Jerome's work on the OT stands on different ground from his work on the NT ; here it was not an emended translation in the light of better MS authority, but a completely new version made direct from the Ilelnew, where the text was, as he thought, in a fairly even and satisfactory con- dition, comjiaied with the confusion shown by the LXX. Jerome tloes not seem to have imagined the possibilit}' of variation to any serious extent in the Hebrew MSS, though he tried to procure the best that were attainable (Ep. xxxvi. 1, ad Dnma- sum ; Fr(i:f. in Faralip. iuxta LXX). He talks in general terms of the ' Hebrew,' the ' Hebraica Veritas,' etc. ; nor does the text used by him seem to ditl'er largely from the Massoretic text which has been handed down to the present day.* Yet it is not quite identical ; t and as it is practically certain that the copies he used diii not possess the vowel points, it is but natural that his interpreta- tion of the consonants should occasionally diller from that adopted by the Massoretes.
Jerome's version, again, was not the first that had been made direct from the Hebrew ; he could con- sult not only the LXX, but also the indeiiendent translations of Acjuila, Symnuuluis, and Theodo- tion ; and indeed in the Bk. of Daniel the version of Theodotion was that generally used in the Church. J
His method of translating the OT he describes to us in the preface to his Comment, in Ecclcsi- nsten : though he is only referring to that book in his preface, there is no doubt that he is describing his general practice. He worked with the Hebrew text, translating it directly, according to the best of his power and knowledge, with such help as he could obtain from the Jewish Kabbis and their traditional methods of interpretation ; he tried to be conservative, .and to keep to the lines marked out by the LXX ('de Hebr;eo transferens magis
• Kaulen, p. 10(5 ; Wcstcott, p. 1714 ; the latter saj-a ot Jerome's work that it is ' a remarkable monument of the sub- stantial identity of the Hebrew text of the 4th cent, with the present Masoretic text*; and with rei^urd to the Bks. of bomucl, Wellhausen speaks even more stronjj^ty in the same direction, Der Text d. Bdctier SamuelU, Gottingen, 1872, p. 3, Anm. 2.
t Nowack, Die Bcdeutung dea Uier. fiir die alttest. Kritik, Gottingen, 1875, asserts that the identity is nut complete, and that in many aises Jerome follows the Greek tranylators, or Chaldee, or Syrinc, whilst in some variant readings he stands quite alone; similarly II. P. Smith. 'The Value of the Vulgate Old Test, for Textual Criticism,' in the Preebi/tcrian aiui He- /ontu'd Review, April 1801, notes that in a number of cases Jerome's text varies from that of the Massoretes, and even where it simply i*hoW8 agreement with the Greek it is not always dependent nj>on It ; again, * it has in a number of cases readings agreeing with the 8yriac where the derivation of one from the other is unlikely ; it shows besides a number of variants in whieh it stands alone.'
1 Prc^. in Dan.: ' l>anielem i>rophe(am Juxta LXX inter prctes Domini Salvatoris ecclesiai nun legunt, utentes Tbeodo- tionis editione ; et cur hoc acciderit nescio.'
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me LXX interpretum consuetudini coaptavi, in his dumtaxat qii;e non niultum ab Hebraicis dis- crepabant ') ; he did not disdain to incorporate parts of tlie Old Lat. versions,* and he also made use of the translations of Aquila, Symmachus, and Tlieo- iotion, so as to observe the mean between excessive novelty and slavish adherence to ancient errors ;t and his aim in translating was to represent the sense of the original rather than strain after literal exactness (Ep. Ivii. ad Pammaihium ; cvi. ad Suniam et ]<retelam). Such, at least, was his general practice: 'non verbum e verbo, sed sensum exprimere de sensu.' He professes to be more careful in the Holy Scriptures ' ubi et verboriim ordo mj'sterium est,' and where 'in verbis sin^;ulis multiplices latent intelligentiae' {£■/>. liii. ad Paul- inum) ; yet he shows with such obvious satisfaction that the apostles and evangelists in their inter- pretation of the OT sought after 'sensum . . . non verba, nee magnopere de ordine sermonibusque curasse diim intellectui res pateret,' that we may well imagine that in his own translation, even of the Bible, lie would be much less literal than he thought he was.J An examination of his transla- tion, such as has been made by Kaulen (p. 169 f.) and No«ack, verifies this expectation. It is the work of a good, though by no means immaculate or scientific Hebrew scholar, aiming at the sense rather than at the words of the original. Occasion- ally in translating he shows traces of the influence of Kabbinical tradition ;§ occasionally, on the other hand, he inserts a Messianic meaning in the trans- lation « here the original does not bear it ; l| and he is fond of interpreting Hebrew proper names, there- by reversing the practice of the LXX translators, who frequently solve the difficulty of a hard Hebrew word by simply transliterating it in Greek characters ; a few amplifications are found where the verse seems to need them ;1I in other cases the pleonastic Hebrew is compressed in the Latin.**