2021-11-10 18:09:39
How did the translator of the Vulgate become proficient in so many languages?The translator, Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus, known as Saint Jerome, was an Illyrian born ᴬᴰ342 in Stridon, Dalmatia.
Jerome moved to Rome around ᴬᴰ360 to learn rhetorical and philosophical studies under grammarian Aelius Donatus, who also taught him Latin and Greek.
Jerome spent the next decade living in Rome, Trier (Germany) and Aquileia (Italy), before moving to Antioch in ᴬᴰ373.
In Antioch, Jerome learnt Hebrew from the local Nazarene scholars. These 4th centuryᴬᴰ Nazarenes were the descendants of Christian Israelites converted by the Apostles who fled Jerusalem because of Jesus' prophecy of the ᴬᴰ70 Siege of Jerusalem; leaving the Romans and (((Idumæans))) to fight it out, fleeing northeast until permanently settling in Aleppo and Bashan, Syria [Panarion 29.3.3].
These were the surviving remnant of the Levantine White tribe known as Israelites, not to be conflated with the ancient Jews, then known as Idumæans.
The Nazarenes were a distinct Christian group, who, while adhering to a proto-orthodox Christian practice, rejected all the Canonical Gospels, and had their own Christian Gospel in Hebrew. They were one of three Christian Israelite groups who had their own Gospels: Gospel of the Nazarenes, Gospel of the Hebrews (Jerusalem) and Gospel of the Ebionites. None of these groups genetically existed after adulteration from the Islamic invasions several centuries later.
At the time Jerome believed the Gospel of the Hebrews to be the original Gospel of Matthew, stating so in his translation Prologues; however it is now known to be the inverse, that all three Hebraic Gospels are translations of the Greek Gospel of Matthew, a century later. Jerome however still thankfully translated Matthew from the Greek.
In ᴬᴰ380 Jerome moved to Constantinople for scriptural studies under Gregory Nazianzen. Jerome excelled in his field so much that he moved back to Rome in ᴬᴰ382 for the Council of Rome which determined definitively what was considered scripture, as the secretary to Pope Damasus I.
In the same year, Damasus commissioned Jerome to revise the current Vetus Latina Gospels (the four Canonical Gospels) from the best Greek manuscripts; which was completed along with a Septuagint translated Psalms, before the death of Damasus in ᴬᴰ384.
Out of Jerome's own initiative, he began a translation of the complete bible into Latin, likely inspired by his dislike of the Septuagint as a corrupt and poor textual tradition; which the Vetus Latina was also based from.
His complete translation would use the original tongues of all scripture, into a single unified Latin. The Old Testament would use pre-Masoretic Hebraic manuscripts a thousand years older than those we have today. The New Testament would use the earliest Greek manuscripts, now unavailable to us today. The Apocryphal texts likely came from the Septuagint, or similar manuscripts.
In ᴬᴰ385 left Rome for Antioch, and later studied at the Catechetical School of Alexandria; and in ᴬᴰ388 moved to Bethlehem where he completed his complete translation of the bible into Latin (with the aid of Nazarene scholars for the Hebrew), and where he spent his last days.
His translation was completed before the turn of the century, and alone became the most influential and important book in history.
The oldest complete and extant copy of Jerome's translation, which is also the oldest complete and extant Christian bible, is the Codex Amiatinus.
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