The Work
Jerome's Latin translation of the Bible - known as the Versio Vulgata (the 'common version') - was commissioned by Pope Damasus I in 382 CE and completed by Jerome over the following two decades (approximately 382-405 CE). Damasus commissioned the work because the numerous Old Latin translations (Vetus Latina) then in circulation were inconsistent and unreliable. Jerome began by revising the New Testament against the Greek, then produced new translations of most Old Testament books directly from the Hebrew, a radical choice that was initially controversial (Augustine worried about the disruption to congregations accustomed to the Old Latin).
The Vulgate became the official Bible of the Western Church. The Council of Trent (1546) declared it 'authentic' for public readings and theological argument, a position that shaped Catholic biblical scholarship until Vatican II. It remained the basis of all Western Catholic biblical translation and commentary until the twentieth century. The standard critical edition is the Biblia Sacra Vulgata (Stuttgart, 1969), now in its fifth edition (2007).
Jerome was also a prolific commentator. His major exegetical works include commentaries on Isaiah (in eighteen books), Jeremiah (six books), Ezekiel (fourteen books), Daniel, the twelve Minor Prophets, Matthew, Galatians, Ephesians, Philemon, Titus, and Ecclesiastes. He also wrote extensive letters (Epistulae) that are among the finest Latin prose of late antiquity.
Biblical Engagement
Isaiah 7:14 - 'Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel' - is the most theologically consequential translation decision Jerome made. The Hebrew word almah means 'young woman' (of marriageable age); the Greek Septuagint had translated it as parthenos (virgin), and Jerome's virgo confirmed this translation in the Western tradition. Matthew 1:23 quotes the Septuagint version in applying the prophecy to Mary. Jerome's Vulgate cemented the 'virgin birth' reading in the Latin theological tradition, making Isaiah 7:14 one of the most debated Old Testament passages in the history of biblical scholarship.
Isaiah 53 - the Suffering Servant songs - is treated with special theological depth in Jerome's commentary. Jerome is comprehensive in applying the servant passages to Christ: 'He was wounded for our transgressions' (53:5) and 'He hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows' (53:4) are expounded as precise prophecies of the Passion. Jerome knew the Jewish interpretation that understood the servant as the people of Israel and engaged it directly, arguing for the christological reading on both grammatical and contextual grounds.
Matthew 1:23 - the citation of Isaiah 7:14 in the context of the virginal conception - is the New Testament text that most directly reflects Jerome's translation decision on the Isaiah passage. Jerome's commentary on Matthew, completed around 398 CE, is a careful verse-by-verse treatment of the Gospel in four books, notable for its attention to the Hebrew and Aramaic behind the Greek text.
Galatians 2:20 - 'I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me' - receives extended treatment in Jerome's Commentary on Galatians (three books, completed c. 386 CE). Jerome follows Origen's allegorical method while adding philological precision; his treatment of Galatians 2:11-14 (the confrontation between Paul and Peter at Antioch) is historically famous because he argued - against Augustine - that Paul's rebuke of Peter was theatrical rather than genuine, a position Augustine challenged in a celebrated exchange of letters.
Author and Context
Eusebius Hieronymus (c. 347-420 CE), known as Jerome, was born in Stridon, Dalmatia (modern-day Croatia/Slovenia). He received an outstanding classical education in Rome under the grammarian Donatus, reading Cicero and Virgil with passionate intensity before converting to Christianity and pursuing an ascetic vocation. After periods in Aquileia, Trier, and the desert of Chalcis in Syria (where he learned Hebrew from a Jewish convert), he became secretary to Pope Damasus in 382.
His Hebrew learning was exceptional for a Latin-speaking Christian of his time and was the enabling condition of his translation of the Old Testament from the Hebrew rather than from the Septuagint. He was motivated by the conviction - expressed in his preface to the Psalms - that the Hebraica veritas (Hebrew truth) was more reliable than any translation, however ancient and venerable. This preference for the original languages over authoritative translations would be rediscovered at the Reformation and would shape Protestant biblical scholarship permanently.
Jerome was a brilliant but difficult personality: learned, ascetic, polemical, and capable of both profound generosity and ferocious malice. His circle of aristocratic Roman women - Paula, Marcella, Eustochium - provided him with financial and social support; his enemies accused him of improper relationships with these women, accusations that contributed to his departure from Rome in 385 CE after Damasus's death. He settled in Bethlehem, where Paula funded the construction of a monastery and a convent, and spent the last thirty-five years of his life in study, translation, and correspondence.
The Translation Method
Jerome's translation method combined philological rigor with theological intention. For the New Testament, he worked cautiously, revising the Old Latin only where clearly necessary to match the Greek: 'I am not, as some evil-speaking persons insinuate, wishing to make a new Gospel.' For the Old Testament, he worked more boldly, translating directly from the Hebrew against the objections of those who believed the Septuagint's alleged divine inspiration made it definitive.
His Latin is classical in syntax and elegant in diction - he did not write the 'vulgar Latin' of the street but a careful literary Latin that became the model for Western ecclesiastical prose. His translations of the Psalms (he made three different translations at different points in his career) reflect his deep knowledge of the psalmic genre: his Gallican Psalter (a revision of the Old Latin against the Septuagint) became the version used in Catholic liturgy for a millennium.
Critical Reception
The Vulgate was contested from the beginning. Augustine objected to Jerome's departure from the Septuagint and his use of the Hebrew. Rufinus of Aquileia attacked Jerome's methods. But the quality of the translation was ultimately undeniable, and by the seventh century it had displaced most Old Latin versions in the Western church.
At the Reformation, Jerome's Hebraica veritas principle was claimed by Protestant reformers as a precedent for their own appeal to original Hebrew and Greek against the Vulgate tradition. Erasmus's editions of the Greek New Testament (1516-1535) identified numerous places where Jerome's Vulgate diverged from the best Greek manuscripts - a project that provoked the Council of Trent's declaration of Vulgate authenticity.
Legacy
Jerome's Vulgate shaped Western Christianity's imagination more profoundly than any other single document except the Bible itself. Its vocabulary entered Western languages: 'salvation,' 'sanctification,' 'justification' - all these theological terms entered medieval Latin through Jerome's translation choices. His translation of Genesis 1:1 (In principio creavit Deus caelum et terram) is one of the most read sentences in Western history. Dante read the Bible in Jerome's Latin; so did Thomas Aquinas, Francis of Assisi, and Teresa of Avila. The Douay-Rheims English Bible (1582-1609) and the Latin Mass preserved Jerome's prose in the worship of Catholic communities until the twentieth century.
Reading Alongside Scripture
Readers should study the passages Jerome translated most influentially: Genesis 1-2 (creation), Psalm 23 (the Lord is my shepherd), Psalm 119 (the love of Scripture), Isaiah 7:14 and 53 (the Servant Songs and the virginal conception), Matthew 1-2 (the Nativity), John 1:1-18 (the Prologue), and the Epistle to the Galatians (the letter that generated his most famous commentary and correspondence).
Further Reading
- J.N.D. Kelly, Jerome: His Life, Writings and Controversies (1975) - the standard English biography, thorough and reliable. - Pierre Jay, L'Exégèse de saint Jérôme d'après son Commentaire sur Isaïe (1985) - the definitive study of Jerome's commentary method. - Megan Hale Williams, The Monk and the Book: Jerome and the Making of Christian Scholarship (2006) - the best recent account of Jerome's scholarly world and methods.