JEROME
832
JEPvOME
quiring any further into the reason of the alteration. Yet here he had in his favor the authority of a Roman bishop, as well as the fact that in this case it was im- possible to oppose to him a translation established and transmitted by ecclesiastical authority, or a divine in- spiration oftlie text hitherto received But he must
have given far greater offence by another useful under- taking, viz. a new version of the Old Testament, not according to the Alexandrian translation, which before this had alone been accepted, but according to the He- brew. This appeared to many, even of those who did not belong to the class of ignorant persons, a great piece of impiety— to pretend to understand the Old Testament better than the seventy inspired interpreters— better than the apostles who had followed this translation, and who would have given another translation if they had considered it to be necessary— to allow one's self to be so misled by Jews as for their accommodation to falsify the writings of the Old Testament!" (Neander, Church JlUtoni, ii, 68-1 sq.) But with the opposition there came also friends, and among his supporters he counted even Augustine, until gradually it was introduced in all the churches of the West. Of this great work, as a whole, Ur. Schaif thus speaks {Ch. Jlistonj, iii, 975 sq.) : " The Vulgate takes the first place among the Bible versions of the ancient Church. It exerted the same influence upon Latin Christendom as the Septuagint upon Greek, and it is directly or indirectly the mother of most of the earlier versions in the European vernaculars. It is made immediately from the original languages, though with the use of all accessible helps, and is as much supe- rior to the Itala as Luther's Bible is to the older German versions. From the present stage of Biblical philology and exegesis the Vulgate can be charged, indeed, with innumerable faults, inaccuracies, inconsistencies, and ar- bitrary dealing in particulars; but, notwithstanding these,"it deserves, as a whole, the highest praise for the
ments, useful for its time, but in many respects defec- tive, and now worthless ; and Libe?- de situ et nominihm locorum Hehruicorum, usually cited under the title Eit- seh'd Onomasficon (lurbium et locorum S. Scripturre) {Opera, iii, 121-290), a free translation of the Onomas- ticon of Eusebius, a sort of Biblical topology in alpha- betical order, still considered valuable to antiquarian scholarship.
Yet the busy life which Jerome led, and the contro- versies which he waged in behalf of rigid orthodoxy in Christian belief, prove that, so far from confining himself to the production of exegetical works, he was employed on almost every subject — biography, history, and the vast field of theology, and in all he wielded the pen of a scholar, in a (Latin) style acknowledged by all to be both pure and terse. '' The phraseology of Jerome," says Prof. W. Kamsay (Smith, iJicf. of Grteh and Roman Bio(). s. v.), "is exceedingly pure, bearing ample testi- mony to the diligence with which he must have studied the choicest models. No one can read the Vulgate without being struck by the contrast which it presents in the classic simplicity of its language to the degener- ate afTectation of Apuleius, and the barbarous obscurity of Ammianus, to say nothing of the ecclesiastical writ- ers." AVe lack the space to go into further details on his varied productions, and are obliged to refer for a more detailed statement to Smith, Diet, of Greek and Bo- man Biog. (Lond. 1859, roy. 8vo), ii, 461 sq., and Hoefer, Nouv. Bioff. Ginerale, xxvi, G81 sq. In short, "Jerome excelled" (says Dr. Eadie, in Appleton's Cyclop. Biorjr.) "all his contemporaries in erudition. He wanted the glowing fancy of Chrysostom, and the serene temper and symmetrical intellect of Augustine, but he was be- yond them both in critical skill and taste. His faults lie upon the surface — a hot and hasty disposition, which so resented everj' opposition, anil magnified trifles, that, in his towering passion, he heaped upon opponents op-
boldness with which it went back from the half-deified probrious epithets and coarse invective. Haste, eager- Septuagint directly to the original Hebrew ; for its ness, and acerbity appear also in his letters and cxposi- union of fidelity and freedom; and for the dignity, ] tions. His mode of life must have greatly aggravated clearness, and gracefulness of its style. Accordingly, this touchiness and irascibility, as it deprived him of after the extinction of the knowledge of Greek, it very the mollifying influence of society and friendship. H'ls naturallv became the clerical Bible of Western Chris- [ heart was estranged from human sympathies; and, save
tendom, and so continued to be till the genius of the Reformation in Germany, Switzerland, Holland, and England, returning to the original text, and still fur- ther penetrating the spirit of the Scriptures, though with the continual help of the Vulgate, produced a number of popular Bibles, which were the same to the evangelical laity that the Vulgate had been for many centuries to the Catholic clergy. This high place the Vulgate holds even to this day in the Roman Church, where it is unwarrantal)ly and perniciously placed on an oi[iiality witli the original." Sec ViLd.VTE.
.liniiii/.-i othiT Writim/s.— As tlie result of his crit- ical labors on the Holy Scriptures, we have also com- mentaries on Genesis, the major and minor prophets, Ecclcsiastes, Job, on some of the Psalms, the (iospel of Matthew, and the epistles to the Galatians, Ephesians, Titus, and Pliilemon, besides translations of different parts of the Old and New Testaments. All these pro- ductions Dr. Schaff pronounces " the most instructive we have from the Latin Church of that day, not except- ing even those of Augustine, which otherwise greatly surpass them in tlieological dcjitli and sjiiritual unction." Alban Butler thus speaks of Jerome's exegetical labors: " Xotlii.ig has rendered St. Jerome so famous as his crit- ical labors on the holy Scriptures. For this the Church acknowledges him to have been raised by God through a special providence, and particularly assisted from above, and she styles him the greatest of all her doc- tors in expounding the divine oracles." To works of an exegetical cliaracter in a wider sense belong also his Liber de iiii> rpn tiiiiiiin- iwminum llebraicormn, or J)e nomiiiibus J/iIt. ( Oju ra. iii, 1-120), the book On the In- terpretation if thi- J/i'orcw Xame.'f, an etymological lex- icon of the proper Names of the Olil and New Testa-