Translation of Jerome’s Prologues
by Kevin P. Edgecomb
 

BEGINNING OF THE PROLOGUE TO TOBIAS

… the book of Tobias, which the Hebrews exclude from the catalogue of Divine Scriptures, being mindful of those things which they have titled Hagiographa. I have done enough for your desire, yet not by my study. For the studies of the Hebrews rebuke us and find fault with us, to translate this for the ears of Latins contrary to their canon. But it is better to be judging the opinion of the Pharisees to displease and to be subject to the commands of bishops. …

END OF THE PROLOGUE

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BEGINNING OF THE PROLOGUE TO JUDITH

Among the Hebrews the Book of Judith is found¹ among the Hagiographa, the authority of which toward confirming those which have come into contention is judged less appropriate. Yet having been written in Chaldean words, it is counted among the histories. But because this book is found by the Nicene Council² to have been counted among the number of the Sacred Scriptures, I have acquiesced to your request, indeed a demand, and works having been set aside from which I was forcibly curtailed, I have given to this (book) one short night’s work³ translating more sense from sense than word from word. …

Receive the widow Judith, an example of chastity, and declare triumphal honor with perpetual praises for her. For this one has the Rewarder of her chastity given as imitable not only for women but also for men, Who granted her such strength, that she conquered the one unconquered by all men, she surpassed the insurpassable.

END OF THE PROLOGUE

¹ Or "read" legitur
² That is, the First Ecumenical Council at Nicea in 325. Unfortunately the Acts for this Council are lost, and we have only the list of canons promulgated by the Council, none of which actually mention the Biblical canon. Obviously, the implication here is that Jerome's interlocutors were aware of a positive evaluation of Judith in this respect which is since lost to us.
 

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In the beginning of his translations Jerome included the reason that the Jews rejected these books, however it can be clearly seen that he considered these books to be equally inspired by looking at his letter to Rufinius as well as the fact that he included them in his Bible translation, the Latin Vulgate.

Jerome wrote in  Against Rufinius II:33  [AD 401]

"What sin have I committed if I follow the judgment of the churches?  But he who brings charges against me for relating [in my preface to the book of Daniel] the objections that the Hebrews are wont to raise against the story of Susannah [Dan. 13], the Song of the Three Children [Dan. 3:24-90], and the story of Bel and the Dragon [Dan. 14], which are not found in the Hebrew volume, proves that he is just a foolish sycophant.  I was not relating my own personal views, but rather the remarks that they are wont to make 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 added promptly the remark, for I said, ‘This is not the time to discuss such matters’"   [Against Rufinius Book 2, Section 33]

JEROME’S  LETTER  TO  POPE   DAMASUS,  THE  BISHOP  OF  ROME   contains the following: (letter #  15 - This letter, written in AD 376 or 377, illustrates Jerome's attitude towards the see of Rome which was held by Pope Damasus at that time.)
 

"…As I follow no leader save Christ, so I communicate with none but your blessedness, that is with the chair of Peter. For this, I know, is the rock on which the church is built !  This is the house where alone the paschal lamb can be rightly eaten. This is the ark of Noah, and he who is not found in it shall perish when the flood prevails. … He that gathers not with you scatters…"

THE  JEWS

Some people have reasoned that since the Christians are of the New Testament era that they should determine the canon of the New Testament and since the Jews are of the Old Testament era that they should determine the canon of the Old Testament.  However logical this may sound on the surface there is a problem with this idea.  Namely, that there are two groups of Jews.

One group of Jews rejected Jesus.  The other group accepted Jesus Christ as their Messiah and became completed Jews, or in other words Christians.  The Hebrew Canon of the majority of today’s Jews is the canon that was settled upon by a group of Rabbis meeting in Jamnia [Javneh] in 90 AD.  However, these Rabbis were exclusively those who rejected Jesus.  They also rejected all of the New Testament.   At this same meeting they also required all Jews to curse Jesus Christ and all other Jewish people who became Christians.  The other group, the completed Jews, or Christians, accepted the Deuterocanonical books as equally inspired.  This can be seen in their writings where they use and quote from these books and even call them Holy Scripture.  So the pertinent question is, should we look to the Jews, the scribes and Pharisees, who did not recognize the Incarnated Word of God when He walked in their midst to tell us what is the inscripturated Word of God -the Bible- or do we look to the early Christian Church?

The Septuagint, which means seventy, ( LXX ) is the Greek translation of the Old Testament which was completed in Alexandria, Egypt in about 100 BC. It was begun by a group of seventy-two Hebrew scholars from Jerusalem that were sent to Alexandria to provide the Jews of the Dispersion with a copy of the scriptures in their language.  (Since Alexander the Great had conquered the known world of his day, they spoke primarily Greek.)

There are approximately 350 quotations in the New Testament of the Old Testament.  Of these 350 quotations 300 come from the Greek Septuagint.  It was the Old Testament Bible of the first century Christians.  Jesus quoted from it.  The Septuagint included the Deuterocanonical books which Protestants call the "Apocrypha."  The Jews in Ethiopia to this day still follow the same identical canon which is found in the Catholic Old Testament which includes these seven Deuterocanonical books (cf. Encyclopedia Judaica, vol. 6, p. 1147).  

ENCYCLOPAEDIA  BRITANNICA

The Encyclopaedia Britannica, in its Micropaedia, the article "Septuagint," states "The Septuagint has four (divisions): law, history, poetry, and prophets, with the books of the Apocrypha inserted where appropriate."

The Encyclopaedia Britannica also states,
    [in its article "Biblical Literature" section "Old Testament Canon, Texts, and Version - The Canon - The Christian Canon" volume 14, page 907, 1994 edition, Macropaedia:]

"The Christian Church received its Bible from Greek-speaking Jews and found the majority of its early converts in the Hellenistic world.  The Greek Bible of Alexandria thus became the official Bible of the Christian community, and the overwhelming number of quotations from the Hebrew Scriptures in the New Testament are derived from it...

"Early councils of the African Church held at Hippo (393) and Carthage (397,419) affirmed the use of the Apocryphal books as Scripture...

"Throughout the Middle Ages, the Apocryphal books were generally regarded as Holy Scripture in the Roman and Greek churches, although theoretical doubts were raised from time to time...The first modern vernacular Bible to segregate the disputed writings was a Dutch version by Jacob van Liesveldt (Antwerp, 1526).  Luther’s German edition of 1534 did the same thing  and  entitled them ‘Apocrypha’ for the first time...

"In response to Protestant views, the Roman Catholic Church made its position clear at the Council of Trent (1546) when it dogmatically affirmed that the entire Latin Vulgate enjoyed equal canonical status.  This doctrine was confirmed by the Vatican Council of 1870...

"Even though the Wycliffite Bible (14th century) included the Apocrypha, its preface made it clear that it accepted Jerome’s judgment"   (?)

"The translation made by  the English bishop Miles Coverdale (1535) was the first English version to segregate these books, but it did place Baruch after Jeremiah...

"The first Bible in English to exclude the Apocrypha was the Geneva Bible of 1599.
The King James Version of 1611 placed it between the Old and New Testaments.  In 1615 Archbishop George Abbot forbade the issuance of Bibles without the Apocrypha, but editions of the King James Version from 1630 on often omitted it from the bound copies.  The Geneva Bible edition of 1640 was probably the first to be intentionally printed in England without the Apocrypha, followed in 1642 by the King James Version."

"The Old Testament in its Greek translation, the Septuagint (LXX), was the Bible of the Earliest Christians...In the last decade of the 1st century, the Synod of Jamnia (Jabneh), in Palestine, fixed the canon of the Bible for Judaism, which, following a long period of flux and fluidity and controversy about certain of its books, Christians came to call the Old Testament.  A possible factor in the timing of this Jewish canon was a situation of crisis: the fall of Jerusalem and reaction to the fact that the Septuagint was used by Christians and to their advantage, as in the translation of the Hebrew word ‘alma’ ( ‘young woman’ ) in chapter 7, verse 14, of Isaiah- ‘Behold, a young woman shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel’ - into the Greek term parthenos ( ‘virgin’ )."

"As far as the New Testament is concerned, there could be no Bible without a church that created it..."

ORIGEN

Origen (185-254 AD), in his "Commentaries on the Psalms"  [to Ps. 1: apud Eusebium, Hist. eccl. 6,25], writes "The 22 books according to the Hebrews are these..."  He then goes on to list the Old Testament books but he leaves out the Deuterocanonical books with the exception of the sixth chapter of Baruch which is called the  Letter of Jeremiah, which he includes.   Origen also wrote the "Hexapla" which contained six columns of synopsis of Old Testament versions: the Hebrew text, a transliteration, the Septuagint, and three other Greek translations.  It did not include the Deuterocanonical books, but Origen did indicate where the appropriate Deuterocanonical texts were missing.            A superficial examination of this data has led some people to conclude that Origen did not consider the Deuterocanonical books inspired.

When Origen listed the books "according to the Hebrews" he was listing the books that the Hebrews, that is the Jews of his day, considered inspired.  He was not intending to list the Christian canon.  The fact that Origen considered the Deuterocanonical books inspired by God is evident by his many other writings.

In his letter to Julius Africanus, Origen writes that "History of Susanna" - a portion of the book of Daniel that is found only in the longer Deuterocanonical text - "is found in every Church of Christ."  Origen wrote that the Jews of his day had had an Old Testament that had been altered.  To Africanus, he wrote (section 9 ), "But probably to this you will say, Why then is the "History" not in their Daniel, if, as you say, their wise men hand down by tradition such stories?  The answer is, that they hid from the knowledge of the people as many of the passages which contained any scandal against the elders, rules, and judges..."  In this letter Origen also refers to the books of Tobit and Judith as well as the other Deuterocanonical additions of Daniel and Esther.  He defends his use of these books on the basis that the Church accepts them.

Origen quotes Wisdom and Sirach right along with other Scripture passages ( See his Homily 5 on Leviticus sec.2, para.4 and Comm. on John bk.6, para.183.)  And in his homily #12 on Genesis he writes, "For hear what the Scripture says: ‘Prick the eye and it will bring forth a tear; prick the heart and it brings forth understanding.’"  This is a quotation from the Deuterocanonical book of Sirach, chapter 22, verse 19.  [The word "Scripture" is a reference to the writings of the Bible.  The word "Bible" which means book, did not come mean the Written Word of God until much later.  For example, St. Augustine in his writing Christian Instruction 2,8,13 states, "The whole canon of the Scriptures… is contained in these books…"  He then goes on to list those books of the Bible and only those books.]

Also in his letter to Africanus, Origen states, "And I make it my endeavor not to be ignorant of their various readings, lest in my controversies with the Jews I should quote to them what is not found in their copies..."  This explains why the "Hexapla" did not contain the Deuterocanonical text.  The Encl. Brit. explains that "The purpose of the Hexapla was to provide a secure basis for debate with rabbis to whom the Hebrew alone was authoritative."  It would have been pointless to try to demonstrate the truth of Christianity by quoting books that they no longer accepted.

JUSTIN  THE  MARTYR

Justin the Martyr in his "Dialogue with Trypho, a Jew," written about 180 AD, writes in chapter 71,
 

"But I am far from putting reliance in your teachers, who refuse to admit that the interpretation made by the seventy elders who were with Ptolemy [king] of the Egyptians is a correct one; and they attempt to frame another.  And I wish you to observe, that they have altogether taken away many Scriptures from the translations effected by those seventy elders who were with Ptolemy, and by which this very man who was crucified is proved to have been set forth  expressly as God, and man... but I proceed to carry on my discussions by means of those passages which are still admitted by you.  For you assent to those which I have brought before your attention, except that you contradict the statement, ‘Behold, the virgin shall conceive,’ and say it ought to read, ‘Behold the young woman shall conceive.’"

NEW  CATHOLIC  ENCYCLOPEDIA

Josephus (about 37 AD - 100 AD), who was a Jewish apologist and historian, contended that the Old Testament Canon was closed by Ezra the prophet.  Since Ezra died before the Deuterocanonical books were written that would mean that the Old Testament Canon would be the same as that of the Masoretic Text.  The Masoretic Text was written about 100 AD by a Jewish Scribe and it did not include the Deuterocanonical books.  This theory can not account for the fact that the Jews included the Deuterocanonical books in the Septuagint which was used by Christ and the Apostles.

We read in the New Catholic Encyclopedia
[volume 2  on pages 389-390, of 1967 edition in the article Bible, part III, (canon) section: 2. History of Old Testament Canon - Canon of the Old Testament among the Jews - Closing of Old Testament Canon]
 

"It was believed for a time that the collection of OT books was fixed conclusively by Ezra.  The proponents of this theory relied largely on the apocryphal 4 Ezra 14.19-48, written c. A.D. 90, about 500 years after Ezra lived.  But when carefully examined this passage does little more than ascribe to Ezra some role in the preservation of the OT texts.  It does not unequivocally affirm that he was the final arbiter of the OT cannon."

"At another time it was believed that the OT canon was determined by Ezra together with his associates, ‘the men of the Great Synagogue.’"…

"The very existence of the Great Synagogue, to say nothing of its alleged canonizing function, is open to question.  One grave objection to its existence is the complete silence about it in the OT itself, as well as in Josephus, Philo and the Apocrypha.  The earliest reference to such a group is in the Mishnaic treatise, Pirke Avoth (c,1), which dates only from the 2d or 3d Christian century…"

"All too commonly it is assumed that great differences of opinion divided Palestinian Jews from those of the Dispersion and that the differences sprang from divergent theories of inspiration prevalent in Alexandria and Jerusalem.  This is a purely gratuitous inference   [see Peter Katz, ZNTWiss 47 (1956) 209].  The Hellenistic Jews before the fall of the theocracy in Palestine looked reverently toward Jerusalem and favored religious currents coming from it.  Doubts were referred there for solution (Josephus, Contra Apion 1.30-36).  They turned to Jerusalem for their Scriptures (2 Mc 2.13-15) and for its translation [Est 11.1 (Vulg); 10.31 (LXX)].  If they used the Deuterocanonical books in the Diaspora, it was because they had received them from Palestine… Palestine, then, was the source of the esteem for the Deuterocanonical works.  The OT, as it is found in the LXX, reflects, therefore, a tradition older than the present Hebrew Bible in regard to its list of sacred books…"

"An examination of the NT use of the OT shows that the NT writers had the same broad view of the sacred books as the Hellenist and Qumran Jews had of them.  The NT writers knew and used a fuller collection that included the so-called Deuterocanonical books.  The OT of the early Church was not the Masoretic Text (MT), but the Septuagint (LXX), which contained the Deuterocanonical as well as the protocanonical books.  In the LXX the former were not, as in some later versions, relegated to a limbo of doubt by being grouped together in a place apart.  Rather, they were interspersed throughout the whole OT and assigned to places where they seemed best to fit…"

 

"Doubts began to develop in the East in the 4th century.  These doubts seem to have emerged as an aftermath of the Christian polemic with the Jews.  Since the Jews from the time of the Synod of Jamnia no longer recognized the Deuterocanonical literature, it would have been futile for Christian apologists to make use of them.  Justin Martyr says this expressly (Dial. Tryphon).  These hesitations gradually evolved into misgivings about the canonicity itself of the books…"

"M. Jugie has shown conclusively that from the earliest times through the Middle Ages there was general agreement in the Byzantine Church that the disputed books were canonical."
 

End  part I

To continue see part II, 
Protestants ,  Luther, and  Allusions.