Jerome and the Hebrew Scriptures

Abstract

Abstract Abstract: The great bulk of the Latin Bible known as the Vulgate is made up of Jerome’s translations of the books of the Old Testament in its Hebrew form. Isidore of Seville, in his Etymologiae, one of the most influential works of medieval Latin literature, offers a brief statement about those translations, noting two points: Jerome made them from the Hebrew, and he did so in an eloquent fashion (Etym. 6.4.5). This chapter therefore focuses on Jerome’s change of the textual basis of the Latin Old Testament from the Greek to the Hebrew, and his work of translation as a literary endeavor.