Jerome, Greek Scholarship, and the Hebrew Bible: A Study of the Quaestiones Hebraicae in Genesim.

• Author: Wevers, John Wm.

The Oxford Classical Monographs is a series intended to "publish outstanding revised theses" on classical themes, "examined by the faculty board of Litterae Humaniores" (p. ii). Kamasar's study of Jerome's Quaestiones richly deserves inclusion in this series.

Prior to J(erome), the Old Testament, as far as the Christian world of the first centuries of our era was concerned, was centered on the Septuagint (LXX). This was also true, according to Kamesar, of Origen's hexapla, that monument of industry with its six columns of texts, the Hebrew, Hebrew in Greek characters, Aquila, Symmachus, the hexaplaric LXX, and Theodotion. The fifth column with its Aristarchean asterisks, obeli and metobeli, was simply an attempt to help the reader to focus attention on and aid him in understanding the LXX, whose accuracy as translation was guaranteed by a dispensatio providentiae.

This approach to the Scriptures was in the time after Origen sanctioned by tradition, in which even oral tradition played its part, being known to the translators themselves, extended via the Apostles to the gentiles, and by the divine economy was accurate and reliable even in any changes made by translators. In other words, it superseded the Hebrew. Even the recentiores, i.e., mainly Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion, were simply aids to understanding LXX. In the Antiochian school, which did recognize the Hebrew, this was only approached through the LXX as its most accurate and literal translation. Before J the Hebrew was not taken seriously, and it was "only in the Latin world that the implication of the Hexapla and the Hexaplaric LXX was fully understood" (p. 40).

It was no accident that a Latin (and therefore a true bilingual, in Greek and Latin) would be the first to take the Hebrew text as fons and translations as mere rivuli (equivalents). And the Vetus Latina was a translation of a translation of the Hebrew fons, which fact was undoubtedly instrumental in J's turning to the Hebrew. J was, however, faced with the LXX as the accepted, inspired Scripture of Christendom; this forced him to proceed a step at a time.

A first step was to support the hexaplaric recension of the LXX over against all others as the closest to the Hebrew. But this was far from sufficient. J realized that the LXX of his day was by no means original. The trifaria variatas proved this, and the only valid way was to return to the Hebrew.

So J proceeded to translate iuxta Hebraeos (i.e., our Vulgate). By...