More questions about St. Jerome's translations

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Tis_Bearself

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Hello Scripture experts, it’s been quite a few months since my last thread asking questions on this topic so here I am again.

I was reading this article on St. Jerome and his (many) translations and I had a few questions:

https://www.franciscanmedia.org/saint-jerome-the-bible-translator/
  1. What exactly was so odd about St. Jerome’s translation of Jonah that it caused riots? Anybody have more details on this episode?
  2. St. Jerome made three translations of the Psalms. Some commentators (one of whom is Lutheran so I don’t know whether to trust them as reliable) said that the last translation, the “Hebrew Psalter”, was the best one because St. Jerome was very experienced as a translator by then and was trying to capture the poetic beauty of the originals.
    Does anyone here have an opinion on whether the Hebrew Psalter is the best translation of the Psalms to read?
    Did the Church ever even use it, because it seems like Catholic Bibles use an earlier translation made by St. Jerome, the “Roman Psalter”.
Would like to hear the thoughts of the SMEs on Scripture and translation. Thanks!
 
(1) The controversy was, strangely enough, botanical: the ‘plant’ in Jonah chapter 4 (Hebrew: קיקיון kikayon) was traditionally translated as cucurbita ‘gourd’ in the Vetus Latin (Old Latin) translations. Examining Hebrew texts and post-Second Temple Jewish translations of Jonah in Greek, Jerome translated it as hedera ‘ivy’.

We know of the controversy primarily from the exchange of letters between Augustine and Jerome (letters 71, 75 and 82). Apparently a bishop had ordered that Jerome’s translation be read in liturgy, and this lead to an angry confrontation between the bishop and his congregation due to the dissimilarities between the Vetus Latina and Jerome’s translation.

For Augustine, the issue also related to the relationship between the Septuagint and the Hebrew text: which took priority, which was inspired, which was canonical, which was more reliable. Jerome always asserted Hebraica Veritas ‘Hebrew Truth’, that the Hebrew text must take priority over the Greek, and this was exceptionally controversial in the early Church considering that almost no-one was fluent in Hebrew.

(2) Insofar as I know, the Hebrew Psalter was never read liturgically in the Church. We have always used Jerome’s translation from the Septuagint, the ‘Gallican Psalter’. In addition, I don’t think Jerome’s Hebrew Psalter has even been translated into English.
 
Do we know what text he used for the Hebrew? Correct me if I’m wrong but the Masoretic Text
that we know now didn’t exist back then.
 
Xarto said:
Correct me if I’m wrong but the Masoretic Text
that we know now didn’t exist back then.
Click to expand...
This is correct. But there are early examples of pre- or proto-Masoretic Texts. For example, the Dead Sea Scrolls primarily demonstrate proto-Masoretic readings, but it has also shown that many variants in the LXX are very ancient and of a different tradition from the Masoretic.

It’s very difficult to adequately answer ‘which text’ Jerome used because he had no notion of our contemporary critical categories of textual traditions: Masoretic, Samaritan, etc. He probably used whatever was at hand: Symmachus’ translation of the Hebrew into the Greek relied predominantly upon a pre-Masoretic Text, whilst Origen’s Hexaplar (which Jerome also consulted) leaned more closely to the LXX.
 
Tis_Bearself said:
Hello Scripture experts, it’s been quite a few months since my last thread asking questions on this topic so here I am again.

I was reading this article on St. Jerome and his (many) translations and I had a few questions:

https://www.franciscanmedia.org/saint-jerome-the-bible-translator/
  1. What exactly was so odd about St. Jerome’s translation of Jonah that it caused riots? Anybody have more details on this episode?
  2. St. Jerome made three translations of the Psalms. Some commentators (one of whom is Lutheran so I don’t know whether to trust them as reliable) said that the last translation, the “Hebrew Psalter”, was the best one because St. Jerome was very experienced as a translator by then and was trying to capture the poetic beauty of the originals.
    Does anyone here have an opinion on whether the Hebrew Psalter is the best translation of the Psalms to read?
    Did the Church ever even use it, because it seems like Catholic Bibles use an earlier translation made by St. Jerome, the “Roman Psalter”.
Would like to hear the thoughts of the SMEs on Scripture and translation. Thanks!
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I’m enjoying reading the newly released “The Abbey Psalms & Canticles” that will be used in the forthcoming revised Liturgy of the Hours and the forthcoming revision of the New American Bible along with updated U.S. Lectionary for Mass.

https://www.amazon.com/Psalms-Canticles-Conference-Catholic-Bishops/dp/1601376448/
 
Are there any particular changes that stand out to you? I know that I’m attached to praying the Psalms as I learned them, so when I see a revision or a different translation of a familiar Psalm it can sometimes be off-putting until I get used to it. I wish the Amazon link you posted had the “look inside” preview feature so I could get a taste of the revision.
 
Tis_Bearself said:
I’m not quite sure what the Abbey Psalms aka the Revised Grail Psalms have to do with St. Jerome’s translations
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I figured your question had already been adequately answered upthread 🙂

Looking at Psalm 51, which I have committed to memory after having prayed it so often, I see many slight changes. If it becomes the standard I suppose I’m not too old to relearn it.
 
The constant re-imagining of the Psalms drives me nuts.
I would much prefer to just read the KJV Psalms. They’re the ones everybody knows and that get quoted and cited through all of pop culture. The problem is that they aren’t indulgenced so I am forced to read some Catholic version of Psalms as well.

Sometimes I fantasize about learning enough Hebrew to read the originals.
 
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With apologies to @Tis_Bearself for going off topic, I’d like to ask @Bithynian a question that falls under the heading of history or biography. Jerome’s first journey to the Middle East ended in about 378 or 379, when he returned to Rome from either Constantinople or Antioch. Within a year or so of his arrival in Rome, he was in a top job as secretary or adviser to Pope Damasus. How did this come about? What prompted Jerome to return to Rome at that time? Did he travel at Damasus’ invitation? Had Damasus and Jerome met years earlier, before the journey to the East? These rather obvious questions don’t seem to be answered anywhere.
 
Tis_Bearself said:
The constant re-imagining of the Psalms drives me nuts.
Click to expand...
I like your choice of terminology.
Tis_Bearself said:
Sometimes I fantasize about learning enough Hebrew to read the originals.
Click to expand...
I’ve been studying a Biblical Hebrew offering from the Great Courses company, and I’m just about where I can do that, if I pick a short Psalm, use the working aids that I already have, and prepare to spend some serious time and brain grease on the project. I already know enough to tell you that if you do that, you will be more irritated than you already seem to be with the modern translations used in the lectionaries and applications like iBreviary.

D
 
Sounds like it can be done!
Maybe I will put that on my bucket list of goals.
I’ve been wanting to learn Hebrew anyway and a bit annoyed that Catholics don’t have Hebrew School like my Jewish friends’ kids. The Church could have Latin School too.
 
BartholomewB said:
These rather obvious questions don’t seem to be answered anywhere.
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From my understanding, Jerome was in Antioch and Constantinople from 378 to 382. It was at Antioch in 378 that he was roped into a theological controversy between one of the Cappadocian Fathers and Bishop Paulinus of Antioch. Paulinus, apparently, ordained a very reluctant Jerome. When Paulinus and Bishop Epiphanius of Salamis travelled to the Council of Rome (382), Jerome was part of their ecclesiastical delegation as an interpreter and translator. It was only then that Pope Damasus and Jerome first met, with the former being sufficiently impressed at the latter’s aptitude to make him a papal secretary.

Apparently Jerome had attempted to write letters to the Pope many years prior, but Jerome was rather a nobody prior to the 380s: living in the sticks, not even a cleric, learning languages that nobody wanted to learn, etc. The Pope probably thought he was overly eccentric.
Tis_Bearself said:
Sometimes I fantasize about learning enough Hebrew to read the originals.
Click to expand...
Short of learning Hebrew, I can recommend Robert Alter’s translation of the Psalms. He’s a scholar of Hebrew literature, and his translation is very illuminating since it tries to capture the poetic ‘flavour’ of the original Hebrew: the things that would’ve made the Psalms interesting and memorable to the first audiences. He also includes a helpful commentary that teases out all the poetic nuances in the Psalms.
 
Thank you, @Bithynian. This means, then, that Jerome was not involved in any way with the planning stages of the Council of Rome? He simply arrived there as a junior member of Epiphanius’ delegation and when the Council meetings began, Damasus thought to himself, “This guy Jerome is a goldmine of information on all kinds of out-of-the-way subjects. I need someone like that to work with me full time right here in the Lateran. I’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse.” In other words, Jerome just happened to be in the right place at the right time. Is that it?
 
Bithynian said:
For example, the Dead Sea Scrolls primarily demonstrate proto-Masoretic readings, but it has also shown that many variants in the LXX are very ancient and of a different tradition from the Masoretic.
Click to expand...
Actually, the Dead Sea Scrolls have more in common with the Septuagint than with the Masoretic Text as far as the books compiled there. All the Septuagint books are in the DSS except for Esther.
 
BartholomewB said:
In other words, Jerome just happened to be in the right place at the right time. Is that it?
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I believe so, yes. But most scholars also note that Jerome was very probably quite determined and ambitious for (as one scholar put it) ‘a virtually unknown novus homo from a rural backwater in Illyria’, which was essentially his reputation when he returned to Rome in 382.

He was strategic with whom he associated, what he wrote and to whom he exchanged correspondence. Jerome wasn’t a clericalist by any means (the idea of being a priest apparently revolted him), but it’s quite clear that he had abundant gifts, that he himself recognised these gifts in himself, and that he was intent on productively employing these gifts for the benefit of the Church.

For perspective of his career, Jerome only began serious studies in Greek, Syriac and Hebrew in the mid-370s. He was only commissioned by Pope Damasus to edit the NT in 382, and Jerome only began translating the OT in 391.
Dan_Defender said:
Actually, the Dead Sea Scrolls have more in common with the Septuagint than with the Masoretic Text as far as the books compiled there. All the Septuagint books are in the DSS except for Esther.
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This is an excerpt from Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls by Lawrence Schiffman, a textual specialist on the Qumran documents:
The Biblical manuscripts found in the Qumran, are distributed as follows: 60% Proto-Masoretic texts, 20% Qumran style manuscripts, 10% Nonaligned texts, 5% Proto-Samaritan texts, and 5% Septuagintal type texts. Further more, the Qumran style manuscripts have their bases in the proto-Masoretic texts. The Masoretic type texts were dominant in the time of the Hasmonean period.
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Bithynian said:
This is an excerpt from Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls by Lawrence Schiffman, a textual specialist on the Qumran documents:
The Biblical manuscripts found in the Qumran, are distributed as follows: 60% Proto-Masoretic texts, 20% Qumran style manuscripts, 10% Nonaligned texts, 5% Proto-Samaritan texts, and 5% Septuagintal type texts. Further more, the Qumran style manuscripts have their bases in the proto-Masoretic texts. The Masoretic type texts were dominant in the time of the Hasmonean period.
Click to expand...
I guess Proto-Masoretic means the inclusion of the 6 books excluded in the later Masoretic Text. Then it makes sense.
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