Jerome Translates the Latin Vulgate

In the fourth century the Latin churches read the Old Testament in a version made from the Greek Septuagint (Augustine, City of God 18.43), and their copies of the Gospels differed widely from one another (Jerome, Preface to the Four Gospels). Jerome, already known as a student of Scripture, came to Rome with two eastern bishops and stayed to help its bishop, Damasus I, with his correspondence (Jerome, Letter 127.7) (Jerome, Letter 123.10). Damasus asked him to revise the Latin Gospels. In the preface Jerome says that there were “almost as many forms of texts as there are copies”, that he compared old Greek manuscripts, and that he changed the familiar wording only where the sense was wrong. He expected to be called a forger (Jerome, Preface to the Four Gospels), and he was soon answering critics who charged him with correcting the Gospels against the authority of the ancients (Jerome, Letter 27.1).

After Damasus died Jerome left Rome (Jerome, Letter 45.3, 45.6). He settled at Bethlehem with the Roman widow Paula, who founded monasteries there, and her daughter Eustochium; both women learned Hebrew (Jerome, Letter 108.20, 108.27). He first revised Old Testament books from the Septuagint and then began to translate from the Hebrew, appealing to what he called the “Hebrew verity” (Jerome, Letter 71.5). The preface to Samuel and Kings, addressed to Paula and Eustochium, was meant as a “helmeted” introduction to the whole undertaking. It lists the twenty-two books of the Hebrew canon and says that Wisdom, Sirach, Judith, Tobit and the Shepherd “are not in the canon” (Jerome, Preface to Samuel and Kings). He translated Tobit and Judith all the same, from “Chaldean”, that is Aramaic: Tobit in a single day at the request of two bishops, Judith in one night’s work (Jerome, Preface to Tobit) (Jerome, Preface to Judith). The books from Joshua to Ruth, with Esther, followed the Pentateuch and were issued after Paula’s death (Jerome, Preface to Joshua), which Jerome dates to January 404 (Jerome, Letter 108.35).

Jerome described his usual method as rendering “sense for sense and not word for word”, but made an exception for Scripture, “where even the order of the words is a mystery” (Jerome, Letter 57.5).

The new version was not welcomed everywhere. Augustine of Hippo wrote to Jerome that he would rather have a Latin translation of the Septuagint, the version the apostles used and the Greek churches read, and told him of a congregation at Oea in Africa that rose in protest when its bishop read Jonah in Jerome’s wording (Augustine, Letter 71.3–6). Years later Augustine praised Jerome as a man skilled in three languages and still held that no single translator should be preferred to the Seventy (Augustine, City of God 18.43).

Jerome’s version nonetheless became the common text of the Latin church, and “vulgate” means the common edition. In 1546 the Council of Trent spoke of “the said old and vulgate edition” as approved by the usage of many years and declared it authentic for public reading, disputation and preaching (Council of Trent session 4, decree on the edition and use of the sacred books).