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Sep 27, 2024 · St. Jerome’s legacy as the translator of the Bible and a fierce defender of Scripture endures to this day. His monumental achievement in translating the Bible into Latin made the Word of God accessible to millions, shaping Christian thought and devotion for centuries.
Sep 28, 2017 · He was a Church Father, the one who translated the Bible into Latin directly from the Hebrew texts of the Old Testament, instead of relying on the Greek translation known as the Septuagint.
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St. Jerome (born c. 347, Stridon, Dalmatia—died 419/420, Bethlehem, Palestine; feast day September 30) biblical translator and monastic leader, traditionally regarded as the most learned of the Latin Fathers. He lived for a time as a hermit, became a priest, served as secretary to Pope Damasus I, and about 389 established a monastery at Bethlehem. ...
Jerome was born of well-to-do Christian parents at Stridon, probably near the modern Ljubljana, Slovenia. His education, begun at home, was continued in Rome when he was about 12. There he studied grammar, rhetoric, and philosophy. A serious scholar enamoured of Latin literature, he frequented the catacombs and near the end of his Roman education was baptized (c. 366), probably by Pope Liberius.
He spent the next 20 years in travel and impermanent residences. At Treveris (later Trier), he was profoundly attracted to monasticism. Possibly as early as 369 he was back in the vicinity of Stridon. In Aquileia (Italy) he was linked with an ascetic elite—including Tyrannius Rufinus, a writer and scholar, who translated the 3rd-century Alexandrian theologian Origen—grouped around Bishop Valerianus. When the group disbanded (c. 373), Jerome decided to go on a trip through the East. On reaching Antioch in 374, fatigued by travel and by inner conflict, he rested as a guest of the priest Evagrius of Antioch and there may have composed his earliest known work, De septies percussa (“Concerning Seven Beatings”). There also, in mid-Lent 375, during a near-fatal illness, he had a celebrated dream. In that dream, in which he was dragged before a tribunal of the Lord, he was accused of being a Ciceronian—a follower of the 1st-century-bce Roman philosopher Marcus Tullius Cicero—rather than a Christian, and he was severely lashed; he vowed never again to read or possess pagan literature.
Long afterward, in controversy with Rufinus, Jerome minimized the dream’s importance, but for years it prevented him from reading the classics for pleasure, and at the time it was the cause of a genuine spiritual crisis. One result of the dream was his first exegetical (critical interpretive) work, an allegorical commentary on the biblical book Obadiah, which he disowned 21 years later as a youthful production of fervent ignorance.
In 375 Jerome began a two-year search for inner peace as a hermit in the desert of Chalcis. The experience was not altogether successful. A novice in spiritual life, he had no expert guide, and, speaking only Latin, he was confronted with Syriac and Greek. Lonely, he begged for letters, and he found desert food a penance, yet he claimed that he was genuinely happy. His response to temptation was incessant prayer and fasting. He learned Hebrew from a Jewish convert, studied Greek, had manuscripts copied for his library and his friends, and carried on a brisk correspondence.
The crisis arrived when Chalcis became involved with ecclesiastical and theological controversies centring on episcopal succession and Trinitarian (on the nature of the relationship of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) and Christological (on the nature of Christ) disputes. Suspected of harbouring heretical views (i.e., Sabellianism, which emphasized God’s unity at the expense of the distinct persons), Jerome insisted that the answer to ecclesiastical and theological problems resided in oneness with the Roman bishop. Pope Damasus I did not respond, and Jerome quit the desert for Antioch.
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Jerome on the Canon of Scripture. Jerome (340-420) was born near Aquileia, lived in Rome for a time, and spent most of his later life as a monk in Syria and Palestine. He was the most learned churchman of his time, and was commissioned by the bishop of Rome to produce an authoritative Latin version (the Vulgate). Preface to the Books of the Kings.
Jan 4, 2022 · Who was Saint Jerome? What is St. Jerome most known for in church history? Why did Jerome translate the Bible into Latin?
Sep 30, 2024 · St. Jerome is perhaps the biggest saint-maker in the history of the Church, because St. Jerome, by translating the Scriptures, gave us the foundation of our spiritual life. Jerome even saw his role as mediating Jesus Christ’s life to the world, through both the Old and New Testaments.
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Sep 30, 2014 · Saint Jerome was gifted with a brilliant mind that he surrendered to Christ. He allowed the Lord Jesus to use his intellectual gifts to further the mission of the Church. His greatest intellectual legacy is his Latin translation of the Bible.
