in repudiating this doctrine is not to reproach the Christian form of chiliasm represented by John's Apocalypse and held by such lights as Papias, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, and the early Augustine. Rather, the target appears to be heretical, secular, Marxist, and National Socialist (Nazi) forms. Farkasfalvy seems to concur with my observations when he says, "The doubts about the scriptural character of [the book of]

Revelation are clearly linked to the church's rejection of millenarism, although forms of early millenarism—like that of Papias and of Irenaeus—were not condemned officially by the Church."1197 De Lubac correctly observes that chiliasm was "fatally wounded" by Origen, whose perspective was adopted by Eusebius, Jerome, and Augustine and then became mainstream.1198

However, when de Lubac concludes that Origen's opposition to this doctrine was one of the "greatest victories" of Origen's exegesis that "ensured the purity of the faith," this seems to me to drastically overestimate the danger posed by early Christian chiliasm and to unnecessarily alienate us from this most ancient form of Christian eschatology. In the place where de Lubac seems to rank the importance of Origen's antichiliasm views, in terms of his contribution to the Catholic dogmatic tradition, I would rate Origen's exegesis of Paul's writings.

Various forms of Christian millenarianism are still of importance today, since variations of this belief are accepted by millions of Protestant Christians in America who are members of evangelical and fundamentalist denominations. Their doctrine has spread worldwide through Protestant missionary endeavors. It appears to me that the core teaching is orthodox when it maintains in continuity with Papias and Irenaeus the fervent belief that Christ will one day return to earth and reign with his saints. Yet certain modern innovations do border on heresy, such as Protestant Dispensationalism, which affirms that the church will be gathered into heaven at the "Rapture," after which Christ will restore the theocratic kingdom of David in Jerusalem for one thousand years and fulfill all of God's promises to ethnic Israel. Such views are completely alien to ancient Catholic forms of chiliasm. The above discussion has been offered as a prelude to Jerome's treatment of chiliasm.

Jerome writes very polemically against a bogeyman that he calls chiliasm, or millennialism.1199 In at least fifty passages in his writings, mostly in his commentaries on the prophets, Jerome denounces this "error"; yet he describes it only in a distorted depiction that has no historical representatives. This was the form that made the best foil for his own position.2200 He adopts the tactics of a polemicist and makes no distinction between orthodox and unorthodox forms of this doctrine, or between the Jewish and Christian forms. O'Connell notes that Jerome's method of treating millenarian exegesis differs from his method of treating based on the Decree of the Holy Office, 1944.

1197 D. Farkasfalvy, Inspiration & Interpretation, 48n39. Italics added.

1198 H. de Lubac, History and Spirit, 41–2, 117–8.

1199 O'onnell, The Eschatology of St. Jerome, 65, lists the following passages from Jerome'

Commentary on Isaiah that relate to millenarism: Isa 1:1; 11:6ff.; 19:23; 25:1; 27:13; 30:26;

35:3–; 54:1; 54:11–2; 55:2–; 58:14; 60:19–0; prol. to bk. 18; 65:13–4; 66:12; 66:22–3.

2200 A complete list of passages and discussion is found in ibid., chap. 4. The texts in the Isaiah commentary are: 1.1; 6.6; 19.23; 25.1; 25.4; 27.13; 30.26; 54.1, 11–; 55.2–; 58.14; 60.19–0; prol to bk. 18; 65:13–4; 66:22–3.

other errors.2201 For in regard to other errors, even Origenism, Jerome often fails to indicate that the exegesis he gives is not his own or not approved by him. Yet, when there is an instance of millenarian exegesis, Jerome never fails to make clear that such teaching is unacceptable.

Jerome does not consider this error exclusively Christian, for he often engages Jewish proponents of an earthly messianic kingdom. Jerome's hostility toward this doctrine seems excessive when we recall that Christian chiliasm did not advocate indulgence in material pleasures (such as procreation) during the millennial kingdom, or the other crassly materialistic ideas Jerome ascribes to them. Therefore, Christian millenarians can hardly be accused of the things for which Jerome seems to hold it responsible.2202

To me it seems that the Christian chiliasts whom Jerome denounces so severely deserve to be treated with greater respect. In 18.1 Jerome himself seems to sense that his rabid polemics against such lights of the church will provoke opposition from contemporary churchmen. In a different context, Rufinus, for example, when he observed Jerome publicly attacking the reputations of Sts. Ambrose and Pamphilus in connection with the Origenist controversy, wrote:

Is there any one to whose authority he will bow? Is there any one whom he will refrain from abusing? All the old Greek writers of the church, according to him, have erred. As to the Latins, how he disparages them, how he attacks them one by one, both those of the old and those of modern times, anyone who reads his various work knows well. Now even the Martyrs fail to gain any respect from him.2203

It appears to me that Jerome's polemical writing against Christian chiliasts could be criticized along these same lines.

ST. JEROME AND MODERN THEORIES ABOUT THE BOOK OF ISAIAH

In the final section of this introduction, I want to introduce the reader to the so-called higher-critical study of the Book of Isaiah that has emerged in modern times and highlight some differences between Jerome and mainstream modern exegesis. Kelly claims that Jerome's exegesis of Isaiah was "unavoidably hampered" by his assumption that the entire book was written by one man.2204 Jerome, it is true, believes that the prophecies recorded in the Book of Isaiah were uttered by a single Judean prophet, Isaiah son of Amoz, in the eighth and seventh centuries BC. Modern exegesis, in contrast, holds that Isaiah of Jerusalem contributed a minimal amount of material to what is now known as the Book of Isaiah. The basis for Jerome's view is both tradition and the heading of the book itself: "The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah" (Isa 1:1). In addition to this internal evidence, Jesus, Paul, the other writers of the New Testament, and Josephus attribute the prophecies of Isaiah to a single prophet. The evidence from the Isaiah scroll found at Qumran in 1947 is a clear witness to the unity of the 2201 Ibid., chap. 4.

2202 Ibid., 70–1.

2203 Apology against Jerome 2.30.

2204 Kelly, Jerome, 301.

prophecy, since there is no thought of a break between chapters 39 and 40. Since this scroll was copied from an earlier one, the tradition of unified Isaianic authorship of the entire book was well established by the third century BC.2205 This is confirmed by the testimony of Sirach 48:22–

25.

Isaiah's fame in pre-Christian Judaism rested upon his comforting and authoritative preaching, his miracles, and his ability to foretell the future by the power of God. Christian sources inherited this admiration of Israel's greatest prophet and added to it the claim that Isaiah the prophet had foreseen the sufferings of Jesus and the establishment of the church (cf.

Matt 3:3; Isa 40:3; Matt 12:17–21; Isa 42:1–4; John 12:38; Rom 10:16; Isa 53:1). Jerome simply takes such evidence at face value. At 3.2 and 5.38, Jerome says that the prophecies were uttered in their chronological order: Isaiah 1–5 under Uzziah, Isaiah 6 under Jotham, Isaiah 7–

14:27 under Ahaz, and Isaiah 14:28–66 under Hezekiah.

Jerome's traditional approach to the authorship of Isaiah held sway for eighteen centuries until the so-called "Enlightenment" and the rise of "Rationalism" in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when new theories were developed concerning the authorship of Isaiah.2206 Rationalist scholars are those who endeavor to explain all human data by recourse to human reason alone, to the exclusion of God and the concept of divine revelation. Whereas

Christian apologists from St. Justin Martyr to Thomas Aquinas to Blaise Pascal based their defenses of Christianity on miracles and fulfilled prophecy, Rationalists reject a priori the appeal to miracles, supernatural sources of knowledge, and truly predictive prophecies that would entail divine foreknowledge of the future.2207 Applied to the prophecies of Isaiah, rationalism as a philosophical approach assumes that Isaiah's oracles predicting the demise of Babylon (chap.

13), for example, or his naming of Cyrus hundreds of years in advance as a future deliverer of Israel (cf. Isa 44:28; 45:1), must have been written after the events. Consequently, philosophical prejudices seem to have contributed to the idea that some of Isaiah's prophecies are

"predictions after the event" (vaticinia ex eventu). The German theologian J. Ratzinger (later

Pope Benedict XVI) articulated the nature of the hermeneutical problem as follows:

At its core, the debate about modern exegesis is not a dispute among historians: it is rather a philosophical debate. Only in this way can it be carried on correctly; otherwise we continue with a battle in the mist. In this respect, the exegetical problem is identical with our time's struggle about the foundations as such.… The exegete should approach the exegesis of the text not with a ready-made philosophy, not with the dictate of a socalled modern or scientific worldview, which determines in advance what is permitted to be and what is not permitted to be. He may not exclude a priori that God is able to speak

2205 Cf. E. J. Young, The Book of Isaiah, 3 vols. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1965–2), 3:538–0.

2206 See Brevard S. Childs, The Struggle to Understand Isaiah as Christian Scripture (Grand

Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), chaps. 15 and 16; R. Margalioth, The Indivisible Isaiah: Evidence for the Single Authorship of the Prophetic Book (New York: Yeshiva University, 1964), 1–9.

2207 For a defense of the traditional Christian views on Old Testament prophecy, see L. Feingold,

The Mystery of Israel and the Church

, vol. 1,

Figure and Fulfillment

(St. Louis: Miriam Press, 2010).

as himself in human words in the world.2208

To my knowledge Ratzinger makes no application of his principles to the scholarly treatment of the Book of Isaiah. On the contrary, he seems to take for granted a "Second Isaiah" who allegedly lived at the end of the Babylonian exile.2209 Nevertheless, it appears to me that antecedent philosophical assumptions do play a role in leading some modern scholars to refuse to countenance the possibility that the Book of Isaiah is an anthology of authentic prophecies, delivered over a period of fifty years, deriving from a single Hebrew prophet, whose name is attached to the oracles.

Through much of the twentieth century, the higher-critical "consensus" of opinion has spoken of three "Isaiahs" who were largely independent of one another: first Isaiah (1–39) related to the Assyrian crisis of 739–700 BC; second (deutero-) Isaiah (40–55) related to the people in the Babylonian exile in 545–535 BC; and third (trito-) Isaiah (56–66) related to the return to Palestine from the Babylonian exile in 520–500 BC. This threefold division originated with Bernard Duhm's commentary on Isaiah in 1892.2210 With respect to so-called II Isaiah,

Duhm isolated the four passages called the "Servant Songs" (42:1–4; 49:1–6; 50:4–9; 52:13–

53:12) and attributed them to still another author. Interestingly, Duhm recognized that texts such as Isaiah 7:15 are indeed "messianic prophecies," but he attributed these passages to later editors and not to the original prophet.2211

Duhm was a liberal Protestant professor of Old Testament at the University of Basel and a proud pupil of Julius Wellhausen, the author of the JEDP source theory for the composition of the Pentateuch. It was Wellhausen who had boldly claimed that no historical knowledge whatsoever could be obtained from the Book of Genesis, since he thought Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were a mere "glorified mirage" projected back from later Hebrew history.2212 Trained in 2208 Cf. J. Ratzinger, "Biblical Interpretation in Crisis,"The Erasmus Lecture (January 27, 1988), in The Essential Pope Benedict XVI: His Central Writings and Speeches, ed. John F. Thorton and Susan B. Varenne (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2007), 243–8 (253).

2209 Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration (New York: Doubleday, 2007), 347; "Vicarious Representation,"trans. J.

Wicks, Letter & Spirit 7 (2011): 209–0 (212).

2210 B. Duhm, Das Buch Jesaja (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1892).

2211 Ibid., 54; cited by J. Sailhamer, The Meaning of the Pentateuch: Revelation, Composition and Interpretation (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2009), 241. Sailhamer says that it is unlikely that Isa 7:15 is a gloss, since it is present in the Qumran Isaiah manuscript.

2212 Cf. Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels, 6th ed. (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1927), 316; cited in W.

Kaiser, A History of Israel: From the Bronze Age through the Jewish Wars (Nashville: Broadman

& Holman, 1998), 51. D. Farkasfalvy, Inspiration & Interpretation, 163, writes, "he philosophers of the nineteenth century sought a rational understanding of the Bible as a whole and wanted to insert it (together with a comprehensive theory about the origins of Christianity) into their general understanding of mankind' religious history. They wanted ultimately to create a purely rationalistic synthesis that would eliminate the need to recognize anything supernatural or miraculous in the process of history. Instead, they would explain all phenomena by physical,

this sort of extreme rationalist skepticism, Duhm limited the genuine prophecies of the eighthcentury-BC Isaiah of Jerusalem to 1:2–26, 29–31; 2:2–4, 6–19, 21; 3:1–9, 12, 13–4:1; 5:1–14,

17–29; 6:1–13 (to remain); 7:2–8a, 9–14, 16, 18–20; 8:1–18, 21–22; 9:2–7, 8–14, 17–10:4; 10:5–

9, 13–14; 11:1–8; 14:24–25a, 26–27; 17:1–6, 9–14; 18:1–6; 20:1, 3–6; 21:16–17; 22:1–9a, 11b–

14, 15a, 16–18; 28:1–4, 7–29; 29:1–4a, 5b–7, 9–10, 13–15; 30:1–7a; 8–17, 27–33; 31:1–4 (to of them), 5 (from so), 8a, 9b; 32:1–5, 9–18, 20.2213 A careful analysis of the verses removed by Duhm's critical knife and assigned to later interpolators shows that many of them are comforting utterances that promise forgiveness, hope, and restoration to the Jews; they are words that mitigate the threats of judgment by offering Israel the expectation of a Messiah, of a new future with God and a renewal of friendship. To Duhm it was simply unthinkable that the historical Isaiah of Jerusalem could have spoken tenderly and in such hopeful terms to the Jewish people.

In a remarkable study, the Jewish scholar R. Margalioth has demonstrated that one of the principal incentives for splitting up the Book of Isaiah was precisely this "anti-Semitic factor."2214

The German scholars Duhm and Marti in particular claimed that the "true" Isaiah who lived in the days of Hezekiah was solely a prophet of doom of the Jewish people. According to Marti, the "true" Isaiah believed that Israel had no future whatsoever. Marti viewed the Jewish people as "an accursed race, spurned by God and man, whose sovereignty has passed to the believing

Christians."2215 Like Duhm before him, Marti "seeks to erase from the book every expression of nearness and amity between the God of Israel and His people."2216 According to this deeply engrained Protestant-Germanic prejudice, all expressions of consolation and hope that are scattered throughout the Book of Isaiah must necessarily be later additions. The theme of a remnant that runs like a scarlet thread through the book (cf. Isa 10:20–23; 11:11, 16; 28:5;

37:31; 46:3) is not accepted by Duhm or Marti as the original text.

Moreover, because he adhered to an evolutionary scheme for the development of Israelite religion, Duhm rejected the authenticity of 37:16 (Hezekiah's prayer to God: "Thou hast made heaven and earth"). According to Duhm, the exclusively monotheistic tone of this prayer could not have existed before the exile. Oswalt critiques the evolutionary philosophical framework

Duhm has imposed upon the Book of Isaiah in these words:

But even taking the most narrow view of the authentic writings of so-called "Isaiah of Jerusalem," it must be plain that his message was identical to the content of Hezekiah's prayer: God alone is master of the nations. Furthermore, evolution has proven itself unable to explain Israelite monotheism. Israel's own explanation—revelation—demands psychological, sociological, or other natural causes."

2213 This list was given by S. R. Driver, An Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament, 6th ed. (New York: Charles Scribner' Sons, 1897), 230.

2214 Margalioth, The Indivisible Isaiah, 17, citing both Duhm and D. Karl Marti, Das Buch Jesaha

(Tübingen: 1900).

2215 Margalioth, The Indivisible Isaiah, 18n22.

2216 Ibid., 18.

less credulity.2217

Thus application of Darwinian evolutionary theory to biblical literature is a major component of the higher critical theory of Isaiah. A framework that derives from this biological theory is being imposed on the literature of the Hebrew Bible.2218

With a few notable exceptions such as R. Margalioth, R. K. Harrison, E. J. Young, and J.

Oswalt, Duhm's theory of three separate and independent "Isaiahs" as well as his evolutionary approach to the Israelite religion has determined the shape of Isaiah scholarship until the present day. Especially after Vatican II this framework was accepted rather uncritically by Catholic Old Testament scholars.2219 Duhm opened a window to the complete disintegration of the idea that Isaiah is in any sense a coherent and theologically unified "book." For even scholars who accept a mere twofold or threefold division of Isaiah display a shocking lack of consensus as to the extent and origin of even these supposed compositional units that are presumed to contain certain theological motifs that are characteristic of the "author" and his times. When material within the unit is encountered that seems dissonant from the scholar's presumptions about what I, II, or III Isaiah would have said, the material is assigned to other anonymous writers spanning over five centuries. It is argued, for instance, that II Isaiah himself has inserted interpolations into I Isaiah,2220 and vice versa!2221 In ways that are left unexplained, modern scholars claim that redactors, glossators, and interpolators were permitted to insert their thoughts, synagogue sermons, conflicting theological views, and "prophecies" (vaticinia ex eventu) into the book before it received its final canonical form. Consequently, the claim of some popular writings that there has been broad scholarly agreement upon the nature and extent of I, II, and III Isaiah is refuted immediately when research is undertaken into the scholarly monographs written on Isaiah. It seems that the only genuine agreement among modern Isaian scholars is the negative judgment that the Book of Isaiah is not a compositional unity stemming from one author.

2217 Cf. J. Oswalt, The Book of Isaiah, Chapters 1–9 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), 654n8.

2218 A prominent critic of the common tendency to transfer science' evolutionary model to spiritual history is J. Ratzinger, "Biblical Interpretation in Crisis: On the Question of the Foundations and Approaches of Exegesis Today,"in Biblical Interpretation in Crisis: The Ratzinger

Conference on Bible and Church, ed. R. J. Neuhaus (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989), 1–3 (10).

He writes, "piritual processes do not follow the rule of zoological genealogies. In fact, it is frequently the opposite: after a great breakthrough, generations of descendants may come who reduce what was once a courageous new beginning to an academic commonplace."

2219 Cf. The Jerome Biblical Commentary (1968) and The New Jerome Biblical Commentary

(1993).

2220 Margalioth, The Indivisible Isaiah, 5 summarizes Kraus' approach, which is typical: "raus enumerates eighteen words and expressions 'eculiar'to Isaiah 'he second.'Several of them, as he admits, are to be found also in Isaiah 'he first,'but in chapters that Kraus ascribes to Isaiah 'he second'"

2221 J. L. McKenzie, SJ, Second Isaiah (Garden City: Doubleday, 1968), 3–, places Isa 34 and 35 in his exposition of "econd Isaiah."

In light of its obvious basis in rationalism, it seems surprising that in American academic circles Duhm's theories about the composition of Isaiah would prevail the way they have throughout the twentieth century. When the formidable challenge to Duhm and Marti was presented on purely linguistic grounds by the Jewish scholar R. Margalioth, she was largely ignored. Yet she demonstrates beyond the shadow of a doubt that the vocabulary of the book is that of a single author. Words found in the first part of Isaiah are also found in the second part.

Moreover, these words often appear in certain combinations that are unique to Isaiah. This phenomenon occurs so often that its convincing force seems overwhelming. In addition to these linguistic arguments, Margalioth shows that the unusualness of the phenomenon of a Hebrew prophet's predicting a name (Cyrus) is already stressed by the prophet himself, "who no fewer than seven times repeats that he is foretelling the future, with particular stress on his naming of Cyrus" [41:26; 42:9; 45:21; 46:10; 48:6; 48:7; 45:4].2222 The phenomenon has a precedent in 1

Kings 13:2, where Josiah's name is predicted three hundred years before his birth; and in Ezekiel

38–39 (Gog and Magog), a prophecy referring to the end times. Unfortunately, Margalioth's arguments seem to have had little effect in scholarship. The major exceptions are the conservative Protestants R. K. Harrison, E. J. Young, and J. Oswalt.

Brevard Childs's "Canonical Interpretation" of Isaiah In 1979 Brevard Childs offered a new approach to Isaiah as an alternative to Duhm's, since the old one had resulted in such extreme atomization and fragmentation of the text.2223 Childs proposes a "canonical interpretation" of the book. This means that whatever the history of the formation of the book, it is its canonical form that the community of faith has identified as being authoritative. To be sure, Childs adheres to multiple authorship of Isaiah, and he dates the book after the exile. Moreover, he firmly denies that Isaiah was any sort of "clairvoyant," a word he uses to stigmatize the approaches taken by E. J. Young's and J. Oswalt's commentaries on Isaiah.

But Childs argues that those responsible for the final shape of the book of Isaiah have conspicuously suppressed the historical settings of chapters 40–55 and 56–66 in order to strengthen the theological unity of composition. Furthermore, Childs says that "I Isaiah" had been rewritten in more than casual ways so as to reflect the teachings of the later sections.

Childs calls into question the idea of three separate and independent compositional units. J.

Oswalt summarizes the results of Childs's scholarship:

Thus it seems safe to say that at the present time, the idea of several independent books of Isaiah is in the eclipse. From ch. 1 to ch. 66, the various parts of the present book all reflect the other parts. Furthermore, one may say in general terms that the later chapters were written in the light of the former ones, while the former chapters show familiarity with the themes of the later ones. This is not merely a matter of repeating specific catchphrases or of superficial adoptions of particular themes. Rather, it is what one may call the necessary development of central themes that are introduced in the 2222 Margalioth, The Indivisible Isaiah, 3–.

2223 Brevard Childs, Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture (Philadelphia: Fortress,

1979).

first section of the book.2224

Although Childs provoked a great deal of opposition to himself by his challenge of the status quo, the current direction of modern scholarship on Isaiah is toward admitting the linguistic, literary, ideological, and theological unity of the book in its present form. While this has not led most scholars to the reassertion of traditional authorship by Isaiah of Jerusalem, since modern scholars presuppose that Hebrew prophecy is not predictive, it has moved things in a better direction.2225

J. Oswalt In a recent full-scale Protestant commentary on Isaiah, J. Oswalt (my former Hebrew teacher) assumes unitary authorship of the anthology of prophetic oracles contained in the book. He argues that they were spoken by the Judean prophet Isaiah son of Amoz, between approximately 740 and 690 BC. The collection of Isaiah's sayings, sermons, thoughts, and writings was edited with brief editorial or transitional materials added either by Isaiah himself or those working with him, but not necessarily in chronological order.2226 Oswalt claims that the present form of the Book of Isaiah is the most striking argument for the unity of the book. This is the only form of the book ever known to have existed. If the Book of Isaiah were really a collection of writings from at least three major authors and dozens of redactors or editors over a period of five centuries, it becomes very hard to explain how the book came to exist in its present form at all.2227 Fully aware that many modern scholars cleave to the dogma of multiple

"Isaiahs" and dozens of later redactors, glossators, and interpolators, Oswalt formidably (in my judgment) critiques this "consensus" as prejudiced by philosophical naturalism and insufficiently attentive to the form of the text that has come down to us. With regard to the former point,

Oswalt writes:

Too much of the whole fragmentation of the book rests upon the assumption that it is not possible for a prophet of the eighth century B.C. to foretell accurately and to speak to the events of the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. While this assumption is by no means the whole of the argument against the single authorship of the book, it still forms altogether too much of the basis for that argument. Once one grants that Isaiah of Jerusalem could have written such material, the arguments from style, vocabulary, themes, etc. become very nebulous.2228

2224 John N. Oswalt, The Book of Isaiah, Chapters 40–6 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 4.

2225 It is noteworthy that in general terms the new approach proposed by Brevard Childs under the name "anonical exegesis"has captured the interest of Pope Benedict in Jesus of Nazareth, and of Farkasfalvy, who in his Inspiration & Interpretation, 200 says: "he theology of Dei Verbum has much to learn from and much to offer this trend."However, Childs' ideas have met with stiff opposition from other Catholic scholars such as J. L. McKenzie and J. Collins.

2226 Cf. Oswalt, The Book of Isaiah, Chapters 1–9, 26.

2227 Ibid., 19.

2228 Ibid., 48.

Oswalt shows, moreover, that theology and prediction are inextricably intertwined throughout the Book of Isaiah, from beginning to end. "If specific prediction is denied to the prophet (or prophets), then their theology is groundless."2229 He identifies the great flaw in the scheme that claims that genuine Hebrew prophecy is not predictive: besides the fact that no extrabiblical evidence supports this idea, "II Isaiah" makes very strenuous efforts to deny it. For clearly the theme of Isaiah 40–55 is the superiority of Israel's God over the idols of the nations. This is proved in three ways: his ability to explain the past (41:22), tell the future (41:23), and do things that are radically new (43:18–19). That is, according to "II Isaiah" God alone transcends the bounds of the universe. But the conviction that these chapters had to be written about 540 BC rests squarely on the prior conviction that Isaiah of Jerusalem could not have known the future in any supernatural way. Oswalt draws the inference of such logic:

This conviction then involves the unknown Babylonian prophet [II Isaiah] in an irreconcilable contradiction. His God Yahweh cannot tell the future any more than the gods can, but he wishes his hearers to believe that Yahweh can. In order to prove this point, the prophet tries to get his readers to believe that it was really Isaiah of Jerusalem who said these things, all the while knowing this was not true. He even goes so far as to alter some of the earlier writings (e.g., ch. 13 with its reference to Babylon), or to insert some of his own (chs. 34–35) in order to make those writings correspond more closely to his own work.2230

I find Oswalt's critique of the higher-critical consensus compelling. With regard to the second point of giving an account for the publication of all the prophecies of the book under the name of Isaiah, Oswalt reproaches the hubris of scholarship's tendency, inspired by Duhm's bold conjectures, to reduce the original Isaianic nucleus to a smaller and smaller corpus of not much greater extent than the material of Amos or Hosea.

Yet we are asked to believe that of all the prophets, only Isaiah sparked a movement which would continue for some five centuries and eventually produce a book in the "founder's" name that would be some five to six times the volume of the original input.

That such a superstructure of thought must be created to reconcile the conclusion is at least questionable.2231

It appears to me that St. Jerome would concur with many of the arguments of scholars such as Young, Margalioth, and Oswalt in favor of the reality of miracles and predictive prophecy, and on behalf of the linguistic and theological unity of the Book of Isaiah, as well as those used in support of Isaiah's historical authenticity. I have presented the views of these conservative exegetes sympathetically, because I am convinced that their principles of interpretation are by and large consonant with Jerome's.

Legacy of St. Jerome's Life and Works 2229 Ibid., 49.

2230 See Oswalt, The Book of Isaiah, Chapters 40–6, 5–.

2231 Oswalt, The Book of Isaiah, Chapters 1–9, 20.

Although his new Bible translation was the subject of much controversy during his lifetime and required centuries to be fully accepted for liturgical and theological use in the Catholic Church,

Jerome was immediately recognized as a preeminent scriptural commentator in the Latin church. In fact he was one of the few Latin fathers whose exegesis was treasured by Greek theologians as well. Less than two decades after St. Jerome's death, St. Cyril of Alexandria (d.

444) made consistent use of St. Jerome's Commentary on Isaiah in his own Greek Commentary on Isaiah.2232 Ironically (in light of Jerome's use of Greek sources), Cyril appears to have exploited the services of Alexandrian translators who made Jerome's Latin text accessible to him.2233 In his influential book De Institutione Divinarum Litterarum, Cassiodorus (490–583) commends Jerome's "wonderfully written" eighteen book exposition of Isaiah. He echoes

Jerome's own description of Isaiah from the opening preface: "[Isaiah] who, because he refers openly to the mysteries of Christ and the church, deserves to be called not so much a prophet as an evangelist."2234 De Lubac points out that generally the most popular of Jerome's commentaries in the Carolingian age seem to be the commentaries on Isaiah, Matthew, and Galatians.2235

In the sixteenth century, the Catholic theologian Erasmus of Rotterdam published the first complete edition of Jerome's writings in nine folio volumes at the Froben Press in Basel in 1516.

He wrote: "It is a river of gold, a well-stocked library, that one acquires who possesses Jerome and nothing else."2236 In a letter to Pope Leo X in 1515, Erasmus assessed St. Jerome's stature as an exegete and theologian more fully in these terms:

I saw clearly that St Jerome is chief among theologians of the Latin world, and is in fact almost the only writer we have who deserves the name of theologian (not that I condemn the rest, but men who seem distinguished on their own are thrown into the shade by his brilliance when they are compared with him); indeed he has such splendid gifts that Greece itself with all its learning can scarcely produce a man to be matched with him. What Roman eloquence, what mastery of tongues, what a range of knowledge in all antiquity and all history! And then his retentive memory, his happy knack of combining unexpected things, his perfect command of Holy Scripture! Above all, with his burning energy and the divine inspiration in that amazing heart, he can at the same moment delight us with his eloquence, instruct us with his learning, and sweep us away

2232 See M. Crawford, "Scripture as a 'ne Book' Origen, Jerome, and Cyril of Alexandria on Isaiah

29:11,"JTS 64, no. 1 (April 2013): 137–3.

2233 Cf. Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on Isaiah, trans. R. C. Hill, 3 vols. (Brookline, MA: Holy

Cross Orthodox Press, 2008), 1:3, 320n17.

2234 PL 70:1114B.

2235 Cf. H. de Lubac, Medieval Exegesis, 3:190.

2236 Ep. 396. This letter forms the dedicatory epistle addressed to Archbishop William Warham in Erasmus' edition of St. Jerome (1516). For an English translation of the prefatory documents, see Desiderius Erasmus, Patristic Scholarship: The Edition of St. Jerome, ed. J. Brady and J. Olin,

CWE 61 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992).

with his religious force.2237

Like so many others, Erasmus ranked Jerome's commentaries on the prophets as his greatest and most learned works.2238

When Martin Luther radically denied the freedom of the human will, both in salvation and damnation, and made this dogma foundational to his religious revolt, Erasmus confronted him with scriptural arguments.2239 But in addition to passages from the Bible, Erasmus also cited texts from St. Jerome's commentaries to show Luther that the mind of the ancient church opposed him. Luther responded by accusing Jerome of being an incompetent theologian and exegete. For instance, Erasmus referred to Jerome's exegesis of Isaiah 63:17, which in reliance upon Origen maintained the existence of free will in salvation. Luther retorted: "For hardly any of the ecclesiastical writers have handled the Divine Scriptures more ineptly and absurdly than

Origen and Jerome."2240 In response to Jerome's interpretation of the divine choice of Jacob over Esau as being grounded not in an unalterable predestination to heaven or hell but in his divine foreknowledge of how they would turn out, Luther said that Jerome "does nothing but corrupt the Divine Scriptures and deceive the souls of the faithful with a notion hatched out of his own head and violently thrust upon the Scriptures."2241 As an interpreter of Scripture, Jerome is "a man quite without either judgment or application."2242 According to Luther, Jerome has earned for himself damnation to hell for his interpretations of Scripture.2243 Erasmus responded forcefully to Luther's attack on Jerome in these words:

How hatefully he fumes against a man whose memory has been held sacred by God's church for so many centuries! Why is Jerome said to be dreaming about this passage when he is following, or rather translating, so many Greek Fathers? Why do not Chrysostom, Theophylact, and Ambrose also share in the beating, since they give the same interpretation?2244

2237 Desiderius Erasmus, CWE 3, Ep. 335:232–5.

2238 Cf. Erasmus, CWE 10, Ep. 1334, 5 January 1523. This letter is also published in Erasmus,

Christian Humanism and the Reformation: Selected Writings of Erasmus, edited by John C. Olin

(New York: Fordham University Press, 1987), 181–11. In addition to describing St. Jerome' commentaries on the prophets as his masterpiece, Erasmus describes Virgil' Georgics this way,

Ovid' Medea, Cicero' De Oratore, Augustine' City of God, Thomas Aquinas on the Eucharist, and Bernard on the Canticle.

2239 Erasmus, Controversies: De libero arbitrio, Hyperaspistes 1 and 2, ed. C. Trinkhaus, trans.

Clarence H. Miller, CWE 76, 77 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999, 2000).

2240 Martin Luther, On the Enslaved Will; cited from Luther and Erasmus: Free Will and Salvation, trans. P. S. Watson with B. Drewery, Library of Christian Classics (Philadelphia: Westminster,

1969), 224.

2241 Ibid., 249.

2242 Ibid., 267.

2243 Ibid., 302– (DSA WA 763–9).

2244 Desiderius Erasmus, Hyperaspistes 2, CWE 77:668.

Erasmus recognized that Jerome's exegesis was drawn from Greek sources and that therefore it represented a broad and very ancient consensus of interpretation. On this basis Erasmus recognized that Luther's attack on Jerome was essentially an attack on the heart of the Catholic exegetical tradition. After careful study of these polemics, C. Augustijn reached the conclusion:

"In Luther's view the center of the Gospel is at stake here. Jerome is the quintessence of all theology which Luther detests."2245 On the other hand, I have encountered no Catholic exegete and theologian who ever matched Erasmus in devotion to St. Jerome, both in terms of the selfless and ascetic dedication of his life to ecclesiastical scholarship, in conscious imitation of St. Jerome in opposing newly arisen heresies, and in the influence and assimilation of Jerome's exegesis and theology into his own.2246 The Council of Trent spoke of St. Jerome as "the greatest doctor in explaining the Sacred Scriptures."2247 The engagement with Jerome at the Tridentine council was so extensive that it appears to me that Erasmus deserves much of the credit for it, since he had edited the critical edition of St. Jerome that gave Catholic scholars access to the saint's writings.

The epithet used of Jerome by the Council of Trent, "The greatest doctor in explaining the Sacred Scriptures," would be picked up again in the early and mid-twentieth century by Popes

Benedict XV and Pius XII, who warmly commended Jerome's Scripture scholarship to Catholic scholars.2248 Benedict XV's encyclical Spiritus Paraclitus (1920) is one of the only papal encyclicals devoted entirely to the commendation of the writings of a church father. Echoing both Erasmus and the Council of Trent, he describes St. Jerome as "foremost" among the Catholic Church's teachers. "Him the Catholic Church acclaims and reveres as her 'Greatest

Doctor,' divinely given her for the understanding of the Bible." Similarly, Pius XII, in Divino

Afflante Spiritu (1943), commends Jerome as "the greatest Doctor of the Sacred Scriptures" and 2245 C. Augustijn, Erasmus: Der Humanist als Theologe und Kirchenreformer (Leiden: Brill, 1996),

251.

2246 Cf. Erasmus, New Testament Scholarship: Paraphrases on Romans and Galatians, ed. Robert

D. Sider, trans. and ann. John B. Payne, Albert Rabil Jr., and Warren S. Smith Jr., CWE 42

(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984). The Paraphrase on Titus is found in CWE 44; the Paraphrase on Matthew in CWE 45. See also A. Reese, " 'So Outstanding an Athlete of Christ'

Erasmus and the Significance of Jerome' Asceticism,"Erasmus of Rotterdam Society Yearbook 18

(1998): 104–7; and J. Olin, "Erasmus and Saint Jerome: The Close Bond and Its Significance,"Erasmus of Rotterdam Society Yearbook 7 (1987): 33–3.

2247 Doctor Maximus in Exponendis Sacris Scripturis; cited by Murphy, "aint Jerome,"759. I am aware that during the epoch of the "ounter Reformation,"some Catholic scholars, such as St.

Peter Canisius and Bishop Mariano Vittori, produced editions of St. Jerome' writings that plagiarized Erasmus' edition from start to finish, but then replaced Erasmus' prefaces with their own anti-Erasmus invectives. Very regrettable is the way Erasmus' Catholic critics endeavored to conceal their plagiarisms of his edition by defrauding the source of the acclaim that he had won for his edition of Jerome. See Hilmar M. Pabel, Herculean Labours: Erasmus and the Editing of St. Jerome' Letters in the Renaissance (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 287, 342, 346.

2248 Cf. Spiritus Paraclitus = Encyclical of Pope Benedict XV on St. Jerome, September 15, 1920

(Acta Apostolicae Sedis 12:385–20); Divino afflante Spiritu (Sept. 30, 1943).

expresses regret that the precious treasures of Christian antiquity are almost unknown to many writers of the present day. Pius XII notes that students of the history of exegesis have not yet accomplished all that seems necessary for the due investigation and appreciation of so momentous a subject.

Would that many, by seeking out the authors of the Catholic interpretation of Scripture and diligently studying their works and drawing thence the almost inexhaustible riches therein stored up, might contribute largely to this end, so that it might be daily more apparent to what extent those authors understood and made known the divine teaching of the Sacred Books, and that the interpreters of today might thence take example and seek suitable arguments. (Divino Afflante Spiritu

) Finally, in the dogmatic constitution of the Second Vatican Council, Dei Verbum

, the bishops of the Catholic Church carried on this legacy by encouraging exegetes to study the holy fathers of both East and West.

Sad to say, it seems that these papal exhortations have fallen upon deaf ears within the guild of Catholic Scripture scholarship that arose in the wake of the Second Vatican Council. R. E.

Brown, for instance, declared: "I think we must recognize that the exegetical method of the Fathers is irrelevant to the study of the Bible today."2249 In The Jerome Biblical Commentary, edited by Brown, the exegetical works of St. Jerome are systematically neglected. I have found no engagement with St. Jerome in Catholic Scripture commentaries written after the Second

Vatican Council.2250 And yet, as F. X. Murphy has correctly observed, for the Catholic Church at least, St. Jerome is "an indispensable witness to the mind of the church in dealing with the Word of God."2251

On the other hand, a handful of theologically conservative Protestant scholars have expressed sincere admiration for St. Jerome's Old Testament scholarship. Gleason Archer was one of the pioneers of this group, who translated Jerome's Commentary on Daniel into English, being chiefly motivated by the desire to make Jerome's Old Testament scholarship more widely known, especially Jerome's defense of the authenticity of Daniel's prophecies.2252 E. J. Young engages Jerome's exegesis some three dozen times in his 1700-page commentary on Isaiah, and openly expresses his esteem for this Latin church father: "Some of his historical and geographical allusions and comments are quite valuable. At times his exposition is historical and at times typological. I have found Jerome of considerable help and have used him frequently."2253 To my knowledge, E. J. Young stands completely alone among modern exegetes of Isaiah in the way he accords to St. Jerome the courtesy of engaging him at the scholarly level.

Even the founder of Young's Calvinist theological tradition, John Calvin of Geneva, cites Jerome's

2249 "he Problems of the Sensus Plenior,"Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses 43 (1967): 463.

2250 See Alex Wolf, "Trends in Modern Catholic Biblical Exegesis: A Comparison of the Study

Notes in the

Jerusalem Bible

(1966) and the

New Jerusalem Bible

(1983)

,"Angelicum 89 (2012):

7–7.

2251 Murphy, "aint Jerome,"759.

2252 Cf. Archer, Jerome' Commentary on Daniel.

2253 Young, The Book of Isaiah, 1:488.

Commentary on Isaiah only three times in his own twothousand-page commentary on Isaiah.2254

Another Protestant, B. Childs, in his own Commentary on Isaiah, does not cite Jerome or even mention his name in his catalogue of "great Christian interpreters" whose voices "remain an enduring guide for truthfully hearing the evangelical witness of Isaiah in a manner seldom encountered since the Enlightenment."2255 The roster includes Chrysostom, Augustine, Thomas,

Luther, and Calvin, but not Jerome! But in a later monograph, Childs devotes an appreciative chapter to Jerome's Commentary on Isaiah.2256 It seems that Childs discovered Jerome at a very late date in his own scholarly career.

Text and Translation I take some comfort in Jerome's opinion that eloquence has no place in a commentary, that, on the contrary, it should be written in "simple speech."2257 Still, I think he deserves a more learned and eloquent translator, one with greater literary ability in the English language. But I have done my best. The following translation is based on the Latin text found in the new critical edition: Commentaires de Jérôme sur le prophète Isaïe, 5 volumes, introduction by Roger

Gryson, edited by R. Gryson and P.-A. Deproost, AGLB 23, 27, 30, 35, 36 (Freiburg: Herder, 1993–

99). This new edition supplants the previous critical edition by M. Adriaen, S. Hieronymi

Presbyteri Commentariorum in Esaiam

, libri 1–11

.. CCSL 73 (Turnholt: Brepols, 1963); libri 12–18. CCSL 73A (Turnholt:

Brepols, 1963). Since Gryson's text, unlike Adriaen's, does not provide accent and breathing marks for Greek words, I have not supplied them. Jerome cites very many Greek terms that are drawn from grammar and rhetoric, such as allegory, hyperbole, apostrophe, metaphor, anagogy, tropology, metonymy, type, paraphrase, and so on. I have usually simply transliterated these into English, even when the Greek term is found in the original.

FFor the commentary's lemmata (the passage from Isaiah cited in the cue heading of each numbered section) and for Jerome's biblical citations that seem to reflect his own Vulgate edition of the Old and New Testament, I have used the Douay-Rheims English translation of the Latin Vulgate as my starting point and base translation. When Jerome cites at length from the Septuagint, either in the lemmata or in the body of his commentary, I have used Sir Lancelot Brenton's nineteenthcentury English translation as the base translation for my own. But I have not used either of these modern versions in a slavish manner or mindlessly. I have always updated the archaic English and endeavored to follow Jerome's wording as literally and carefully as possible. For most of the names of persons and places, I have used

2254 Cf. John Calvin, Commentary on the Prophet Isaiah, translated from the original Latin by William Pringle, 4 vols. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1948–8). Clearly, Calvin is not impressed by the "apist"affirmation of free will in the interpretation of Isa 1:19–0 and 63:17; but he does not name Jerome in his polemic in either passage. Calvin says that God is truly the author of the blinding and hardening of sinners; cf. 4:356.

2255 B. Childs, Isaiah (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), 5.

2256 Childs, The Struggle to Understand Isaiah as Christian Scripture. In my judgment, Childs' remarks about Jerome' exegetical principles leave a great deal to be desired. A far more reliable source would be H. de Lubac, Medieval Exegesis.

2257 PL 26:401B.

.CCSL Corpus Christianorum Series latina (Turnhout: Brepols, 1953– CCSL Corpus Christianorum Series latina (Turnhout: Brepols, 1953–

FRSV Revised Standard Version

those of the RSV Catholic edition. If Jerome's rendering of names is significantly different from these, I sometimes inform the reader by placing his Latin in parentheses. In order to reduce the number of footnotes and thereby significantly shorten the page length of this work, Scripture citations have been placed in square brackets in the body of the translation. They are cited solely according to their locations in the RSV ,, even in cases when the LXX and the Hebrew have a different versification from the RSV.

AAnother 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 italics. 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 will hopefully assist the reader in seeing the extent of Jerome's reliance upon the Septuagint (Old Latin) as his default version of Scripture. It was easier for me to employ this convention when Jerome supplied complete Hebrew and Septuagint lemma, but since he does not always do this, especially in the first half of the commentary, I have surely missed many echoes of the LXX in his commentary and accidently left these without quotation marks.

RSV Revised Standard Version ,LXX Septuagint RSV Revised Standard Version ALXX Septuagint

↑ Back to top