CHAPTER 2
Commentary writings: see, for example, his remarks on Gen. 36: 24 in the present work; and In Esa. 5. 19: 5-7; 6. 13: 10. For the miracle of Christ walking on the water, see Matt. 14: 22-33; Mark 6: 45-52;
John 6: 16-21. Porphyry (c. AD 232-c.305) wrote a work against the Christians in fifteen books, which was burned in 448, and now survives only in fragments and stray quotations in works such as this, which seek to refute his arguments.!5
CHAPTER 2 verse 2 Jerome follows the Hebrew text of this verse in his Vg, as do also the Aramaic Targums. But LXX put the completion of creation on the sixth day; the same reading is found in the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Pesh, and Jub. 2: 16. The reason for the change is obvious: the original Hebrew might be taken to imply that God worked on the Sabbath, which He Himself declares a day of rest. God, therefore, must be made to observe the first Sabbath by not working. Jewish tradition lists this alteration as one of a number made for King Ptolemy when the Torah was translated into Greek.! The contents of these traditional lists differ somewhat, as can be seen from b. Meg. gab; jer. Meg. 1. 1. 4; Masseketh Soferim t: 7-9; Mekh. de R. Ishmael Pisha 14: 64-77; ARNb 37; Yalqut
Shim'oni 3; Midrash Tannaim on Exod. 22; and MHG on Exod.
Rabbinic authority, however, preferred not to use this means of removing a potential difficulty from the text, emphasizing instead either the completion of creation before the seventh day, or pointing to the Sabbath itself as the completion of creation (Gen. Rab. to: 9). The Targums also translated the verse literally, with the exception of one manuscript of TO and the main text of FTP, which state that God was 'filled with desire for' his work on the seventh day. TO, however, seems to have addressed the problem by 15 See A. von Harnack, Porphyrius, 'Gegen Die Christen' 15 Biicher: Zeugnisse,
Fragmente und Referate (Abhandlungen der kéniglich preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1; Berlin, 1916), 80-1. On Jerome's knowledge and refutations of Porphyry, see P. Courcelle, Late Latin Writers and their Greek Sources, trans. H. E.
Wedeck (Cambridge, Mass., 1969), 72-8.
' See further A. Geiger, Urschrift und Uebersetzung der Bibel (Breslau, 1857), 439-42; J. Bowker, The Targums and Rabbinic Literature (Cambridge, 1969), 319
20; and Kamesar, Jerome, 66-7. stating that God Syzy, that is, 'finished' his work, in the sense of ceasing from it.?
Yet the possibility that God might have worked on the first Sabbath was matter for debate between Jews and Christ in John 5:
2-18. Jerome's words have close affinities with sentiments expressed in that Gospel. His attitude towards work on the Sabbath reflects the general stance of his Christian contemporaries; but moderate Christian defence of the Sabbath was not unknown: see, for example, Ignatius, Ad Magnesios 9; and Tertullian, Adv. Marc.
2.21, 4. 12. verse 8 LXX took the Hebrew expression gan b*éden in this verse to mean 'a paradise in Edem'. In 2: 15, however, as Jerome notes, they translated Eden as 'pleasure' or 'delight': the Hebrew root 'dn does, indeed, signify 'delight'. Jerome here omits the preposition
'in', and uses the word deliciae, the second of three meanings he gives to it in Lib. Heb. Nom. (p. 65) as his rendering of Eden. It has the sense of delights, allurements, or enticements, and may have about it an air of the evanescent (cf. Ep. roo. 3); but he uses it elsewhere to speak of this garden: see Comm. in Hiez. 9. 28: 11-19;
Comm. in Hier. 5. 63, 6. 21.
He also has a comment on Gen. 2: 15, where LXX take Eden to mean 'pleasure', and which he renders into Latin as voluptas: this same word he puts in his Vg to interpret Eden here and at 2: 15;
3: 23. It is his first choice for the meaning of the word in Lib. Heb.
Nom. (p. 65). Vg only once in these early chapters of Genesis (at 4: 16) regards Eden as the name of a place. This may possibly result from Jerome's knowledge and apparent approval of Symmachus' translation 'a flowering paradise', which seems to regard Eden as a qualification of the preceding word 'garden'. Indeed, another reading of Symmachus extant for this verse, preserved by Ishodad of Merv and one Greek MS., renders 'a garden in Eden' as 'the luxury
(Greek: truphé) of the world': cf. LXX of Gen. 3: 23
, 24, 'the paradise of luxury, truphés'; and Philo, Leg. All.
1. 45.3 Both Symmachus and Jerome's Vg indicate that Eden might not necessarily be understood as a place: this seems to have been known to ? See B. Grossfeld, 'Targum Onkelos and Rabbinic Interpretation to Genesis 2: 1,
2', JJS 24 (1973), 176-8.
3 See A. Salvesen, Symmachus in the Pentateuch (Manchester, 1991), 7-9, for full discussion of these readings of Symmachus and their affinities with Ephrem's interpretation of Eden in Hymni de Paradiso 5. 14. 6.
Commentary Origen, Sel. in Gen. 2: 8, who quotes a Jewish tradition confirming that Eden was indeed a location, the middle of the world. Eusebius of Emesa (Devreesse, p. 59) is much clearer, asking directly whether
Eden is the place where paradise was located, or paradise itself? He does not answer the question, preferring to remain ambiguous.*
While Jerome does not explicitly tackle this question, either here or in Vg, the works of Origen, Symmachus, and Eusebius may have played their parts in his thinking and, in particular, in his choice of wording in Vg verses cited above. Neither does he discuss the opinion that the Garden of Eden was a purely heavenly reality, which many Greek Fathers felt it necessary to refute (see Petit, La
What the LXX translated as 'over against the east' is the word miqqedem, which one witness to QHG (Codex Monacensis 6311) reads as meccedem: Kamesar, Jerome, 143, warms to Field's suggestion (vol. i, p. 13) that the original reading was 'meccedem non mimizra', 'meccedem, not mimizra'. There is ambiguity in miqqedem, which may mean either 'from the east' or 'from of old':
LXX takes the first option, as do Josephus, Ant. 1. 37, Philo, Leg.
1. 49, and some Syriac sources listed by Salvesen.S Other sources, however, translated as 'from of old': Jerome lists Aquila,
Symmachus, and Theodotion among them, and they also include his own Vg, Pesh, and all extant Targums. Indeed, it was commonly held by Jews of Jerome's time that the Garden of Eden had been one of a number of items created before the universe existed: see
1V Esdras 3: 6 (cf. Syr. Bar. 4: 3); PJ of Gen. 2: 8; b. Pes. 54a; Ned.
39b; PRE 3: 2; and Yalqut Shimoni 20. An equally ancient tradition attested by Jub. 2: 7 and Gen. Rab. 11: 9; 15: 3; 21: 9 puts the creation of Eden on the third day of the first week. It was known to Eusebius of Emesa (Devreesse, p. 59); but Jerome does not follow this, preferring a solution like the Talmud's.®
Kamesar believes that Jerome's comments are directed against 4 See de Lange, Origen and the Jews, 25, quoting Origen's Sel. in Gen. 2: 8. For Eusebius of Emesa, see Devreese, p. 59, and cf. Diodore's statement of the two opinions in a Catena fragment, Petit, ii. 88. There is no hint in QHG of the debate in Gen. Rab. 15: 2, noted by de Lange, whether Eden was in the garden, or the garden located in Eden. Theodoret, QG 25, records the view that certain people located the paradise in heaven.
5 See Salvesen, Sywmachus, 7-8, for this and for what follows.
6 Cf. M. Rahmer, Die hebrdischen Traditionen in den Werken des Hieronymus durch einen Vergleichung mit den jiidischen Quellen, i: Die 'Quaestiones in Genesin' the opinion of Eusebius of Emesa (Devreesse, p. 59), that God created Eden after He had made Adam.' This is probable; but the opinion was not restricted to Eusebius, since Theophilus, Ad
Autolycum 2. 24, seems also to regard Adam as created before Eden by understanding Gen. 1 to refer simply to the creation of Adam, and Gen. 2: 8 to the subsequent creation of the garden. verse 11 The river Pishon, which according to this verse encompasses the land of Havilah, is identified with the Ganges by Josephus, Ant. 1. 38. He also equates the 'land of Havilah' with India, where Jerome locates this river in agreement with the Targums PJ and TN. Pishon as the Ganges was well known; Jerome refers to it again in Im Esa. 6. 13: 12, and Eps. 51. 5. 5, 125. 3. 23 and it features also in Ambrose, De Paradiso 14; Eusebius, Onomasticon (ed. Klostermann) 80. 24; Acacius, in a Catena fragment (Petit, ii. ror); and Augustine, De Gen. ad Litt. 8. 7. Kamesar is thus almost certainly correct in suggesting that Jerome did not borrow this information from Acacius.* His agreement with the Jewish Targums, against the tradition of the Samaritan Targum that Pishon is the Nile and the note in Gen. Rab. 16: 4 that it stands for Babylon, is particularly noteworthy.' verse 12 The identity of the precious stones in this verse was of interest, given that the second of them features as part of the high priest's vestments, according to Exod. 25: 7; 28: 93 39: 13. VL translated in the same manner as LXX, whereas other ancient versions referred to different types of stone. So the Hebrew habb«ddlah is taken as 'bdellium' by Pesh, TO, PJ, and TN: Jerome follows this in Vg. Pesh, TO, and PJ understood "eben hassoham as 'beryl stone', TN as 'precious stones and pearls'. The 'others' whom
Jerome refers to are Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion, whom he follows here and in Vg by translating 'bdellion and onyx': so much is clear from his Ep. 64. 15 (ad Fabiolam), where he discusses the high priestly robes and transliterates the Hebrew of the second stone as SOOM. He notes that Josephus, by translating it as 'sardonyx', agrees with the Hebrew and Aquila.'° His reference is to Josephus, Ant. 3. 165, 168, part of an extended discussion of the 7 See Kamesar, Jerome, 141-5.
8 See Kamesar, 'Thesis', 116.
° The medieval commentators Rashi, Sa'adia, and Nahmanides, and the Zohar and Midrash Aggadah also identified Pishon with the Nile. Cf. b. Ber. 59a.
40 For identification of the 'others' as Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion, see Field, i. 14, 131, 157-8.
Commentary priestly vestments and their precious stones of a kind common from Second Temple times onward: see also ben Sira 45: 115 50: 93
Wisdom 18: 24; Philo, De Vita Mosis 2. 122-3, Quis Rerum 176, QE 2. 109, 114-15; pseudo-Philo, LAB 11: 153 12: 93 13: 1; and 25: 11, which refers specifically to this verse of Genesis. PJ of Exod.
35: 27 says that the precious beryl (= onyx) stones for the high priest's garments came from Pishon; cf. b. Yoma 75a; Exod. Rab.
25: 2; Num. Rab. 12: 16; Sifre Naso' 45; Tanb Naso' 27. verse 15 LXX read: 'And the Lord God took the man whom He had formed, and placed him in the paradise to work it and to guard it', adding the words 'whom He had formed' which occur also in 2:
8. See comments on 2: 8 above. Here, however, the reading which Jerome attributes to Symmachus is problematic. Some witnesses to OHG read alsés, not aktés: the former being an otherwise unattested and unknown word, suspicion arises that aktés may be a valiant attempt by scribes to make sense of it; and it has consequently been the object of conjectural emendations in plenty.!! Of these, the reading akmés, 'of youth', may have a certain appeal, in that Symmachus at Gen. 18: 12 translated Hebrew 'ednab as akmé."? Jerome's comments are purely philological: he offers no explanation why Adam was put in the paradise. verse 17 LXX attempted, as far as was possible, a literal translation of the Hebrew mét tamut, an infinitive absolute and finite verb which mean 'you shall certainly die'. The same sort of translation is offered by Aquila, Theodotion, TO, TN, Pesh ('you shall die a death'), VL, and Jerome's Vg. The Hebrew verb 'you shall die' is singular, but LXX, Theodotion, and most witnesses to the VL translated as a plural, no doubt wishing to emphasize that the warning applied to Eve as well as to Adam. Jerome prefers the singular in Eps. 22. 18. 2, 140. 7. 2.
Jerome here expresses approval of Symmachus' rendering, although he does not make use of it in Vg." It would have been 12 See Salvesen, Symmachus, 8-9.
'3 Jerome explicitly quotes Symmachus approximately twenty-seven times in QHG, approving his translation as being 'plainer'
(e.g. 6: 16; cf. 41: 16) and 'according to the meaning' (e.g. 19: 21). His high regard for this version is evident in his commentary In Esaiam, where he uses it more frequently than either Aquila's or Theodotion's precisely because of its customary clarity: see Jay, L'Exégése de saintJéréme, 105-6. Salvesen, Symmachus, 10, suggests that in Vg, Jerome's rendering of this verse is only superficially literal, and is intended to show that death has been brought into the world from outside; the same may apply to the translations of Commentary Lit evident to the earliest students of Scripture that Adam and Eve did not die on the selfsame day that they ate from the tree.'* It would therefore be natural to interpret the words of 2: 17, not in a strictly literal fashion, but to show that death was likely to confront the couple from that day on. Symmachus' interpretation is not far removed from that of PJ, which reads: 'you shall be liable to death', although the latter includes notions of death as a judicial penalty which are not necessarily implicit in Symmachus' version. Jerome indicates that the Hebrew may properly be understood in the manner of Symmachus: if it is, then the problem of interpretation is eliminated. There is no need to invoke the scriptural notion that one day in God's sight is as a thousand years (Ps. 90: 4), and, since
Adam did not survive for that length of time (Gen. 5: 5), his death might be deemed to have occurred on the day he sinned. Such a solution is found in Gen. Rab. 19: 8, and Justin, Dial. 81. 2.
Neither need the verse be referred to the death of the soul rather than the body, which is the solution advocated by Philo, Leg. All.
I. 105-8, OG 1. 16, and Origen, Hom. in Gen. 15. 2. verse 21 Lying behind Jerome's comment is a detailed discussion within Judaism of the meaning of tardémab, summarized conveniently by Rab (Gen. Rab. 17: 5) to the effect that the word may mean either sleep (as in Adam's case); or a prophetic state (as in Abraham's case, described in Gen. 15: 12); or a sleep of terror. The Greek word ekstasis may include all these, and more besides; so Jerome and other translators sought for a more precise rendering.
Thus Philo discoursed on ekstasis at length (Quis Heres 249-66), distinguishing four different types, namely madness, consternation, calmness, and possession of a prophetic sort. Like Rab, he defined
Adam's in this verse as 'a stillness and calmness of the mind' in sleep (257), while Abraham's was prophetic, inspired by God
(258). Sekel Tov on Gen. 15: 12 also lists four types of tardémdah, and describes as sleep the one listed here.
The Targums, too, largely agree with Rab and Philo on this verse:
TO and the marginal gloss of TN speak of 'sleep'(so also Pesh), LXX, Aquila, Theodotion, and Pesh. She also lists other Jewish and Christian interpretations of this verse which attempt, by implication, to explain why Adam did not die that very day.
4 Kamesar, Jerome, 90, cites Theodoret, OG 38, as asking the question directly.
He, too, quotes Symmachus. See further Ginzberg, 'Die Haggada' (MGWJ ns 7), 154-5.
T12 Commentary while PJ and TN specify 'deep sleep', an idea which Aquila and Symmachus wish to convey by their use of two rare Greek words.
A variant of this understanding is the reading 'pleasant sleep' found in a fragmentary MS of Targum from the Cairo Geniza.'* This latter may be related to the view of b. Sanh. 39a, that Adam would have despised Eve if his rib had been removed while he was conscious, and he had seen the flesh from which she was made. Jerome supports his understanding of the word as 'deep sleep' with reference to Jonah 1: 5, which states that Jonah lay down and 'went into a deep sleep', wayyérdadam, during the course of a storm at sea: this is a form of the verbal root rdm, from which tardémah derives.
It is not accidental that Jerome chose a verse from Jonah, a prophetical book, to prove his case. Kamesar has indicated that he was concerned to refute the claims of the Montanists, that true prophecy depended on ekstasis in the sense of mentis excessus, the departure of the mind from bodily control. The Montanists set great store by ecstasy, believing that the age of the Spirit had now arrived: they opposed this ecstatic-prophetic dispensation to that of the Catholic Church. But the Fathers, in their several ways, were adamant that ecstasy was not necessary for true prophecy. Their case might appear a strong one, in that Origen himself (De Princ. 1.
7; In Cant. Cant. 2, on Song 1: 11-12) had spoken of Adam as a prophet, predicting the mystery of Christ and His Church at Gen.
2: 24. Jerome, in his prologues to his commentaries on Isaiah and Nahum, makes this very point; and he never used the phrase mentis excessus in the Vg. For him, the true meaning of the Hebrew tardémah undermines the claims of the Montanists, who had used this verse and Gen. 15: 2 as proof of their doctrines.'" It should be noted, however, that Augustine, De Gen. ad Litt. 9. 19, retains the notion of Adam's ecstasy as described by LXX, and says that through it, one becomes as ifhe were a member of the angelic court, entering God's sanctuary. Adam awoke as if he were full of 1S On Symmachus' word karos as meaning stupor, or some kind of anaesthetic state, see further Salvesen, Symmachus, 11-12. For other Jewish sources which refer to Adam's sleep or deep sleep, see Josephus, Ant. 1. 35; Jub. 3: 5; II Enoch 30: 17.
17 See Kamesar, 'Thesis', 169-72. As opponents of the Montanist view of ecstasy he cites Epiphanius, Adv. Haer. 48. 4. 4.-48. 6, 48. 7. 8-9; Eusebius, HE 5. 17. 1;
Jerome's prologues to the commentaries on Isaiah and Nahum, and his Ep. 106. 18; Didymus the Blind, Comm. in Gen. 230. 7-10, and comments on Acts 10: 11-12, 2 Cor. 5: 12-13. Jay, L'Exégése de saint Jéréme, 183-4, discusses Jerome's continuing concern with Montanism as expressed in the In Esaiam. prophecy, and gave voice to the significance of marriage which St Paul describes in Eph. 5: 31-2 as a 'great mystery'. It was ecstasy which had made Adam as it were a prophet. verse 23.
LXX, Vg, and VL read: 'because she was taken from her man, husband': Jerome seems to follow the Hebrew in his translation of this clause. His comment recalls Gen. Rab. 18: 4, where R.
Pinchas and R. Hilgiah in the name of R. Simon state the impossibility of reproducing the Hebrew play on the words 78 and 783ah in any other language. They cite Greek and Aramaic as examples, and consequently set forth this verse as a proof that the creation of the world took place by means of the Hebrew language. The Targums, indeed, carefully avoid any endeavour to transfer the pun into Aramaic; but Jerome praises Symmachus for his attempt to reproduce it in Greek, and tries to emulate him by using the forms virago and vir in Vg.'8 He is not entirely successful in this, since the most common meaning of virago is 'female warrior' or 'heroic woman'; but he does use the pun on other occasions (e.g. in his Comm. in Osee 1. 2: 16-17). Origen, Comm. in Matt. 14. 16 (on Matt. r9: 4), also records the difficulty of reproducing in Greek what is a pun in Hebrew: he resorts to transliteration of the latter and, like Jerome, notes the renderings of both Symmachus and Theodotion. See also his Ep. ad Afr. 18 (12). Further, he uses the Hebrew text of Gen. 2:
23 to illustrate the force of the Lord's ruling that a man should marry only one wife, and not divorce her; only one woman was created from the original single man. But Jerome himself, in commenting on the same New Testament passage, makes no allusion to the Hebrew Bible (Comm. in Matt. 3 on 19: 4).
Theodotion evidently derived the Hebrew word for 'woman', *188ah, from the root ndsd, 'to bear, carry, take up', by understanding the words 'because she was taken (up) from Man' as providing the actual grounds for the etymology. Theodotion's procedure would have derived support from a Greek transliteration of the Hebrew 'i83ah as essa: in this form, it is indistinguishable in pronunciation from Hebrew 'essa', meaning 'I shall take up'. The transliteration is preserved as a reading of 'the Hebrew' and is
18 See Salvesen, Symmachus, 13. Theodor and Albeck, in their edition of Bereschit Rabbah, pt. 1 (Berlin, 1912), 165, note Symmachus' reading, and post-Talmudic comments on this verse. For Symmachus, see further Petit, La Chaine, 210 and notes. Augustine, De Gen. contra Manichaeos x.
+8, also notes the difficulties inherent in any Latin translation of this verse.