1»74 THIRD PEKIOD. A.D. 311-590.
Above all Lis contemporaries, and above all bis successors down to tbe sixteenth century, Jerome, by liis linguistic knowledge, his Oriental travel, and his entire culture, was best fitted, and, in fact, the only man, to undertake and successfnlly execute so gigantic a task, and a task which just then, with tlie apj)roachiug separation of East and AVest, and the decay of the knowledge of the original languages of the Bible in Latin Christendom, was of the highest necessity. Here, as so often in history, we plainly discern the hand of divine Providence. Jerome began the work during his secotid residence in Rome (382-385), at the suggestion of pope Damasus, who deserves much more credit for that suggestion than for his liymns. He at first intended only a revision of the Itala, the old Latin version of the Bible which came down from the second century, and the text of which had fallen into inextricable confusion through the negligence of transcribers and the caprice of correctors.' He finished the translation at Bethlehem, in the year 405, after twenty years of toil. He translated first the Gospels, then the rest of the Xew Testament, next the Psalter (which he wrought over twice, in Rome and in Bethlehem'), and then, in irregular succession, the historical, prophetic, and poetical books, and in part the Apocrypha, which, however, he placed decidedly below the canonical books. By this " labor pius, sed periculosa praesumtio," as he called it, he subjected himself to all kinds of enmity from ignorance and blind aversion to change, and was abused as a disturber of the peace and falsifier of the Scripture ; ^ but from other sources he received much encouragement. The New Testament and
Greek text, in which the best bil>lical critics have followed the steps of Bentlev, with ever-deepening conviction of tlie supreme importance of the coincidence of tiie earliest Greek and Latin authorities."
' Jerome says of the Itala: "Tot sunt exemplaria jiscne quot codices," and frequently complains of the " varietas " and " vitiositas " of the Codices Latini, which he charges partly upon the original translators, partly upon presumptuous revisers, partly upon negligent transcribers. Corap. especially his Pnefat. in Evang. ad Damasum.
' Both versions continued in use, the former as the Psalterium Romfnwn. the other as the Pmltcrium CraUica7iit>n, like the two English versions of the Pdalms in the worship of the Anglican church.
* Falsarius, sacrilegus, et corruptor Scripturje.
§ 177. THE WORKS OF JEAOME. 97c
the Psalter were circulated and used in the church long before the completion of the whole. Augustine, for example, wag using the New Testament of Jerome, and urged him strongly to translate the Old Testament, but to translate it from the Septuagint.' Gradually the whole version made its way on its own merits, without authoritative enforcement, and was used iu the West, at first together with the Itala, and after about the ninth century alone.
The Yulgate takes the first place among the Bible-versions of the ancient church. It exerted tlie same influence upon Latin Christendom as the Septuagint upon Greet, 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 mncli superior to the Itala as Luther's Bible to the older German versions. From the present stage of biblical philology and exegesis the Yulgate can be charged, indeed, with innumerable faults, inaccuracies, inconsistencies, and arbitrary dealing, in particulars;' but notwithstanding these, it deserves, as a whole, the highest praise for the boldness with which it went back from the half-deified Septuagint directly to the original Hebrew ; for its union of fidelity and freedom ; and for the dignity, clearness, and gracefulness of its style. Accordingly, after the extinction of the knowledge of Greek, it very naturally became the clerical Bible of Western Christendom, and so continued to be, till the genius of the Reformation in Germany, Switzerland, Holland, and England, returning to the original text, and still further penetrating the
' Augustine feared, from the displacement of the Septuagint, which he regarded as apostolically sanctioned, and as inspired, a division between the Greek and Latin church, but yielded afterwards, in part at least, to the correct view of Jerome, and rectified in his Retractations several false translations in his forme; works. Westcott, in his scholarly article on the Vulgate (in Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, Hi. 702), makes the remark : " There are few more touching instances of humility than that of '■-he young Augustine bending himself in entire submission before the contemptuous and impatient reproof of the veteran scholar."
" Excepting the Gothic version, which is older than Jerome, and the Slavonic, which comes down from Methodius and Cyril.
^ It has been so censured long ago by Le Clerc in his Qusestiones Hieronymianao.
976 TiiiRr PERIOD. A.D. 311-590.
spirit o^ the Scriptures, thougli with the eontiimal lielp of the Yulgutc, produced a number of popular Bibles, wliicli were the same to the evangeh'cal laitj that the Yulgate liad 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 unwarrantably and perniciously placed on an equality with the original."
The Commentaries of Jerome cover Genesis, the Major and Minor Prophets, Ecclesiastes, Job, some of tlie Psalms,' the Gospel of Mattliew, and the Ep'stles to the Galatians, Ephesians, Titus, and Philemon.^ Besides these he translated the
■ For particulars respecting tlie Vulgate, see H. IIouy : De Bibliorum tcxtibus originalibus, Oxon. 1'705 ; Joh. Clericcs : Quaestiones Hieronymianic, Amsterd. 1719 (who, provoked bj tlie exaggerated praise of the Benedictine editor, Martianay, subjected the Vulgate to a sharp and penetrating, tliough in part unjust criticism) ; Lkander tan Ess: Pragiuatisch-kritische Geschichte der Vulgata, Tiib. 1824; the lengthy article Vulgata by 0. F. Fritzsche in Herzog's Tlieol. Encycl. vol. xvii. pp. 422-460 ; an article on the same subject by B. F. Westcott in W. Smith's Dietionary of the Bible, 1863, vol. iii. pp. eSS-YlS; and ZiicKLER: Hieronymus, pp. 99 tf. ; 183 £f. ; 343 ff.
The text of the Vulgate, in the course of time, has become as corrupt as the text of the Itala was at the time of Jeroine, and it is as much in need of a critical revision from manuscript sources, as the textus rcceptus of the Greek Testament. The authorized editions of Sixrus V. and Clement XIII. have not accomplished thia task. Martianay, in the Benedictine edition of Jerome's work, did more valuable service towards an approximate restoration of the Vulgate in its original form from manuscript sources. Of late the learned Barnabite 0. Vercellonk has commenced such a critical revision in Variaj Lectiones Vulgatic Latin. BibUoruni editionis, torn, i. (Pentat.), Rome, 1860; torn. ii. Pars prior (to 1 Regg.), 1862. Westcott, in the article referred to, has made use of the chief results of this work, which may be said to create an epoch in the history of the Vulgate.
" His seven treatises on Psalms x.-xvi. (probably translated from Origen), and his brief annotations to all the Psalms (commeutarioli) are lost, but the pseudo. hieronymianum breviarium in Psalmos, a poor compilation of later times (Opera, vii. 1-588), contains perhaps fragments of these.
' Opera, torn. iii. iv. v. vi. and vii. Jerome dedicated his commentaries and other writings mostly to those high-bom ladies of Rome whom he induced to embrace the ascetic mode of life, as Paula, Eustochium, Marcella, &c. He received much encouragement from them in his labors ; — such was the lively theological intePi est which prevailed in some female circles at the time. He was, however, censured on this account, and defended himself in the Preface to his Commentary on Zephaniah, tom. vi. 671, by referring to Deborah and Huldah, Judith and Esther Anna, Elizabeth, and Mary, not forgetting the heathen Sappho, Aspasia, Themista, and the Cornelia Gracchorum, as examples of literary women.