Jerome's Commentaries on the Pauline Epistles and the Architecture of Exegetical Authority 0192847198, 9780192847195

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OXFORD EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES General Editors Gillian Clark

Andrew Louth

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THE OXFORD EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES series includes scholarly volumes on the thought and history of the early Christian centuries. Covering a wide range of Greek, Latin, and Oriental sources, the books are of interest to theologians, ancient historians, and specialists in the classical and Jewish worlds. Titles in the series include: The Roman Martyrs Introduction, Translations, and Commentary Michael Lapidge (2017) Philo of Alexandria and the Construction of Jewishness in Early Christian Writings Jennifer Otto (2018) St Theodore the Studite’s Defence of the Icons Theology and Philosophy in Ninth-Century Byzantium Torstein Theodor Tollefsen (2018) Gregory of Nyssa’s Doctrinal Works A Literary Study Andrew Radde-Gallwitz (2018) The Donatist Church in an Apocalyptic Age Jesse A. Hoover (2018) The Minor Prophets as Christian Scripture in the Commentaries of Theodore of Mopsuestia and Cyril of Alexandria Hauna T. Ondrey (2018) Preaching Christology in the Roman Near East A Study of Jacob of Serugh Philip Michael Forness (2018) God and Christ in Irenaeus Anthony Briggman (2018) Augustine’s Early Thought on the Redemptive Function of Divine Judgement Bart van Egmond (2018) The Idea of Nicaea in the Early Church Councils,  431–451 Mark S. Smith (2018) The Many Deaths of Peter and Paul David L. Eastman (2019) Art, Craft, and Theology in Fourth-Century Christian Authors Morwenna Ludlow (2020) Nemesius of Emesa on Human Nature A Cosmopolitan Anthropology from Roman Syria David Lloyd Dusenbury (2021) The Acts of Early Church Councils Acts Production and Character Thomas Graumann (2021) Fallen Angels in the Theology of St Augustine Gregory D. Wiebe (2021)

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Jerome’s Commentaries on the Pauline Epistles and the Architecture of Exegetical Authority ANDREW CAIN

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Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Andrew Cain 2021 The moral rights of the author have been asserted First Edition published in 2021 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2021938234 ISBN 978–0–19–284719–5 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192847195.001.0001 Printed and bound in the UK by TJ Books Limited Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work.

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Acknowledgments Little could I have imagined at the time that the seeds of this book were being planted back in 2008, which now seems like half a lifetime ago. Before the ink was dry on my first monograph, on Jerome’s letters, I took an unplanned detour into the (for me, at the time) largely uncharted waters of the early Christian biblical commentary, and one of my first ports of call happened to be Jerome’s robust commentary on Galatians. While finishing an annotated translation and a spate of studies on it, I explored other wings of the Hieronymian œuvre in commentaries on the famous Letter 52 to Nepotian and the Epitaphium on Paula, before wandering into the enchanted forest of early Greek hagiography. During the past few years I returned in fits and starts to nagging questions about Jerome’s opus Paulinum that still lingered from a decade or so ago, until the present monograph incrementally took its final shape. Even though it has had to grow up alongside four intervening book projects on Greek and Latin hagiography, I hope that it is the better for it. I am fortunate to have been able to share some of the core ideas of this book with numerous audiences whose probing questions helped me to refine my thinking and to tie up loose ends. I express my deepest gratitude to the colleagues who invited me to present this ongoing research at their institutions and conferences in Cardiff, Jerusalem, Ljubljana, Lund, Oxford, Paris, Rome, Split, and Vienna. In particular, I thank the organizing committees of both the Origeniana Duodecima: Origen’s Legacy in the Holy Land conference in Jerusalem (June, 2017) and the Hieronymus Noster conference in Ljubljana, Slovenia (October, 2019) for inviting me to deliver the final plenary lectures at their splendid events. All of my hosts were most gracious to this wide-eyed American visitor to their beautiful cities. This book as well as my earlier work on Jerome have benefitted richly from exchanges with many generous friends and colleagues whom it is a treat to acknowledge here: Gillian Clark, the late Yves-Marie Duval, Susanna Elm, John T. Fitzgerald, Alfons Fürst, Michael Graves, Hugh Houghton, Peter Hunt, David Hunter, Anders-Christian Jacobsen, Adam Kamesar, Matthew Kraus, Noel Lenski, Josef Lössl, Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe, Ralph Mathisen, Hillel Newman, Francesco Pieri, Stefan Rebenich, Ingo Schaaf, David Scourfield, Danuta Shanzer, Hagith Sivan, Jessica van’t Westeinde, and Mark Vessey. Finally, I extend my sincere thanks to the anonymous reader at OUP for delivering a timely, comprehensive, and insightful review of the book manuscript.

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At the University of Colorado–Boulder, my home institution since 2003, I thank my colleagues in the Department of Classics for their supportiveness and good humor over the years. A College of Arts & Sciences College Scholar Award funded my sabbatical during the 2017–18 academic year. Even though I spent the lion’s share of this sabbatical drafting most of a commentary on Athanasius’s Life of Antony, I took advantage of needed lulls in this project to fine-tune the present book’s arguments and to usher it into its penultimate stage. The staff at Oxford University Press have been, as always, the model of efficiency in guiding this book to publication. I am grateful to Karen Raith and Tom Perridge, commissioning editors at OUP with whom I have had the good fortune of working on (now) four books, as well as to Bhavani Govindasamy, Katie Bishop, Kim Richardson, and the other members of the production team for their impeccable work. Warm thanks are due to Gillian Clark and Andrew Louth, editors of the Oxford Early Christian Studies series, for accepting this book for publication. Above all, I thank my family, and especially Kailani, for making it all worthwhile. A. J. C.

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Contents List of Abbreviations

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Introduction

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1. A Choice of Epistles The Commentaries: Circumstances of Composition Philemon: Canonicity, Apostolicity, and Utility Galatians: Law and Gospel and Hebrew Philology Ephesians: Divine Mysteries Galore Titus: Canonicity and Clerical Morals

7 7 19 30 37 43

2. The Prefaces: Patronage, Polemic, and Apology The Art of the Preface Destination: Rome Adgrediar opus intemptatum: Jerome contra Marius Victorinus Negotiating Crisis

47 48 53 63 72

3. Ad fontes: Greek and Hebrew Philology Graeca veritas and the Vetus Latina Hebraica veritas and the Septuagint

75 76 87

4. The Ascetic Apostle Meditatio Scripturarum and the Ascetic Life Championing Chastity Toward a Monastic Clergy Hieronymus haereticus

102 103 108 117 130

5. Orthodoxy and Heresy Heretics as the Pernicious “Other” Marcion and the Unity of Scripture Christology The Doctrine of Fixed Natures

136 137 143 149 154

6. In Origen’s Footsteps: Greek Sources Commentary on Galatians Commentary on Ephesians Commentary on Philemon Commentary on Titus A Variorum Approach

161 162 177 182 184 188

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7. Between East and West: Latin Sources Classical Literature Tertullian Cyprian Lactantius Conclusion Conclusion Bibliography Index of Hebrew Words Index of Greek Words Index of Latin Words Index of Biblical Citations Index of Ancient Sources General Index

195 195 200 214 219 221 223 229 267 267 268 271 274 284

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List of Abbreviations A&R AAntHung AB AJPh AJTh ALMA AnnSE ANRW ARG AugStud BAGB BASP BPW BStudLat C&M CCSL CFC(L) ChHist CJ CPh CQ CSEL CSQ CTh EHR EThR FOTC GCS GRBS GTJ HBAI HSCP HThR JAOS JbAC JBL JECS JEH JGRChJ

Atene e Roma Acta Antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae Analecta Bollandiana American Journal of Philology American Journal of Theology Annales Latini Montium Arvernorum Annali di Storia dell’Esegesi Aufstieg und Niedergang der r€ omischen Welt Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte Augustinian Studies Bulletin de l’Association Guillaume Budé Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists Berliner Philologische Wochenschrift Bollettino di Studi Latini Classica et Mediaevalia Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina Cuadernos de Filología Clásica, Estudios Latinos Church History Classical Journal Classical Philology Classical Quarterly Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum Cistercian Studies Quarterly Codex Theodosianus English Historical Review Études Théologiques et Religieuses Fathers of the Church Die Griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies Grace Theological Journal Hebrew Bible and Ancient Israel Harvard Studies in Classical Philology Harvard Theological Review Journal of the American Oriental Society Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum Journal of Biblical Literature Journal of Early Christian Studies Journal of Ecclesiastical History Journal of Greco-Roman Christianity and Judaism

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  

JHS JLA JMEMS JML JQR JR JRH JRS JSNT JThS MEFRA MH MP NTS OCP OLD OS P&P PG PL PRS PVS RAC RBén RCCM REA REAug RecAug RecTh REL RestQ RHE RhM RHR RIL RMAL RQA RSI RSPh RSR RStR RThPh SC SCent

Journal of Hellenic Studies Journal of Late Antiquity Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies Journal of Medieval Latin Jewish Quarterly Review Journal of Religion Journal of Religious History Journal of Roman Studies Journal for the Study of the New Testament Journal of Theological Studies Mélanges d’Archéologie et d’Histoire de l’École Française de Rome, Antiquité Museum Helveticum Medieval Prosopography New Testament Studies Orientalia Christiana Periodica Oxford Latin Dictionary Östkirchliche Studien Past & Present Patrologia Graeca Patrologia Latina Perspectives in Religious Studies Proceedings of the Virgil Society Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum Revue Bénédictine Rivista di Cultura Classica e Medioevale Revue des Études Anciennes Revue des Études Augustiniennes Recherches Augustiniennes Recherches de Théologie Ancienne et Médiévale Revue des Études Latines Restoration Quarterly Revue d’Histoire Ecclésiastique Rheinisches Museum für Philologie Revue de l’Histoire des Religions Rendiconti/Istituto Lombardo Revue du Moyen Âge Latin Römische Quartalschrift für Christliche Altertumskunde und für Kirchengeschichte Rivista Storica Italiana Revue des Sciences Philosophiques et Théologiques Recherches de Science Religieuse Ricerche di Storia Religiosa Revue de Théologie et de Philosophie Sources Chrétiennes Second Century

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   SJTh SCO SO SSR StudAns StudPatr StudTard TAPA ThStKr TQ V&P VChr VetChr VoxP WJA WS YCS ZAC ZKG ZNTW

xi

Scottish Journal of Theology Studi Classici e Orientali Symbolae Osloenses Studi Storico-Religiosi Studia Anselmiana Studia Patristica Studi Tardoantichi Transactions of the American Philological Association Theologische Studien und Kritiken Theologische Quartalschrift Vivre et Penser Vigiliae Christianae Vetera Christianorum Vox Patrum Würzburger Jahrbücher für die Altertumswissenschaft Wiener Studien Yale Classical Studies Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft und die Kunde der Älteren Kirche

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Introduction Until the middle of the fourth century, the exegesis of Paul’s epistles had been dominated by commentators writing in Greek.¹ Then, between the early 360s and c.409, six different Latin authors commented on selected epistles or the entire series. The first on record to do so was Marius Victorinus, the Neoplatonic philosopher and decorated professor of rhetoric at Rome who converted to Christianity sometime in the 350s. At the beginning of the following decade, and near the end of his life, he composed commentaries on Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Romans, and 1 & 2 Corinthians, but only the first three of these survive.² During the late 370s and early 380s, another Rome-based interpreter, an anonymous priest known today by the moniker “Ambrosiaster,”³ commented on the complete Pauline corpus as it was constituted in the late fourth century (excluding Hebrews).⁴ In the mid-390s, Augustine wrote a commentary on Galatians and an unfinished one on Romans.⁵ Between 396 and 405, an interpreter sometimes called “Budapest Anonymous” because his commentaries are partially

¹ C. H. Turner, “Greek Patristic Commentaries on the Pauline Epistles,” in J. Hastings (ed.), A Dictionary of the Bible, Supplement (Edinburgh, 1898), 484–531; cf. P. Boucaud, “The Corpus Paulinum: Greek and Latin Exegesis of the Epistles in the First Millennium,” RHR 230 (2013): 299–332. On the early Christian reception of Paul more generally, see M. F. Wiles, The Divine Apostle: The Interpretation of St. Paul’s Epistles in the Early Church (Cambridge, 1967); F. Cocchini, Il Paolo di Origene: contributo alla storia della recezione delle epistole paoline nel III secolo (Rome, 1992). On the evolution of the “commentary” genre in early Christianity, see J. Lössl, “Commentaries,” in P. M. Blowers and P. W. Martens (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Biblical Interpretation (Oxford, 2019), 171–86. ² F. Gori (ed.), Marii Victorini opera pars II: opera exegetica, CSEL 83/2 (Vienna, 1986). Cf. G. Raspanti, Mario Vittorino esegeta di S. Paolo (Palermo, 1996); S. A. Cooper, Metaphysics and Morals in Marius Victorinus’ Commentary on the Letter to the Ephesians (New York, 1995); Cooper, Marius Victorinus’ Commentary on Galatians: Introduction, Translation, and Notes (Oxford, 2005). ³ For the debate about his identity, see S. Lunn-Rockliffe, Ambrosiaster’s Political Theology (Oxford, 2007), 33–44. ⁴ H. Vogels (ed.), Ambrosiastri qui dicitur commentarius in epistulas Paulinas, CSEL 81 (Vienna, 1966–9); cf. A. Souter, A Study of Ambrosiaster (Cambridge, 1905). Ambrosiaster’s commentaries currently are being translated into English by Theodore de Bruyn, Stephen Cooper, and David G. Hunter, and the first to appear is Ambrosiaster’s Commentary on the Pauline Epistles: Romans (Atlanta, 2017). ⁵ J. Divjak (ed.), Expositio quarumdam propositionum ex epistula ad Romanos, Epistulae ad Galatas expositio, Epistulae ad Romanos inchoata expositio, CSEL 84 (Vienna, 1971). Cf. P. Fredriksen Landes, Augustine on Romans: Propositions from the Epistle to the Romans; Unfinished Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (Chico, 1982); M. G. Mara, Agostino interprete di Paolo (Milan, 1993); E. Plumer, Augustine’s Commentary on Galatians: Introduction, Text, Translation, and Notes (Oxford, 2003).

Jerome’s Commentaries on the Pauline Epistles and the Architecture of Exegetical Authority. Andrew Cain, Oxford University Press. © Andrew Cain 2021. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192847195.003.0001

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2 ’      preserved in a manuscript of the Hungarian National Museum in Budapest,⁶ commented on the whole series;⁷ he also was the only one in his Latin cohort to comment on Hebrews.⁸ Last came Pelagius, who between 406 and 409 wrote his own set of commentaries on all of the epistles except Hebrews.⁹ Around the middle of this timeline, during the summer and early autumn of 386, Jerome composed his own set of commentaries on Philemon, Galatians, Ephesians, and Titus.¹⁰ These four commentaries occupy a time-honored place in the history of the Latin-language exegesis of Paul’s writings.¹¹ They are significant also within the broader context of Jerome’s scholarly production for at least three reasons. First of all, they were his inaugural literary works in Bethlehem, where he relocated from Rome in 386 and would live until his death in c.419. Second, they constitute his first foray into the systematic exegesis of whole biblical books,¹² which in the coming decades was to become one of his preoccupations, and so they give us precious insight into his intellectual development at a critical stage of his early scholarly career. Third, they represent his only experiment with the sustained exposition of Paul’s epistles;¹³ otherwise he produced only sporadic, ad hoc treatments of individual Pauline passages in other literary venues.¹⁴ ⁶ For the suggestion that he was an anti-Pelagian bishop named Constantius, see T. de Bruyn, “Constantius the Tractator: Author of an Anonymous Commentary on the Pauline Epistles?,” JThS n.s. 43 (1992): 38–54; cf. Y.-M. Duval, “Pélage en son temps: données chronologiques nouvelles pour une présentation nouvelle,” StudPatr 38 (2001): 95–118 (101). ⁷ H. J. Frede (ed.), Ein neuer Paulustext und Kommentar, 2 vols. (Freiburg, 1973–4); cf. W. Dunphy, “Glosses on Glosses: On the Budapest Anonymous and Pseudo-Rufinus: A Study on Anonymous Writings in Pelagian Circles,” AugStud 44 (2013): 227–47; 45 (2014): 49–68; 46 (2015): 43–70. ⁸ Frede, Ein neuer Paulustext, 1.242, notes that his is the oldest known commentary on Hebrews in the Latin West. ⁹ A. Souter (ed.), Pelagius’s Expositions of Thirteen Epistles of St Paul, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1922). Only the Romans commentary has been translated into English: T. de Bruyn, Pelagius’s Commentary on St Paul’s Epistle to the Romans (Oxford, 1993). ¹⁰ F. Pieri (ed.), “L’esegesi di Girolamo nel Commentario a Efesini: aspetti storico-esegetici e storicodottrinali: testo critico e annotazioni” (Ph.D. diss.: Università di Bologna, 1996); F. Bucchi (ed.), Commentarii in epistulas Pauli apostoli ad Titum et ad Philemonem, CCSL 77C (Turnhout, 2003); G. Raspanti (ed.), S. Hieronymi Presbyteri Opera. Pars I. Opera exegetica 6. Commentarii in Epistulam Pauli Apostoli ad Galatas, CCSL 77A (Turnhout, 2006). For English translations, see R. Heine, The Commentaries of Origen and Jerome on St Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians (Oxford, 2001); T. Scheck, St. Jerome’s Commentaries on Galatians, Titus, and Philemon (South Bend, 2010); A. Cain, St. Jerome, Commentary on Galatians, FOTC 121 (Washington, D.C., 2010). ¹¹ For a summary assessment, see C. P. Bammel, “Die Pauluskommentare des Hieronymus: Die ersten wissenschaftlichen lateinischen Bibelkommentare?,” in Cristianesimo Latino e cultura Greca sino al sec. IV, XXI Incontro di studiosi dell’antichità cristiana, Rome 7–9 maggio 1992 (Rome, 1993), 187–207. ¹² I leave out of the equation a lost allegorical commentary on Obadiah which he wrote in the 370s: in 396, in the prologue to his second commentary on this Minor Prophet, he decried that earlier commentary as a misguided experiment of his youth (Comm. Abd., prol. ll. 1–13). ¹³ And, aside from an abbreviated commentary on Matthew (398), they represent his only commentary-length engagement with a New Testament writing. ¹⁴ E.g., Ep. 55 to Amandus (1 Cor. 6.18, 15.25–6) and Ep. 59 to Marcella (1 Cor. 2.9; 1 Thess. 4.15–17); cf. L. Perrone, “Questioni paoline nell’epistolario di Gerolamo,” in C. Moreschini and G. Menestrina (eds.), Motivi letterari ed esegetici in Gerolamo: atti del convegno tenuto a Trento il 5–7 dicembre 1995 (Brescia, 1997), 81–103. Jerome deals extensively with Paul also in other works, such as in his Adversus Iovinianum; see Y.-M. Duval, L’affaire Jovinien: d’une crise de la société romaine à

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Jerome’s four Pauline commentaries have received a modicum of scholarly scrutiny over the years,¹⁵ but they have not garnered anywhere near the amount of focused attention that has been showered on other sectors of his oeuvre,¹⁶ such as his correspondence,¹⁷ hagiographic works,¹⁸ and translations, commentaries, and other scholarship on the Hebrew Bible.¹⁹ The present monograph, which is the first book-length treatment of his Pauline commentaries in any language, aims to begin filling this glaring lacuna in Hieronymian studies. My hope also is that it contributes more generally to the ever-growing bibliography on the late antique reception of Paul and his epistles. In this book I adopt a thematic approach to Jerome’s opus Paulinum, homing in on what I consider to be its most salient aspects—from the inner workings of his philological method and appropriation of Greek exegetical material, to his recruitment of Paul as an anachronistic surrogate for his own theological and ascetic special interests. Additionally, one of the overarching concerns of this study is to explore and to answer, from multiple vantage points, a question that was absolutely fundamental to Jerome in his late fourth-century context: what are the mechanisms by which he legitimized himself as a Pauline commentator, not only on his own terms but also vis-à-vis contemporary western commentators? Put

une crise de la pensée chrétienne à la fin du IVe et au début du Ve siècle (Rome, 2003); D. G. Hunter, Marriage, Celibacy, and Heresy in Ancient Christianity: The Jovinianist Controversy (Oxford, 2007). ¹⁵ See most recently T. E. Hunt, Jerome of Stridon and the Ethics of Literary Production in Late Antiquity (Leiden, 2020), who treats important selected topics in the commentaries on Ephesians and Galatians. ¹⁶ For studies of various aspects of the Hieronymian corpus, see the contributions in: Y.-M. Duval (ed.), Jérôme entre l’Occident et l’Orient: XVIe centenaire du départ de saint Jérôme de Rome et de son installation à Bethléem (Paris, 1988); A. Cain and J. Lössl (eds.), Jerome of Stridon: His Life, Writings, and Legacy (Aldershot, 2009); A. Cain and S. Rebenich (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Jerome (Oxford, forthcoming). ¹⁷ E.g., J. H. D. Scourfield, Consoling Heliodorus: A Commentary on Jerome, Letter 60 (Oxford, 1993); B. Conring, Hieronymus als Briefschreiber: Ein Beitrag zur spätantiken Epistolographie (Tübingen, 2001); N. Adkin, Jerome on Virginity: A Commentary on the Libellus de virginitate servanda (Letter 22) (Chippenham, 2003); A. Cain, The Letters of Jerome: Asceticism, Biblical Exegesis, and the Construction of Christian Authority in Late Antiquity (Oxford, 2009); Cain, Jerome and the Monastic Clergy: A Commentary on Letter 52 to Nepotian, with an Introduction, Text, and Translation (Leiden, 2013). ¹⁸ E.g., S. Weingarten, The Saint’s Saints: Hagiography and Geography in Jerome (Leiden, 2005); A. Cain, Jerome’s Epitaph on Paula: A Commentary on the Epitaphium Sanctae Paulae, with an Introduction, Text, and Translation (Oxford, 2013); C. Gray, Jerome, Vita Malchi: Introduction, Text, Translation, and Commentary (Oxford, 2015). ¹⁹ E.g., J. Braverman, Jerome’s Commentary on Daniel: A Study of Comparative Jewish and Christian Interpretations of the Hebrew Bible (Washington, D.C., 1978); P. Jay, L’exégèse de saint Jérôme d’après son Commentaire sur Isaïe (Paris, 1985); A. Kamesar, Jerome, Greek Scholarship, and the Hebrew Bible: A Study of the Quaestiones Hebraicae in Genesim (Oxford, 1993); M. Graves, Jerome’s Hebrew Philology: A Study Based on his Commentary on Jeremiah (Leiden, 2007); S. Weigert, Hebraica veritas: Übersetzungsprinzipien und Quellen der Deuteronomiumübersetzung des Hieronymus (Stuttgart, 2016); M. Kraus, Jewish, Christian, and Classical Exegetical Traditions in Jerome’s Translation of the Book of Exodus: Translation Technique and the Vulgate (Leiden, 2017).

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4 ’      another way, and to use an architectural metaphor: what are the pillars of his exegetical authority? These questions can obviously be posed—though not necessarily always answered satisfactorily, given the limitations of our evidence—about any of Jerome’s fellow late antique Latin commentators on Paul. Yet, these questions have a certain piquancy when it comes to him. With characteristic flair he hailed his work on Paul as something unprecedented in the Latin West, and he thus tried to position himself as a uniquely experienced interpreter while dismissing rivals as lightweights who do not even deserve a hearing. This combative approach is ironic, of course, because at the time he was himself a fledgling biblical commentator who also happened to be staring down a number of personal and professional crises which complicated any bid for spiritual and intellectual authority he could have hoped to make. Read and appreciated in this historical context, then, Jerome’s opus Paulinum has a compelling story to tell. Chapter 1 begins our study by taking up fundamental preliminaries. After elaborating on the circumstances under which Jerome composed his commentaries, I propose reasons why the seemingly miscellaneous quartet of Galatians, Ephesians, Titus, and Philemon might have whetted his interpretive appetite. In the early church, Philemon was held in generally low regard (and even excluded by some from the canon) for its brevity and apparent lack of both theological rumination and practical moral teaching. Bucking this trend, Jerome used both his commentary and its preface to mount an argument for Philemon’s apostolic authorship, rightful place in the canon, theological richness, and instructional value for the general Christian reader. Galatians appealed to him for its own set of reasons. He regarded it as being, along with Romans, Paul’s most forceful statement about the relationship between the Law and the Gospel. Paul frequently invokes Old Testament texts and themes in it, and Jerome found ample opportunity for organically showcasing his beloved Hebraica veritas methodology. Additionally, because Galatians was one of the few epistles on which Marius Victorinus, his sworn rival in Pauline interpretation, had commented, Jerome almost surely was motivated by an impulse of exegetical one-upmanship. Victorinus also had commented on Ephesians, and this undoubtedly factored into Jerome’s decision to comment on this epistle as well. Its main attraction for him, though, was the perception, widely held among early Christian commentators, that it is the most theologically sophisticated of Paul’s writings, a point he duly reiterates throughout his commentary and its prefaces. As for Titus, its canon-worthiness was agreed upon by the mainstream early church but rejected by a minority of Christians. In his lengthy preface Jerome refutes these skeptics’ objections, thus demonstrating (as in the case of Philemon) that one of his priorities was to defend Pauline writings whose legitimacy had been challenged. Titus was irresistible to him also because it prescribes a moral code of conduct for

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churchmen, and the ascetic theorist in him seized on its paraenesis as a biblical basis for his notion of a monastic clergy. In Chapter 2 we turn to the four commentaries’ prefaces, which number eight in all (one for each of the three books of the Galatians and Ephesians commentaries, and one each for the Titus and Philemon commentaries). Early Christian biblical exegetes conventionally introduced their commentaries with prefaces which overview basic expository information about the biblical books in question. In half of his eight prefaces Jerome abides strictly by this traditional script, but in the other half he deviates from it and includes personal content which has nothing to do with the epistle under comment. He was well aware that contemporary readers would encounter the prefaces to his works right before delving into the works themselves, and so he crafted them as media to help shape how these works, and how he as their author, would be received. This holds true for his Pauline prefaces, and especially the four non-expository ones, which are the focus of this chapter. I argue that Jerome deployed these primarily to cultivate literary patrons in Rome, to defend his opus Paulinum against anticipated criticism, and to displace Marius Victorinus and represent himself as the Latin West’s first legitimate commentator on Paul. In the years leading up to his work on Paul, Jerome had become hardened in the conviction that biblical scholarship is a highly specialized craft requiring certain technical skills. He reckoned a mastery of the biblical languages, Hebrew and Greek, to be the most fundamental of these because it (hypothetically) enables the scholar to come face to face with the ipsissima verba of Scripture. During his stay in Rome between 382 and 385, he had experimented with this back-to-the-sources approach in a number of shorter exegetical set pieces, but it was not until he embarked on his opus Paulinum that he was able finally to apply it systematically in the context of commentaries on whole biblical books. In Chapter 3 we explore, through detailed case studies, how he develops his ad fontes methodology in the four Pauline commentaries and cumulatively builds the case that Hebrew and Greek philology are absolutely vital to serious study of the Bible, all the while attempting to demonstrate by example that he is the model biblical scholar. Jerome is unique among his Latin contingent in that he dedicated his Pauline commentaries to named individuals, Paula and her daughter Eustochium, who doubled as his literary patrons and spiritual mentees. He accordingly viewed his commentaries not only as a formal scholarly enterprise but also as a teaching tool for their ostensible addressees (and other readers down the line) and additionally as a vehicle for propagating his idiosyncratic ascetic ideals. Chapter 4 begins by situating the commentaries as a textualized extension of his face-to-face instruction of his circle of spiritual advisees, which included Paula and Eustochium as well as Marcella (an honorary dedicatee of the commentaries) and others he had left behind in Rome. From there we look closely at the often subtle ways in which

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6 ’      he interprets Paul through an asceticizing lens to center his own ideological priorities, from his emphasis on sexual purity to his notion of a monastic clergy. Yet, Jerome’s views on the Christian life were criticized in many quarters for being too extreme, and even verging on a Manichaean worldview, and in the remainder of the chapter we track how he used his work on Paul as a platform for vindicating himself against these insinuations of heresy. Throughout his literary career, which spanned some four decades, Jerome consistently projected to readers the image of a mighty champion of theological orthodoxy. Rhetorically speaking, he curated this idealized image in part by defining himself in stark opposition to “heretics,” whom he relentlessly cast as the damnable “other.” He adopts this same literary persona to the hilt in the four Pauline commentaries. In Chapter 5 we first review his anti-heretical strategies in them before moving on to case studies in his three main heresiological preoccupations as an interpreter of Paul: Marcionite theology, anti-Nicene Christologies, and the Gnostic doctrine of fixed natures. In the final two chapters we turn our attention to another crucial aspect of the commentaries’ makeup: the literary sources and intertexts that underlie them and inform their content. Chapter 6 intensively evaluates Jerome’s use of Greek exegetical sources—and especially Origen’s Pauline commentaries, which he claimed to take as the principal model for his own work—to ascertain the actual extent of his indebtedness to them. After examining each of his four commentaries in turn, we explore the nuances and broader implications of how Jerome engages, and represents his engagement, with the Greek exegetical tradition. Chapter 7 continues in the same vein but interrogates his Latin sources, an important but often neglected component of his commentaries’ literary pedigree. We begin by taking stock of how he handles classical literary references and find that he draws from an eclectic spread of texts. In the remaining bulk of the chapter I adduce and discuss his numerous unattributed borrowings—virtually all of which have gone undetected by modern scholars—from the writings of Tertullian, Cyprian, and Lactantius. As a result of these source-critical investigations, Jerome’s four Pauline commentaries emerge as an even more colorful literary patchwork than they traditionally have been given credit for being. The three critical editions of Jerome’s four Pauline commentaries that form the basis of this book are listed in note 10 of this Introduction. All biblical quotations given in English generally follow the New Revised Standard Version. Unless otherwise noted, all translations of Jerome’s works and of other literary sources in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew are mine.

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1 A Choice of Epistles During the approximately fifty-year span between the early 360s and c.409, there appeared in Latin no less than fifty-two commentaries on Paul’s epistles by six different authors.¹ This unprecedented burst of exegetical activity has been dubbed a Pauline “renaissance” in the western church.² Whatever macro-level factors may have converged to pave the way for this phenomenon,³ in this chapter we focus solely on the impetuses behind Jerome’s work on Paul and address several vital questions related to his authorial intent. Why did Jerome, who by inclination and research output was overwhelmingly a Hebrew Bible scholar, comment on Paul at all? Why did he do so at this particular juncture in his literary career, given that there are no real traces of a prior interest in Paul’s writings? Why, moreover, did he compose commentaries on the seemingly miscellaneous quartet of Galatians, Ephesians, Titus, and Philemon?

The Commentaries: Circumstances of Composition On a windy day in August of 385, Jerome and a few male associates boarded a ship at Rome’s harbor Portus on the Tyrrhenian Sea. They embarked on a circuitous journey by sea and land, including a stop on Cyprus, where they likely were joined by Jerome’s Roman patron Paula, her daughter Eustochium, and their retinue, all of whom had left Rome several weeks after Jerome. Once reunited, both parties continued their travels until reaching Jerusalem in late 385. They lodged for a

¹ See above, pp. 1–2. ² B. Lohse, “Beobachtungen zum Paulus-Kommentar des Marius Victorinus und zur Wiederdeckung des Paulus in der lateinischen Theologie des vierten Jahrhunderts,” in A. M. Ritter (ed.), Kerygma und Logos (Göttingen, 1979), 351–66 (351–3); K. Froehlich, “Which Paul? Observations on the Image of the Apostle in the History of Biblical Exegesis,” in B. Nassif (ed.), New Perspectives on Historical Theology (Grand Rapids, 1996), 279–99 (285); J. Lössl, “Augustine, ‘Pelagianism,’ Julian of Aeclanum, and Modern Scholarship,” ZAC 10 (2007): 129–50 (129–33); P. Boucaud, “The Corpus Paulinum: Greek and Latin Exegesis of the Epistles in the First Millennium,” RHR 230 (2013): 299–332. During this period Paul’s writings were being extensively commented on and preached on also in the Greek church, and one need only think of John Chrysostom’s massive body of work; see M. Mitchell, The Heavenly Trumpet: John Chrysostom and the Art of Pauline Interpretation (Louisville, 2002). ³ Some contributing factors have been proposed by M. G. Mara, “Ricerche storico-esegetiche sulla presenza del corpus paolino nella storia del cristianesimo dal II al V secolo,” in M. G. Mara, Paolo di Tarso e il suo epistolario (Aquila, 1983), 6–64. Cf. W. Geerlings, “Hiob und Paulus: Theodize und Paulinismus in der lateinischen Theologie am Ausgang des vierten Jahrhunderts,” JbAC 24 (1981): 309–27.

Jerome’s Commentaries on the Pauline Epistles and the Architecture of Exegetical Authority. Andrew Cain, Oxford University Press. © Andrew Cain 2021. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192847195.003.0002

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8  ’       while with Melania the Elder and Jerome’s old friend Rufinus at their monastic complex on the Mount of Olives before beginning a comprehensive tour, lasting probably throughout the spring of 386, of many major and minor sites of biblical significance in Palestine.⁴ One of the stops during their months-long pilgrimage was at Bethlehem, a farming village about six miles to the south of Jerusalem.⁵ During this period its main claim to fame for Christians was as the reputed birthplace of Christ. Although the Gospel writers make no mention of a cave in their birth narratives, Christian tradition dating back to the middle of the second century held that when Joseph and Mary could not secure lodging in Bethlehem proper they found a grotto outside the village limits to stay, and it was here that Mary gave birth to Jesus.⁶ In 327 the emperor Constantine, as part of his campaign to promote pilgrimage to the Holy Places,⁷ formally recognized this cave, now the Grotto of the Nativity, as a locus sanctus by having an octagonal sanctuary erected over it.⁸ The Church of the Nativity, built at the same time, was adjoined to the sanctuary on its east side and to a portico on its west side. Bethlehem was situated near a Roman road that intersected with Jerusalem, and so Christian pilgrims heading to and from Jerusalem on this route would pass right by it.⁹ There is evidence that already by the early 300s it had become a draw for pilgrims. In the first decade of the fourth century, for instance, Eusebius noted that Christians from all over the world went there.¹⁰ Constantine’s efforts only heightened its profile as a tourist destination; for instance, the Bordeaux Pilgrim (early 330s) and Egeria (between 381 and 384) included it in their itineraries.¹¹ Some of the pilgrims who passed through Bethlehem were monks looking for somewhere to settle.¹² At least two monastic communities had put down roots ⁴ For a detailed study of her itinerary, see A. Cain, Jerome’s Epitaph on Paula: A Commentary on the Epitaphium Sanctae Paulae, with an Introduction, Text, and Translation (Oxford, 2013). ⁵ K. Baedeker, Jerusalem and Its Surroundings (Jerusalem, 1973), 134, estimates that in antiquity it would have taken around one hour and twenty minutes to travel on foot between Jerusalem and Bethlehem. ⁶ Cf. Justin Martyr, Dial. 78; Origen, C. Cels. 1.51. ⁷ E. D. Hunt, Holy Land Pilgrimage in the Later Roman Empire,  312–460 (Oxford, 1982), 6–49. ⁸ Constantine’s mother Helena seems to have been the primary mover behind this construction project. See N. Lenski, “Empresses in the Holy Land: The Making of a Christian Utopia in Late Antiquity,” in L. Ellis and F. Kidner (eds.), Travel, Communication and Geography in Late Antiquity (Aldershot, 2004), 113–24. ⁹ P. Maraval, Lieux saints et pèlerinages d’Orient: histoire et géographie des origines à la conquête arabe (Paris, 1985), 271–2. On the routes traveled by pilgrims, see J. Wilkinson, Jerusalem Pilgrims before the Crusades (Warminster, 2002), 30–51. These pilgrims availed themselves of the more than one thousand miles of engineered Roman roads that connected principal towns and cities in Palestine; see I. Roll, “Roads and Transportation in the Holy Land in the Early Christian and Byzantine Times,” in Akten des XII. Internationalen Kongress für christliche Archäologie, vol. 2 (Münster, 1995), 1166–70. ¹⁰ Dem. ev. 1.1.2. ¹¹ Itin. Burd. (CCSL 175:20): Vbi natus est Dominus Iesus Christus; ibi basilica facta est iussu Constantini. See P. Devos, “Égérie à Bethléem,” AB 86 (1968): 87–108. ¹² B. Bagatti, Église de la gentilité en Palestine (Ier–XIe siècle) (Jerusalem, 1968), 64. On pilgrim monks, see B. Bitton-Ashkelony, Encountering the Sacred: The Debate on Christian Pilgrimage in Late

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there by the late fourth century, prior to Jerome’s arrival. John Cassian and his friend Germanus lodged with one of them on their way to Egypt in the middle 380s.¹³ Around this time Palladius stayed for a year with the Theban monk Posidonius near Shepherd’s Field.¹⁴ Like other monastic founders before them, Jerome and Paula chose Bethlehem as the place to make their permanent home. To believe his account, which he put into writing months after her death in January of 404, Paula had felt an irresistible mystical draw to this village during her first visit there, and her ecstatic experience in the Nativity Grotto prompted her to decide, right then and there, to live out the rest of her days in Bethlehem: I heard her swear that she could see, with the eyes of faith, the infant wrapped in swaddling clothes crying in his crib; the Magi worshipping [him as] God; the star shining down from on high; the virgin mother; the attentive foster-father; the shepherds coming by night both to see the Word which had come to pass . . . the slaughtered infants; Herod in his rage; and Joseph and Mary fleeing to Egypt. Shedding tears mixed with joy, she said: “Hail, Bethlehem, house of bread, where the Bread that comes down from heaven was born. Hail, Ephrathah, an abundantly rich and fruit-bearing area whose crop is God . . . I, a wretched sinner, have been considered worthy both to kiss the crib in which the baby Lord cried and to pray in the cave in which the virgin in labor gave birth to the infant God. This is my place of respite because it is the native land of my Lord. I will dwell here because the Savior chose it.” Me audiente iurabat cernere se fidei oculis infantem pannis involutum vagientem in praesepe, deum magos adorantes, stellam fulgentem desuper, matrem virginem, nutricium sedulum, pastores nocte venientes ut viderent verbum quod factum erat . . . parvulos interfectos, Herodem saevientem, Ioseph et Mariam fugientes in Aegyptum. Mixtisque gaudio lacrimis loquebatur: “Salve, Bethlem, domus panis, in qua natus est ille panis qui de caelo descendit. Salve, Ephrata, regio uberrima

Antiquity (Berkeley, 2005), 140–83. For the tendency of monks in Palestine to settle around pilgrimage centers, see C. Saulnier, “La vie monastique en Terre Sainte auprès des lieux de pèlerinage (IVe s.),” in Miscellanea Historiae Ecclesiasticae VI, Section I: Les transformations dans la société chrétienne au IVe siècle (Brussels, 1983), 223–48. On monasticism in late antique Palestine more generally, see G. D. Gordini, “Il monachesimo romano in Palestina nel IV secolo,” StudAns 46 (1961): 85–107; Y. Hirschfeld, The Judean Desert Monasteries in the Byzantine Period (New Haven, 1992); J. Binns, Ascetics and Ambassadors of Christ: The Monasteries of Palestine, 314–631 (Oxford, 1994); J. Patrich, Sabas, Leader of Palestinian Monasticism: A Comparative Study in Eastern Monasticism, Fourth to Seventh Centuries (Washington, D.C., 1995). ¹³ O. Chadwick, John Cassian (Cambridge, 1968), 10–12; C. Stewart, Cassian the Monk (New York, 1998), 6–12. ¹⁴ Palladius, Hist. Laus. 36.1. Posidonius’s monastery is perhaps the μοναστήριον τὸ λεγόμενον Ποίμνιον mentioned by Epiphanius of Jerusalem as being in the vicinity of Bethlehem (PG 120:264). Cf. Cain, Jerome’s Epitaph on Paula, 259.

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 ’       atque καρποφόρος, cuius fertilitas Deus est . . . Ego misera atque peccatrix digna sum iudicata deosculari praesepe in quo dominus parvulus vagiit, orare in spelunca in qua virgo puerpera Deum fudit infantem. Haec requies mea quia Domini mei patria est. Hic habitabo quoniam Salvator elegit eam.”¹⁵

Paula and Jerome settled in Bethlehem probably in the late spring of 386. Their first three years there were occupied with several substantial building projects financed by Paula’s senatorial fortune. First came a monastery for Jerome and his monks, followed by her nearby convent,¹⁶ both of which were built close to the Church of the Nativity so that their communities could become integrated into its regular liturgical life.¹⁷ They also constructed a hostelry for Christian pilgrims which by the early fifth century would be teeming with visitors from all over the world.¹⁸ By the time Jerome began working on his Pauline commentaries in the early summer of 386,¹⁹ he had been living in Bethlehem for only a few months, but we do not know if he was staying in his own monastery (depending on how much of it was even constructed by that point) or in one of the pre-existing monasteries in the area. Whatever the case, he claims that he was “situated in the solitude of a monastery and see opposite me” the Church of the Nativity,²⁰ a claim which, whether rigidly true or not, is calculated to give his writerly activity a certain holy mystique.²¹ In whatever monastery he was staying at the time, his own or somebody else’s, Jerome composed his Pauline commentaries, as he did all of his subsequent literary works in Bethlehem, with the aid of a secretarial staff who took down his dictation, made copies of his finished work for distribution, and assisted with day-to-day archival and other activities.²² In the preface to Book 3 of his Galatians ¹⁵ Jerome, Ep. 108.10.2–3, 7 (Cain, Jerome’s Epitaph on Paula, 55, 57). ¹⁶ Jerome, Ep. 108.20.1. Their monastic complex conformed to the contemporary eastern pattern of what might be termed the “double monastery” (duplex monasterium/διπλοῦν μοναστήριον), a male and a female monastic community that had separate sleeping and living quarters and yet were located within close proximity to each other and were interdependent financially. See D. F. Stramara, “Double Monasticism in the Greek East, Fourth through Eighth Centuries,” JECS 6 (1998): 269–312; E. Wipszycka, Moines et communautés monastiques en Égypte (IVe–VIIIe siècles) (Warsaw, 2009), 568–88; cf. M. Serrato Garrido, Ascetismo femenino en Roma (Cádiz, 1993), 109–20. ¹⁷ Jerome often delivered homilies there. See A. Cain, “Jerome,” in A. Dupont, S. Boodts, G. Partoens, and J. Leemans (eds.), Latin Preaching in the Patristic Era: Sermons, Preachers, and Audiences in the Latin West (Leiden, 2018), 274–93. ¹⁸ E.g., in a letter of 403 to Paula’s daughter-in-law Laeta, Jerome boasted that he daily welcomed crowds of monks from India, Persia, and Ethiopia (Ep. 107.2.3). ¹⁹ P. Nautin, “La date des commentaires de Jérôme sur les Épîtres,” RHE 74 (1979): 5–12, surmises that he did not begin work on them until May or June. ²⁰ . . . qui in monasterii solitudine constitutus et illud praesepe contra videns in quo vagientem parvulum festini adoravere pastores, id facere non possum quod mulier nobilis inter strepentem familiam et procurationem domus explet operis subsecivis (Comm. Eph., lib. 2, prol. ll. 6–11). ²¹ See below, pp. 59–61. ²² A. Wikenhauser, “Der heilige Hieronymus und die Kurzschrift,” TQ 29 (1910): 50–87; P. E. Arns, La technique du livre d’après saint Jérôme (Paris, 1953), 37–50; H. Hagendahl, “Die Bedeutung der

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commentary he gives us the kind of over-the-shoulder glimpse into his scholarly workshop that later inspired a rich tradition of Renaissance iconography:²³ I do not write with my own hand due the weakness of my eyes and of my entire poor body. I cannot make up for the slowness of my speech through hard work and diligence. They say that Virgil, too, fashioned his books by licking them into shape as bears do with their cubs.²⁴ To be sure, after summoning my secretary either I dictate right away whatever comes into my mouth or, if I want to mull over things a little so as to put out something better, my secretary silently rebukes me, clenches his fist, wrinkles his brow, and indicates by all of his body language that he is here for no reason. Propter oculorum et totius corpusculi infirmitatem manu mea ipse non scribo; nec labore et diligentia compensare queo eloquii tarditatem, quod de Virgilio quoque tradunt quia libros suos in modum ursorum fetum lambendo figuraverit. Verum accito notario aut statim dicto quodcumque in buccam venerit aut, si paululum voluero cogitare melius aliquid prolaturus, tunc me tacitus ille reprehendit, manum contrahit, frontem rugat et se frustra adesse toto gestu corporis contestatur.²⁵

Jerome complains here, as he does often in his writings,²⁶ about poor eyesight and the general frailty of his corpusculum (“poor body”), a word which among ascetic writers from this period often pejoratively connotes the material part of humans.²⁷ Without denying that there was at least some reality behind his rhetoric, we should keep in mind that he strategically voiced such complaints in order to heroicize himself as an embattled scholar who had worn out his eyes and body

Stenographie für die spätlateinische christliche Literatur,” JbAC 14 (1971): 29–33; B. Conring, Hieronymus als Briefschreiber: Ein Beitrag zur spätantiken Epistolographie (Tübingen, 2001), 106–18. ²³ R. Jungblut, Hieronymus: Darstellung und Verehrung eines Kirchenvaters (Tübingen, 1967); H. Friedmann, A Bestiary for Saint Jerome: Animal Symbolism in European Religious Art (Washington, D.C., 1980), 48–100; B. Ridderbos, Saint and Symbol: Images of Saint Jerome in Early Italian Art (Groningen, 1984), 63–88; D. Russo, Saint Jérôme en Italie: étude d’iconographie et de spiritualité (XIIIe–XVe siècle) (Paris, 1987), 201–51; P. Conrads, Hieronymus, scriptor et interpres: Zur Ikonographie des Eusebius Hieronymus im frühen und hohen Mittelalter (Würzburg, 1990). For Jerome’s posthumous reception more generally, see E. Rice, Saint Jerome in the Renaissance (Baltimore, 1985). ²⁴ Suetonius, V. Virg. 22; Aulus Gellius, Noct. Att. 17.10.2–3; cf. N. Horsfall, A Companion to the Study of Virgil (Leiden, 1995), 15–16. Jerome recycled the same anecdote some two decades later (early 407): Vnde et de Vergilio traditum est, quod libros suos quasi ursorum fetus lingua composuerit et lambendo fecerit esse meliores (Comm. Zach., lib. 3, prol. ll. 12–14). ²⁵ Comm. Gal., lib. 3, prol. ll. 28–36. ²⁶ B. Lançon, “Maladie et médecine dans la correspondance de Jérôme,” in Y.-M. Duval (ed.), Jérôme entre l’Occident et l’Orient: XVIe centenaire du départ de saint Jérôme de Rome et de son installation à Bethléem (Paris, 1988), 355–66. ²⁷ Thesaurus Linguae Latinae IV, 1025.81–2; cf. Cain, Jerome’s Epitaph on Paula, 120.

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prematurely through excessive study and asceticism.²⁸ The arresting anecdote he tells about his feisty amanuensis likewise communicates one of his favorite literary conceits, the supposed ability to dictate lengthy and information-packed works on the spur of the moment and without forethought.²⁹ The secretary’s reaction, which is captured in vivid detail, underscores this point, for he becomes fidgety and impatient precisely because he is accustomed to Jerome’s spontaneous, rapidfire dictation.³⁰ In addition to a secretarial staff, Jerome had at his disposal an extensive library of secular, Jewish, and Christian writings he had acquired through the years.³¹ Earlier in 386, prior to undertaking his opus Paulinum, he presumably had obtained personal copies of Origen’s voluminous commentaries on the Pauline epistles (at the very least, the ones on Galatians, Ephesians, Titus, and Philemon), on which he heavily depended for his own interpretive work.³² He may well have had in hand other Greek commentaries on Paul as well, such as those by Didymus and Apollinaris.³³ All of these texts would have been available to him for copy (and consultation) at the famed ecclesiastical library at Caesarea Maritima, which was about fifty miles from Bethlehem.³⁴ Another of Origen’s major scholarly productions was the Hexapla,³⁵ which presented the Old Testament text in six parallel columns starting on the far left

²⁸ Thus Jerome employs what R. Krawiec, Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery (Oxford, 2002), 69–71, calls the rhetoric of the “suffering servant,” idealizing himself as the model of Christian perseverance through adversity. ²⁹ Cf. Epp. 33.6.1, 57.2.2, 84.12.1, 99.1.2, 108.32.1, 117.12.1, 118.1.1–2, 127.14.1, 128.5.4; C. Vig. 17. ³⁰ A. Cain, The Letters of Jerome: Asceticism, Biblical Exegesis, and the Construction of Christian Authority in Late Antiquity (Oxford, 2009), 175. Cf. Jerome, Comm. Es., lib. 5, prol. ll. 47–9: Dictamus haec, non scribimus: currente notariorum manu currit oratio. ³¹ M. Hale Williams, The Monk and the Book: Jerome and the Making of Christian Scholarship (Chicago, 2006), 147–66. ³² See Chapter 6. ³³ See Chapter 6. ³⁴ After moving to Bethlehem, Jerome made semi-regular trips to Caesarea to consult the library’s many important manuscripts. See F. Cavallera, Saint Jérôme: sa vie et son oeuvre, 2 vols. (Louvain, 1922), 2.88–9; J. N. D. Kelly, Jerome: His Life, Writings, and Controversies (New York, 1975), 135; P. Jay, L’exégèse de saint Jérôme d’après son Commentaire sur Isaïe (Paris, 1985), 411–17; Jay, “Jérôme et la pratique de l’exégèse,” in J. Fontaine and C. Pietri (eds.), La Bible de tous les temps, vol. 2: Le monde latin antique et la Bible (Paris, 1985), 523–41 (529–34). On the library’s history, see A. J. Carriker, The Library of Eusebius of Caesarea (Leiden, 2003), 11, 14–15. ³⁵ Origen nowhere calls it the “Hexapla” (τὰ Ἑξαπλᾶ) in his extant writings, but Eusebius refers to it as such (Hist. eccl. 6.16.4). Scholars debate about Origen’s possible motivation(s) for producing the Hexapla. J. Wright, “Origen in the Scholar’s Den: A Rationale for the Hexapla,” in C. Kannengiesser and W. L. Petersen (eds.), Origen of Alexandria: His World and His Legacy (South Bend, 1988), 48–62, suggests that he had a text-critical aim in mind, to pave the way for a corrected text of the Old Testament. M. Martin, “Origen’s Theory of Language and the First Two Columns of the Hexapla,” HThR 97 (2004): 99–106, argues that Origen was keen to provide Christians with a tool for synoptically comparing readings of Old Testament manuscripts so that they would be well informed for any textual disputes with Jews. T. M. Law, “Origen’s Parallel Bible: Textual Criticism, Apologetics, or Exegesis?,” JThS n.s. 59 (2008): 1–21, charts a different path, suggesting that he was prompted more by exegetical than by text-critical or apologetic concerns.

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with the Hebrew, the Greek transliteration of the Hebrew,³⁶ and then four translations of the Hebrew into Greek (Aquila, Symmachus, a recension of the Septuagint, and Theodotion). In his commentary on Titus Jerome describes the Hexapla’s contents in some detail,³⁷ and numerous times in his Pauline commentaries he also juxtaposes readings from the Hebrew Bible and its four Greek translations.³⁸ These data can be taken to suggest, at least circumstantially, that he had firsthand access to the Hexapla at the time. At some point he did own a personal copy of the Hexapla, but whether he had it in 386 is unknown. In any event, the sheer cost of materials and scribal labor involved in copying such a massive work—one modern estimate has it filling thirty-eight codices, each containing 400 leaves (800 pages)³⁹—would have made owning a private copy of the Hexapla an extraordinarily costly proposition in the late fourth century. Needless to say, only the very privileged few could afford such a luxury, and Jerome fits into that rarefied camp by virtue of Paula’s patronage.⁴⁰ Jerome dictated all four of his Pauline commentaries in quick succession between the (early?) summer and early autumn of 386.⁴¹ Clues internal to them enable us to reconstruct their order of composition. The one on Philemon came first,⁴² as we learn from its opening lines: You wanted me to dictate [commentaries] on Paul’s epistles in inverted and flipflopped order. For when you repeatedly asked me to do this, Paula and Eustochium, and I resolutely refused to do so, you compelled me to comment at least on the short epistle and the one that you regarded as last in its number of verses as well as in its meaning and order. Praepostero ordine atque perverso in epistulas Pauli dictari a me vobis placuit. Nam cum id crebro, o Paula et Eustochium, peteretis ut facerem, et ego obnixe ne

³⁶ This column may have been intended to serve as a guide to vocalizing the text in Hebrew characters in the first column. See J. A. Emerton, “A Further Consideration of the Purpose of the Second Column of the Hexapla,” JThS n.s. 22 (1971): 15–28. ³⁷ Comm. Tit. 3.9. ³⁸ E.g., Comm. Gal. 1.4–5, 3.10, 3.11–12, 3.13b–14, 6.18; Comm. Eph. 5.3–4; Comm. Tit. 2.11–14, 3.9; cf. Comm. Phlm. 20. ³⁹ A. Grafton and M. Hale Williams, Christianity and the Transformation of the Book: Origen, Eusebius, and the Library of Caesarea (Cambridge, MA, 2006), 323. ⁴⁰ For a rough estimate of Paula’s net worth, see Cain, Jerome’s Epitaph on Paula, 108–10. Like Jerome, Rufinus owned a private copy of the Hexapla which he procured “at great expense” (magnis sumptibus) (Jerome, Apol. c. Ruf. 2.34), and almost certainly thanks to Melania the Elder’s patronage, on which see A. Cain, Rufinus of Aquileia, Inquiry about the Monks in Egypt, FOTC 139 (Washington, D.C., 2019), 6–7. ⁴¹ Nautin, “La date des commentaires.” ⁴² Like Jerome, Origen, his chief exegetical model for the Pauline commentaries, evidently started his own Pauline exegesis with a commentary on Philemon; see C. Bammel, “Origen’s Pauline Prefaces and the Chronology of his Pauline Commentaries,” in G. Dorival and A. le Boulluec (eds.), Origeniana sexta: Origène et la Bible. Actes du Colloquium Origenianum Sextum, Chantilly, 30 août–3 septembre 1993 (Leuven, 1995), 495–513 (511).

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 ’       facerem recusarem, saltem parvam et quae vobis ut numero versuum, ita sensu quoque et ordine videbatur extrema, ut dissererem coegistis.⁴³

Jerome’s remarks about Philemon being “last in order” (ordine extrema) and about his interpreting the Pauline epistles “in inverted and flip-flopped order” (praepostero ordine atque perverso⁴⁴) by commenting on Philemon first⁴⁵ reflect the canonical ordering of the New Testament writings that was widespread by the late fourth century. There was a clear tendency by that point to arrange Paul’s letters in descending order of length of the Greek text, with Romans first and Philemon last.⁴⁶ Paula’s awareness of Philemon’s last-place position in the traditional canonical sequence apparently colored her perception of it and prompted her to think less highly of it than of the other epistles. Jerome commented next on Galatians. He says in the preface to Book 1 of its commentary: “It has been only a few days since I commented on Paul’s epistle to Philemon and moved on to Galatians, leaving behind many things in between.”⁴⁷ So, he wasted no time in taking up Galatians, but his somewhat cryptic statement about “leaving behind many things in between” perhaps suggests that he had other plans which he postponed to work on Galatians. In any case, this compendious commentary, which he divided into three books, must have occupied him for several weeks at the very minimum. After finishing with Galatians he moved on to Ephesians,⁴⁸ producing a comparably lengthy commentary also spread across three books. The interval between

⁴³ Comm. Phlm. 1–3. ⁴⁴ Jerome reproduces the same arresting phrase in Prol. in Sal. de Graec. emend.: Necnon etiam illa, quae inperiti translatores male in linguam nostram de Graeco sermone verterant, oblitterans et antiquans curiosissima veritate correxi, et, ubi praepostero ordine atque perverso sententiarum fuerat lumen ereptum, suis locis restituens feci intellegi quod latebat (R. Weber (ed.), Biblia Sacra iuxta Vulgatam Versionem (Stuttgart, 1983), 6). ⁴⁵ Similarly, in Comm. Am., lib. 3, prol. ll. 35–9 Jerome explains that he has commented on the Minor Prophets out of their canonical order: Praepostero ordine atque confuso duodecim prophetarum opus et coepimus, et Christo adiuvante, complemus. Non enim a primo usque ad novissimum, iuxta ordinem quo leguntur, sed ut potuimus, et ut rogati sumus, ita eos disseruimus. ⁴⁶ B. M. Metzger, The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin, Development, and Significance (Oxford, 1987), 312–14; L. M. McDonald, The Formation of the Biblical Canon, vol. 2: The New Testament: Its Authority and Canonicity (London, 2017), 226; E. L. Gallagher and J. D. Meade, The Biblical Canon Lists from Early Christianity: Texts and Analysis (Oxford, 2017). In some manuscripts, however, Hebrews appears last, after Philemon, because its status as an authentic Pauline letter was seen by some in the early church as being ambiguous. On the earliest canonical collections of Paul’s epistles, see further D. Trobisch, Paul’s Letter Collection: Tracing the Origins (Minneapolis, 1994), 1–27; J. Schröter, “Sammlungen der Paulusbriefe und die Entstehung des neutestamentlichen Kanons,” in J. Schröter, S. Butticaz, and A. Dettwiler (eds.), Receptions of Paul in Early Christianity: The Person of Paul and His Writings through the Eyes of His Early Interpreters (Berlin, 2018), 799–822. ⁴⁷ Pauci admodum dies sunt quod epistulam Pauli ad Philemonem interpretatus ad Galatas transcenderam multis retrorsum in medio praetermissis (Comm. Gal., lib. 1, prol. ll. 1–3). ⁴⁸ Additional evidence that the Philemon commentary came before the Ephesians one is Jerome’s cross-referencing of it in Comm. Eph. 3.1–4: Vinctum autem Iesu Christi Paulum esse pro gentibus, potest et de martyrio intellegi quod, Romae in vincla coniectus, hanc epistulam miserit eo tempore quo ad Philemonem et ad Colossenses et ad Philippenses in alio loco scriptas esse monstravimus. The allusion

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these two commentaries, like the one between the Philemon and Galatians ones, was “a few days,” as he indicates in the first Ephesians preface.⁴⁹ Judging by its sheer size, we can assume that the Ephesians commentary, like the Galatians one, took several weeks to complete. At last Jerome came to Titus, and he gives us not one but two testimonia about its relative date of composition. In Comm. Tit. 1.10–11 he makes the passing comment that he composed his commentary on Galatians “a few months ago,”⁵⁰ and several pages later he cross-references this same commentary.⁵¹ Moreover, who was the commentaries’ intended audience? The most immediate one obviously was Paula and Eustochium, the joint dedicatees of all four. Jerome in fact is the only one in the late antique Latin cadre of Pauline commentators to dedicate his commentaries to named individuals, a (compulsory) gesture he made in recognition of their literary patronage of him.⁵² It is not just in the prefaces but also in the commentaries themselves that he directly addresses Paula and Eustochium. One example is the above-quoted passage from the opening of his Philemon commentary and another is found in his Titus commentary, when he discusses the Mosaic laws on theft and does a personalized call-out to both women: “I recall that I recently explained these things to you (vobis) on Leviticus.”⁵³ It is clear from his various Pauline prefaces that Jerome envisaged also an audience extending well beyond rural Bethlehem to Rome, his recent former base of operations. He indirectly designates Marcella, one of his main literary patrons there,⁵⁴ as an honorary dedicatee of his Galatians and Ephesians commentaries, because he counted on her to facilitate the dissemination and favorable reception of them within the orbit of her social network,⁵⁵ which would have consisted of educated elites. By the same token, Jerome seems to have expected that his commentaries would reach a more general, non-elite audience as well.⁵⁶ This, at

here is to Comm. Phlm. 1–3: Scribit igitur ad Philemonem, Romae vinctus in carcere, quo tempore mihi videntur ad Philippenses, Colossenses et Ephesios epistulae esse dictatae. ⁴⁹ Iam ad Galatas orantibus vobis ante paucos dies quid nobis videretur expressimus, nunc ad Ephesios transeundum est (Comm. Eph., lib. 1, prol. ll. 69–71). ⁵⁰ Ante paucos menses tria volumina in epistulae ad Galatas explanatione dictavimus. ⁵¹ Quomodo autem vel Cretenses mendaces et stulti Galatae, vel dura cervice Israhel, vel unaquaeque provincia proprio vitio denotetur, in epistula Pauli ad Galatas disseruimus (Comm. Tit. 1.12–14). ⁵² All of Jerome’s biblical commentaries have dedicatees. Not all contemporary Christian authors, however, followed this custom. For example, only two of Ambrose’s works have dedicatees (De fide and De apologia prophetae David). Augustine, too, rarely dedicated his writings to others, and he did not name any dedicatees for his Galatians commentary, though he seems to have composed it for his parishioners and fellow monks; see E. Plumer, Augustine’s Commentary on Galatians: Introduction, Text, Translation, and Notes (Oxford, 2003), 71–88. Even though Pelagius does not name any dedicatees for his Pauline commentaries, he, like Jerome, wrote for a primarily upper-class readership; see T. de Bruyn, Pelagius’s Commentary on St Paul’s Epistle to the Romans (Oxford, 1993), 11–12. ⁵³ De quibus nuper vobis in Levitico exposuisse me memini (Comm. Tit. 2.9–10). ⁵⁴ Cain, The Letters of Jerome, 68–98. ⁵⁵ See Chapter 2. ⁵⁶ Cf. S. A. Cooper, Metaphysics and Morals in Marius Victorinus’ Commentary on the Letter to the Ephesians (New York, 1995), 2, for the suggestion that Marius Victorinus intended his Pauline commentaries for use “outside the studies of reasonably well-educated churchmen.”

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any rate, is the thrust of a remark he makes that qualifies an interpretation he has just given, a follow-up explanation he says he offers “for the sake of the simpler ones” (propter simpliciores);⁵⁷ simpliciores is his standard term for Christians with little or no formal education.⁵⁸ Moreover, in his second Ephesians preface, when he speaks in passing about the scope of his readership, he mentions Marcella (illam), Paula and Eustochium (vos), and “any who will happen to read” (si qui forte lecturi sunt) his commentaries.⁵⁹ Why did Jerome undertake a major interpretive project on Paul at this moment in his career? He seems to close the case by answering this question in his own words. In his first Ephesians preface he addresses Paula and Eustochium as follows: “You yourselves know that you have compelled me, who was unwilling and reluctant, to undertake this work of interpretation.”⁶⁰ He likewise opens his Philemon commentary with the claim that these same women “repeatedly entreated” and even “forced” him to comment on Paul despite the fact that he “resolutely refused to do so.”⁶¹ Taken purely at face value, both of these remarks are straightforward enough: Paula and Eustochium were solely responsible for the idea that he comment on Paul, and he obliged only because they left him with no other choice. Such statements, however, need to be situated within their ancient rhetorical context. Read in this light, they conspicuously resemble the very kind of contrived protests about compulsory commissions that are commonplace in Greek and Latin prefaces. In the dedicatory prefaces to his various works Jerome frequently makes staged complaints about how his commissioning patrons have forced him to produce the writings in question. Such recusationes are performative rhetoric. They partly are a function of the traditional patron-client relationship dynamic and enable Jerome to pay homage to patrons whose financial support made his literary enterprises possible in the first place, and they also remind these patrons of their implied obligation to facilitate the dissemination of the writings they have sponsored. For the benefit of outside readers, this topos also gave Jerome, a provincial parvenu, a certain respectability by representing him as a cliens whose services were sought out eagerly by distinguished Christians. On an apologetic level, it was designed to ⁵⁷ Qui vero de superioribus disputat et concentum mundi omniumque creaturarum ordinem atque concordiam subtilis disputator edisserit, iste spiritale canticum canit. Vel certe, ut propter simpliciores manifestius quod volumus eloquamur, psalmus ad corpus, canticum refertur ad mentem (Comm. Eph. 5.19). ⁵⁸ Cain, “Jerome,” 289. Origen similarly designated uneducated Christians as οἱ ἁπλούστεροι; see G. af Hällström, Fides simpliciorum according to Origen of Alexandria (Helsinki, 1984). ⁵⁹ Quapropter et illam et vos et si qui forte lecturi sunt, in commune precor ut sciatis . . . (Comm. Eph., lib. 2, prol. ll. 12–13). ⁶⁰ Scitis enim ipsae quod ad hoc me explanationum opus invitum et retractantem compuleritis (Comm. Eph., lib. 1, prol. ll. 42–3). ⁶¹ Praepostero ordine atque perverso in epistulas Pauli dictari a me vobis placuit. Nam cum id crebro, o Paula et Eustochium, peteretis ut facerem, et ego obnixe ne facerem recusarem . . . ut dissererem coegistis (Comm. Phlm. 1–3).

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insulate his work from criticism by pinning the (allegedly) sole responsibility for it on their commissioners.⁶² In Jerome’s hands such recusationes had another important desired rhetorical effect, and that was to downplay any possible appearance of blind literary ambition, something considered anathema for an ascetic monk.⁶³ None of this is of course to deny that a set of commentaries on the Pauline epistles was somewhere on Paula’s wish list at the time, or perhaps even at the very top. It is simply to point out that Jerome himself very likely exercised more autonomy around the genesis of this project than is suggested by a surface reading of his stylized rhetoric. In fact, it is conceivable—quite so, to my mind—that the idea for a multi-volume exposition of Paul’s epistles actually originated with him and that a receptive Paula heartily encouraged it and agreed to underwrite the considerable costs involved in obtaining ample writing materials and equipping him with the proper research apparatus by having copies made of numerous Greek patristic commentaries on Paul, especially Origen’s voluminous ones.⁶⁴ It is precisely this Origenian connection that promisingly suggests the initiative coming more from Jerome’s side than from Paula’s. For, in the years leading up to 386, one of his avowed missions was to make Origen’s exegesis available to western readers, both through direct Latin translation and through creative adaptation of Origenian material in his own original exegetical writings.⁶⁵ Viewed from this angle, his four Pauline commentaries, which by his own admission are very heavily derivative of Origen’s,⁶⁶ take shape as the most substantial installment to date of his program of Latinizing Origen. Given Jerome’s reliance on Origen as an exegetical guide for his own work on Paul, not to mention his documented ambition to represent himself as the Origenes Latinus,⁶⁷ an intriguing question arises. Origen wrote commentaries on Galatians, Ephesians, Titus, and Philemon, but he also commented—in a mix of ⁶² See, for example, the following charge Jerome gives to Pammachius, the commissioner of his commentary on Hosea: Tu autem, Pammachi, qui nos facere praecepisti hoc, necesse est ut fautor sis imperii tui, et Amafinios ac Rabirios nostri temporis, qui de Graecis bonis, Latina faciunt non bona; et homines eloquentissimos, ipsi elingues transferunt, evangelico calces pede; viperamque et scorpium iuxta fabulas poetarum, aduras cauterio, solea conteras; et scylleos canes ac mortifera carmina sirenarum surda aure pertranseas; ut pariter audire et nosse valeamus quid vaticinetur Osee propheta, in cuius explanationem secundum dictabimus librum. Cumque tuo laeter adminiculo, et in prima urbe terrarum, primum et nobilitate et religione habere me gaudeam defensorem . . . (Comm. Os., lib. 2, prol. ll. 179–89); cf. Comm. Os., lib. 3, prol. ll. 136–7: Cumque apertum fautorem pro iure amicitiae esse te gaudeam . . . ⁶³ Cf. A. Cain, The Greek Historia Monachorum in Aegypto: Monastic Hagiography in the Late Fourth Century (Oxford, 2016), 54–7. ⁶⁴ In some cases Jerome’s dedicatees simply invited him to undertake a given project and then gave him encouragement and financial assistance to complete it. See Y.-M. Duval (ed.), Jérôme, Commentaire sur Jonas: introduction, texte critique, traduction, et commentaire (Paris, 1985), 39. For an example of how he entertained requests from literary patrons, but only if such requests did not interfere with his existing plans, see Comm. Es., lib. 5, prol. ll. 15–47. ⁶⁵ See Chapter 6. ⁶⁶ See below, p. 172. ⁶⁷ M. Vessey, “Jerome’s Origen: The Making of a Christian Literary Persona,” StudPatr 28 (1993): 135–45.

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formal commentaries and exegetical homilies—on most of the Pauline epistles as well.⁶⁸ Did Jerome intend to follow suit and comment on more epistles than just these four and perhaps even the rest of the Pauline corpus? The simple answer is that we do not know. Nevertheless, certain circumstantial considerations seem to tip the scales in favor of him intending to confine his labors to only four epistles. For one thing, he does not drop the slightest hint in his Pauline commentaries or their prefaces, nor in any other extant writing, about continuing his work on Paul. This silence is potentially telling for the simple reason that he was in the habit of announcing major and even minor works in progress as well as future projects, to keep his readers apprised of his ever-growing literary output.⁶⁹ Another consideration has to do with timing. By the time Jerome was working on the last of his four commentaries (Titus), the close of that year’s sailing season rapidly was approaching. Between early November and April, the Mediterranean Sea was mare clausum, meaning that far-offshore travel which was not absolutely necessary typically was suspended due to volatile seasonal weather conditions.⁷⁰ One can imagine how Jerome, facing this looming deadline, was keen to dispatch his work to Rome.⁷¹ His sense of urgency would only have been heightened by an eagerness to reconnect, sooner rather than later, with his Roman literary circle via Marcella. Several months earlier he had reached out to her, evidently in vain, in a letter of invitation to Bethlehem,⁷² and now he would try again to cultivate her as a patron by offering his new body of exegetical work on Paul ostensibly as a way to console her for the recent death of her mother, Albina.⁷³ Moreover, if he had planned to write more Pauline commentaries, he would have had the safety net of the next several months to complete them and then to send them to Rome once the sailing season reopened in the spring. Nothing at all materialized, however. It is not that he was distracted in the interim by other scholarly projects, either: almost a full year would pass before his next literary production, a translation of Didymus’s treatise On the Holy Spirit he had begun in Rome, would come to ⁶⁸ Commentaries on Romans, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 & 2 Thessalonians, Titus, Philemon, and Hebrews(?). Homilies on 1 & 2 Corinthians, Galatians, 1 & 2 Thessalonians, and Titus. ⁶⁹ E.g., Comm. Ion., prol. ll. 1–8; Comm. Hiez., lib. 1, prol. ll. 30–1; lib. 11, prol. ll. 4–5; lib. 14, prol. ll. 21–6; Comm. Mt., prol. ll. 104–10, 121–5; Comm. Gal. 2.11–13; V. Mal. 1.3; Ep. 65.22.4. ⁷⁰ E. de Saint-Denis, “Mare clausum,” REL 25 (1947): 196–209; J. Rougé, “La navigation hivernale sous l’empire romain,” REA 54 (1952): 316–25; Rougé, Recherches sur l’organisation du commerce maritime en Méditerranée sous l’empire romain (Paris, 1966), 32–5; L. Casson, Ships and Seamanship in the Ancient World (Baltimore, 1995), 270–3. ⁷¹ As a comparandum from later in Jerome’s life, as Easter of 398 approached and the sailing season was about to reopen, Eusebius of Cremona pressured him to dictate a commentary on Matthew in a tight two-week time frame. Despite the fact that he was still recovering from a prolonged illness, Jerome was able to complete the commentary in a hurry, but only because his team of stenographers worked overtime (Comm. Mt., prol. ll. 98–103). ⁷² Ep. 46. See P. Nautin, “La lettre de Paule et Eustochium à Marcelle (Jérôme, Ep. 46),” Augustinianum 24 (1984): 441–8. This letter was drafted by Jerome but sent in the names of Paula and Eustochium; see N. Adkin, “The Letter of Paula and Eustochium to Marcella: Some Notes,” Maia 51 (1999): 97–110. ⁷³ See below, pp. 57–8.

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fruition.⁷⁴ The fact that he did not ride the wave of momentum and continue his work on Paul in the shorter term suggests that he regarded his four commentaries as constituting a sufficient contribution in their own right to Pauline studies.⁷⁵ Taking this inference as my starting point, in the remainder of this chapter I propose reasons why Jerome chose to focus on Galatians, Ephesians, Titus, and Philemon. My aim is not to propose every single conceivable reason but instead to track what in my view are the most discernible signposts he has left behind in the text. Generally speaking, these signposts come in two basic forms: direct and indirect statements of authorial intention in the commentaries’ prefaces, and prominent topical emphases peculiar to the individual commentaries.

Philemon: Canonicity, Apostolicity, and Utility Philemon, one of the so-called “prison epistles” along with Colossians, Ephesians, and Philippians, is the shortest of the extant letters traditionally attributed to Paul, containing as it does a mere 335 Greek words.⁷⁶ Few biblical scholars today dispute its Pauline authorship.⁷⁷ Nevertheless, there has been extensive debate about how to view it within the broader Pauline corpus. Some see it as an outlier, a private letter to an individual about strictly personal matters as opposed to a public letter to a specific church dealing with issues of importance to the community in question.⁷⁸ Others argue that it is addressed to Philemon and other

⁷⁴ P. Nautin, “L’activité littéraire de Jérôme de 387 à 392,” RThPh 115 (1983): 247–59 (257–8); cf. L. Doutreleau (ed.), Didyme l’Aveugle: Traité du Saint-Esprit: introduction, texte critique, traduction, notes et index, SC 386 (Paris, 1992); A. Cesareo, “Il Liber de Spiritu sancto di San Girolamo: una versione latina dell’opera perduta di Didimo Cieco,” Schol(i)a 11 (2009): 31–49. ⁷⁵ That he never resumed his work on Paul even in the longer term also is striking, for after all this would not have been the only larger-scale project he would resume after a longer than expected interval. In Comm. Ion., prol. ll. 1–9 he speaks of interruptions in his exegesis of the Minor Prophets: Triennium circiter fluxit, postquam quinque prophetas interpretatus sum: Michaeam, Nahum, Abacuc, Sophoniam, Aggaeum; et alio opere detentus, non potui implere quod coeperam: scripsi enim librum de illustribus viris, et adversum Iovinianum duo volumina; apologeticum quoque, et de optimo genere interpretandi ad Pammachium, et ad Nepotianum, vel de Nepotiano duos libros, et alia quae enumerare longum est. Igitur tanto post tempore, quasi quodam postliminio a Iona interpretandi sumens principium . . . ⁷⁶ Despite its brevity, numerous scholars have detected in it a deliberate rhetorical undercurrent; see J. White, “The Structural Analysis of Philemon: A Point of Departure in the Formal Analysis of the Pauline Letter,” SBL Seminar Papers 1 (1971): 1–4; F. F. Church, “Rhetorical Structure and Design in Paul’s Letter to Philemon,” HThR 71 (1978): 17–33; J. Heil, “The Chiastic Structure and Meaning of Paul’s Letter to Philemon,” Biblica 82 (2001): 178–206; P. Lampe, “ ‘You Will Do Even More than I Say’: On the Rhetorical Function of Stylistic Form in the Letter to Philemon,” in D. F. Tolmie (ed.), Philemon in Perspective: Interpreting a Pauline Letter (Berlin, 2010), 79–112; C. Frilingos, “ ‘For My Child, Onesimus’: Paul and Domestic Power in Philemon,” JBL 119 (2000): 91–104. ⁷⁷ J. D. G. Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle (Grand Rapids, 1998), 299–300; S. McKnight, The Letter to Philemon (Grand Rapids, 2017), 37. ⁷⁸ E.g., G. Bornkamm, Paulus (Stuttgart, 1969), 100; E. Schweizer, Der Brief an die Kolosser (Einsiedeln, 1976), 27–8; R. Wilson, Colossians and Philemon (London, 2005), 317: “Philemon is unique in the main corpus of the Pauline letters (excluding the Pastorals) in that it is addressed not to a community but to an individual.”

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named members of the Christian congregation (ἐκκλησία) associated with his house (οἴκος), and that it therefore deals with concerns within a specific communal religious situation.⁷⁹ In the early church, too, Philemon sparked vigorous debate, though of a markedly different kind. It was excluded from the canon by some—on the broadest known scale, by the Syriac church in the third and fourth centuries.⁸⁰ By the mid- to late fourth century, however, it generally was accepted by the vast majority of mainstream churches as a canonical document.⁸¹ Even still, many Christians regarded it as an inferior New Testament writing, especially when compared to Paul’s other epistles. Some, for instance, bemoaned that it is too light on theology,⁸² a criticism echoed by not a few modern biblical scholars.⁸³ The general complaint was that because its subject matter is trivial, it lacks any real instructional value for the Christian reader.⁸⁴ This prevalent attitude could well explain why there is no evidence for it at the earliest developmental stages of the New Testament canon. As Wilson puts it: “Nobody had any occasion to mention it. There is no doctrinal content which might have led to its being quoted, no contribution to the evolution of Paul’s theology, or of Christian theology in general.”⁸⁵ The debate about Philemon’s relevance intensified in the late fourth century; or, at least, this is the period for which we are best informed about the status quaestionis.⁸⁶ We gain glimpses of its problematic reception through the pleadings

⁷⁹ E.g., M. Barth and H. Blanke, The Letter to Philemon: A New Translation with Notes and Commentary (Grand Rapids, 2000), 112–15; J. A. Harrill, Slaves in the New Testament: Literary, Social, and Moral Dimensions (Minneapolis, 2006), 14; K. Shaner, Enslaved Leadership in Early Christianity (Oxford, 2018), 56–7. J. D. G. Dunn, The Epistle to the Colossians and to Philemon: A Commentary on the Greek Text (Grand Rapids, 1996), 299, strikes a sensible balance: “The letter to Philemon is unique within the New Testament. It is the only genuinely personal, that is, person-toperson, letter, even though the wider community is also in view explicitly in vv. 2, 22, and 25 and in the background throughout.” ⁸⁰ Metzger, The Canon of the New Testament, 219. ⁸¹ E.g., in Egypt in 367, in Rome in 382, and in Carthage and Hippo in 395 and 397 (Barth and Blanke, The Letter to Philemon, 105). ⁸² So J. B. Lightfoot, Saint Paul’s Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon (London, 1879), 316–17: “This letter taught them nothing about questions of theological interest, nothing about matters of ecclesiastical discipline.” ⁸³ For attempts to buck this trend, see M. Soards, “Some Neglected Theological Dimensions of Paul’s Letter to Philemon,” PRS 17 (1990): 209–19; T. Still, “Philemon among the Letters of Paul: Theological and Canonical Considerations,” RestQ 47 (2005): 133–42. ⁸⁴ H. B. Swete (ed.), Theodori Episcopi Mopsuesteni in Epistolas B. Pauli commentarii: The Latin Version with the Greek Fragments, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1880–2), 2.261; F. F. Bruce, The Epistle to the Colossians, to Philemon, and to the Ephesians (Grand Rapids, 1984), 191–3; N. A. Dahl, “The Particularity of the Pauline Epistles as a Problem in the Ancient Church,” in D. Hellholm (ed.), N. A. Dahl, Studies in Ephesians (Tübingen, 2000), 168–9. ⁸⁵ Colossians and Philemon, 317. On Philemon’s early canonical history, see W. Schenk, “Der Brief des Paulus an Philemon in der neueren Forschung (1945–1987),” ANRW II.25.4 (1987): 3439–95. ⁸⁶ It is perhaps notable in this context that apart from a lost third-century commentary on it by Origen (see R. Heine, “In Search of Origen’s Commentary on Philemon,” HThR 93 (2000): 117–33), there is no evidence of substantial patristic discussion of Philemon until the late fourth century; see M. Mitchell, “John Chrysostom on Philemon: A Second Look,” HThR 88 (1995): 135–48 (145).

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of its contemporary apologists.⁸⁷ John Chrysostom was one of the more spirited among these defenders. In the introduction to his homilies on Philemon, which he preached in Constantinople probably in the last decade of the fourth century, he says that those who deny that this epistle offers any practical benefit (κέρδος) to readers are deserving of countless censures (μυρίων ἐγκλημάτων ἄξιοι).⁸⁸ He argues that the very minutiae that give these skeptics pause are what profit us, for the epistle offers precious behind-the-scenes access to Paul’s daily life, allowing us to observe his private virtue in action: For if only seeing places where they sat or were imprisoned, inanimate places, we often transport our minds there and imagine their virtue and are aroused and become more zealous, this would much more be the case if we heard about their words and other deeds . . . For whenever someone lives a spiritual life, the mannerisms, gait, words, and actions of such a person, and absolutely everything about him, profit the hearers. Εἰ γὰρ τόπους ὁρῶντες μόνον, ἔνθα ἐκάθισαν ἢ ἐδέθησαν, τόπους ἀψύχους, πολλάκις ἐκεῖ παραπέμπομεν τὴν διάνοιαν, καὶ φανταζόμεθα αὐτῶν τὴν ἀρετὴν, καὶ διανιστάμεθα καὶ προθυμότεροι γινόμεθα· εἰ τὰ ῥήματα καὶ τὰς ἑτέρας αὐτῶν πράξεις ἠκούσαμεν, πολλῷ μᾶλλον . . . Ὅταν γάρ τις πνευματικῶς ζῇ, καὶ σχήματα καὶ βαδίσματα, καὶ ῥήματα καὶ πράγματα τοῦ τοιούτου, καὶ πάντα ἁπλῶς τοὺς ἀκούοντας ὠφελεῖ, καὶ οὐδὲν ἐμποδίζει οὐδὲ κώλυμα γίνεται.⁸⁹

Chrysostom goes on to pinpoint what in his view are Philemon’s three critical takeaway lessons. First, Paul demonstrates by his own example that Christians must be diligent and conscientious in everything they do. Second, masters should not despair over misbehaving slaves but remain hopeful that they will be reformed. Third, we are instructed not to remove a slave from his master without the latter’s consent.⁹⁰ Theodore of Mopsuestia makes his own case for Philemon in the preface to his commentary on it.⁹¹ In fact, we learn from this preface that the dedicatee, a certain ⁸⁷ For a selective overview, see P. Decock, “The Reception of the Letter to Philemon in the Early Church: Origen, Jerome, Chrysostom, and Augustine,” in Tolmie (ed.), Philemon in Perspective, 273–87. ⁸⁸ Hom. Phlm., argum. (PG 62:702). ⁸⁹ Hom. Phlm., argum. (PG 62:702–3). ⁹⁰ Εἰ γὰρ Παῦλος ὑπὲρ δραπέτου, ὑπὲρ λῃστοῦ καὶ κλέπτου τοσαύτην ποιεῖται πρόνοιαν, καὶ οὐ παραιτεῖται μετὰ τοσούτων αὐτὸν ἐγκωμίων παραπέμψαι, οὐδὲ αἰσχύνεται, πολλῷ μᾶλλον οὐδὲ ἡμᾶς προσήκει ῥᾳθύμους εἶναι περὶ τὰ τοιαῦτα. Δεύτερον, ὅτι τὸ δουλικὸν γένος οὐ δεῖ ἀπογινώσκειν, κἂν εἰ ἐσχάτην ἐλάσῃ κακίαν. Εἰ γὰρ ὁ κλέπτης, ὁ δραπέτης οὕτως ἐγένετο ἐνάρετος, ὡς θέλειν τὸν Παῦλον κοιν ωνὸν αὐτὸν καταστῆσαι, καὶ γράφων ἔλεγεν· Ἵνα ὑπὲρ σοῦ διακονῇ μοι· πολλῷ μᾶλλον ἐλευθέρους ἀπογινώσκειν οὐ χρή. Τρίτον, ὅτι τοὺς δούλους ἀποσπᾷν τῶν δεσποτῶν οὐ προσήκει (Hom. Phlm., argum. [PG 62:703–4]). For an analysis of Chrysostom’s treatment of slavery in his Philemon homilies, see C. de Wet, “Honour Discourse in John Chrysostom’s Exegesis of the Letter to Philemon,” in Tolmie (ed.), Philemon in Perspective, 317–31. ⁹¹ For an exemplary study of Theodore’s commentary on Philemon, see J. T. Fitzgerald, “Theodore of Mopsuestia on Paul’s Letter to Philemon,” in Tolmie (ed.), Philemon in Perspective, 333–63. On

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Cyrinus, had been skeptical about Philemon’s value: “What profit could be acquired from [this epistle] needs to be explained more clearly because I do not think that it is able to be recognized by all. You yourself especially have asked that I discuss this problem.”⁹² Theodore, taking Cyrinus’s mandate seriously, devotes the rest of his rather lengthy preface to building the case for Philemon’s relevance. He boils down his argument to one main thesis. Philemon teaches officers of the church how they ought to act towards fellow Christians, and in this respect its message is pertinent to readers in his own time.⁹³ Pelagius veers in this same direction when he says that the epistle’s essential goal is to teach us to exercise humility in our dealings with fellow Christians.⁹⁴ If Philemon’s utility was not self-evident to Cyrinus, it was not immediately obvious to the dedicatees of Jerome’s commentary on Philemon either. In the opening lines of it he addresses Paula and Eustochium: “You compelled me to comment on the short [epistle] and the one that you regarded as ranking last in terms of its number of verses, meaning, and canonical order.”⁹⁵ Despite its brevity, the preface to Jerome’s commentary on it is inordinately long. In Bucchi’s recent critical edition it occupies four pages, whereas the commentary spans a little under twenty-six pages.⁹⁶ This disproportionality is in itself striking and represents an anomaly within Jerome’s opus Paulinum. Even more telling as a signpost of Jerome’s authorial intent is the actual thrust of the preface: a defense of the canonicity and utility of Philemon against critics who deny either one or both of these things.⁹⁷

Theodore’s Pauline exegesis more generally, see U. Wickert, Studien zu den Pauluskommentaren Theodors von Mopsuestia: Als Beitrag zum Verständnis der antiochenischen Theologie (Berlin, 1962) and “Die Persönlichkeit des Paulus in den Paulus kommentaren Theodors von Mopsuestia,” ZNTW 53 (1962): 51–66. ⁹² Quid vero ex ea lucri possit adquiri convenit manifestius explicari, quia nec omnibus id existimo posse esse cognitum; quod maxime etiam ipse a nobis disseri postulasti; R. A. Greer (ed. and trans.), Theodore of Mopsuestia: The Commentaries on the Minor Epistles of Paul (Atlanta, 2010), 772. ⁹³ Quae est ergo utilitas etiam huius epistulae? Vt omnes qui in ecclesiastica habentur functione, maxime illi qui praeesse ecclesiis videntur, ut sciant quemadmodum oporteat agere cum illis qui nobis fide iuncti sunt, quando vel maxime de negotiis illis agitur quae ad illos proprie pertinere videntur. Quorum utilitatem tunc maxime quis poterit perspicere, si respexerit illa quae nostris temporibus a multis geruntur (Greer, Theodore of Mopsuestia, 776). ⁹⁴ Nihil magis est in hac epistula attendendum nisi quanta humilitate discipulum deprecetur, dans nobis exemplum quid apud coaequales facere debeamus (Comm. Phlm., prol.). ⁹⁵ Parvam et quae vobis ut numero versuum, ita sensu quoque et ordine videbatur extrema, ut dissererem coegistis (Comm. Phlm. 1–3). ⁹⁶ F. Bucchi (ed.), Commentarii in epistulas Pauli apostoli ad Titum et ad Philemonem, CCSL 77C (Turnhout, 2003), 77–80 (preface), 81–106 (commentary). ⁹⁷ Jerome’s preface likely is based on the preface to Origen’s lost commentary on Philemon. See C. H. Turner, “Greek Patristic Commentaries on the Pauline Epistles,” in J. Hastings (ed.), A Dictionary of the Bible, Supplement (Edinburgh, 1898), 484–531 (496); A. von Harnack, “Origenistisches Gut von kirchengeschichtlicher Bedeutung in den Kommentaren des Hieronymus zum Philemon-, Galater-, Epheser- und Titusbrief,” in A. von Harnack, Der kirchengeschichtliche Ertrag der exegetischen Arbeiten des Origenes (Leipzig, 1919), 141–6; A. Souter, The Earliest Latin Commentaries on the Epistles of St. Paul (Oxford, 1927), 115; Nautin, “La date des commentaires,” 11; Bammel, “Origen’s Pauline

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Jerome opens the preface by summarizing his unnamed opponents’ position.⁹⁸ He mentions in passing that some reject out of hand Philemon’s Pauline authorship,⁹⁹ but he focuses his attention on the skeptics who do accept its Paulinity but do not believe that it was written under divine inspiration. Their argument, according to Jerome’s selective framing of it,¹⁰⁰ hinges on Paul’s request for Philemon to prepare lodging for him (Phlm. 22), which they claim evinces a concern with everyday practicalities that someone writing in the power of the Holy Spirit would not express. Alongside this passage they cite two other New Testament proof texts in which Paul displays his humanity (2 Tim. 4.13: asking Timothy for a cloak; Gal. 5.12: cursing theological enemies),¹⁰¹ and they also point out that the Old Testament prophets (Ezekiel is singled out), like the apostles, did not always speak under the direct influence of the Spirit but each of them, as soon as he uttered divinely inspired prophecies, went back to being himself—a regular person (rursum in semet revertens, homo communis).¹⁰² Moreover, in support of their argument that Philemon’s author adopts a tone that is beneath the dignified apostolic one that Paul maintains in other epistles, they point out that twice in Philemon, in the greeting (v. 1) and in its body (v. 9), Paul self-identifies not as an “apostle” but as “a prisoner of Christ Jesus.” In the second half of the preface Jerome develops his counterargument. He first defends Philemon’s canonicity by citing its catholicity: it has been accepted by all churches throughout the world.¹⁰³ He also says that if the critics reject Philemon on the basis of Paul’s request for lodging, then they should at least be consistent Prefaces,” 49. For a source-critical analysis of Jerome’s preface, see Heine, “In Search of Origen’s Commentary,” 120–6. ⁹⁸ As Heine, “In Search of Origen’s Commentary,” 125, duly reminds us, not all of these opponents in question need have fallen under the heading of “heretics,” nor need they all have belonged to one homogeneous group or sect that rejected Philemon. ⁹⁹ His et ceteris istiusmodi volunt aut epistulam non esse Pauli, quae ad Philemonem scribitur . . . (Comm. Phlm., prol. ll. 27–8). ¹⁰⁰ He admits later in the preface that his summary of their argument is not exhaustive: Non est huius temporis ad omnia respondere, quia nec omnia quae proponere illi solent intulimus (Comm. Phlm., prol. ll. 53–5). ¹⁰¹ Qui nolunt inter epistulas Pauli eam recipere quae ad Philemonem scribitur, aiunt non semper apostolum, nec omnia Christo in se loquente dixisse; quia, neque humana imbecillitas unum tenorem Sancti Spiritus ferre potuisset, neque huius corpusculi necessitates sub praesentia semper Domini complerentur, velut disponere prandium, cibum capere, esurire, satiari, ingesta digerere, exhausta complere. Taceo de ceteris quae exquisite et coacte replicant, ut adfirment fuisse aliquod tempus in quo Paulus dicere non auderet: Vivo iam non ego, vivit autem in me Christus; et illud: An experimentum quaeritis eius qui in me loquitur Christus? Quale, inquiunt, experimentum Christi est audire: Penulam quam reliqui Troade apud Carpum, veniens te cum adfer; et illud ad Galatas: Vtinam et excidantur qui vos conturbant; et in hac ipsa epistula: Simul autem et praepara mihi hospitium? (Comm. Phlm., prol. ll. 1–16). ¹⁰² Hoc autem non solum apostolis, sed prophetis quoque similiter accidisse, unde saepius scriptum feratur: Factum est verbum Domini ad Hiezechiel, sive ad quemlibet alium prophetarum; quia, post expletum vaticinium rursum in semet revertens, homo communis fieret . . . (Comm. Phlm., prol. ll. 16–20). ¹⁰³ Qui germanae auctoritatis eam esse defendunt, dicunt numquam in toto orbe a cunctis ecclesiis fuisse susceptam, nisi Pauli apostoli crederetur (Comm. Phlm., prol. ll. 31–3).

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and reject the other epistles from which they cite examples of his humana imbecillitas (Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Timothy, Galatians). Conversely, if they accept these other epistles, then they should accept Philemon as well. Jerome goes on to adduce the fact that Marcion, who otherwise plays his main heretical foil in the Pauline commentaries,¹⁰⁴ included Philemon in his own abridged version of the New Testament.¹⁰⁵ This situational praise of Marcion has a farcical ring to it and is meant to shame Philemon’s naysayers: even the worst arch-heretic of them all had enough sense to acknowledge its canonicity! Jerome next turns to the skeptics’ claim that Philemon is excessively short and deals with too trifling a topic to offer any real instructional value for the general Christian reader: When they accuse the epistle of having no depth, it seems to me that they expose their own ignorance, failing to understand the power and wisdom that lie hidden in the individual passages. With the aid of your prayers, and with the Holy Spirit himself guiding us, we will attempt to explain these things in the contexts in which they were written. But if brevity is held in contempt, then let there be contempt for Obadiah, Nahum, Zephaniah, and the other twelve [Minor] Prophets, in whom such amazing and sublime things are recorded that you do not know whether you should wonder at the brevity of their words or the loftiness of their ideas. If those who repudiate the epistle to Philemon understood this, they would never look down on its brevity, which has been enwrapped in the Gospel’s splendor instead of the Law’s tedious burdens. Mihi videtur, dum epistulam simplicitatis arguunt, suam imperitiam prodere, non intellegentes quid in singulis sermonibus virtutis et sapientiae lateat. Quae, orantibus vobis et ipso nobis Sancto Spiritu suggerente, quo scripta sunt suis locis explanare conabimur. Si autem brevitas habetur contemptui, contemnatur Abdias, Naum, Sophonias et alii duodecim prophetarum in quibus tam mira et tam grandia sunt quae feruntur, ut nescias utrum brevitatem sermonum in illis admirari debeas, an magnitudinem sensuum. Quod si intellegerent hi qui epistulam ad Philemonem repudiant, numquam brevitatem despicerent quae pro laciniosis legis oneribus evangelico decore conscripta est.¹⁰⁶

Jerome advances an implicit twofold claim here. First, because it is a divinely inspired writing, Philemon is as worthy of exegetical analysis as other shorter biblical books (i.e., the Minor Prophets) whose canon-worthiness is unquestioned ¹⁰⁴ See Chapter 5; cf. Cain, Commentary on Galatians, 47–9. On Jerome’s heresiology more generally, see B. Jeanjean, Saint Jérôme et l’hérésie (Paris, 1999). ¹⁰⁵ Jerome may have in mind Tertullian’s quip that its brevitas is the only thing that saved Philemon from Marcion’s “falsifying hands” (falsariae manus); cf. Tertullian, Adv. Marc. 5.21: Soli huic epistulae brevitas sua profuit, ut falsarias manus Marcionis evaderet. ¹⁰⁶ Comm. Phlm., prol. ll. 65–76.

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because, as is the case with these others, so much “power and wisdom” are baked into their texts. Second, Jerome himself is competent to uncover and decode its hidden mysteries because he has the aid of not only the prayers of Paula and Eustochium but also the very Spirit who inspired Paul to write this epistle.¹⁰⁷ He essentially is making an indirect invocation of the Holy Spirit as his divine Muse,¹⁰⁸ and in so doing he floats the suggestion that his commentaries draw from the well of divine inspiration. Thus, he masterfully combines his defense of Philemon’s canonicity with a subtle yet powerful, and indeed virtually irrefutable, affirmation of his own exegetical authority. Throughout his commentary Jerome develops his claim that Philemon is an inspired document primarily by emphasizing Paul’s apostolic status.¹⁰⁹ He already had set the tone at the tail end of the preface with the following transition into the commentary proper: “But now the Apostle’s own words ought to be presented. They begin as follows.”¹¹⁰ It is significant that he refers to Paul by the epithet “the Apostle,” which was extremely common among early Christian writers and was but one manifestation of the exalted status that Paul enjoyed in later centuries as the first and greatest of all Christian theologians and as the most recognizable apostolic face of the Gospel.¹¹¹ Out of his eight Pauline prefaces (one each for ¹⁰⁷ Cf. below, pp. 62–3. ¹⁰⁸ On this exordial trope, see E. R. Curtius, Europaïsche Literatur und lateinisches Mittelalter (Bern, 1948), 240–1; T. Janson, Latin Prose Prefaces: Studies in Literary Conventions (Stockholm, 1964), 144–5; P. Klopsch, Einführung in die Dichtungslehren des lateinischen Mittelalters (Darmstadt, 1980), 21–30; cf. Juvencus, Evang. lib. IV, praef. 25–7; Ambrose, Off. 1.25; Paulinus of Nola, Carm. 23.20–1; John Cassian, Coll. 10.1; Possidius, V. Aug., praef. 2; Sidonius, Carm. 16.5–6; Theodoret, Hist. rel. 1.1. Jerome deploys this Spirit-as-Muse trope in other prefaces as well. See, e.g., the opening of the prologue to his Vita Hilarionis: Scripturus vitam beati Hilarionis habitatorem eius invoco Spiritum Sanctum, ut qui illi virtutes largitus est, mihi ad narrandas eas sermonem tribuat, ut facta dictis exaequentur. In Adv. Helv. 2 he calls upon the entire Trinity: Sanctus mihi invocandus est Spiritus, ut beatae Mariae virginitatem suo sensu, ore meo defendat. Invocandus est Dominus Iesus, ut sacri ventris hospitium, cuius decem mensibus inhabitator fuit, ab omni concubitus suspicione tueatur. Ipse quoque Deus Pater est imprecandus, ut matrem Filii sui, virginem ostendat fuisse post partum, quae fuit mater antequam nupta. Cf. Comm. Am., lib. 2, prol. ll. 34–8: Jerome invokes Solomon’s Lady Wisdom as his Muse. See also Comm. Es., lib. 7, prol. l. 4: his interpretive work relies on the prayers of Eustochium and the help of Christ himself. ¹⁰⁹ Other patristic commentators likewise emphasize Paul’s apostolic persona in Philemon. Theodoret of Cyrrhus finds in his willingness to write on behalf of Onesimus a strong affirmation of his apostolicity: “Did this man, who was not without compassion for a runaway, a worthless slave and petty thief, and instead accorded him salvation through the spiritual teaching—did he ever bypass anybody?” (Ὁ δὲ οἰκέτου δραπέτου, καὶ μαστιγίου, καὶ λωποδύτου μὴ ἀμελήσας, ἀλλὰ διὰ τῆς πνευματικῆς αὐτὸν διδασκαλίας ἀξιώσας τῆς σωτηρίας, τίνος ἂν ἠμέλησε πώποτε; (Comm. Phlm., prol. [PG 82:872]). For Origen’s general emphasis on Paul’s authority as an apostle, see Cocchini, Il Paolo, 56–9. ¹¹⁰ Sed iam ipsa apostoli verba ponenda sunt, quae ita incipiunt (Comm. Phlm., prol. ll. 77–8). ¹¹¹ Wiles, The Divine Apostle, 14–25; C. Roetzel, Paul: The Man and the Myth (Columbia, 1998), 152–77; B. White, Remembering Paul: Ancient and Modern Contests over the Image of the Apostle (Oxford, 2014), 7–10; cf. W. S. Babcock (ed.), Paul and the Legacies of Paul (Dallas, 1990); D. L. Eastman, Paul the Martyr: The Cult of the Apostle Paul in the Latin West (Atlanta, 2011); J. L. Kovacs, “Paul the Apostle,” in P. M. Blowers and P. W. Martens (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Biblical Interpretation (Oxford, 2019), 614–25. On Paul’s reception in second-century Christian literature in particular, see E. Aleith, Paulusverständnis im ersten und zweiten Jahrhundert

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Philemon and Titus, and three each for Galatians and Ephesians), Jerome concludes only one other one, the first Galatians preface, by calling Paul “the Apostle.”¹¹² What is more, between the Philemon preface and its commentary (but not including lemmatized passages or biblical quotations), Jerome refers to Paul as apostolus (or uses the adjective apostolicus in reference to him) another thirty-two times, a hearty number of occurrences given the relative brevity of the text. By comparison, he dubs him “the Apostle” 127 times in the Galatians commentary, 91 in the Ephesians one, and 68 in the Titus one, for a grand total of 318 times in all four commentaries. Jerome drops explicit periodic reminders in his commentary that Paul wrote Philemon in his capacity as an apostle. Early on, in his comments on vv. 1–3, he seems to be responding to critics’ objection, which he mentions in the preface, that Paul twice calls himself “a prisoner of Christ Jesus.” He acknowledges that Paul technically does not characterize himself like this anywhere else, though in principle he does because he mentions in three other epistles that he is “in chains.”¹¹³ Jerome then opines that “a prisoner of Christ Jesus” is not even really a demeaning title but actually a more exalted one than “apostle” because the apostles boasted about being persecuted for Christ’s name: Now as for “prisoner of Jesus Christ” which comes next, Paul employed this epithet in no [other] epistle, though in his corpus of epistles—Ephesians, Philippians, and Colossians—he testifies that he is in chains for confessing [Christ] (cf. Eph. 3.1, 6.20; Phil. 1.7, 14; Col. 4.3). It seems to me a matter of greater pride that he calls himself a “prisoner of Jesus Christ” than an “apostle.” The apostles of course boasted that they had been worthy of suffering mistreatment for the name of Jesus Christ (cf. Ac. 5.41), but the authority that comes with chains was necessary. Being about to make a request on Onesimus’ behalf, he was obliged to make his request as the sort of person who was capable of procuring what he was asking for. Undoubtedly, he is fortunate who boasts not in wisdom,

(Berlin, 1937); E. Dassmann, Der Stachel im Fleisch: Paulus in der frühchristlichen Literatur bis Irenäus (Münster, 1979); A. Lindemann, Paulus im ältesten Christentum: Das Bild des Apostels und die Rezeption der paulinischen Theologie in der frühchristlichen Literatur bis Marcion (Tübingen, 1979); M. F. Bird and J. R. Dodson (eds.), Paul and the Second Century (London, 2013). ¹¹² Sed iam tempus est ut ipsius apostoli verba ponentes singula quaeque pandamus (Comm. Gal., lib. 1, prol. ll. 101–2). ¹¹³ Historically speaking, Paul’s two comments in Philemon about being “in chains” (vv. 10, 13) are a reference to his house arrest in Rome while he was in military custody. B. Witherington, The Letters to Philemon, the Colossians, and the Ephesians: A Socio–Rhetorical Commentary on the Captivity Epistles (Grand Rapids, 2007), 68–9, notes: “Paul’s confinement was one of the lightest possible, for he seems to continue to have ongoing dealings with a variety of people, even non-high status people like Onesimus.” On this and Paul’s other imprisonment experiences, see B. Rapske, The Book of Acts in Its First-Century Setting, vol. 3: Paul in Roman Custody (Grand Rapids, 1994); R. Cassidy, Paul in Chains: Roman Imprisonment and the Letters of St. Paul (Crestwood, 2001); M. Skinner, Locating Paul: Places of Custody as Narrative Settings in Acts 21–28 (Leiden, 2003).

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not in riches, not in eloquence and secular power, but in the sufferings of Christ (cf. 2 Cor. 11.30; Gal. 6.14; Col. 1.24). Quod autem sequitur: Vinctus Iesu Christi, in nulla epistula hoc cognomine usus est, licet in corpore epistularum, ad Ephesios videlicet et Philippenses et Colossenses, esse se in vinculis pro confessione testetur. Maioris autem mihi videtur supercilii vinctum Iesu Christi se dicere quam apostolum. Gloriabantur quippe apostoli, quod digni fuerant pro nomine Iesu Christi contumeliam pati, sed necessaria auctoritas vinculorum. Rogaturus pro Onesimo, talis rogare debuit, qui posset impetrare quod posceret. Felix nimirum qui non in sapientia, non in divitiis, non in eloquentia et potentia saeculari, sed in Christi passionibus gloriatur.¹¹⁴

So, then, Paul’s admission that he was incarcerated at the time of writing to Philemon is a badge of honor,¹¹⁵ and he invokes what Jerome calls “the authority that comes with chains” (auctoritas vinculorum) to certify his apostolic authority so that he can make his request of Philemon seem more compelling. Later in the commentary (on v. 7), Jerome explains what Paul means when he commends Philemon for refreshing the “hearts” (viscera) of his fellow Christians, and he identifies this as a moment when he displays a trait characteristic of an apostle (idioma apostolicum) in speaking of caritas for others as being associated with viscera.¹¹⁶ Commenting on vv. 8–9, Jerome says that Paul could easily have invoked his apostolic authority to command Philemon to receive back his misbehaving slave Onesimus without punishing him,¹¹⁷ but he instead appealed to him on the basis of Christian charity. Yet, even this very act of asking implies authority on the part of the one doing the asking. Furthermore, in this same context Paul calls himself an “old man” and “prisoner of Christ Jesus,” and neither of these self-ascribed epithets is deferentially meek but rather is subtly infused with weighty apostolic auctoritas.¹¹⁸ Later on, Jerome emphasizes that Paul, in his position as an apostle, was able to override Philemon’s will in another respect, by

¹¹⁴ Comm. Phlm. 1–3. ¹¹⁵ For a similar explanation of Paul’s reference to himself as a “prisoner” of Christ, see Jerome, Comm. Eph. 3.1–4. ¹¹⁶ Dignum siquidem erat agere gratias Deo super caritate Philemonis, qui internum cordis affectum et profundos animi sanctorum recessus suscipiendo refecerat. Et hoc idioma apostolicum est; ut semper viscera vocet, uolens plenam mentis ostendere caritatem (Comm. Phlm. 7). ¹¹⁷ For the implausible theory that Onesimus was not a runaway slave but a wandering person seeking Paul’s intervention in some kind of squabble with Philemon, see S. Winter, “Paul’s Letter to Philemon,” NTS 33 (1987): 1–15. ¹¹⁸ Multis in Philemone laudibus ante praemissis, cum res talis sit, pro qua rogaturus est, quae et praestanti sit utilis et roganti, poterat Paulus magis imperare quam petere. Et hoc ex fiducia illa veniebat quod, qui tanta ob Christum opera perpetrarat, utique impar sui in ceteris esse non poterat. Sed vult magis petere quam iubere, grandi petentis auctoritate proposita, per quam et apostolus obsecrat, et senex, et vinctus Iesu Christi (Comm. Phlm. 8–9). As Jerome emphasizes in his commentary on Ephesians, the same can be said for Paul’s claim to be the least of all Christians (Comm. Eph. 3.8–9).

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keeping Onesimus by his side for as long as he was in prison instead of returning him to his master in the meantime.¹¹⁹ We will recall from the overview of Jerome’s preface that v. 22, where Paul asks Philemon to prepare a place for him to stay after he is released from prison, is the passage that the epistle’s naysayers adduced to argue that Paul would not have made such a mundane request if he had been writing under divine inspiration. In his comments on this verse Jerome responds to these critics by underscoring the providential underpinnings and big-picture import of Paul’s request: If anyone thinks that Philemon was commanded not in a diplomatic but in a frank way to prepare lodging for him: the lodging is to be prepared for the apostle rather than for Paul. Being about to arrive in a new city, preach the Crucified, and reveal unheard-of teachings, Paul knew that a great many people would flock to him. There needed first of all to be a house in a well-known part of the city where people could conveniently congregate. Secondly, the house needed to have no trace of inappropriate behavior, be spacious enough to accommodate a large audience, and not be next to venues of public entertainment, lest it be loathsome on account of its disreputable locale. Si autem hoc non dispensatorie, sed vere quis aestimat imperatum, ut sibi hospitium praepararet, apostolo magis quam Paulo hospitium praeparandum est. Venturus ad novam civitatem, praedicaturus crucifixum et inaudita dogmata delaturus, sciebat ad se plurimos concursuros; et necesse erat primum, ut domus in celebri esset urbis loco ad quam facile conveniretur; deinde, ut ab omni importunitate vacua, aut ampla, quae plurimos caperet audientium, ne proxima spectaculorum locis, ne turpi vicinia detestabilis.¹²⁰

As we saw earlier, Jerome closes the preface to his Philemon commentary by declaring that the epistle has enormous instructional value for Christian readers, contrary to the surface impression given by its brevity and content, and despite his concession that it is indeed a private letter written to one person (epistula privata ad unum hominem).¹²¹ In his comments on certain passages he illustrates these edifying lessons that materialize through his expert handling of the text. For instance, in his exposition of v. 6 (“I pray that the sharing of your faith may become effective when you perceive all the good that we may do for Christ”), Jerome inculcates how this passage teaches that faith must be demonstrated by good works and thus gives a much-needed reminder for his own time, when many perform good deeds but lack faith as well as knowledge of the very good they are doing. He concludes with an exclamatory affirmation of the epistle’s overall ¹¹⁹ Potuit itaque et apostolus Paulus absque Philemonis voluntate Onesimum sibi in ministerium retinere (Comm. Phlm. 14). ¹²⁰ Comm. Phlm. 22. ¹²¹ Comm. Phlm. 23–4.

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message: “By how great strides and by how great advances the apostolic declaration strives towards higher things!”¹²² In his remarks on other passages Jerome substantiates the assertion he makes in the preface that Philemon is chock-full of “power and wisdom” and is a treasure trove of theological mysteries. In vv. 8–13 Paul tells Philemon that he would like to keep Onesimus as his personal minister while he is incarcerated, yet he respectfully acknowledges that Onesimus is Philemon’s slave and would need his permission to keep Onesimus longer, even though he could invoke his apostolic authority to override Philemon’s wishes. In v. 14 Paul gives his rationale: “I preferred to do nothing without your consent, in order that your good deed might be voluntary and not something forced.” In explaining this verse Jerome maps it onto one of the thorniest theological conundra of them all: if God is good and created humans in his own image and likeness, then why are they capable of sinning? He opens his exposition by magnifying the subject matter, noting that the present passage is able to solve a problem probed all the time by the masses.¹²³ As a purposeful display of his exegetical prowess, he proceeds to answer the complicated question in short order, pointing out that God has free will and likewise gave humans freedom of choice, from which arises the opportunity for sin.¹²⁴ Returning then to the immediate context of Paul’s remark, Jerome applies the findings of this brief excursus to Philemon’s situation with Onesimus and thereby corroborates his claim that this epistle does in fact conceal consequential theological matters beneath the surface of its text. Jerome likewise uses his commentary on vv. 15–16 (“Perhaps this is the reason he was separated from you for a while, so that you might have him back forever, no longer as a slave but more than a slave, a beloved brother, especially to me but how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord”) as a springboard for discussing a broader theological issue which loomed large in the discourse about Paul’s writings in the fourth-century Latin West: the problem of evil.¹²⁵ He begins by noting that an evil sometimes becomes the occasion for good, such as when God turns the plans of the wicked to his greater good. As a biblical instantiation of this principle he cites Joseph’s jealous brothers selling him into slavery and Joseph

¹²² Quantis gradibus quantisque profectibus apostolicus in altiora sermo se tendit! (Comm. Phlm. 4–6). ¹²³ Hoc quod a plerisque quaeritur et saepissime retractatur . . . de praesenti loco solvi potest (Comm. Phlm. 14). ¹²⁴ Jerome almost certainly patterned this explanation after the one Origen gave in his lost commentary on Philemon in which he polemicized against Gnostics who blamed the Creator for his creatures’ evils; see Heine, “In Search of Origen’s Commentary,” 128–31; Bucchi (ed.), Commentarii, lxvii–lxix. On Origen’s emphasis on the role of human free will in theodical matters, see E. Osborn, “The Apologist Origen and the Fourth Century: From Theodicy to Christology,” in W. A. Bienert and U. Kühneweg (eds.), Origeniana Septima: Origenes in den Auseinandersetzungen des 4. Jahrhunderts (Leuven, 1999), 51–9. ¹²⁵ See Geerlings, “Hiob und Paulus.” See also the various essays in D. G. Hunter and N. V. Harrison (eds.), Suffering and Evil in Early Christian Thought (Grand Rapids, 2016).

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later telling them, “Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good.”¹²⁶ Jerome then reverts the discussion to Onesimus, who he says had been a degenerate slave beforehand but gradually experienced a conversion in his thinking and became a minister of the Gospel after fleeing from his master.

Galatians: Law and Gospel and Hebrew Philology Galatians, one of the few epistles whose Pauline authorship is not seriously challenged today,¹²⁷ has been at the center of more than one major debate about Christian belief and practice throughout history.¹²⁸ In the second century it factored prominently into the clash between the Marcionites and orthodox Christians.¹²⁹ Marcion himself regarded it—once, that is, it had been purged of supposed Jewish interpolations—as the quintessential digest of Pauline theology, and so he placed it as the very first epistle in his Apostolikon.¹³⁰ Almost a millennium and a half later, a thirty-something Augustinian monk in Germany found in this short epistle the greatest of all comforts for the beleaguered conscience, justification by faith alone, and, empowered by his discovery of its liberating message, he appropriated Galatians as a call to arms in the opening act of the Protestant Reformation.¹³¹ Later in life, Martin Luther even claimed that it was as dear to him as his own wife.¹³² Early Christian biblical commentators, too, thought that Galatians is integral to the Pauline corpus, as evidenced by the fact that, as Lightfoot observed, “the patristic commentaries on Galatians, extant either whole or in part, are perhaps

¹²⁶ Gen. 50.20. ¹²⁷ D. A. DeSilva, The Letter to the Galatians (Grand Rapids, 2018), 1–2. For an overview of a few (dated) attempts to disprove Paul’s authorship on stylistic grounds, see E. de Witt Burton, Syntax of the Moods and Tenses of New Testament Greek (Chicago, 1898), lxix–lxxi. ¹²⁸ See M. Meiser, Galater (Göttingen, 2007); J. Riches, Galatians through the Centuries (Malden, 2013). ¹²⁹ See below, pp. 142–9. ¹³⁰ R. J. Hoffmann, Marcion: On the Restitution of Christianity: An Essay on the Development of Radical Paulinist Theology in the Second Century (Chico, 1984), 75. ¹³¹ On Martin Luther’s exegesis of Galatians, see, e.g., K. Bornkamm, Luthers Auslegungen des Galaterbriefs vom 1519 und 1531: Ein Vergleich (Berlin, 1963); K. Hagen, Luther’s Approach to Scripture as Seen in His Commentaries on Galatians, 1519–1538 (Tübingen, 1993); V. Stolle, Luther und Paulus: Die exegetischen und hermeneutischen Grundlagen der lutherischen Rechtfertigungslehre im Paulinismus Luthers (Leipzig, 2002); J. Mikkonen, Luther and Calvin on Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians: Analysis and Comparison of Substantial Concepts in Luther’s 1531/35 and Calvin’s 1546/48 Commentaries on Galatians (Åbo, 2007); cf. R. Kolb, “The Influence of Luther’s Galatians Commentary of 1535 on Later Sixteenth-Century Lutheran Commentaries on Galatians,” ARG 84 (1993): 156–84. See more generally J. Pelikan, Luther the Expositor: Introduction to the Reformer’s Exegetical Writings (St. Louis, 1959), and M. L. Mattox, “Martin Luther’s Reception of Paul,” in R. W. Holder (ed.), A Companion to Paul in the Reformation (Leiden, 2009), 93–128. ¹³² “The Epistle to the Galatians is my dear epistle. I have put my confidence in it. It is my Katy von Bora”; T. G. Tappert (ed.), Luther’s Works, vol. 54: Table Talk (Philadelphia, 1967), 20.

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more numerous than on any other of St. Paul’s epistles.”¹³³ This observation certainly applies to the Latin exegetical tradition: Galatians is the only epistle commented on by all six late antique Latin interpreters of Paul.¹³⁴ What is more, in Jerome’s case there are several reasons for believing that he made his Galatians commentary, which he divided into three books, the mainstay of his exegetical docket on Paul, in fact positioning it first in the sequence of commentaries on the four epistles so that readers would encounter it, and its prefaces, before the other three commentaries and their respective prefaces. First of all, Jerome uses the preface to Book 1 to introduce his opus Paulinum to the Latin-speaking world, heralding it as “a work not attempted before me by writers in our language and executed by only a very choice few of the Greeks themselves in a manner warranted by the grandeur of the subject matter.”¹³⁵ This bold pronouncement about the novelty of his undertaking is the kind of remark one normally finds in the prologue to an ancient literary work—or, as the case may be, in the prologue to the first in a collection of interconnected works like his Pauline commentaries.¹³⁶ Secondly, in the final chapter of his literary history De viris illustribus, where he lists the titles of his principal writings down to the year 393,¹³⁷ he places the Galatians commentary first in order of the four Pauline commentaries,¹³⁸ even though it was the second one he composed (after the one on Philemon)—an evident sign of his personal prioritization of it among the four. Finally, in manuscripts that contain all four commentaries, the one on Galatians almost always precedes the other three, a transmission pattern that presumably reflects the internal structure that Jerome imposed on his archetype.¹³⁹

¹³³ Epistle, 217. ¹³⁴ See K. Pollman and M. Elliott, “Galatians in the Early Church: Five Case Studies,” in M. Elliott, S. Hafemann, N. T. Wright, and J. Frederick (eds.), Galatians and Christian Theology: Justification, the Gospel, and Ethics in Paul’s Letter (Grand Rapids, 2014), 40–61. ¹³⁵ Adgrediar opus intemptatum ante me linguae nostrae scriptoribus et a Graecis quoque ipsis vix paucis, ut rei poscebat dignitas, usurpatum (Comm. Gal., lib. 1, prol. ll. 23–5). ¹³⁶ This is not the only time Jerome implants in a preface a self-congratulatory note on the novelty of a particular scholarly venture. For example, he describes exegesis of the Minor Prophets as an activity “completely neglected by the Latins” (certe intermissum a Latinis) and speaks of his own commentaries on them as an opus quod nullus ante nos latinorum temptare ausus est (Comm. Os., lib. 2, prol. ll. 175–6). He likewise characterizes his Hebrew Questions on Genesis as “a new work hitherto unheard of among both Greeks and Latins” (opus novum et tam Graecis quam Latinis usque ad id locorum inauditum) (Lib. int. Heb. nom., prol. ll. 17–18). ¹³⁷ See P. Nautin, “La liste des oeuvres de Jérôme dans le De viris inlustribus,” Orpheus n.s. 5 (1984): 319–34. ¹³⁸ . . . in epistulam Pauli ad Galatas commentariorum libros tres, item in epistulam ad Ephesios commentariorum libros tres, in epistulam ad Titum librum unum, in epistulam ad Philemonem librum unum . . . (Vir. ill. 135.3). ¹³⁹ For overviews of the manuscript tradition of the individual commentaries, see F. Pieri (ed.), “L’esegesi di Girolamo nel Commentario a Efesini: aspetti storico-esegetici e storico-dottrinali: testo critico e annotazioni” (Ph.D. diss.: Università di Bologna, 1996), cxxxix–cliii; F. Bucchi, “Sulla tradizione manoscritta del Commento alla Lettera a Tito di Girolamo,” Eikasmos 12 (2001): 301–21; G. Raspanti (ed.), S. Hieronymi Presbyteri Opera. Pars I. Opera exegetica 6. Commentarii in Epistulam Pauli Apostoli ad Galatas, CCSL 77A (Turnhout, 2006), xiv–clvii.

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But why did Jerome comment on Galatians in the first place? Tantalizing possibilities abound, some less plausible than others. Let us begin by considering one promising yet ultimately problematic option. Paul sternly warns Gentile converts in Galatia not to muddy the waters of salvation by grace by slipping into legalism through observance of the Mosaic law, which the Judaizers had been pressuring them to keep.¹⁴⁰ Did Jerome find this message timely enough to merit a commentary reiterating it for a contemporary audience? This question is well worth asking because the phenomenon of Christians attending Jewish worship services and observing Jewish customs was a live issue in pockets of the late fourth-century East.¹⁴¹ The works of Aphrahat, Ephrem, and especially John Chrysostom,¹⁴² to take just three examples, contain strong admonitions that Christians keep themselves separate from Jews, and these copious appeals indicate an apparently “acute problem” on the ground that needed to be addressed.¹⁴³ By contrast, clear and incontrovertible evidence for Jewish Christianity and/or Jewish proselytism in late fourth-century Palestine, which Jerome recently had made his home, is for all intents and purposes non-existent,¹⁴⁴ even though literary and archeological data make a compelling case for Jews and Christians living side by side in certain communities.¹⁴⁵ Furthermore, whenever Jerome

¹⁴⁰ M. Murray, Playing a Jewish Game: Gentile Christian Judaizing in the First and Second Centuries  (Waterloo, 2004), 29–41. For a thorough reconstruction (from Paul’s counterarguments and other evidence) of the nature of the Judaizers’ demands and the reasons for their apparent success among the Galatian Christians, see J. M. G. Barclay, Obeying the Truth: A Study of Paul’s Ethics in Galatians (Edinburgh, 1988), 36–74. ¹⁴¹ For attestations of this phenomenon in the first and second centuries , see L. Gaston, “Judaism of the Uncircumcised in Ignatius and Related Writers,” in S. G. Wilson (ed.), Anti-Judaism in Early Christianity, vol. 2: Separation and Polemic (Waterloo, 1986), 33–44; M. Edwards, “Ignatius, Judaism and Judaizing,” Eranos 93 (1995): 69–77; S. G. Wilson, “Gentile Judaizers,” NTS 38 (1992): 605–16. ¹⁴² See C. Shepardson, “Paschal Politics: Deploying the Temple’s Destruction against FourthCentury Judaizers,” VChr 62 (2008): 233–60, for a synoptic comparison of all three of these writers. On Chrysostom’s polemic in particular, see R. L. Wilken, John Chrysostom and the Jews: Rhetoric and Reality in the Late Fourth Century (Eugene, 2004); D. S. Kalleres, “Imagining Martyrdom during Theodosian Peace: John Chrysostom and the Problem of Judaizers,” in J. Engberg, E. Holmsgaard, U. Eriksen, and A. Klostergaard (eds.), Contextualising Early Christian Martyrdom (Frankfurt am Main, 2011), 257–75; A. Finkelstein, “Taming the Jewish Genie: John Chrysostom and the Jews of Antioch in the Shadow of Emperor Julian,” in M. Satlow (ed.), Strength to Strength: Essays in Honor of Shaye J. D. Cohen (Providence, 2018), 555–76. Cf. P. W. Harkins (trans.), St. John Chrysostom, Discourses against Judaizing Christians (Washington, D.C., 1979). ¹⁴³ P. Luomanen, Recovering Jewish-Christian Sects and Gospels (Leiden, 2012), 30. ¹⁴⁴ J. E. Taylor, Christians and the Holy Places: The Myth of Jewish-Christian Origins (Oxford, 1993), 18–47. On Jewish Christianity more generally, see S. C. Mimouni, Le Judéochristianisme ancien (Paris, 1998). ¹⁴⁵ See, e.g., B. Y. Arubas and R. Talgam, “Jews, Christians and ‘Minim’: Who Really Built and Used the Synagogue at Capernaum: A Stirring Appraisal,” in G. C. Bottini, L. D. Chrupcala, and J. Patrich (eds.), Knowledge and Wisdom: Archaeological and Historical Essays in Honour of Leah Di Segni (Milan, 2014), 237–74; R. Hakola, “Galilean Jews and Christians in Context: Spaces Shared and Contested in the Eastern Galilee in Late Antiquity,” in J. Day, M. Kahlos, and U. Tervahauta (eds.), Spaces in Late Antiquity: Cultural, Theological and Archaeological Perspectives (London, 2016), 141–65. For literary and sub-literary sources for Jewish proselytism throughout the empire during the third through fifth centuries, see L. H. Feldman, Jew and Gentile in the Ancient World: Attitudes and Interactions from Alexander to Justinian (Princeton, 1993), 383–415; cf. L. V. Rutgers, The Jews in Late Ancient Rome: Evidence of Cultural Interaction in the Roman Diaspora (Leiden, 1995).

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mentions Jewish customs, rituals, or laws in his commentary on Galatians,¹⁴⁶ he is referring to historical artifacts from Paul’s time and not to contemporary realities.¹⁴⁷ Moreover, whenever he speaks of “Judaizers” (Iudaizantes) in his own day, he does not mean Gentile Christians who insist that the Jewish law must be observed in order to be saved, but rather he uses this term as a polemical tag to defame millenarians, and so no meaningful testimonies about contemporary Judaizing tendencies can be gleaned from these references.¹⁴⁸ Other possible motives for Jerome’s choice of Galatians gain more traction. As we saw with the Philemon commentary, we are able to follow the prompts he himself gives, whether wittingly or unwittingly, in the programmatic first Galatians preface. I suggested earlier that in a sense it serves as the general prolegomenon to not only his three-book Galatians commentary but also his entire opus Paulinum. On account of its strategic position, Jerome uses it as an occasion to carve out a niche for himself as the first legitimate Latin-language commentator on Paul and in the process he tries to eviscerate Marius Victorinus’s exegetical legacy.¹⁴⁹ Given this avowed rivalry with Victorinus, and given that Galatians is one of a handful of Pauline epistles on which Victorinus is known to have written a commentary, it seems plausible that Jerome’s choice of Galatians was motivated at least in part by an impulse of exegetical one-upmanship. In this same preface Jerome drops another hint about his authorial intent, but this one relates to his appreciation of the epistle’s actual content. He begins the argumentum section of the preface by coupling Galatians with Romans and discussing their shared themes and importance in the grand scheme of Pauline thought.¹⁵⁰ He points out in particular that these are the two epistles in which Paul most explicitly articulates the relationship between the Mosaic law and the ¹⁴⁶ E.g., Comm. Gal. 1.10, 2.11–13, 2.14b, 2.19a, 3.2, 4.10–11, 4.17–18, 5.13b–14, 5.16, 6.12. ¹⁴⁷ H. I. Newman, “Jerome’s Judaizers,” JECS 9 (2001): 421–52 (434), calls Jerome’s silence about contemporary Christian leanings towards Judaism in his Galatians commentary “most striking.” By contrast, Marius Victorinus’s anti-Jewish polemicizing in his commentary on Galatians has plausibly been read as his condemnatory response to Christians taking up Jewish practices in his contemporary Rome; see S. A. Cooper, Marius Victorinus’ Commentary on Galatians: Introduction, Translation, and Notes (Oxford, 2005), 170–81. ¹⁴⁸ Newman, “Jerome’s Judaizers,” 428–9. Cf. G. Stemberger, Jews and Christians in the Holy Land: Palestine in the Fourth Century, trans. R. Tuschling (Edinburgh, 2000), 78: “[Jerome’s] individual descriptions of Jewish Christians are too imprecise for us to be able to differentiate between Judaizers . . . and Christians of Hebrew descent.” See also B. Jeanjean, “Le regard de Jérôme sur les différents courants de Judaïsme,” in J.-M. Poinsotte (ed.), Les chrétiens face à leurs adversaires dans l’Occident latin au IVe siècle (Rouen, 2001), 61–84; M. Graves, “ ‘Judaizing’ Christian Interpretations of the Prophets as Seen by Saint Jerome,” VChr 61 (2007): 142–56. ¹⁴⁹ See below, pp. 63–72. ¹⁵⁰ Modern scholars, too, recognize their close thematic interconnectedness. For instance, F. F. Bruce, The Letter of Paul to the Romans: An Introduction and Commentary (Grand Rapids, 1985), 30, notes their affinity on the basis that “in both of these letters Paul’s gospel of justification by faith is most clearly expounded.” H. L. Willmington, Willmington’s Guide to the Bible (Wheaton, 1982), 397, says that “Galatians is a rough sketch of which Romans is the finished picture,” and Lightfoot, Epistle, 49, similarly remarks that Galatians is related to Romans “as the rough model to the finished statue.” For the parallelism between Galatians and Romans, see H. Boers, The Justification of the Gentiles: Paul’s Letters to the Galatians and Romans (Peabody, 1994); M. Forman, The Politics of Inheritance in Romans (Cambridge, 2011), esp. 172–206.

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Gospel.¹⁵¹ In the remainder of the preface he homes in on the peculiarity of Galatians within the Pauline corpus: The epistle to the Galatians is unique in that Paul was not writing to Jewish believers in Christ who thought that their forefathers’ rites had to be observed. He was writing instead to Gentile converts who fell away from their pristine faith after being intimidated by the authority of certain people who claimed that Peter, James, and all the churches of Judea were conflating the Gospel of Christ with the old Law. These same people alleged that even Paul himself did one thing in Judea while preaching another thing among the Gentiles and that their faith in the crucified one was in vain if they thought they had to neglect what the leading apostles observed. For this reason Paul proceeds cautiously, steering a middle course between two extremes so as neither to betray the grace of the Gospel by being bullied by the sheer number and authority of the elders, nor to detract from his Jewish forefathers in his preaching of grace. He makes a stealthy approach as if going by a secret passageway. He shows that Peter did what was expedient for the circumcised believers of his flock out of fear that if they departed straightaway from their previous manner of living, they would be scandalized and not believe in the cross. He also shows that it was right for him to defend as true that which another pretended was a dispensation, inasmuch as the preaching of the Gospel to the Gentiles had been entrusted to him. That impious man Porphyry from Batanea did not comprehend any of this. In the first book of his treatise Against the Christians, he alleged that Peter had been rebuked by Paul because he did not walk uprightly as he spread the Gospel. His intention was to charge Peter with error and Paul with impudence and to implicate the entire community of Christians in the lie of fabricated teaching on the grounds that the leaders of the churches disagreed amongst themselves. Sed ad Galatas hoc proprium habet quod non scribit ad eos qui ex Iudaeis in Christum crediderant et paternas putabant caeremonias observandas, sed ad eos qui ex gentibus fidem evangelii receperant et rursum retro lapsi quorumdam fuerant auctoritate deterriti adserentium Petrum quoque et Iacobum et totas

¹⁵¹ Argumentum itaque epistulae huius breviter comprehendens hoc praefatione commoneo ut sciatis eamdem esse materiam epistulae Pauli ad Galatas et quae ad Romanos scripta est, sed hoc referre inter utramque quod in illa altiori sensu et profundioribus usus est argumentis, hic quasi ad eos scribens de quibus in consequentibus ait o insensati Galatae et sic insipientes estis, tali se sermone moderatus est quo increparet potius quam doceret et quem possent stulti intellegere, ut communes sententias communi oratione vestiret et quos ratio suadere non poterat revocaret auctoritas. Nullus quidem apostoli sermo est, vel per epistulam vel praesentis, in quo non laboret docere antiquae legis onera deposita et omnia illa quae in typis et imaginibus praecesserunt (id est otium sabbati, circumcisionis iniuriam, kalendarum et trium per annum sollemnitatum recursus, scrupulositatem ciborum et per dies singulos lavacra iterum sordidanda) gratia evangelii subrepente cessasse, quam non sanguis victimarum, sed fides animae credentis impleret. Verum alibi pro parte et ut se aliud agenti haec quaestio obtulerat ex latere disputatum est et paene perstrictum, in his autem duabus, ut dixi, epistulis specialiter antiquae legis cessatio et novae introductio continetur (Comm. Gal., lib. 1, prol. ll. 51–73).

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Iudaeae ecclesias evangelium Christi cum lege veteri miscuisse, ipsum etiam Paulum aliud in Iudaea facere aliud in nationibus praedicare et frustra eos in crucifixum credere, si id neglegendum putarent quod apostolorum principes observarent. Quamobrem ita caute inter utrumque et medius incedit ut nec evangelii prodat gratiam pressus pondere et auctoritate maiorum, nec praecessoribus faciat iniuriam dum adsertor est gratiae, oblique vero et quasi per cuniculos latenter incedens et Petrum doceat pro commissa sibi circumcisionis plebe facere, ne ab antiquo repente vivendi more desciscens in crucem scandalizata non crederet, et sibi praedicatione gentium credita aequum esse id pro veritate defendere quod alius pro dispensatione simularet. Quod nequaquam intellegens Bataneotes et sceleratus ille Porphyrius in primo operis sui adversum nos libro Petrum a Paulo obicit esse reprehensum quod non recto pede incederet ad evangelizandum, volens et illi maculam erroris inurere et huic procacitatis et in commune ficti dogmatis accusare mendacium, dum inter se ecclesiarum principes discrepent.¹⁵²

Paul’s rebuke of Peter at Antioch (Gal. 2.11–14), which Jerome discusses above, was cited by Marcion to support his contention that Christianity (Paul) is incompatible with Judaism (Peter).¹⁵³ Anti-Christian polemicists also seized on this pericope to show that even from its earliest days the church had had serious cracks in its foundation. A well-known case in point is the Neoplatonic philosopher Porphyry of Tyre. In his treatise Against the Christians,¹⁵⁴ in which he identified supposed mistakes and contradictions in the New Testament,¹⁵⁵ he adduced this incident as proof that the leaders of the apostolic church were a quarrelsome lot and that their inability to agree on even the fundamentals of Christian practice implied that Jesus’s teachings are not entirely clear and therefore not fully authoritative. Jerome singles out Porphyry in the above-quoted passage, and in his commentary on the Antioch episode he refutes the arguments of Porphyrius blasphemans and promises to dismantle them in greater detail in a

¹⁵² Comm. Gal., lib. 1, prol. ll. 74–99. ¹⁵³ See, e.g., Tertullian, Adv. Marc. 1.20, 5.3; Praescr. haer. 23–4; cf. E. Samek Lodovici, “Sull’interpretazione di alcuni testi della Lettera ai Galati in Marcione e in Tertulliano,” Aevum 46 (1972): 371–401; E. Norelli, “La funzione di Paolo nel pensiero di Marcione,” RivB 34 (1986): 578–86; A. Carriker, “Augustine’s Frankness in His Dispute with Jerome over the Interpretation of Galatians 2:11–14,” in D. Kries and C. Tkacz (eds.), Nova Doctrina Vetusque: Essays in Honor of F. W. Schlatter (New York, 1999), 121–38 (122); Meiser, Galater, 98. ¹⁵⁴ The most recent critical edition of the extant fragments is M. Becker (ed.), Porphyrios, Contra Christianos: Neue Sammlung der Fragmente, Testimonien und Dubia mit Einleitung, Übersetzung und Anmerkungen (Berlin, 2016). For an English translation of these fragments, see R. M. Berchman (ed.), Porphyry against the Christians (Leiden, 2005), and for an analysis of them, see A. Magny, Porphyry in Fragments: Reception of an Anti-Christian Text in Late Antiquity (Farnham, 2014). For a study of Porphyry’s thought, see A. P. Johnson, Religion and Identity in Porphyry of Tyre: The Limits of Hellenism in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, 2013). ¹⁵⁵ J. G. Cook, The Interpretation of the Old Testament in Greco-Roman Paganism (Tübingen, 2004), 119–67.

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future work (which never materialized).¹⁵⁶ In other words, he repeatedly shows how Porphyry’s critiques pose a very grave threat to the integrity of Scripture and at the same time he represents himself as neutralizing this threat with masterful precision. Yet, as we will see, anti-pagan apology is not the only subtext of Jerome’s treatment of the confrontation. The Antioch episode was much discussed among early Christian commentators.¹⁵⁷ Most in the Latin tradition—including Cyprian, Hilary, Marius Victorinus, Ambrosiaster, and Augustine—read it literally, assessing that Peter made a clear error in judgment by caving in to the Judaizers and that Paul rightly held him to account for this.¹⁵⁸ Jerome, wanting to uphold Paul’s apostolic authority and to clear Peter of the charge of temporary apostasy, took a different approach, arguing that both apostles staged the encounter to teach Gentile converts that they did not have to observe Jewish religious customs, and this ploy also allowed Peter to save face among the Jewish converts.¹⁵⁹ For Jerome, this dispute is critical to an understanding of Galatians as a whole because it emblematizes the

¹⁵⁶ . . . locum dari Porphyrio blasphemanti, si aut Petrus errasse aut Paulus procaciter apostolorum principem confutasse credatur . . . Ad extremum si propter Porphyrii blasphemiam alius nobis fingendus est Cephas ne Petrus putetur errasse, infinita de Scripturis erunt radenda divinis quae ille, quia non intellegit, criminatur. Sed adversus Porphyrium in alio, si Christus iusserit, opere pugnabimus (Comm. Gal. 2.11–13); cf. Jerome, Ep. 112.6, 11, 16. Jerome’s awareness of Porphyry’s position on the Antioch incident likely came from Apollinaris of Laodicea’s immense treatise Against Porphyry; see A. Fürst, Augustins Briefwechsel mit Hieronymus (Münster, 1999), 13. On his polemic against Porphyry more generally, see C. Moreschini, “L’utilizzazione di Porfirio in Gerolamo,” in C. Moreschini and G. Menestrina (eds.), Motivi letterari ed esegetici in Gerolamo: atti del convegno tenuto a Trento il 5–7 dicembre 1995 (Brescia, 1997), 175–95. ¹⁵⁷ Wiles, The Divine Apostle, 22–5. ¹⁵⁸ Plumer, Augustine’s Commentary, 47–53; G. Raspanti, “San Girolamo e l’interpretazione occidentale di Gal 2,11–14,” REAug 49 (2003): 297–321; G. Dunn, “Augustine’s Use of the Pauline Portrayal of Peter in Galatians 2,” AugStud 46 (2015): 23–42. For a selective overview of patristic and post-patristic interpretations of the Antioch pericope, see K. Froehlich, “Fallibility instead of Infallibility? A Brief History of the Interpretation of Galatians 2:11–14,” in P. C. Empie, T. A. Murphy, and J. A. Burgess (eds.), Teaching Authority and Infallibility in the Church (Minneapolis, 1980), 259–69. ¹⁵⁹ Jerome later claimed that he took this interpretation from Origen (Ep. 112.6; in the same section he cites John Chrysostom as another authority who believed that the dispute was scripted). F. Cocchini, “Da Origene a Teodoreto,” in W. A. Bienert and U. Kühneweg (eds.), Origeniana Septima: Origenes in den Auseinandersetzungen des 4. Jahrhunderts (Leuven, 1999), 292–309, points out that in his surviving works Origen nowhere advances this interpretation, though this is not saying much because only tiny scraps of Origen’s massive commentary on Galatians have survived—and none of it covers the Antioch incident. Furthermore, Cocchini suggests that Jerome took this interpretation not from Origen but from Chrysostom’s homily In faciem ei restiti (PG 51:383). However, this hypothesis is untenable, for Chrysostom preached this particular homily at Antioch no earlier than February 386, and possibly much later (its exact date is uncertain: see W. Mayer, The Homilies of St John Chrysostom: Provenance: Reshaping the Foundations (Rome, 2005), 319n21, 470), and so it is basically out of the question that Jerome could have had access to it by the late summer of 386. In any event, Augustine objected to Jerome’s interpretation of the Antioch incident because it meant that the apostles were knowingly deceitful, and this presents a problem because Scripture forbids lying. The debate between Augustine and Jerome about this issue is analyzed in great detail by Alfons Fürst in his monograph Augustins Briefwechsel mit Hieronymus (Münster, 1999). For a concise overview of the various patristic opinions about the Paul-Peter confrontation, see R. Kieffer, Foi et justification à Antioche: interprétation d’un conflit (Ga 2, 14–21) (Paris, 1982), 81–99.

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unity of the apostolic church and the triumph of the Christian gospel of grace over the Jewish law. This is a major reason why he spotlights it in his preface (to the exclusion of other mentionable items from the epistle) and then devotes so much attention to it in the commentary itself (almost eight pages in Raspanti’s critical edition). Finally, Galatians was appealing to Jerome’s scholarly sensibilities at the time for another important reason. Paul frequently invokes Old Testament texts and themes in it, and this afforded Jerome the opportunity to apply practically the Hebrew philology with which he had been experimenting during his recent stay in Rome. In fact, during this Roman period he had made a concerted effort to become a publicly recognized Christian authority on the Hebrew Bible by releasing selected letters in which he answers questions about exegetical and philological miscellanea posed to him by literary patrons, most notably Marcella and Pope Damasus.¹⁶⁰ Once he was in Bethlehem and delving into Paul, Jerome marshaled his commentaries as a medium for promoting Hebrew studies, and especially for advocating the primacy of the Hebrew Bible over the much-revered Septuagint.¹⁶¹

Ephesians: Divine Mysteries Galore The epistle to the Ephesians has been called “one of the most influential documents in the Christian church”¹⁶² and even the one that has exercised “the most influence on Christian thought and spirituality.”¹⁶³ Some biblical scholars today classify it as deutero-Pauline,¹⁶⁴ but in the early church there was a broad consensus that it was written by Paul.¹⁶⁵ For a number of early Christian

¹⁶⁰ Cain, The Letters of Jerome, 43–98. ¹⁶¹ See Chapter 3. ¹⁶² H. W. Hoehner, Ephesians: An Exegetical Commentary (Grand Rapids, 2002), 1. ¹⁶³ R. E. Brown, An Introduction to the New Testament (New York, 1997), 620. ¹⁶⁴ E.g., C. L. Mitton, The Epistle to the Ephesians (Oxford, 1951); P. N. Harrison, “The Author of Ephesians,” in F. L. Cross (ed.), Studia Evangelica, II: Papers Presented to the 2nd International Congress on New Testament Studies Held at Christ Church, Oxford, 1961: The N.T. Scriptures (Berlin, 1964), 595–604; M. MacDonald, Colossians and Ephesians (Collegeville, 2008). For reviews of the stylistic and other issues at stake in the debate about Ephesians’ authorship, see M. Barth, Ephesians: Introduction, Translation, and Commentary on Chapters 1–3 (Garden City, 1974), 36–50, Hoehner, Ephesians, 2–60, and Witherington, The Letters to Philemon, the Colossians, and the Ephesians, 14–17, all three of whom conclude that the epistle is authentically Pauline. The issue of its authorship aside, the addressees’ geographical setting is uncertain, as the designation of their city as Ephesus may be a later addition; see E. Best, “Recipients and Title of the Letter to the Ephesians: Why and When the Designation ‘Ephesians’?,” ANRW II.25.4 (Berlin, 1987), 3247–79; B. M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 2nd ed. (Stuttgart, 2005), 601; cf. C. Gerber, “Paulus als Ökumeniker: Die Interpretation der paulinischen Theologie durch den Ephesebrief,” in Schröter, Butticaz, and Dettwiler (eds.), Receptions of Paul, 317–54. ¹⁶⁵ Ephesians may be the earliest independently attested New Testament writing. For possible references to it in Clement of Rome and Ignatius of Antioch, see D. A. Hagner, The Use of the Old and the New Testaments in Clement of Rome (Leiden, 1973), 222–6; M. Günther, Die Frühgeschichte des Christentums in Ephesus (Frankfurt am Main, 1995), 147–59. Marcion also accepted Ephesians as a

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commentators it represents the apogee of Pauline thought,¹⁶⁶ in that it expresses some of the core themes of his writings such as pneumatology, eschatology, suffering, and Christian unity. Ancient interpreters also appreciated that it blends practical moral exhortation (Eph. 4.17–6.20) with theological rumination.¹⁶⁷ Origen, who wrote a full-scale commentary on Ephesians which survives in fragments,¹⁶⁸ held this epistle in the highest esteem and even based some of his own theological ideas on certain of its passages.¹⁶⁹ In his view, it offers the believer “solid food” as opposed to the “milk” of 1 Corinthians.¹⁷⁰ In Corinth Paul acted like a servant of Christ but in Ephesus he was a minister of God’s mysteries.¹⁷¹ Paul thought of the Ephesian Christians as being on the same elevated spiritual plane as himself,¹⁷² and so he felt at ease communicating to them the word of truth through secret teachings.¹⁷³ John Chrysostom agreed with Origen that Paul had entrusted the Christians of Ephesus with his deeper ideas (τὰ βαθύτερα τῶν νοημάτων) and that his epistle to

Pauline writing, though he curiously renamed it “Epistle to the Laodiceans” (Tertullian, Adv. Marc. 5.17); see J. Muddiman, A Commentary on the Epistle to the Ephesians (London, 2001), 27–9. ¹⁶⁶ Ephesians was accorded privileged status also by some non-mainstream Christians, such as the Valentinians, who read it as an exposition of pneumatic redemption; see E. Pagels, The Gnostic Paul: Gnostic Exegesis of the Pauline Letters (London, 1992), 115–33. Many modern commentators, like their ancient counterparts, think that this epistle stands at the pinnacle of Paul’s theology. For example, C. H. Dodd, “Ephesians,” in F. C. Eiselen et al. (eds.), The Abingdon Bible Commentary (New York, 1929), 1222–37 (1224–5), declares that its “thought is the crown of Paulinism,” and F. F. Bruce, Paul: Apostle of the Heart Set Free (Grand Rapids, 1977), 229, similarly reckons that it embodies the “quintessence of Paulinism”; cf. Hoehner, Ephesians, 106. ¹⁶⁷ Cf. Pelagius, Exp. Eph., prol.: In principio quidem epistulae Iudaeos appellans, incarnationis Christi sacramenta exponit, post ad gentes conversus exhortatur ut tantis beneficiis non sint ingrati, deinde communiter usque ad finem moralia praecipit instituta (A. Souter (ed.), Pelagius’s Expositions of Thirteen Epistles of St Paul, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1922), 2.344); Theodoret of Cyrrhus, Comm. Eph., prol. (PG 82:508): Τῆς δὲ Ἐπιστολῆς τὰ μὲν πρῶτα περιέχει διδασκαλίαν τοῦ θείου κηρύγματος, τὰ δὲ τελευταῖα παραίνεσιν ἠθικήν. ¹⁶⁸ See Chapter 6. ¹⁶⁹ R. Heine, The Commentaries of Origen and Jerome on St Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians (Oxford, 2001), 48–71. For Origen’s indebtedness to Pauline thought, see, e.g., W. Völker, “Paulus bei Origenes,” ThStKr 102 (1930): 258–79; H. J. Vogt, Das Kirchenverständnis des Origenes (Cologne, 1974); Cocchini, Il Paolo, 88–90. ¹⁷⁰ Frag. 21 in 1 Cor. 4.15: Οὐδεὶς ἀνὴρ παιδαγωγεῖται ἀλλ’ εἴ τις νήπιος καὶ ἀτελής· καὶ οὐκ ἂν ἔγραφεν Ἐφεσίοις ταῦτα ἀλλὰ Κορινθίοις, πρὸς οὓς φησὶν Γάλα ὑμᾶς ἐπότισα, οὐ βρῶμα· οὔπω γὰρ ἐδύνασθε· ἀλλ’ οὐδὲ ἔτι νῦν δύνασθε, ἔτι γάρ ἐστε σαρκικοί. Cf. Hom. Hiez. 7.10: Quando vero Ephesiis scribit, solidum illis praebet cibum. Non auditur quippe in Epheso fornicatio, non auditur in Epheso idolatria et esus idolothytorum; Princ. 3.2.4: Quod vero dictum est in epistula ad Ephesios ita oportebit intellegi quod dixit “nobis” id est mihi Paulo et vobis Ephesiis et quibuscumque non est conluctatio cum carne et sanguine . . . non sicut erat in Corinthiis quibus certamen adhuc adversus carnem et sanguinem erat. ¹⁷¹ Frag. 18 in 1 Cor.: Τολμῶ δὲ καὶ λέγω ὅτι ἐν Κορίνθῳ μὲν ὑπηρέτης γέγονε τοῦ Χριστοῦ, ἐν Ἐφέσῳ δὲ οἰκονόμος μυστηρίων θεοῦ. ¹⁷² Hom. Ies. 11.4: Saepe diximus duplicem esse Christianorum pugnam. Perfectis quidem et talibus, qualis erat Paulus et Ephesii, sicut ipse apostolus dicit. ¹⁷³ Frag. 8 in Eph. 1.13: Πάνυ δὲ κατὰ τοὺς Ἐφεσίους ἐστί, κεκοινωνηκότας ἀπορρήτων λόγων ὑφηγουμένου τοῦ Παύλου, τὸ ἀκούειν ἐν ᾧ καὶ ὑμεῖς ἀκούσαντες τὸν λόγον τῆς ἀληθείας. οὐκ οἶμαι γὰρ τ ὺς τοῦ κηρύγματος μόνου ἀκηκοότας, καὶ τοὺς λόγους τῶν πραγμάτων μὴ παρειληφότας ἐν διηγήσει καὶ τραν ἀναπτύξει, ἀκούειν τὸν λόγον τῆς ἀληθείας. διαφέρει γὰρ ὁ λόγος καὶ τὸ κήρυγμα . . .

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them is full of lofty ideas and teachings (νοημάτων μεστὴ . . . ὑψηλῶν καὶ δογμάτων).¹⁷⁴ Marius Victorinus, the first person known to produce a commentary on Ephesians in Latin, concurred with this assessment and emphasized its esoteric and practical value: The letter to the Ephesians contains the sum and substance which must always characterize the whole teaching. It is clear [Paul wrote this way] so that the Ephesians would have knowledge of theology, that is, knowledge of God and Christ, of his Mystery and advent, and of the other elements that pertain to this knowledge. Likewise [the letter directs them] to the precepts of living which most especially pertain to Christians, whether those fitting for everybody or for the particular persons whose conduct Paul very assiduously restrains. Epistula ad Ephesios summam illam tenet quae totius disciplinae semper esse debet, scilicet ut habeant cognitionem theologiae, id est Dei et Christi, mysterii ipsius et adventus, et ceterorum quae ad eam cognitionem pertinent. Item ad praecepta vivendi Christianis quae maxime pertinent, vel omnibus vel singulis convenientia, quibus personis quas frequentissime continet.¹⁷⁵

Jerome shared this view that Ephesians gives us Paul at his most theologically sublime,¹⁷⁶ and that it also is the heart of the Pauline corpus: in fact, from numerous comments he makes throughout his commentary and its prefaces we can safely infer that this is perhaps the main thing that made this epistle such an attractive object of exegesis for him. In the first preface he thus characterizes it as “the epistle of the Apostle that stands in the middle in terms of its [canonical] order and concepts.” He goes on to explain: “Now, I say ‘middle,’ not because it comes after the first epistles and is longer than the last ones, but in the sense that an animal’s heart is in its midsection, so that you understand from this [analogy] the number of challenges and the profound questions that envelop the epistle.”¹⁷⁷ Jerome opens the third preface along similar lines: “In the preface to the first book I discussed sufficiently and at length the purpose of Paul’s epistle to the Ephesians and I have shown, albeit in brief and scattered remarks, wherever the opportunity arose, that the blessed Apostle did not write to any of the churches in such a mystical way or reveal mysteries hidden from the ages.”¹⁷⁸ As a further ¹⁷⁴ Hom. Eph., argum. (PG 62:10). ¹⁷⁵ Comm. Eph., lib. 1, prol. ll. 1–8; trans. Cooper, Metaphysics and Morals, 43. ¹⁷⁶ The epistle’s mystical depth was recognized in non-exegetical contexts as well. It is, for example, an important subtext of Augustine’s Confessions; see J. P. Kenney, The Mysticism of Saint Augustine: Rereading the Confessions (London, 2005), 75–6. ¹⁷⁷ . . . mediam apostoli epistulam ut ordine ita et sensibus. Mediam autem dico, non quo primas sequens extremis maior sit, sed quomodo cor animalis in medio est, ut ex hoc intellegatis quantis difficultatibus et quam profundis quaestionibus involuta sit (Comm. Eph., lib. 1, prol. ll. 71–5). ¹⁷⁸ Satis abundeque . . . de argumento epistulae Pauli ad Ephesios, in primi libri praefatione disserui et sparsim, ubicumque occasio data est, licet breviter, ostendi quod beatus apostolus ad nullam ecclesiarum tam mystice scripserit et abscondita saeculis revelaverit sacramenta (Comm. Eph., lib. 3, prol. ll. 1–6).

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illustration of his deciphering of the epistle’s riddles, Jerome devotes the remainder of this same preface to a long excursus on the etymology of the toponym “Ephesus”—“my plan in her” (consilium meum in ea) or “my soul in her” (anima mea in ea)¹⁷⁹—and he claims that these suggested meanings symbolize God’s special favor toward the Ephesian Christians. He concludes the preface on a similar note, glossing the letter-carrier’s name Tychicus as “silent” (silens) and claiming that this etymology also points to the epistle’s underlying mysteries, for his name indicates that Tychicus hides the Lord’s words in his heart so that he may not sin against him.¹⁸⁰ Throughout the commentary itself Jerome drops regular reminders that Ephesians is brimming with theological mysteries,¹⁸¹ such as when he says that Paul teaches his readers mysteria tanta¹⁸² and omnia Christi sacramenta.¹⁸³ Indeed, out of sixty total occurrences of the word mysterium in all four of his Pauline commentaries, it is found fifty-five times in this one alone, and the same goes for its synonym sacramentum, eighteen of whose twenty-eight occurrences spread across the Galatians, Ephesians, and Titus commentaries are confined to the Ephesians commentary.¹⁸⁴ In more than one case Jerome even loops back to the very statement quoted above from the first preface. When explaining what Paul means when he says that his addressees know “how the mystery was made known to me by revelation, as I wrote above in a few words, a reading of which will enable you to perceive my understanding of the mystery of Christ” (Eph. 3.3–4), Jerome avers that this is Paul’s modest invitation to readers to contemplate the true depth of what he has written thus far, and he concludes: “This is what I said in the preface: none of Paul’s epistles contains such great mysteries or is enveloped in such recondite

¹⁷⁹ Comm. Eph., lib. 3, prol. ll. 11–12. Origen is the likely source of Jerome’s etymological discussion; see R. Layton, “Origen as a Reader of Paul: A Study of the Commentary on Ephesians” (Ph.D. diss.: University of Virginia, 1996), 319–22. ¹⁸⁰ Quod autem per Tychicum epistula mittitur, valde eiusdem epistulae congruit sacramentis. De quibus et noni Psalmi titulus praenotatur Pro arcanis Filii. Tychicus enim silens interpretatur, non proiiciens margaritas ante porcos, nec dans sanctum canibus et libere ad Deum loquens: In corde meo abscondi eloquia tua ut non peccem tibi (Comm. Eph., lib. 3, prol. ll. 65–71). ¹⁸¹ In speaking so often of Ephesians’ “mysteries” in his commentary Jerome takes his cue from Paul himself, who employs the term μυστήριον six times in the epistle (1.9, 3.3, 3.4, 3.9, 5.32); see M. J. Brannon, The Heavenlies in Ephesians: A Lexical, Exegetical, and Conceptual Analysis (London, 2011), 177–9. Scholars now generally agree that Paul’s use of this word is colored by Jewish apocalypticism; see R. E. Brown, The Semitic Background of the Term “Mystery” in the New Testament (Philadelphia, 1968); A. E. Harvey, “The Use of Mystery Language in the Bible,” JThS n.s. 31 (1980): 320–36; G. Wiley, “A Study of ‘Mystery’ in the New Testament,” GTJ 6 (1985): 349–60; J. Coppens, “ ‘Mystery’ in the Theology of Saint Paul and Its Parallels at Qumran,” in J. Murphy-O’Connor (ed.), Paul and the Dead Sea Scrolls (New York, 1990), 132–58. ¹⁸² Comm. Eph. 5.1. ¹⁸³ Comm. Eph. 5.24. ¹⁸⁴ In other biblical commentaries he refers to Ephesians’ mysteria (Comm. Es. 55.4–5), mystica (Comm. Es. 3.3), and sacratiora (Comm. Hiez. 40.5–13).

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ideas which the Apostle boasts he knows and shows in brief to have been revealed to us, so that we attend more carefully to what has been written.”¹⁸⁵ In his comments on Eph. 4.17–19, where Paul exhorts the Ephesian Christians to be sexually pure, Jerome goes on at some length to explain the passage’s implications and rounds off his remarks as follows: “Do not be annoyed if we linger for a long time on more obscure matters, for I made the point at the start that among all of Paul’s epistles this one especially is complicated in its words and meanings.”¹⁸⁶ In his exposition of Eph. 6.12 he again begs the reader’s pardon for being so prolix in his comments: “Perhaps this passage has been discussed at greater length than the reader will have wanted, but he should give pardon in view of the complexity of the verse itself and of the character of the Ephesians who, after being involved in magic, needed to know by whom they had once been deceived.”¹⁸⁷ These kinds of serial asides to the reader reinforce Jerome’s assertion that Ephesians is the most labyrinthine of Paul’s letters,¹⁸⁸ a claim which inherently justifies why it is so deserving of serious study in the form a commentary. Such asides perform another perhaps less apparent but nonetheless crucial rhetorical function. In periodically reminding the reader about the sheer difficulty of the task before him, all the while performing that very task with aplomb, Jerome affirms his own self-constructed authority as an interpreter of Paul. Put simply: no matter how arduous the hermeneutical challenge, he is able to meet it and to instruct his readers in even the most arcane mysteries of Scripture.¹⁸⁹ God’s self-revelation in Christ, with all of its attendant cosmic implications, is one of the cardinal themes of Ephesians,¹⁹⁰ and Jerome appropriately showcases ¹⁸⁵ Hoc est illud quod in praefatione diximus: nullam epistularum Pauli tanta habere mysteria, tam reconditis sensibus involutam, quos et apostolus nosse se gloriatur et nobis indicatos breviter ostendit ut attentius quae sunt scripta relegamus (Comm. Eph. 3.1–4). ¹⁸⁶ Non vobis molestum sit, si diu in obscurioribus immoremur: causati sumus enim in principio sumus inter omnes Pauli epistulas hanc vel maxime et verbis et sensibus involutam. Theodore of Mopsuestia agreed, writing in the preface to his own commentary on Ephesians: “I only want to add to what I have said, that this letter plainly also poses great difficulty in its language, so that it is not easy for someone who wishes to interpret it to make its meaning clear. For this reason I have thought it best not only to supply a general interpretation but also to explain the obscure words where the text requires me to do this” (Greer, Theodore of Mopsuestia, 179). ¹⁸⁷ Prolixius forsitan quam lector voluerit, de hoc capitulo disputatum sit, sed quaeso, det veniam difficultati ipsius loci et personae Ephesiorum, qui, post artes magicas, scire debuerant a quibus fuissent aliquando decepti (Comm. Eph. 6.12). Cf. Comm. Es., lib. 8, prol. ll. 2–9: Sextus et septimus superiores libri allegoriam quinti voluminis continent, quod olim historica explanatione dictavi. Praesens opus, id est octavus liber, ad coeptam interpretationem revertitur, ut et historiam et tropologiam iuxta utramque editionem pariter disserat. Quae si longa tibi videbitur, o virgo Christi Eustochium, non mihi imputes, sed scripturae sanctae difficultati, praecipueque Esaiae prophetae, qui tantis obscuritatibus involutus est, ut prae magnitudine rei, brevem explanationem putem, quae per se longa est. ¹⁸⁸ In Ep. 121.10.7 he mentions Paul’s opacity in Ephesians: Tale quid et in verbis et in sensibus et in genere elocutionis obscurissime scribit ad Ephesios. ¹⁸⁹ Thus in Comm. Eph., lib. 2, prol. ll. 14–15 he speaks of revealing the mysteria Scripturarum to his readers. ¹⁹⁰ G. H. van Kooten, Cosmic Christology in Paul and the Pauline School: Colossians and Ephesians in the Context of Graeco-Roman Cosmology, with a New Synopsis of the Greek Texts (Tübingen, 2003), 147–202; J. Smith, Christ the Ideal King: Cultural Context, Rhetorical Strategy, and the Power of Divine

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this divine mystery in his commentary.¹⁹¹ He also repeatedly emphasizes the bond between Christ and the church, another mystery revealed in the epistle.¹⁹² In his discussion of Eph. 5.32 (“This is a great mystery, and I am applying it to Christ and the church”), in which he explicates Paul’s comparison of human marriage (Eph. 5.31) to this bond, he embeds an anecdote about Gregory of Nazianzus which is meant to highlight the elevated nature of the divine mystery in question as well as his own (allegedly close) personal connection to a prominent contemporary theologian:¹⁹³ Gregory of Nazianzus, a man who is very eloquent and well-versed in the Scriptures, when he would discuss this passage with me, was in the habit of saying: “Notice how weighty the mystery of this section is. When the Apostle interprets it in regard to Christ and the church, he does not assert that he has expressed it in a fashion demanded by the dignity of the testimony but says, in a manner of speaking: ‘I know that this passage is full of ineffable mysteries and requires a divine heart in the interpreter.’ ” Gregorius Nazianzenus, vir valde eloquens et in Scripturis adprime eruditus, cum de hoc mecum tractaret loco, solebat dicere: Vide quantum istius capituli sacramentum sit, ut apostolus in Christum illud et in ecclesiam interpretans, non se ita asserat ut testimonii postulabat dignitas expressisse, sed quodammodo dixerit: Scio quia locus iste ineffabilibus plenus sit sacramentis et divinum cor quaerat interpretis.¹⁹⁴

Another mystery which captures Jerome’s attention is the unseen warfare between angels and demons that Paul treats in Ephesians 6.¹⁹⁵ Already in his

Monarchy in Ephesians (Tübingen, 2011); C. Tilling, “Ephesians and Divine Christology,” in I. H. Marshall, V. Rabens, and C. Bennema (eds.), The Spirit of Christ in the New Testament and Christian Theology (Grand Rapids, 2012), 177–97. ¹⁹¹ Pieri, “L’esegesi di Girolamo,” lxxxvii–cxxxviii; Pieri, “Mit und nach Origenes: Über einige christologische Themen im Epheserbriefkommentar des Hieronymus,” in W. A. Bienart and U. Kühneweg (eds.), Origeniana septima: Origenes in den Auseinandersetzungen des 4. Jahrhunderts (Leuven, 1999), 623–31. ¹⁹² Cf. below, pp. 114–16. ¹⁹³ On Jerome’s association with Gregory, see A. Cain, Jerome and the Monastic Clergy: A Commentary on Letter 52 to Nepotian, with an Introduction, Text, and Translation (Leiden, 2013), 196–8. ¹⁹⁴ Comm. Eph. 5.32. ¹⁹⁵ Cf. A. Capone, “Principi, potenze a dominatori: Ambrosiaster e Gerolamo su Eph 6,12,” in A. Bergamo and L. Ingrosso (eds.), Intellectus enim merces est fidei: studi in onore di Luigi Manca (Bari, 2020), 43–59. This theme in Ephesians was appealing to other patristic authors as well. See J. Strawbridge, The Pauline Effect: The Use of the Pauline Epistles by Early Christian Writers (Berlin, 2015), 57–96; cf. . . Arnold, Ephesians: Power and Magic: The Concept of Power in Ephesians in Light of Its Historical Setting (Cambridge, 1989).

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first preface he had signaled his awareness of how significant this theme is for the epistle as a whole: We have repeated all these things to show why the Apostle gathered in this epistle in particular arcane ideas and mysteries unknown to the ages and taught about the dominion of sacred and hostile powers: who demons are, what they are capable of, what they previously were, and how they were overthrown and destroyed after Christ’s coming. Haec idcirco universa replicavimus, ut ostenderemus quare apostolus in hac vel potissimum epistula obscuros sensus et ignota saeculis sacramenta congesserit et de sanctarum contrariarumque virtutum docuerit potestate: qui sint daemones, quid valeant, quid ante fuerint et quomodo post adventum Christi sint diruti atque destructi.¹⁹⁶

Titus: Canonicity and Clerical Morals Completing Jerome’s quartet of Pauline commentaries is the one on Titus, which he composed last of all, prior to dispatching all four to Rome. The epistle to Titus, which is one of the three Pastoral Epistles alongside 1 & 2 Timothy, is believed by some modern scholars to be pseudonymously written.¹⁹⁷ In the early church, too, the Paulinity of all three was rejected by some, including Marcion, who excluded them from his Apostolikon,¹⁹⁸ and apparently also the Valentinians.¹⁹⁹ Such dissenters, however, seem to have been few and far between, for otherwise, at least in the mainstream church, there was widespread agreement that these three epistles comprise a subset of genuine Pauline writings.²⁰⁰

¹⁹⁶ Comm. Eph., lib. 1, prol. ll. 115–20. ¹⁹⁷ E.g., V. Hasler, Die Briefe an Timotheus und Titus (Zurich, 1978); A. T. Hanson, The Pastoral Epistles (Grand Rapids, 1982); T. L. Wilder, “Pseudonymity, the New Testament, and the Pastoral Epistles,” in A. Köstenberger and T. L. Wilder (eds.), Entrusted with the Gospel: Paul’s Theology in the Pastoral Epistles (Nashville, 2010), 28–51. For a useful overview of the authenticity debate and its implications for interpreting Titus, see P. Towner, The Letters to Timothy and Titus (Grand Rapids, 2006), 9–31. ¹⁹⁸ Tertullian, Adv. Marc. 5.21. ¹⁹⁹ Pagels, The Gnostic Paul, 115. But cf. R. W. Wall, 1 & 2 Timothy and Titus (Grand Rapids, 2012), 20, 21–2n38, for the suggestion that Valentinus was not even acquainted with the Pastoral Epistles. ²⁰⁰ For a summary of the evidence, see I. H. Marshall, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Pastoral Epistles (London, 2004), 2–8; cf. G. W. Knight, The Pastoral Epistles (Grand Rapids, 1992), 13–14; B. White, “How to Read a Book: Irenaeus and the Pastoral Epistles Reconsidered,” VChr 65 (2011): 125–49. On the interpretive tradition for Titus throughout the history of the church, see J. Twomey, The Pastoral Epistles through the Centuries (Malden, 2009), 189–225.

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Jerome’s preface to his commentary on Titus spans almost a page and a half in Bucchi’s critical edition. The second half is concerned with laying out the epistle’s occasion, but the first half is a response to those who deny its Pauline authorship (as well as the Paulinity of 1 & 2 Timothy and Hebrews,²⁰¹ which are mentioned in passing) and on that basis deem it unworthy of being included in the canon.²⁰² The first half of the preface runs as follows: Although those who have vitiated the pristine faith are not worthy of the faith²⁰³—I am talking about Marcion, Basilides, and all the heretics who tear to shreds the Old Testament—we nevertheless would tolerate them to some extent if they at least tied their own hands when it comes to the New Testament and did not dare to contaminate either the evangelists or apostles of Christ, the Son of the good God (as they outrageously call him). But now, since they have demolished his Gospels and have appropriated the apostles’ epistles as their very own, rather than accepting them as epistles of Christ’s apostles, I am amazed at how they dare to claim for themselves the name “Christian.” For to say nothing of the rest of the epistles, from which they erased anything they had seen that runs contrary to their teaching, they have believed that some of them ought to be rejected in their entirety, namely the ones to Timothy, Hebrews, and Titus, which we currently are attempting to expound. If they were to give reasons why they do not think that they are the Apostle’s, we would try to say something in reply and perhaps satisfy the reader. Now let them proclaim with heretical authority and say, “That epistle is Paul’s, this one is not.” Let them understand, as a matter of truth, that they are refuted by the very authority by which they themselves are not ashamed to make up falsehoods. But Tatian, patriarch of the Encratites, who himself also rejected some of Paul’s letters, believed that this one especially—the one to Titus, that is—ought to be declared to be the Apostle’s. Licet non sint digni fide qui fidem primam irritam fecerunt, Marcionem loquor et Basilidem et omnes haereticos qui vetus laniant testamentum, tamen eos aliqua ex parte ferremus, si saltem in novo continerent manus suas et non auderent Christi

²⁰¹ The vast majority of scholars today exclude Hebrews from the authentic Pauline corpus on stylistic and theological grounds. See, e.g., P. Ellingworth, The Epistle to the Hebrews: A Commentary on the Greek Text (Grand Rapids, 1993), 7–12. On the early reception history of Hebrews, see C. Rothschild, Hebrews as Pseudepigraphon: The History and Significance of the Pauline Attribution of Hebrews (Tübingen, 2009), 15–44; cf. R. A. Greer, The Captain of Our Salvation: A Study in the Patristic Exegesis of Hebrews (Tübingen, 1973); C. Grappe, “Hébreux et la tradition paulinienne,” in Schröter, Butticaz, and Dettwiler (eds.), Receptions of Paul, 461–83. ²⁰² By contrast, Theodore of Mopsuestia’s preface to his own commentary on Titus deals only with the historical background and occasion of the letter but does not touch on the authenticity debate. ²⁰³ Heresy as a negation of the true faith is a heresiological commonplace; see A. Le Boulluec, La notion d’hérésie dans la littérature grecque (IIe–IIIe siècles), 2 vols. (Paris, 1985), 1.184–6.

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(ut ipsi iactitant) boni Dei Filii vel evangelistas violare vel apostolos. Nunc vero cum et evangelia eius dissipaverint et apostolorum epistulas non apostolorum Christi fecerint esse sed proprias, miror quomodo sibi christianorum nomen audeant vindicare. Vt enim de ceteris epistulis taceam, de quibus quidquid contrarium suo dogmati viderant eraserunt, nonnullas integras repudiandas crediderunt: ad Timotheum videlicet utramque et ad Hebraeos et ad Titum quam nunc conamur exponere. Siquidem redderent causas cur eas apostoli non putarent, temptaremus aliquid respondere et forsitan satisfacere lectori. Nunc vero cum haeretica auctoritate pronuntient et dicant: Illa epistula Pauli est, haec non est, ea auctoritate refelli se pro veritate intellegant qua ipsi non erubescunt falsa simulare. Sed Tatianus, Encratitarum patriarches, qui et ipse nonnullas Pauli epistulas repudiavit, hanc vel maxime, hoc est ad Titum, apostoli pronuntiandam credidit.²⁰⁴

Jerome names Marcion and Basilides as the prime offenders, and in coupling them here he probably is taking his cue from Origen, who had enshrined these two along with Valentinus in his triumvirate of archetypal heretics,²⁰⁵ and who probably named them in the preface to his own commentary on Titus, which Jerome almost certainly used as the model for his own. Unlike in the Philemon preface, Jerome does not rebut any specific arguments made against the canonicity of the Pastoral Epistles and Hebrews because, he says, none of the skeptics has bothered to advance any such arguments; each one simply has rejected them with his own arbitrary and reckless ipse dixi. He then states that even Tatian, whom he places firmly in the heretical camp by calling him the patriarches of the Encratite sect, insisted that this epistle’s canon status be accepted even though he rejected other Pauline epistles.²⁰⁶ Thus, just as he does in the Philemon preface where he ridicules critics of that epistle by adducing Marcion’s acceptance of it, so too here he fights fire with fire—or heretics with heretics. From this tone-setting preface we may deduce that one of Jerome’s reasons for undertaking a commentary on Titus was to give himself a platform for delivering, in its preface, his own ipse dixi about its canonicity, and, after formally reclaiming it as an authentic Pauline work, to reify this reclamation through a commentary that concretely demonstrates the epistle’s utility as a tool of Christian edification. Titus does in fact lend itself to practical application, more so in fact than many letters in the Pauline ambit, because its author has a straightforwardly pragmatic

²⁰⁴ Comm. Tit., prol. ll. 1–20. ²⁰⁵ Le Boulluec, La notion d’hérésie, 2.550; J. Lieu, Marcion and the Making of a Heretic: God and Scripture in the Second Century (Cambridge, 2015), 136. ²⁰⁶ The evidence for Tatian’s firsthand familiarity with and use of the Pastoral Epistles is inconclusive; see E. Hunt, Christianity in the Second Century: The Case of Tatian (London, 2003), 44–5. Cf. R. Grant, “Tatian and the Bible,” StudPatr 1 (1955): 297–306.

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aim: to prescribe how church elders should conduct themselves both privately and publicly as ministers of the Gospel.²⁰⁷ Given its subject matter, this epistle is rife with interpretive possibilities in the hands of an ascetically minded commentator like Jerome, and, as we will see in Chapter 4, commenting on it afforded him the opportunity to articulate his vision of a monastic clergy.

²⁰⁷ Cf. Pelagius, Exp. Tit., prol.: Titum discipulum suum episcopum, quem commonet et instruit de constitutione presbyterii et de spiritali conversatione . . . ; Theodore of Mopsuestia, Comm. Tit., prol.: Scribit ergo ad eum, ut compendiose dicam, de ordinatione facienda, instruens eum quemadmodum conveniat ipsas facere ordinationes; simul et de ceteris omnibus consilium ei tribuit, et docens qualiter de singulis agere oporteat eum (Greer, Theodore of Mopsuestia, 738).

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2 The Prefaces Patronage, Polemic, and Apology

As a minor literary genre unto itself, the preface to the early Christian biblical commentary followed a predictable script in that it conventionally was devoted to isagogical matters: identifying a given biblical book’s provenance and occasion, outlining its contents, and summarizing its theological themes and arguments.¹ This is the template followed by the rest of Jerome’s Latin cohort of Pauline exegetes, who themselves preferred short and unadorned expository prefaces that deal exclusively with the biblical book at hand.² Jerome’s Pauline prefaces number eight in all—three each for Galatians and Ephesians, and one each for Titus and Philemon—and they vary widely in length and subject matter. In four of these he keeps to the traditional script in delivering only epistle-related content (Phil., Tit., Gal. 2, Eph. 3). In two others he dispenses with the expository preface in favor of an open-ended one which affords him the latitude to address topics other than the content of the epistle under investigation (Gal. 3, Eph. 2). The remaining two prefaces contain a mixture of expository and non-expository elements (Gal. 1, Eph. 1). This chapter scrutinizes the four prefaces that are either partly or wholly non-expository and explores their performative dimensions, arguing that Jerome choreographs his rhetorical self-presentation in them so as to consolidate support from key literary patrons, to respond preemptively to critics of his work, and generally to smooth the path of reception for his opus Paulinum.³

¹ M. Skeb, Exegese und Lebensform: Die Proömien der antiken griechischen Bibelkommentare (Leiden, 2007); D. Ciarlo, “I prologhi nei commenti patristici ai Profeti tra quarto e quinto secolo,” Augustinianum 52 (2012): 383–416; cf. I. Hadot, “Les introductions aux commentaires exégétiques chez les auteurs néoplatoniciens et les auteurs chrétiens,” in M. Tardieu (ed.), Les règles de l’interprétation (Paris, 1987), 99–122. See also more generally J. Mansfeld, Prolegomena: Questions to Be Settled before the Study of an Author or a Text (Leiden, 1994). ² S. Lunn-Rockliffe, “Prologue Topics and Translation Problems in Latin Commentaries on Paul,” in J. Lössl and J. Watt (eds.), Interpreting the Bible and Aristotle in Late Antiquity: The Alexandrian Commentary Tradition between Rome and Baghdad (Aldershot, 2011), 33–47. ³ Most of these concerns underlie other prefaces to his biblical scholarship. See A. Cain, “Apology and Polemic in Jerome’s Prefaces to his Biblical Scholarship,” in E. Birnbaum and L. SchwienhorstSchönberger (eds.), Hieronymus als Exeget und Theologe: Der Koheletkommentar (Leuven, 2014), 107–28.

Jerome’s Commentaries on the Pauline Epistles and the Architecture of Exegetical Authority. Andrew Cain, Oxford University Press. © Andrew Cain 2021. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192847195.003.0003

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 ’      

The Art of the Preface The more sophisticated among ancient Greek and Latin authors did not regard the prefaces to their prose or poetry simply as incidental preludes to the ensuing works but rather as platforms for literary artifice.⁴ Jerome was no different. Indeed, remaining ever aware (or at least hopeful) that his writings would reach an indefinitely broad audience,⁵ he crafted their prefaces to be tours de force in their own right,⁶ studding them with literary features of various kinds. For instance, references to classical literature abound.⁷ Thus in the short preface to Book 14 of his Ezekiel commentary he quotes seven lines from three different passages in the Aeneid, and at the beginning of the preface to Book 3 of the same commentary (ll. 5–7) he couples sententiae by Sallust (Omnia quae orta occidunt et aucta senescunt⁸) and Cicero (Nihil est enim opere et manu factum quod non conficiat et consumat vetustas⁹) in order to give a distinctly classical air to his somber reflection about Alaric’s recent siege of Rome. Jerome’s flair for verbal wit is evident throughout his prefaces.¹⁰ A fine example is the opening sentence of the preface to his Pentateuch translation, a work he dedicated to his literary patron Desiderius: “I have received the letters I desired from my Desiderius—who by some prophetic sign has shared a name with Daniel—imploring that I hand over to the ears of our [fellow Latin-speakers] the Pentateuch translated from Hebrew into Latin.”¹¹ In a move meant

⁴ See, e.g., Z. Pavlovskis, “From Statius to Ennodius: A Brief History of Prose Prefaces to Poems,” RIL 101 (1967): 535–67; C. W. Macleod, “The Preface to Gregory of Nyssa’s Life of Moses,” JThS n.s. 33 (1982): 183–91; G. R. Knight, “Ausonius to Axius Paulus: Metapoetics and the Bissula,” RhM 149 (2006): 369–85; G. Halsall, “The Preface to Book V of Gregory of Tours’ Histories: Its Form, Context and Significance,” EHR 122 (2007): 297–317; P. van Nuffelen, Orosius and the Rhetoric of History (Oxford, 2012), 24–44; A. Pelttari, The Space that Remains: Reading of Latin Poetry in Late Antiquity (Ithaca, NY, 2014), 45–72. See also the collected essays in C. Santini and N. Scivoletto (eds.), Prefazioni, prologhi, proemi di opere tecnico-scientifiche latine, vol. 1 (Rome, 1990). ⁵ See, e.g., Comm. Es., lib. 11, prol. ll. 1–4; Comm. Hiez., lib. 7, prol. ll. 1–2; Prol. in Dan. ll. 51–4. ⁶ As a general rule, Jerome composed his prefaces after the writings themselves, though occasionally he wrote them first (see Comm. Hier., lib. 3, prol. l. 4; Comm. Mic., lib. 1, prol. l. 1; lib. 2, prol. ll. 238–9; Comm. Os., lib. 2, prol. ll. 185–7; Comm. Soph., prol. l. 1; Comm. Mal., prol. ll. 1–2). On his nomenclature for prefaces, see D. Viellard, “De la dénomination des textes liminaires chez les auteurs latins des IVe et Ve siècles et chez Jérôme en particulier,” in B. Bureau and C. Nicolas (eds.), Commencer et finir: débuts et fins dans les littératures grecque, latine et néolatine, 2 vols. (Paris, 2008), 2.123–34. ⁷ See, e.g., W. Stade, Hieronymus in prooemiis quid tractaverit et quos auctores quasque leges rhetoricas secutus sit (Rostock, 1925), 92–9; N. Adkin, “Cicero’s Orator and Jerome,” VChr 51 (1997): 25–39; Adkin, “The Classics and Jerome’s Prefaces to the Biblical Translations ‘From the Hebrew’,” Helmántica 60 (2009): 167–75. ⁸ Bell. Iug. 2.3. ⁹ Pro Marc. 11. ¹⁰ Cf. J. Hritzu, The Style of the Letters of St. Jerome (Washington, D.C., 1939). ¹¹ Desiderii mei desideratas accepi epistulas, qui quodam praesagio futurorum cum Danihele sortitus est nomen, obsecrantis ut translatum in Latinam linguam de Hebraeo sermone Pentateuchum nostrorum auribus traderem (Prol. in Pent. ll. 1–3). On Desiderius, who also is the recipient of Jerome’s Ep. 47, see S. Rebenich, Hieronymus und sein Kreis: Prosopographische und sozialgeschichtliche Untersuchungen (Stuttgart, 1992), 261–3.

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simultaneously to flatter his dedicatee and to display his own Hebrew learning, he makes a paronomasiac pun on Desiderius’s name (Desiderii . . . desideratas) that links him typologically to the Hebrew prophet Daniel, who in [Vulg.] Dan. 9.23 is called vir desideriorum.¹² Jerome’s prefaces are replete with traditional exordial topoi which he consistently invokes and thereby maintains a certain solidarity with Latin literary culture across the ages. Two of these deserve special mention here because they are among his favorite devices. Long before his time, authors had invoked the lucubratio motif to demonstrate their literary diligence by appealing to “a popular conception of men of learning sitting at night and working by candlelight when the rest of the world was asleep.”¹³ Jerome also deploys it to project the image of an indefatigable scholar. Thus he claims to have composed his commentary on Obadiah in two short nights (ad duas lucubratiunculas)¹⁴ and to have dictated his translation of the apocryphal book Judith in one short night (una lucubratiuncula).¹⁵ Moreover, in the Latin literary tradition extending from classical times down through the Renaissance, authors routinely appeal in their prefaces to the proverbial perils inherent in (premodern) sea travel in order to give a sense of the vastness of the topic before them.¹⁶ Jerome was fond of seafaring metaphors in general and employed them frequently in his works,¹⁷ gracing many of his prefaces with them.¹⁸ In fact, over half of the preface to Book 13 of his Isaiah commentary is an elaboration on this metaphor.¹⁹ ¹² This etymological pun is tenuous because the name Daniel (‫ )דניאל‬means something more akin to “he who delivers judgment in the name of God;” see W. Gesenius, Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament Scriptures, trans. S. P. Tregelles (Grand Rapids, 1979), #1840. ¹³ T. Janson, Latin Prose Prefaces: Studies in Literary Conventions (Stockholm, 1964), 97. Cf. J. Ker, “Nocturnal Writers in Imperial Rome: The Culture of lucubratio,” CPh 99 (2004): 209–42. ¹⁴ Comm. Abd., prol. l. 7. ¹⁵ Prol. in Iud. l. 6. In both above-cited examples, he uses the diminutive lucubratiuncula rather than the more standard lucubratio in order to impress readers that he accomplished these impressive feats of exegesis and translation in an unusually short time. ¹⁶ E. R. Curtius, Europaïsche Literatur und lateinisches Mittelalter (Bern, 1948), 136–8. Cf. John Cassian, Coll., prol.: Mihi nunc in portu silentii constituto inmensum pelagus aperitur. Nautical imagery was used also to capture the vagaries of life; see H. Rondet, “Le symbolisme de la mer chez saint Augustin,” in Augustinus Magister: congrès international augustinien, Paris, 21–24 septembre 1954, vol. 2 (Paris, 1954), 691–711; B. McGinn, “Ocean and Desert as Symbols of Mystical Absorption in the Christian Tradition,” JR 74 (1994): 155–81. ¹⁷ L. M. Kaiser, “Imagery of Sea and Ship in the Letters of St. Jerome,” Folia 5 (1951): 56–60; J. W. Smit, Studies on the Language and Style of Columba the Younger (Columbanus) (Amsterdam, 1971), 172–89; G. J. M. Bartelink, Hieronymus: Liber de optimo genere interpretandi (Epistula 57): Ein Kommentar (Leiden, 1980), 112–13. ¹⁸ E.g., Comm. Hiez., lib. 12, prol. ll. 14–16; Comm. Os., lib. 3, prol. ll. 148–52; Comm. Abd., prol. ll. 62–5. ¹⁹ Multi casus opprimunt navigantes. Si vehementior flaverit ventus, tempestas formidini est. Si aura moderatior summa iacentis elementi terga crispaverit, piratarum insidias pertimescunt. Atque ita fit, ut fragili animae ligno creditae, aut metuant periculum, aut sustineant, quorum utrumque altero gravius est, vel mortem timere perpetuo, vel quam timueris sustinere. Hoc mihi in Esaiae pelago naviganti accidere video; dum enim inoffenso cursu vela tenduntur, et securis nautarum manibus, sulcans aequoris campos carina delabitur, subitus languoris turbo consurgens, tantis undarum molibus et collisorum inter se fluctuum fragore resonante, pavida amicorum corda perterruit, ut dicere cogerentur: magister, salvos nos fac, perimus (Comm. Es., lib. 13, prol. ll. 1–13).

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 ’      

In a great many of his prefaces Jerome allots at least some space to personalized tasks such as thanking his dedicatees for their financial support and soliciting their continued patronage,²⁰ publicizing his own literary virtuosity,²¹ announcing future scholarly projects,²² and dressing down contemporary rivals.²³ Most often he uses his prefaces for a combination of apology and polemic in justifying his biblical scholarship, typically in the context of airing grievances against critics both real and imagined.²⁴ For example, in numerous prefaces he defends his appropriation of the writings of Christian authors such as Origen²⁵ and Eusebius of Caesarea.²⁶ A case in point is the opening of the prologue to his Hebrew Questions on Genesis (Quaestiones Hebraicae in Genesim): I, who used to have to lay out in my books’ prefaces the themes of the ensuing work, am forced first to reply to abuses, upholding something of the position of Terence, who in self-defense put the prologues of his comedies on stage. For Luscius Lanuvinus, who is like our Luscius, used to press him and accuse him of being basically a poet-thief of the public treasury. Qui in principiis librorum debebam secuturi operis argumenta proponere, cogor prius respondere maledictis, Terentii quippiam sustinens, qui comoediarum prologos in defensionem sui scenis dabat. Vrguebat enim eum Luscius Lanuvinus, nostro Luscio similis, et quasi publici aerarii poetam furem criminabatur.²⁷

This critic, whose identity is unknown,²⁸ alleged that Jerome had plagiarized others,²⁹ and Jerome in turn typecasts him as a modern-day counterpart to the ²⁰ In the prologue to his Vulgate translation of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Songs, which he dedicated to bishops Heliodorus and Chromatius, he gratefully acknowledges their financial assistance and then angles for ongoing patronage by emphasizing that he prioritized their request despite being bombarded by other literary commissions. Cf. Jerome, Comm. Es., lib. 10, prol. ll. 14–22; Comm. Zach., lib. 1, prol. ll. 40–3. ²¹ E.g., he aims to impress readers with his productivity by opening the preface to his commentary on Jonah (Comm. Ion., prol. ll. 1–8) with a bibliography of the diverse works he had composed in the previous three years. ²² Comm. Hiez., lib. 1, prol. ll. 30–1; lib. 11, prol. ll. 4–5; lib. 14, prol. ll. 21–6; Comm. Mt., prol. ll. 104–10; V. Mal. 1.3. ²³ Stade, Hieronymus, 60–7; P. Antin, “Rufin et Pélage dans Jérôme, Prologue 1 In Hieremiam,” Latomus 22 (1963): 792–4. ²⁴ See, e.g., Comm. Ion., prol. ll. 20–4; Comm. Es., lib. 2, prol. ll. 18–20; lib. 9, prol. ll. 1–12; Comm. Hiez., lib. 6, prol. ll. 1–13; lib. 13, prol. ll. 13–20; cf. P. E. Arns, La technique du livre d’après saint Jérôme (Paris, 1953), 113; M. E. Schild, “Leading Motifs in Some Western Bible Prologues,” JRH 7 (1972): 91–109 (93); S. Müller-Abels, “Hieronymus, Prologue zu den Kommentaren zum Zwölfprophetenbuch: Exegese und Rhetorik,” StudPatr 33 (1997): 345–51; D. Ciarlo, “Sui prologhi alle traduzioni bibliche di Girolamo,” Koinonia 33 (2009): 27–45; Cain, “Apology and Polemic in Jerome’s Prefaces.” ²⁵ M. Schatkin, “The Influence of Origen upon St. Jerome’s Commentary on Galatians,” VChr 24 (1970): 49–58. ²⁶ M. J. Hollerich, Eusebius of Caesarea’s Commentary on Isaiah (Oxford, 1999), 56–7. ²⁷ Quaest. Heb. Gen., prol. ll. 1–7. ²⁸ C. T. R. Hayward, Jerome’s Hebrew Questions on Genesis: Translated with an Introduction and Commentary (Oxford, 1995), 88; S. Rebenich, Jerome (London, 2002), 188. ²⁹ On his self-defense against accusations of plagiarism, see R. Layton, “Plagiarism and Lay Patronage of Ascetic Scholarship: Jerome, Ambrose and Rufinus,” JECS 10 (2002): 489–522.

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comic playwright Luscius Lanuvinus,³⁰ who had accused his contemporary rival Terence of contaminatio, the literary “crime” of using elements from more than one Greek play to make one comedy of his own (as opposed to modeling a given comedy exclusively on a single Greek play).³¹ In the process, Jerome implicitly figures himself as another Terence.³² In the preface to Book 2 of his commentary on Micah, Jerome adopts the same apologetic-satiric approach to lash out at unnamed critics who claimed that he plagiarized the exegetical works of Origen: I warn the fat bulls that have surrounded me to keep quiet and stop slandering, lest they be made aware of their misdeeds (Andr. 22–3), which will be publicly disclosed if they persist in their attacks (Eun. 18). For they say that I plunder the books of Origen and that adapting others’ writings is improper (Andr. 16). What they regard as a serious reproach, I take as the greatest praise, since I desire to imitate that man, whom I do not doubt finds favor with all who have good sense and with you as well (cf. Adelph. 17–19). If it is a crime to translate the Greek’s praiseworthy writings, let Ennius, Virgil, Plautus (cf. Andr. 18–19), Caecilius, Terence, and also Cicero and other eloquent men stand accused for translating not only verses, but many book-sections and very long books and entire plays . . . I choose to imitate the carelessness of all of these men rather than the dreary pedantry of those [critics] (Andr. 20–1). Moneo autem tauros pingues, qui circumdederunt me, ut quiescant et desinant maledicere, malefacta ne noscant sua (Andr. 22–3), quae proferentur post, si pergent laedere (Eun. 18). Nam quod dicunt, Origenis me volumina compilare, et contaminari non decere (Andr. 16) veterum scripta, quod illi maledictum vehemens esse existimant, eandem laudem ego maximam duco, cum illum imitari volo, quem cunctis prudentibus, et vobis placere non dubito (cf. Adelph. 17–19). Si enim criminis est Graecorum benedicta transferre, accusentur Ennius et Maro, Plautus (cf. Andr. 18–19: Plautum, Ennium accusant), Caecilius et Terentius, Tullius quoque et ceteri eloquentes viri, qui non solum versus, sed multa capita et

³⁰ C. Garton, Personal Aspects of the Roman Theatre (Toronto, 1972), 41–139. ³¹ On their professional rivalry, see G. E. Duckworth, The Nature of Roman Comedy: A Study in Popular Entertainment (Princeton, 1952), 61–5; K. Dér, “Terence and Luscius Lanuvinus,” AAntHung 32 (1989): 283–97; M. Stein, “Der Dichter und sein Kritiker: Interpretationsprobleme im Prolog des Terenzischen Eunuchus,” RhM 146 (2003): 184–217. For some analyses of Terence’s practice of contaminatio, see A. J. Brothers, “The Construction of Terence’s Heautontimorumenos,” CQ n.s. 30 (1980): 94–119; E. Fantham, “Heautontimorumenos and Adelphoe: A Study of Fatherhood in Terence and Menander,” Latomus 30 (1971): 970–98; J. Pucci, The Full-Knowing Reader: Allusion and the Power of the Reader in the Western Literary Tradition (New Haven, 1998), 95–9. See also S. McGill, Plagiarism in Latin Literature (Cambridge, 2012), 115–45. ³² Cf. Comm. Es., lib. 12, prol. l. 9, where Jerome similarly alludes to Rufinus as Luscius Lanuvinus and to himself as a latter-day Terence. Jerome was fond of likening himself to great figures of the literary (and biblical) past. See, e.g., A. Cain, The Letters of Jerome: Asceticism, Biblical Exegesis, and the Construction of Christian Authority in Late Antiquity (Oxford, 2009), 192–3.

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 ’       longissimos libros ac fabulas integras transtulerunt . . . quorum omnium aemulari exopto neglegentiam, potius quam istorum obscuram diligentiam (Andr. 20–1).³³

As is clear from the underscored references, this portion of the preface is a densely packed pastiche of (unattributed) Terentianisms.³⁴ Ironically, by passing off Terence’s words essentially as his own, Jerome responds to plagiarism allegations through plagiarism. Yet, he is co-opting more than just the playwright’s words; he takes over his polemical persona wholesale and fuses it seamlessly with his own. Thus, in order to give his own controversial labors an air of legitimacy Jerome yokes them with those of Terence. By way of a finishing touch, he explicitly inducts himself into a literary hall of fame that includes bona fide immortals of Latin literature such as Cicero, Virgil, and, above all, Terence. He thereby insinuates that his own critics are fated to be villains—and anonymous villains at that— for all time to come, for Jerome, like Terence before him, refrains from actually naming them and thereby legitimizing them any more than is necessary. They will live on in infamy, to be sure, yet posterity will not even know their names. In the two prefaces just examined, Jerome adopts the literary persona of a novus Terentius in order to fortify himself against accusations of plagiarism and to vilify his unnamed detractors as insignificant, petty rivals who are doomed to the same fate of obscurity that befell Terence’s arch-critic Luscius Lanuvinus.³⁵ His apologetic tactic is bold and even brilliant, not simply because he was comparing himself implicitly to a noted dramatist of the late Republic but, more to the point, because he was patterning himself after an author who by the late fourth century had come to be enshrined along with Virgil, Cicero, and Sallust as one of the four canonical Latin authors who dominated the late Roman scholastic syllabus.³⁶ Every schoolboy in Jerome’s day who was educated in the Latinspeaking western empire intensively studied Terence’s dramatic corpus in the classroom and was culturally programmed to revere his works as being among the great books of Roman civilization.³⁷ Jerome, then, in a very real sense was

³³ Comm. Mic., lib. 2, prol. ll. 223–34, 237–8. ³⁴ On Jerome’s appropriation of Terentian locutions in his works, see A. Cain, “Two Allusions to Terence, Eunuchus 579 in Jerome,” CQ n.s. 63 (2013): 1–6. ³⁵ The late Republican literary critic Volcacius Sedigitus considered Lanuvinus a minor dramatist, ranking him ninth in his list of ten comic playwrights in Latin (Aulus Gellius, Noct. Att. 15.24). An even more telling index of his lack of popularity in posterity is that his two known plays survive only in title (Thesaurus and Phasma), except for two fragments. For speculation about other plays he may have written, see C. Garton, “Luscius Lanuvinus: The Unnamed Plays,” Latomus 31 (1972): 146–53. ³⁶ This elite quartet formed what Cassiodorus (Inst. 1.15.7) later dubbed “Messius’s four-horse chariot” (quadriga Messii), after the rhetorician Arusianus Messius, who in his Exempla elocutionum ex Vergilio, Sallustio, Terentio, Cicerone digesta per litteras (395)—a grammatical handbook listing nouns, adjectives, verbs, and prepositions with multiple constructions—drew his examples from their works. On the nature of education in the late Roman empire, see S. F. Bonner, Education in Ancient Rome from the Elder Cato to the Younger Pliny (Berkeley, 1977). ³⁷ A. Cain, “Terence in Late Antiquity,” in A. Augoustakis and A. Traill (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Terence (Oxford, 2013), 380–96.

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attempting to write himself into the collective consciousness of the burgeoning Christian literary tradition as a figure who commanded authority on a par with that commanded by Terence in the secular literary tradition. Jerome’s self-identification with Terence is significant for another reason. Terence made the unprecedented move of rejecting the expository prologue, which had been a staple of western drama since the days of Euripides, and unfolded the plot throughout the play rather than reveal it all at a glance in the prologue. He reserved the prologus instead for responding to criticisms leveled against him by rivals and for capturing the goodwill of his audience.³⁸ Whereas previous playwrights on occasion had dispensed with the expository prologue, Terence evidently was the first one to eliminate it from all of his works.³⁹ Likewise, Jerome is the first Latin biblical commentator on record to use the preface for sometimes exclusively non-expository purposes. What is more, his explicit citing of Terence’s idiosyncratic practice in two different prefaces in which he conspicuously follows this very practice strongly suggests that he took the playwright as the principal model for his own prefatory custom.

Destination: Rome Jerome composed his four Pauline commentaries in Bethlehem, yet it is clear from occasional nostalgic references to Rome in them,⁴⁰ and especially in their prefaces, that his recent former base of operations was still very much on his mind.⁴¹ Let us consider his second Ephesians preface, which is notable for its brevity (it is the shortest of all eight prefaces) but even more so for the fact that it contains nothing related to Ephesians. The first few lines of it read: Thanks to your prayers, Paula and Eustochium, we take up the second book [of the commentary] to the Ephesians, being about to send new little gifts to Rome as well. It is not because the council of the learned deigns to read them and to add them to the libraries of the ancients, but because holy Marcella insistently demands through her letters that this very thing be done.

³⁸ P. Salat, “Le prologue de l’Heautontimoroumenos,” ALMA 5 (1978): 61–6. ³⁹ R. H. Martin, Terence: Phormio (London, 1959), 83. Cf. B. Dunsch, “Prologue(s) and Prologi,” in M. Fontaine and A. Scafuro (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Greek and Roman Comedy (Oxford, 2013), 498–515. ⁴⁰ He informs readers about his longstanding personal connection to Rome through passing mentions of his time there in his youth as a student (Comm. Gal. 2.11–13) and in his adulthood as scholar and ascetic (Comm. Gal. 1.19). ⁴¹ Cf. A. Cain, “Polemic, Patronage and Memories of Rome in the Prefaces to Jerome’s Pauline Commentaries,” in I. Schaaf (ed.), Hieronymus Romanus: Studies on Jerome and Rome on the Occasion of the 1600th Anniversary of his Death (Turnhout, 2021), 484–508.

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 ’       Secundum orationibus vestris, o Paula et Eustochium, ad Ephesios adgredimur librum nova Romam quoque munuscula transmissuri. Non quo haec dignetur legere doctorum senatus et bibliothecis veterum adscribere, sed quo sancta Marcella idipsum fieri per epistulas flagitet.⁴²

For the only time in his Pauline prefaces Jerome explicitly voices his intention to dispatch his commentaries to Rome, thereby indicating that he was not writing them solely for a closed audience in Bethlehem. Although Paula and Eustochium are the commentaries’ ostensible dedicatees, and therefore by definition their presumptive commissioners, Jerome names Marcella as a virtual honorary dedicatee because she had insisted on receiving a copy of the finished product.⁴³ For added effect he dramatizes her insistence through the strong verb flagitare, which he postpones to the end of the period for emphasis, and he implies by the vague plural epistulae that she communicated her ongoing request through an indefinitely large number of letters.⁴⁴ He also plays the part of gracious cliens in characterizing the commentaries on offer to her as “new little gifts,” nova munuscula, with the diminutive here expressing self-depreciation but also affection.⁴⁵ Jerome takes this opportunity to reaffirm their client-patron relationship and to link Marcella’s name to his commentaries,⁴⁶ meaning in effect that she has an implied obligation to facilitate their dissemination and also to do what she can to secure a favorable reception for them once they reach Italy’s shores.⁴⁷ In the same breath he brings up the doctorum senatus, his sardonic epithet for his critics within the Roman clerical establishment.⁴⁸ These people, he predicts, will snub his commentaries and refuse to give them a place among the bibliothecae veterum, ⁴² Comm. Eph., lib. 2, prol. ll. 1–5. ⁴³ On Jerome’s relations with his aristocratic patrons, see Rebenich, Hieronymus und sein Kreis; C. Krumeich, Hieronymus und die christlichen feminae clarissimae (Bonn, 1993); B. Feichtinger, Apostolae apostolorum: Frauenaskese als Befreiung und Zwang bei Hieronymus (Frankfurt am Main, 1995); S. Letsch-Brunner, Marcella: Discipula et Magistra: Auf den Spuren einer römischen Christin des 4. Jahrhunderts (Berlin, 1997); A. Cain, Jerome’s Epitaph on Paula: A Commentary on the Epitaphium Sanctae Paulae, with an Introduction, Text, and Translation (Oxford, 2013). ⁴⁴ Cf. Jerome, Comm. Es., lib. 10, prol. ll. 16–18: Pammachio, qui insatiabili studio me per litteras cogit, expleto Esaia, transire ad Hiezechiel. ⁴⁵ Jerome refers to his writings as munuscula in other places as well (e.g., Ep. 10.3.3; Comm. Zach., lib. 1, prol. l. 20); cf. A. Cain, Jerome and the Monastic Clergy: A Commentary on Letter 52 to Nepotian, with an Introduction, Text, and Translation (Leiden, 2013), 149. On his use of diminutives, see further H. Goelzer, Étude lexicographique et grammaticale de la latinité de saint Jérôme (Paris, 1884), 121–30. ⁴⁶ Cf. M. Vessey, “Jerome’s Origen: The Making of a Christian Literary Persona,” StudPatr 28 (1993): 135–45; Cain, The Letters of Jerome, 68–98. ⁴⁷ For this kind of implied obligation, see Janson, Latin Prose Prefaces, 124, and for Jerome’s reliance on monied and well-connected patrons to ensure that his scholarly enterprises would see the light of day, see M. H. Williams, The Monk and the Book: Jerome and the Making of Christian Scholarship (Chicago, 2006), 233–60. ⁴⁸ The following year (387) Jerome was still harboring ill will against them and in the preface to his translation of Didymus’s On the Holy Spirit called them the Pharisaeorum senatus; see L. Doutreleau (ed.), Didyme l’Aveugle: Traité du Saint-Esprit: introduction, texte critique, traduction, notes et index (Paris, 1992), 136. On this epithet, see A. Cain, “Origen, Jerome, and the senatus Pharisaeorum,” Latomus 65 (2006): 727–34.

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or “libraries of the ancients.” By the substantive veteres he presumably means Christian authors who came before him,⁴⁹ and the word bibliothecae denotes either (literally) housed collections of manuscripts of their works,⁵⁰ or (figuratively) their collective writings as a conceptual corpus.⁵¹ This bleak forecast is a veiled suggestion that his commentaries in fact do belong among the Christian literary classics, and his critics’ failure to recognize their merits is in turn an indictment of their own lack of learning, as he insinuates by referring to them ironically as docti.⁵² In the first Ephesians preface Jerome again appeals to his literary patrons’ protective instinct in alleging that his Roman critics will accuse him of writing stylistically deficient prose and of mistranslating Greek words: I implore both you who are here and holy Marcella, unparalleled model of widowhood, not to hand over willingly my little works to slanderous and envious people, nor to give what is holy to the dogs and to cast pearls before swine (cf. Mt. 7.6). Because they cannot imitate good things, such people harbor envy—this is all they are capable of doing—and they fancy themselves clever and learned if they disparage others. I implore you to answer them. Let them put pen to paper.⁵³ Let them connect three words, as the saying goes.⁵⁴ Let them exert a little effort. Let them put themselves to the test and learn from their own hard work to go easy on those who do hard work. For you yourselves know that you have compelled me, who was unwilling and reluctant, to undertake this work of interpretation. Obsecro tam vos quae impraesentiarum estis, quam sanctam Marcellam, unicum viduitatis exemplar, ne facile maledicis et invidis opuscula mea tradatis neve detis sanctum canibus et margaritas mittatis ante porcos, qui cum bona imitari non queant, quod solum facere possunt invident et in eo se doctos eruditosque arbitrantur, si de aliis detrahant. Quibus obsecro ut respondeatis: figant ipsi stylum, tria ut dicitur verba coniungant, sudent paululum, experiantur semetipsos et ex

⁴⁹ Cf. Jerome, Ep. 105.5.2; Vir. ill. 10.1; Comm. Abd. 20–1. ⁵⁰ Cf. the bibliothecae ecclesiarum he mentions in Epp. 48.3.3, 112.19.2. ⁵¹ Jerome sometimes speaks of Scripture as a bibliotheca of sacred writings (Epp. 5.2.4, 34.1.1, 60.10.9; Vir. ill. 81.1), and on one occasion he describes in sweeping terms the entire corpus of ancient Greek literature as Graecorum bibliotheca (Ep. 70.3.3). ⁵² Cf. Comm. Mt., prol. ll. 115–19, where he expresses concern that docti critics in Rome will pan his commentary on Matthew for its incomptus sermo. Elsewhere he also has doctus refer pejoratively to people who are arrogant about their erudition; see, for example, Comm. Eph., lib. 1, prol. l. 38; Comm. Os., lib. 2, prol. l. 176. In Ep. 48.3.1 he uses sciolus in the same sense. ⁵³ Figant ipsi stylum. Jerome was rather fond of the expression stilum figere; see also Ep. adv. Ruf. 34; Epp. 50.5.2, 108.32.1. ⁵⁴ Jerome brackets tria verba coniungant as a proverbial saying (ut dicitur). It is attested in two earlier authors in the slightly modified form tria verba iungere (Seneca, Ep. 40.9; Martial, Epig. 6.54.2).

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 ’       labore proprio discant ignoscere laborantibus. Scitis enim et ipsae quod ad hoc me explanationum opus invitum et retractantem compuleritis.⁵⁵

Having acquitted himself before would-be critics of his Pauline exegesis, Jerome now enlists his patrons Paula and Eustochium (the ostensible dedicatees of the commentaries) as well as Marcella as his literary agents. But for all practical purposes, he is pleading his case not so much to Paula and Eustochium, who are by his side in Bethlehem (vos quae impraesentiarum estis⁵⁶), as he is to Marcella, on whom he counted to be—as indeed she turned out to be—one of his most strategically important ideological allies in Rome during his Bethlehem years.⁵⁷ First of all, he refers to his commentaries as opuscula mea. Ancient authors often characterized their literary works with diminutives such as opusculum as a conventional display of authorial modesty.⁵⁸ In this case Jerome does likewise,⁵⁹ but he also exploits the diminutive sense to evoke sympathy, underscoring the smallness and vulnerability of his commentaries in the face of aggressive critics who stand ready to eviscerate them. Additionally, he dotes on Marcella with asceticizing honorifics. He calls her sancta,⁶⁰ thereby situating her conceptually among the spiritual elite of Christianity. To further contrast her exemplary holiness with the godlessness of his critics, he dubs her unicum viduitatis exemplar,⁶¹ an epithet meant to celebrate the fact that she refused to remarry after her husband had died seven months into their marriage. Jerome de-weaponizes his detractors’ anticipated faultfinding by attributing it to envy (invidis; invident), a common complaint of his.⁶² In the same breath he ⁵⁵ Comm. Eph., lib. 1, prol. ll. 33–43. ⁵⁶ The phrase in praesentiarum (printed here as impraesentiarum) in most cases can be rendered as “at the present moment” or “in the present circumstances,” but here it has the additional connotation of spatial proximity. It is attested as early as Cato (Agr. 144.4), and it surfaced periodically in Latin literature over the next three centuries; see, e.g., Tacitus, Ann. 4.59.3; cf. G. Serbat, “Un mot populaire ancien chez Tacite: impraesentiarum,” in Mélanges de littérature et d’épigraphie latines, d’histoire ancienne, et d’archéologie (Paris, 1980), 325–30. By the second century, it had made its way back into limited circulation in archaizing circles; Apuleius, for example, employs it on fourteen occasions in his extant works. The expression recurs nearly five dozen times in Jerome’s surviving works, a proportionately lower frequency than for Apuleius but a higher one than for any other ancient author. ⁵⁷ P. Nautin, “L’activité littéraire de Jérôme de 387 à 392,” RThPh 115 (1983): 247–59 (249–51). On Rome as the geographical epicenter of Jerome’s social network, see K. Sugano, Das Rombild des Hieronymus (Frankfurt, 1983); Rebenich, Hieronymus und sein Kreis, 141–80. ⁵⁸ Janson, Latin Prose Prefaces, 46; cf. R. G. Tanner, “Epic Tradition and Epigram in Statius,” ANRW II.32.5 (1986): 3020–46 (3036–41). Jerome also calls his commentaries on the Minor Prophets an opusculum [duodecim prophetarum] (Comm. Os., lib. 3, prol. ll. 128–9). ⁵⁹ Cf. Arns, La technique du livre, 106–7. ⁶⁰ He applies the same epithet to other discipulae, including Felicitas (Ep. 45.7.1), Lea (Ep. 23.1.2), Blesilla (Comm. Eccl., prol. l. 2), and Paula (Ep. 108.1.1). ⁶¹ He similarly refers to Eustochium as unicum nobilitatis et virginitatis exemplum (Comm. Es., lib. 13, prol. ll. 13–14) and to Asella as exemplum pudicitiae et virginitatis insigne (Ep. 45.7.1). ⁶² Cf. Comm. Mic., lib. 2, prol. ll. 215–16: Semper invidis respondemus, quia non cessat invidia, et librorum nostrorum exordia, aemulorum maledicta confutant; Comm. Es., lib. 9, prol. l. 4; Quaest. Heb. Gen., prol.

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calls them out for self-importantly deriding others’ accomplishments (in eo se doctos eruditosque arbitrantur, si de aliis detrahant), another stock-in-trade of his apologetic offensive.⁶³ Echoing the Sermon on the Mount, he also likens these people to dogs and swine that are undeserving of his exposition of divine teaching.⁶⁴ Finally, he reminds Paula, Eustochium, and Marcella that he had been “unwilling and reluctant” (invitum et retractantem; this doublet emphasizes his supposed prior recusatio) to accept the commission to comment on Paul, but he nonetheless acquiesced because they forced him (compuleritis). Feigned protests about compulsory commissions are a mainstay of ancient prose prefaces, and Jerome invokes the convention here to remind his patrons of their obligation to protect their investment, so to speak.⁶⁵ Jerome’s desire to cultivate his familiar aristocratic audience at Rome is evident again in the preface to Book 1 of his Galatians commentary, which he opens by giving readers a snapshot of his daily round and then a miniaturized panegyric on Marcella: It has been only a few days since I commented on Paul’s epistle to Philemon and moved on to Galatians, leaving behind many things in between. All of a sudden a letter arrived from the City [Rome] reporting that the venerable Albina has returned to the Lord’s presence and that holy Marcella, deprived of her mother’s companionship, now more than ever seeks comfort from you, Paula and Eustochium. Because this is impossible at the moment due to the expansive stretches of sea and lands between us, she wants this suddenly inflicted wound to be tended to with the medicine of the Scriptures. I certainly know her zeal, I know her faith—how she always has a fire in her heart, that she overcomes her sex, that she is unmindful of her human limitations, and that she crosses the Red Sea of ⁶³ He recycles the same phraseology elsewhere. Cf. Prol. in lib. Reg.: In eo se doctos arbitrantur, si aliis detrahant; Comm. Os., lib. 2, prol. ll. 176–8: Quidam in eo se disertos arbitrantur et doctos, si alieno operi detrahant, et non quid ipsi possint, sed quid nos non possimus diiudicent; Comm. Es., lib. 9, prol. ll. 6–7: Eruditosque se aestimant et disertos, si de cunctis scriptoribus detrahant. Cf. Cain, Jerome and the Monastic Clergy, 250. ⁶⁴ Jerome was rather fond of Mt. 7.6 (it is referenced over two dozen times in his extant corpus), and the fact that it contains both canine and porcine imagery is a happy coincidence for him in this case, inasmuch as he frequently applies both kinds of imagery to his enemies; see I. Opelt, Hieronymus’ Streitschriften (Heidelberg, 1973), 50, 62n188, 63, 68, 123, 125, 171, 173. ⁶⁵ Jerome invokes the same convention in the preface to his revision of the Gospels according to the Greek in order to remind readers of the ultimate accountability that Pope Damasus had for the project (cf. Cain, The Letters of Jerome, 51–2). See also the following charge he gives Pammachius, the commissioner of his commentary on Hosea: Tu autem, Pammachi, qui nos facere praecepisti hoc, necesse est ut fautor sis imperii tui, et Amafinios ac Rabirios nostri temporis, qui de graecis bonis, latina faciunt non bona; et homines eloquentissimos, ipsi elingues transferunt, evangelico calces pede; viperamque et scorpium iuxta fabulas poetarum, aduras cauterio, solea conteras; et scylleos canes ac mortifera carmina sirenarum surda aure pertranseas; ut pariter audire et nosse valeamus quid vaticinetur Osee propheta, in cuius explanationem secundum dictabimus librum. Cumque tuo laeter adminiculo, et in prima urbe terrarum, primum et nobilitate et religione habere me gaudeam defensorem . . . (Comm. Os., lib. 2, prol. ll. 179–89); cf. Comm. Os., lib. 3, prol. ll. 136–7: Cumque apertum fautorem pro iure amicitiae esse te gaudeam . . .

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 ’       this world to the tambourine-sound of the divine books. To be sure, when I was in Rome, she was never in such a hurry when she saw me that she did not ask me something about the Scriptures. Contrary to the Pythagorean custom, she did not accept as true whatever answer I would give her, and my authority did not prevail with her if it was not supported by reason. She would probe everything and with a discerning mind would ponder things in their entirety, such that I felt I had a judge rather than a student. Pauci admodum dies sunt quod epistulam Pauli ad Philemonem interpretatus ad Galatas transcenderam multis retrorsum in medio praetermissis, et ecce subito litterae mihi de urbe allatae sunt nuntiantes et Albinam, venerabilem anum, praesentiae Domini redditam et sanctam Marcellam, matris contubernio destitutam, magis nunc vestrum, o Paula et Eustochium, flagitare solacium et, quia hoc interim fieri non potest propter grandia maris in medio spatia atque terrarum, repente vulnus impressum saltem Scripturarum velle curare medicamine. Scio equidem ardorem eius, scio fidem, quam flammam semper habeat in pectore, superare sexum, oblivisci hominis et divinorum voluminum tympano concrepante rubrum huius saeculi pelagus transfretare. Certe, cum Romae essem, numquam tam festina me vidit ut non de Scripturis aliquid interrogaret. Neque vero more Pythagorico quicquid responderam rectum putabat, nec sine ratione praeiudicata apud eam valebat auctoritas, sed examinabat omnia et sagaci mente universa pensabat ut me sentirem non tam discipulam habere quam iudicem.⁶⁶

Jerome attributes to Marcella the rare feat of overcoming her sex: she defies the stereotype, widely voiced in early Christian literature, that women are the weaker sex because they participate imperfectly in the image of God.⁶⁷ She is a dedicated student of Scripture and “crosses the Red Sea of this world to the tambourinesound of the divine books,” a typological allusion to the prophetess Miriam, who took up a tambourine and danced, sang, and praised the Lord for drowning the Israelites’ Egyptian pursuers in the Red Sea.⁶⁸ Marcella’s intellectual inquisitiveness is matched only by her critical-minded cautiousness, which makes her superior to pagan philosophers—a point Jerome drives home with an allusion to Cicero’s jab at the Pythagoreans for trusting Pythagoras’s teaching even when it is illogical.⁶⁹

⁶⁶ Comm. Gal., lib. 1, prol. ll. 1–21. ⁶⁷ P. Laurence, “La faiblesse féminine chez les pères de l’Église,” in V. Boudon–Millot and B. Pouderon (eds.), Les pères de l’Église face à la science médicale de leur temps (Paris, 2005), 351–77. ⁶⁸ Ex. 15.20–1. Jerome alludes to this episode nine other times, and in Ep. 54.13.5 likens Paula, as he does Marcella, to Miriam. Cf. N. Adkin, Jerome on Virginity: A Commentary on the Libellus de virginitate servanda (Letter 22) (Chippenham, 2003), 399–400. ⁶⁹ According to Cicero, among the Pythagoreans “an opinion already decided was so potent that it made authority not supported by reason prevail” (tantum opinio praeiudicata poterat, ut etiam sine ratione valeret auctoritas) (Nat. deo. 1.5.10).

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These compliments, as well as the seemingly impromptu framing of the commentary on Galatians as a piece of consolatory exegesis in Marcella’s honor, serve a dual function. On the surface, they are a flattering overture to an instrumental patron whose support back in Rome Jerome needed all the more, now that he was situated hundreds of miles away in rural Palestine, in order to project a meaningful textualized presence in the capital city. On a deeper level, they are his palpable reminder to Marcella that she was, and still very much is, his spiritual advisee and scriptural student: in Rome she used to bombard him with questions and seek out his counsel,⁷⁰ and now in a time of personal crisis she turns to him despite the vast geographical distance separating them.⁷¹ Furthermore, by portraying Marcella as the model Christian who also happens to be his loyal pupil, Jerome in effect is valorizing his own exegetical authority in a subliminal way. For the more discerning, intellectually emancipated, and allaround exceptional she is made out to be, the more credible he seems as a teacher who has the substance and respectability to attract and retain such a precocious discipula.⁷² The integrity of his exegesis of Paul likewise is significantly reinforced inasmuch as it is implied to be the fruit of his allegedly close personal bond with a circle of exemplary women represented in the above-quoted passage by Marcella, Paula, and Eustochium. As we have just seen, Jerome turns his attention toward Rome in several of his Pauline prefaces, including the short second Ephesians one. After describing Marcella’s persistence in requesting Pauline exegesis from him he says: As often as I recall her studies, her character, her discipline, I reprove myself for being idle. I, who am situated in the solitude of a monastery and see across from me that manger in which the hastening shepherds revered a crying infant (cf. Lk. 2.16), cannot do what a noblewoman accomplishes in her spare time encumbered by a noisy family and the management of her house. Cuius ego quotienscumque studiorum, ingenii, laboris recordor, totiens me damno inertiae, qui in monasterii solitudine constitutus et illud praesepe contra videns in quo vagientem parvulum festini adoravere pastores, id facere non ⁷⁰ Jerome thus says in his epistolary epitaph on Marcella: Quia alicuius tunc nominis aestimabar super studio scripturarum, numquam convenit, quin de scripturis aliquid interrogaret . . . quicquid in nobis longo fuit studio congregatum et meditatione diuturna quasi in naturam versum, hoc illa libavit, hoc didicit atque possedit (Ep. 127.7.1). Cf. Ep. 29.1.2: Tute in tractatibus occuparis, nihil mihi scribis, nisi quod me torqueat et scripturas legere conpellat. ⁷¹ In writing to other Christians abroad who had sought his expertise on exegetical questions Jerome likewise would emphasize the geographical distance between them as a means of highlighting the trouble to which they had gone to contact him in faraway Bethlehem (Cain, The Letters of Jerome, 183–5). ⁷² See A. Cain, “Rethinking Jerome’s Portraits of Holy Women,” in A. Cain and J. Lössl (eds.), Jerome of Stridon: His Life, Writings, and Controversies (Aldershot, 2009), 47–58. On Jerome as a teacher of asceticism, see Chapter 4; cf. P. Laurence, Jérôme et le nouveau modèle féminin: la conversion à la vie parfaite (Paris, 1997).

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 ’       possum quod mulier nobilis inter strepentem familiam et procurationem domus explet operis subsecivis.⁷³

Jerome summarily captures the essence of Marcella’s exceptionalism through a triptych whose components receive their own individual spotlight through asyndeton: her [biblical] studies (studia), her innate goodness (ingenium), and her ascetic self-discipline (labor⁷⁴). He uses the occasion of this encomium to plot, for the benefit of the general reader, the geographical coordinates of his scholarly activity. He represents his workspace as the “solitude of a monastery” in order to emphasize his own personal asceticism and how his biblical scholarship is the natural outgrowth of it.⁷⁵ He further localizes this scholarly activity in the quiet locus amoenus of Bethlehem, which, as he duly reminds readers with a picturesque evocation of Luke’s Gospel, is the (reputed) site of Christ’s birthplace. Thus, for the first time in his surviving writings, he dons what was to become one of his most enduring and visually compelling literary personae, that of the reclusive monk-scholar of Bethlehem.⁷⁶ Even though in the fourth century Jerusalem, just a few miles to the north, was widely regarded as the most venerable place in the Christian world because it had witnessed Christ’s passion, death, and resurrection,⁷⁷ Jerome unabashedly pressed the case for Bethlehem as the true Christian omphalos⁷⁸—and not surprisingly so, given that this was his self-selected home. Throughout his writings he frequently drops notices about his residency in this rural village because he believed, and tried to persuade his readers to believe, that such close proximity to what he championed as the holiest place on earth imparted a unique authenticity to his biblical scholarship that it would have lacked if he lived and wrote anywhere else,⁷⁹ and hence in the above-quoted passage he emphasizes that his monastery is virtually next to the Nativity Crib (or rather, next to the Church of the Nativity in whose crypt the Crib was housed).⁸⁰ And so, what appears at first glance to be a ⁷³ Comm. Eph., lib. 2, prol. ll. 5–11. ⁷⁴ For labor in this specialized ascetic sense in Hieronymian parlance, cf. Jerome, Ep. 108.17.3: At non Paula talis, quae tantae continentiae fuit ut prope mensuram excederet et debilitatem corporis nimiis ieiuniis ac labore contraheret. ⁷⁵ On the close relationship between Jerome’s asceticism and biblical scholarship, see A. Fürst, Hieronymus: Askese und Wissenschaft in der Spätantike (Freiburg, 2016). ⁷⁶ Cain, The Letters of Jerome, 183–4. ⁷⁷ A. Cain, The Greek Historia Monachorum in Aegypto: Monastic Hagiography in the Late Fourth Century (Oxford, 2016), 35–8; cf. P. Maraval, Lieux saints et pèlerinages d’Orient: histoire et géographie des origines à la conquête arabe (Paris, 1985), 251–69. ⁷⁸ A. Cain, “Jerome’s Epitaphium Paulae: Hagiography, Pilgrimage, and the Cult of Saint Paula,” JECS 18 (2010): 105–39 (113–16). ⁷⁹ Cain, The Letters of Jerome, 124–8. ⁸⁰ According to F.-M. Abel and L.H. Vincent, Bethléem: le Sanctuaire de la Nativité (Paris, 1914), 115, the crib on display in the Constantinian church of Jerome’s day took the form of a “bassinet adhérant au sol par le fond, et à la paroi de la caverne par un côté.” In mentioning this crib as a readily viewable physical artifact, Jerome may subtly be trying to entice Marcella to come to Bethlehem and see it for herself. This, at any rate, is the motivation behind his charming description of the Nativity crypt

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casual, passing reference to his monastic residence in Bethlehem has the effect of shoring up exegetical authority for him and legitimacy for his opus Paulinum. In presenting himself as such, he also further distinguishes himself, a pious hermit living in the Holy Land, from his Roman critics, whom, we will recall, he sarcastically calls the doctorum senatus immediately before this in the same preface. Jerome closes the brief preface to Book 2 of his commentary on Ephesians by sculpting more contours of his literary identity as a monk-scholar: I collectively beseech her, you [Paula and Eustochium], and potential readers to understand that I do not produce a well thought-out and polished style but employ almost street language to reveal the mysteries of the Scriptures, and that I sometimes dictate up to one thousand lines each day so that the interpretation of the Apostle that was begun may be brought to fruition by the prayers of the very Paul whose epistles I am attempting to expound. Et illam et vos et si qui forte lecturi sunt, in commune precor ut sciatis me non cogitatum diu limatumque proferre sermonem, sed ad revelanda mysteria Scripturarum uti verbis paene de trivio et interdum per singulos dies usque ad numerum mille versuum pervenire ut coepta in apostolum explanatio ipsius Pauli, cuius epistulas conamur exponere, orationibus compleatur.⁸¹

Jerome projects—to his three immediate addressees (Marcella, Paula, Eustochium) as well as to the general reader (si qui forte lecturi sunt)—the image of a scholar who is hyper-industrious, indeed indefatigable. The specific numerical figure by which he concretizes his output—up to one thousand lines of text dictated daily—is meant to impress and even astound, all the more so because in the same preface he just chastised himself for inactivity (me damno inertiae). In other words, he is superhumanly productive even when he is inert. In this sense, too, he makes a subtle bid for Marcella’s (illam) ongoing literary patronage by demonstrating that he is every bit the diligent scholar whom she had patronized in Rome. Back then, he affectionately would call her his “taskmaster” (ἐργοδιώκτης) for keeping him occupied with answering her questions about the Bible.⁸² Now he reminds her in not so many words that he still offers the same service in absentia. in Ep. 46.11.1–2, a letter he sent to her jointly with Paula and Eustochium after they had moved to Bethlehem in the hope of convincing her to leave Rome and to take up with them in Bethlehem; on this letter, see P. Nautin, “La lettre de Paule et Eustochium à Marcelle (Jérôme, Ep. 46),” Augustinianum 24 (1984): 441–8; N. Adkin, “The Letter of Paula and Eustochium to Marcella: Some Notes,” Maia 51 (1999): 97–110. On Jerome’s personal devotion to the cult of the Infant Christ as it was focalized in the Nativity Crib, see Cain, Jerome’s Epitaph on Paula, 114, 256–7. ⁸¹ Comm. Eph., lib. 2, prol. ll. 12–18. ⁸² Jerome thus opens a letter to her about the psalm-ending Hebrew word selah: De diapsalmate nostram sententiam flagitaras: epistulae brevitatem causati sumus et rem libri non posse explicari litteris praetexuimus. Verum quid prode est ad ἐργοδιώκτην meum? (Ep. 28.1.1). In the preface to Book 5 of his

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Jerome also cautions his readers not to expect eloquence or rhetorical artifice from him. The self-effacing claim that he is conveying elevated subject matter in “almost street language” (verbis paene de trivio) is the carefully calculated stratagem of a gifted prose aesthetician.⁸³ On one level, it functions as a captatio benevolentiae in that it lowers readers’ expectations so that he then can handily exceed them. Indeed, his prose in the Pauline commentaries not infrequently evinces the trademarks of a sophisticated compositional technique (or, to use Jerome’s words, “a well thought-out and polished style”)—from elaborately constructed periods with complex subordination, to strategically planted rhetorical figures which enhance the vivacity and persuasiveness of his interpretations and arguments. On another level, his feigned protest about stylistic deficiency reinforces the vociferous renunciation he makes (in other Pauline prefaces) of secular academic culture with all of its elitist trappings, and this in turn is supposed to bring him into closer touch with the simplicitas of the Bible’s language.⁸⁴ Moreover, throughout this short preface Jerome represents his exegesis not as a private enterprise carried out in a vacuum but rather as a corporate effort sustained by the prayers of Paula, Eustochium, Marcella, and—last but not least—“the very Paul whose epistles I am attempting to expound.”⁸⁵ In late antique Christianity, departed saints were envisaged as being present with God and interceding with him on behalf of the faithful living who request their assistance.⁸⁶ Jerome, then, is channeling no less an authority figure than Paul himself in order to give his commentaries the veneer of apostolic approval. In two other Pauline prefaces he adopts a variation of this same approach, except that he leans on his commissioners’ prayers as well as the help of the Holy Spirit as his divine Muse.⁸⁷ In the Philemon preface he tells Paula and Eustochium: “I will attempt to explain these [mysteries] in their proper context with your prayers and with the Holy Spirit, by whom they were written, giving me commentary on John, Origen nicknames his own wealthy Alexandrian patron Ambrose “God’s taskmaster” (ὁ τοῦ θεοῦ ἐργοδιώκτης). As Vessey, “Jerome’s Origen,” 141 points out, Jerome adopted the moniker ἐργοδιώκτης for Marcella as a way to cast her as the Ambrose to his Origen, thus reminding her allusively of her patronly duty in supplying the ongoing material needs for his scholarship (books, writing materials, stenographers). Other Roman letters to Marcella Jerome frames explicitly as replies to her various queries; see Epp. 25.1.1: Studiosissime postulasti, ut tibi universa nomina cum sua interpretatione dirigerem; 26.1.1: Nuper, cum pariter essemus, non per epistulam . . . sed praesens ipsa quaesisti; 29.1.1: Postulasti, ut, quid sentirem, statim rescriberem; 34.3.1: Illud quoque de eodem psalmo interrogare dignata es. ⁸³ On this conceit, which is common in ancient Latin prefaces, see Janson, Latin Prose Prefaces, 125–33. ⁸⁴ A. Cain, “Tertullian, Cyprian, and Lactantius in Jerome’s Commentary on Galatians,” REAug 55 (2009): 23–51 (45–6). Cf. Comm. Am., lib. 3, prol. ll. 55–6: Non verba composita et oratoriis floribus adornata, sed eruditio et simplicitas quaeritur veritatis. ⁸⁵ In his various prefaces Jerome routinely acknowledges the prayers of his patrons as being instrumental to the completion of his scholarly enterprises (e.g., Comm. Abd., prol. l. 63; Comm. Es., lib. 1, prol. ll. 13–14; lib. 13, prol. ll. 16–18). ⁸⁶ For discussion and references to primary sources, see Cain, Jerome’s Epitaph on Paula, 471–2. ⁸⁷ Cf. above, p. 25.

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guidance.”⁸⁸ In the last of his three Galatians prefaces he writes: “If with the aid of your prayers I could have the same Spirit in interpreting their epistles as [the apostles] had when they dictated them, you would see that there is as much majesty and breadth of true wisdom in them as there is arrogance and vanity in the learned men of the world.”⁸⁹ In both of these passages Jerome invokes the inspired interpreter trope,⁹⁰ which simultaneously projects for the commentator both humility (he needs help) and authority (he receives help directly from God).

Adgrediar opus intemptatum: Jerome contra Marius Victorinus As we saw earlier, in his first Galatians preface Jerome cultivates his Roman patron Marcella by designating her as an honorary dedicatee of this commentary. After opening the preface in this way, he situates his opus Paulinum in a different, broader literary context: I shall undertake a work not attempted before me by writers in our language and executed by only a very choice few of the Greeks themselves in a manner warranted by the grandeur of the subject matter. I am not unaware that Gaius Marius Victorinus, who taught rhetoric at Rome when I was a boy, produced commentaries on the Apostle. However, because he was engrossed in erudition in secular literature, he was completely ignorant of the Scriptures, and nobody— no matter how eloquent he may be—is able to discuss competently what he does not know. Adgrediar opus intemptatum ante me linguae nostrae scriptoribus et a Graecis quoque ipsis vix paucis, ut rei poscebat dignitas, usurpatum. Non quo ignorem Gaium Marium Victorinum, qui Romae me puero rhetoricam docuit, edidisse commentarios in apostolum, sed quod occupatus ille eruditione saecularium

⁸⁸ Comm. Phlm., prol. ll. 67–9: Quae, orantibus vobis et ipso nobis Sancto Spiritu suggerente, quo scripta sunt suis locis explanare conabimur. Cf. Jerome, Comm. Os., lib. 1, prol. ll. 1–3: Si in explanationibus omnium prophetarum sancti Spiritus indigemus adventu, ut cuius instinctu scripti sunt, illius revelatione pandantur; Comm. Zach., lib. 1, prol. ll. 48–9: Iam tempus est, ut Zachariae verba ponentes, Spiritui sancto interpretationis vela pandamus. ⁸⁹ Caeterum si orantibus vobis illum possem in exponendis epistulis eorum habere Spiritum quem illi in dictando habuerunt, tunc videretis tantam maiestatem et latitudinem in his verae fuisse sapientiae quanta in saeculi litteratis adrogantia et vanitas fuit (Comm. Gal., lib. 3, prol. ll. 82–7). Cf. Jerome, Comm. Es., lib. 14, prol. ll. 17–21: Tuque virgo Christi Eustochium, quae aegrotantem tuis orationibus adiuvisti, sanato quoque imprecare gratiam Christi, ut eodem Spiritu, quo prophetae futura cecinerunt, possim in nubem eorum ingredi et caliginem et Dei nosse sermonem. ⁹⁰ For its prevalence among early Christian exegetes, see P. W. Martens, “Ideal Interpreters,” in P. M. Blowers and P. W. Martens (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Biblical Interpretation (Oxford, 2019), 149–70 (161–2). Cf. Origen, Princ. 2.7.2, 4.2.7.

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 ’       litterarum scripturas omnino sanctas ignoraverit et nemo possit, quamvis eloquens, de eo bene disputare quod nesciat.⁹¹

Jerome begins by touting the novelty and monumentality of his work on Paul in terms similar to how in the years ahead he would herald other literary productions.⁹² He then takes direct aim at Marius Victorinus, who some two decades earlier had become the first Latin-speaking Christian on record to compose commentaries on Paul’s epistles.⁹³ His stated objection to Victorinus’s work on Paul is, quite simply, its author’s sheer incompetence: “He was completely ignorant of the Scriptures.” He attributes this ignorance to Victorinus’s study of secular literature, and this most probably is a derisive allusion to the professor’s grammatical writings (Ars grammatica⁹⁴ and Liber de definitionibus⁹⁵), his commentaries on Cicero’s Topica (now lost) and De inventione,⁹⁶ his translation of Porphyry’s Introduction to Aristotle’s Categories, and possibly translations of Aristotle’s Categories and On Interpretation.⁹⁷ What exactly does Jerome mean when he says that Victorinus was “completely ignorant of the Scriptures”? In all likelihood, he intended this charge not as a generic, arbitrary jibe but rather as a substantive critique of a peculiar aspect of Victorinus’s exegetical technique: he rarely quotes the Old Testament, for the most part confining his scriptural cross-references to the Pauline corpus.⁹⁸ Whether this tunnel vision is to be attributed to his imperfect acquaintance with the Old Testament,⁹⁹ or to a conscious methodological decision on his part to

⁹¹ Comm. Gal., lib. 1, prol. ll. 23–31. ⁹² Thus, for instance, he calls his Hebrew Questions on Genesis an opus novum et tam Graecis quam Latinis usque ad id locorum inauditum (Lib. int. Heb. nom., prol. ll. 17–18). Likewise, he characterizes his interpretive work on the Minor Prophets as an opus quod nullus ante nos Latinorum temptare ausus est (Comm. Os., lib. 2, prol. ll. 175–6) and as an opusculum intermissum a Latinis (Comm. Os., lib. 3, prol. ll. 128–9). ⁹³ Victorinus commented on Romans, 1 & 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, and Philippians. ⁹⁴ Of this work only the opening chapters survive. See I. Mariotti (ed.), Marii Victorini Ars grammatica (Firenze, 1967); H. Dahlmann, Zur Ars grammatica des Marius Victorinus (Wiesbaden, 1970). ⁹⁵ For the Latin text with German translation and commentary, see A. Pronay (ed. and trans.), C. Marius Victorinus, Liber de definitionibus: Eine spätantike Theorie der Definition und des Definierens, mit Einleitung, Übersetzung und Kommentar (Frankfurt, 1997). ⁹⁶ There are two recent critical editions: A. Ippolito (ed.), Marius Victorinus, Explanationes in Ciceronis Rhetorica (Turnhout, 2006), and T. Riesenweber (ed.), C. Marius Victorinus, Commenta in Ciceronis Rhetorica (Berlin, 2013). For an extensive commentary which focuses on the reconstruction of Victorinus’s text, see T. Riesenweber (ed.), C. Marius Victorinus, Commenta in Ciceronis Rhetorica. Untersuchungen zur antiken Literatur und Geschichte, Bd. 120–1.2 (Berlin, 2015). ⁹⁷ For an overview of Victorinus’s secular writings, see P. Hadot, Marius Victorinus: Recherches sur sa vie et ses oeuvres (Paris, 1971), 179–90; M. von Albrecht, Geschichte der römischen Literatur, vol. 2 (Munich, 1992), 1281–9; cf. G. Raspanti, Mario Vittorino esegeta di S. Paolo (Palermo, 1996), 23–4. ⁹⁸ This idiosyncratic feature of his interpretive technique prompted the following observation by A. Souter, The Earliest Latin Commentaries on the Epistles of St. Paul (Oxford, 1927), 22: “What especially distinguishes them from other (later) commentaries is that scripture is rarely quoted in illustration of scripture.” ⁹⁹ So Hadot, Marius Victorinus, 238.

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explicate Paul by his own words, is open to debate. Stephen Cooper suggests a hybrid of these two possibilities, on the one hand acknowledging Victorinus’s “no doubt scanty acquaintance with the Old Testament” but on the other hand ascribing his Paul-centeredness to an informed exegetical calculation: “Victorinus’ primary goal—to explain the meaning and import of the Pauline letters for a contemporary audience—could best be accomplished by explicating Paul on the basis of what Paul himself said.”¹⁰⁰ By stark contrast with Victorinus, Jerome ubiquitously cross-references the Old Testament in order to situate Paul’s words in a broader biblical context, a hermeneutical strategy he adopted from Origen. The rationale of this approach is to demonstrate the unity of scriptural truth through lexical and conceptual parallels to relevant passages across the Bible.¹⁰¹ From the ancient reader’s standpoint, a commentary’s presentation of copious biblical quotations, albeit in drips and drops, was sheer gain, for it offered broad (even if not always deep) exposure to the biblical text at a time when unfettered access to it was otherwise restricted to higher clergymen and the choice few privileged laypeople who had the extraordinary financial means to procure their own personal copy of the Bible.¹⁰² From Jerome’s standpoint, this approach was a way to forge exegetical authority by portraying himself to readers as a human concordance.¹⁰³ This impression of having the entire Bible at his fingertips is one he cultivates through periodic statements throughout his four Pauline commentaries, such as the following one in his remarks on Gal. 3.16: “Traversing all the Scriptures in my thought and my memory, I have never come upon the word ‘seed’ in the plural but only in the singular, used in either a good sense or bad.”¹⁰⁴ Given his methodological inclinations, therefore, it is understandable how Jerome may have inferred from Victorinus’s limited engagement with the Old Testament that he lacked one of

¹⁰⁰ Marius Victorinus’ Commentary on Galatians: Introduction, Translation, and Notes (Oxford, 2005), 107. Cf. M. Simonetti, Lettera e/o allegoria: un contributo alla storia dell’esegesi patristica (Rome, 1985), 239–40, who sees in Victorinus’s intensive focus on Paul the influence of the rhetorical methods of the ancient schools whereby a commentator ought to explain an author’s words in the light of themselves. ¹⁰¹ Cf. below, pp. 145–6. ¹⁰² See H. Gamble, A History of Early Christian Texts (New Haven, 1995), 82–202; C. Markschies, Kaiserzeitliche christliche Theologie und ihre Institutionen: Prologomena zu einer Geschichte der antiken christlichen Theologie (Tübingen, 2007), 311–14. ¹⁰³ Even though his Pauline commentaries at times read like scriptural florilegia, we must keep in mind that most (if not virtually all) of these biblical references were taken over from his Greek exegetical sources (primarily Origen); see Chapter 6. ¹⁰⁴ Omnes Scripturas sensu ac memoria peragrans numquam plurali numero semina scripta repperi, sed sive in bonam sive in malam partem semper singulari (Comm. Gal. 3.15–18). For comparable statements in the Pauline commentaries, see Comm. Eph. 1.13, 3.1–4, 5.7, 5.14b; Comm. Tit. 2.12–14. For his expression of this same conceit in other works, see Hom. Ps. 41 ll. 1–2: Omne psalterium sagaci mente perlustrans, nusquam invenio quod filii Chore aliquid triste cantaverint; Comm. Es., lib. 16, prol. ll. 29–32: Omnem scripturam mente perlustrans, animadverti, sicut omnis paene ad Romanos epistula de veteri structa est instrumento, sic et hoc testimonium de psalmis et Esaia esse contextum ( Jerome traces the Old Testament roots of Rom. 3.13–18).

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the most fundamental skill sets for serious biblical study, an encyclopedic command of Scripture. After criticizing Victorinus for his tenuous grasp of the biblical text, in the very next part of the preface Jerome produces a robust catalogue of six different exegetical authorities whom he claims to have consulted in preparation for his own work on Galatians: What, then? Am I foolish or rash to promise what he was incapable of accomplishing? Not at all. I believe that I am more cautious and circumspect because I have recognized the scantness of my own abilities and have followed the commentaries of Origen. He wrote five of his own volumes on Paul’s epistle to the Galatians and rounded out the tenth book of his Miscellanies with a brief section expounding it. He also produced various homilies and scholia which could have been sufficient even by themselves. I say nothing of my seeing guide Didymus, the Laodicean who recently left the church, the ancient heretic Alexander, Eusebius of Emesa, and Theodore of Heraclea, all of whom have left behind modest commentaries of their own on the topic at hand. Quid igitur? Ego stultus aut temerarius qui id pollicear quod ille non potuit? Minime. Quin potius in eo, ut mihi videor, cautior atque timidior, quod imbecillitatem virium mearum sentiens Origenis commentarios sum secutus. Scripsit enim ille vir in epistulam Pauli ad Galatas quinque proprie volumina et decimum Stromatum suorum librum commatico super explanatione eius sermone complevit; tractatus quoque varios et excerpta, quae vel sola possent sufficere, composuit. Praetermitto Didymum, videntem meum, et Laodicenum de ecclesia nuper egressum et Alexandrum, veterem haereticum, Eusebium quoque Emesenum et Theodorum Heracleoten, qui et ipsi nonnullos super hac re commentariolos reliquerunt.¹⁰⁵

Jerome opens his catalogue with Origen,¹⁰⁶ devoting an entry to his diversified output on Galatians which is as long as the notices about the other five commentators combined. He also states unequivocally that Origen was his principal exegetical model. As far as he is concerned, when it comes to (Greek-language) exposition of this Pauline epistle, there is Origen,¹⁰⁷ and then there is everybody else.

¹⁰⁵ Comm. Gal., lib. 1, prol. ll. 31–43. ¹⁰⁶ See A. Cain, “Origen, Jerome’s Pauline Prefaces, and the Architecture of Exegetical Authority,” in B. Bitton-Ashkelony, O. Irshai, A. Kofsky, H. Newman, and L. Perrone (eds.), Origeniana Duodecima: Origen’s Legacy in the Holy Land—A Tale of Three Cities: Jerusalem, Caesarea and Bethlehem. Proceedings of the 12th International Origen Congress, Jerusalem, 25–29 June, 2017 (Leuven, 2019), 413–30. ¹⁰⁷ On the importance of Galatians in Origenian thought, see F. Cocchini, Il Paolo di Origene (Rome, 1992), 74–8.

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The fact that Jerome immediately follows his indictment of Victorinus’s alleged ignorance of Scripture with the fulsome catalogue of his patristic sources is no accident. First of all, he conspicuously excludes Victorinus from the list, thereby implying that his commentaries are not worthy of being consulted by him,¹⁰⁸ or by a wider readership, for that matter. What is more, two of the commentators in particular seem glaringly out of place as cited sources for a commentary in which Jerome places such a high premium on the refutation of heterodox doctrine. One is Alexander,¹⁰⁹ an otherwise unknown author tagged by Jerome as vetus haereticus, and the other is Apollinaris of Laodicea (alluded to as “the Laodicean who recently left the church”), whom Jerome condemns in other contexts as a Christological heretic.¹¹⁰ Needless to say, the very presence of both Alexander and Apollinaris in Jerome’s bibliography is insinuative: even an obscure heretic from centuries past as well as a more recent one are more suitable interpretive guides to Paul than Victorinus. The pressing issue of orthodoxy aside, all six authors populating Jerome’s catalogue share one important trait in common: they composed their commentaries in Greek. Herein lies another implicit criticism of Victorinus. Because his commentaries evince no compelling evidence of acquaintance with the Greek exegetical tradition on Paul, modern scholars have been inclined to conclude that he in fact had no working knowledge of it, and in practical terms of chronology this means that he had no firsthand knowledge of Origen’s writings on Paul.¹¹¹ Whether or not Jerome assumes that he was ignorant of this Greek tradition, he nonetheless obliquely accuses him of arrogance for failing to use it as a hermeneutical guide,¹¹² even as he congratulates himself for adopting it as his own guide. One of the marked disparities between the commenting styles of Victorinus and Jerome is that Victorinus almost always provides a single, succinct interpretation for a given passage,¹¹³ whereas Jerome often presents the opinions of multiple interpreters alongside his own.¹¹⁴ Behind these differing methodologies lie two fundamentally opposing models of how to conduct biblical interpretation. In Jerome’s view, the Latin exegete must not work in a linguistic vacuum but rather must sustain a meaningful dialogue with his authoritative counterparts in the Greek tradition—most of all, Origen. Jerome conceptualizes the act of biblical exegesis, then, as a cross-generational colloquium, which really amounts to an ¹⁰⁸ Despite his censorious treatment of Victorinus’s commentaries, we do not know if Jerome had in fact even read them, though some scholars assume that he had; see R. Hennings, Der Briefwechsel zwischen Augustinus und Hieronymus und ihr Streit um den Kanon des Alten Testaments und die Auslegung von Gal. 2, 11–14 (Leiden, 1993), 255–6; E. Plumer, “The Influence of Marius Victorinus on Augustine’s Commentary on Galatians,” StudPatr 33 (1997): 221–8 (225n26). ¹⁰⁹ See pp. 163–4. ¹¹⁰ See pp. 153–4. ¹¹¹ Raspanti, Mario Vittorino, 94–5. ¹¹² Similarly, a few years earlier when he was in Rome, Jerome had criticized Rheticius of Autun for failing to access Origen’s exegetical work (Ep. 37.3.2). ¹¹³ Cooper, Marius Victorinus’ Commentary on Galatians, 109, speaks of “Victorinus’ almost complete neglect” of the task of citing multiple opinions about a given Pauline passage. ¹¹⁴ See below, pp. 188–94.

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intellectual extension of the notion of the communio sanctorum. The unspoken assumption here is that Latin biblical commentators are dwarves on the shoulders of Greek giants. To Jerome’s mind, Victorinus was a dwarf, yet he had no giant’s shoulders on which to perch. Jerome of course portrays himself in a vastly different light, underscoring his own intimate access to the past and present luminaries of the Greek exegetical tradition. For instance, he affectionately calls Didymus “my seer” (videns meus),¹¹⁵ an allusion to both Didymus’s legendary blindness and the fact that he had attended his lectures on Scripture in Alexandria in early 386,¹¹⁶ several months before composing his own Pauline commentaries. Many years later Rufinus, who himself had studied under Didymus for eight years, mocked Jerome for implying, here and elsewhere in his writings,¹¹⁷ that he had been Didymus’s disciple, despite having spent no more than a month in his presence.¹¹⁸ Rufinus’s taunt exposes the illusory nature of his former friend’s rhetoric, and, as if in a tacit admission of guilt, Jerome never disputed the charge—at least not in his extant writings. Nevertheless, the point of Jerome’s name-dropping was, quite simply, to bolster his exegetical pedigree.¹¹⁹ I argued in the previous chapter that Jerome conceived his first Galatians preface to serve as the general prolegomenon to his series of Pauline commentaries. In it he juxtaposes his censure of Victorinus and his catalogue of Greek exegetical sources, a strategic move on his part, I propose, to throw into relief the supposed impoverishment of Victorinus’s commentaries vis-à-vis the researchintensiveness of his own. Such a move enabled him to achieve a more compelling rhetorical effect than if he had reserved his polemic for the prologues to any of his other three Pauline commentaries, for which he consulted far fewer Greek authorities: for Ephesians he used the commentaries of only Origen, Apollinaris, and Didymus,¹²⁰ and for his Philemon and Titus commentaries he evidently took Origen as his sole model.¹²¹ By contrast, for his Galatians commentary he claims to have accessed commentaries by six different Greek writers, to say nothing of the ¹¹⁵ Elsewhere Jerome calls him “Didymus the seer” (Didymus videns) (Orig. hom. XIV in Hiez., prol.) and “the seeing prophet” (videns propheta) (Didym. de spir. sanc., prol.). ¹¹⁶ F. Cavallera, Saint Jérôme: sa vie et son oeuvre, 2 vols. (Paris, 1922), 2.127–30. Cf. Ep. 84.3.3, where Jerome claims Didymus as his scriptural magister. ¹¹⁷ E.g., Apol. c. Ruf. 1.13; Comm. Eph., lib. 1, prol. ll. 44–9. Cf. Jerome, Comm. Es., lib. 1, prol. ll. 92–3: Didymus, cuius amicitiis nuper usi sumus. In Vir. ill. 109.2 Jerome also claims that Didymus composed commentaries on Zechariah and Hosea at his request. ¹¹⁸ So Rufinus, Apol. c. Hier. 2.15: Ceterum iste, qui in tota vita sua non totos triginta dies Alexandriae, ubi erat Didymus, commoratus est, per totos pene libellos suos longe lateque se iactat Didymi videntis esse discipulum, et καθηγητήν in scripturis sanctis habuisse Didymum. Et omnis ista iactantia in uno mense quaesita est. ¹¹⁹ Correspondingly, in Comm. Eph. 5.32 Jerome cites Gregory of Nazianzus, whom he here touts as vir valde eloquens et in Scripturis adprime eruditus, as his one-time conversation partner about biblical interpretation. On Jerome’s representation of his relations with Gregory, see further Cain, Jerome and the Monastic Clergy, 196–8. ¹²⁰ Comm. Eph., lib. 1, prol. ll. 142–6. ¹²¹ See pp. 182–8.

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rest of Origen’s exegetical miscellanea on Galatians. Of these six, Jerome followed Origen overwhelmingly, if not almost exclusively.¹²² Yet, his presumed desire to arm himself with the appearance of strength in numbers would explain why he furnishes such a fulsome catalogue of sources, including at least two theologically objectionable figures (Alexander and Apollinaris).¹²³ Moreover, in his second and third Galatians prefaces Jerome continues to develop the diametrical opposition he sets up in the first preface between secular literary culture, epitomized by Victorinus, and a Bible-centered Christian culture, embodied by himself. He accomplishes this in part by reminding Paula and Eustochium about the radical spiritual “conversion” he supposedly experienced as a result of his famous Ciceronian dream in which he had been hauled before the throne of God and flogged for being addicted to classical literature, whereupon he vowed to the divine Judge never again to read this literature.¹²⁴ In the preface to Book 2 he makes a point of saying, in reference to this dream, that “it has been many years now since I stopped reading” secular literature.¹²⁵ In the third preface he is even more descriptive and insistent in his denial: “You yourselves know that it has been more than fifteen years since Cicero, Virgil, or any writer of secular literature has come into my hands.”¹²⁶ Elsewhere in the same preface Jerome affectedly belabors his deficiencies as a prose stylist,¹²⁷ and he insists that he has chosen to write in an unadorned style because he is composing a commentary, not a highly rhetoricized work such as a panegyric or a declamation.¹²⁸ He accordingly offers a caveat lector: “If anyone is looking for eloquence (eloquentiam) or relishes declamations (declamationibus), he has Demosthenes and Polemon in Greek and Cicero and Quintilian in Latin.”¹²⁹ Eloquentia and declamationes, then, are the domain strictly of secular ¹²² See below, pp. 172–7. ¹²³ Confirmation that Jerome did indeed think in these terms can be found in a piece of correspondence to Augustine (Ep. 112.6–7). In this letter he cites as partial proof of the truth of his interpretation of Paul’s rebuke of Peter at Antioch (i.e., that it was prearranged by both parties) that so many august church writers have held the same opinion. ¹²⁴ The dream occurred prior to his arrival in Rome in 382, but scholars disagree about its exact date and location; see N. Adkin, “Hierosolymam militaturus pergerem: A Note on the Location of Jerome’s Dream,” Koinonia 17 (1993): 81–3; Adkin, “The Date of the Dream of Saint Jerome,” SCO 43 (1993): 263–73; cf. Adkin, “Some Notes on the Dream of Saint Jerome,” Philologus 128 (1984): 119–26. ¹²⁵ Multi iam anni sunt quod haec legere desivimus (Comm. Gal., lib. 2, prol. ll. 13–14). ¹²⁶ Nostis enim et ipsae quod plus quam quindecim anni sunt ex quo in manus meas numquam Tullius, numquam Maro, numquam gentilium litterarum quilibet auctor ascendit (Comm. Gal., lib. 3, prol. ll. 21–4). In exonerating himself before the general reader, he cites Paula and Eustochium as eyewitnesses to his claim and underscores their supposed assurance of its veracity by placing nostis in the emphatic frontal position within the sentence and by supplementing it with the (otherwise superfluous) intensive pronoun ipsae. The threefold anaphoric numquam adds a nice rhetorical touch and is intended to render his denial even more compelling and credible. ¹²⁷ Comm. Gal., lib. 3, prol. ll. 2–4, 19–42. ¹²⁸ Quorsum ista? videlicet ut et vobis, et caeteris (qui forte legere voluerint) sit responsum me non panegyricum aut controversiam scribere sed commentarium (Comm. Gal., lib. 3, prol. ll. 43–5). ¹²⁹ Si quis eloquentiam quaerit vel declamationibus delectatur, habet in utraque lingua Demosthenem et Tullium, Polemonem et Quintillianum (Comm. Gal., lib. 3, prol. ll. 50–2).

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 ’      

oratory and should occupy no place in the biblical commentary.¹³⁰ There appears to be embedded in this statement an allusive indictment of Victorinus which intertextually looks back to the first Galatians preface. There, we will recall, Jerome gives a backhanded compliment about Victorinus’s eloquence (nemo . . . quamvis eloquens) and identifies him as a teacher of rhetoric (qui Romae me puero rhetoricam docuit),¹³¹ and of course, as educated contemporary readers knew well, a significant part of Victorinus’s pedagogical duties as a rhetor entailed instructing his students on how to compose and deliver declamations.¹³² The encoded message here, then, would be that Victorinus’s rhetorical prowess avails him nothing in the realm of biblical interpretation. Jerome next asserts that the church has drawn its members not from the rarefied Academy or Lyceum but from the common people.¹³³ He then resumes his attack on secular academia with a focus on classical philosophy: “How few now read Aristotle? How many are familiar with Plato’s name and writings? Only a few idle old men study them in out-of-the-way places.”¹³⁴ In Jerome’s works Plato and Aristotle sometimes are paired as archetypal representatives of classical philosophy,¹³⁵ and so this hyperbolic minimization of their contemporary influence can be read, at least superficially, as a piece of generic rhetoric about the triumph of Christianity over paganism.¹³⁶ By the same token, one would be hard pressed not ¹³⁰ On the stylistic aesthetic appropriate for these various genres, see Jerome, Apol. c. Ruf. 1.16. That rhetorical fluff has no place in a biblical commentary or other disquisitions on Scripture is one of Jerome’s familiar refrains. Cf. Adv. Helv. 2: Non campum rhetorici desideramus eloquii, non dialecticorum tendiculas, nec Aristotelis spineta conquirimus: ipsa Scripturarum verba ponenda sunt; Comm. Hiez., lib. 5, prol. ll. 10–15: Nunc eiusdem prophetiae pars reliqua cum ceteris quae sequuntur, quinto volumini, et tuo, Eustochium, nomini dedicatur; in quo nihil ex arte rhetorica, nihil ex compositione reperies et venustate verborum, sed curam simplicis et sollertis diligentiae, ut ista et sola laus mea sit, si prophetae per me dicta intellegas. ¹³¹ Cf. Jerome, Vir. ill. 101.1: Romae sub Constantio principe rhetoricam docuit. ¹³² The composition and delivery of declamations represented the culmination of the Roman rhetorical education (Bonner, Education in Ancient Rome, 250–327). Jerome often alludes to his own rhetorical education in Rome more generally (e.g., Comm. Am., lib. 2, prol. l. 1; Comm. Soph. 3.14–18; Comm. Gal. 2.11–13; Ep. 69.6.1), and on some occasions he specifically mentions his ability to compose declamations (e.g., C. Vig. 3; Comm. Hiez. 12.40; Ep. 81.1.2). One of his most famous letters (Ep. 117), in which he rebukes an unnamed virgin and her widowed mother for cohabiting with men of the cloth, is in fact cast ostensibly as a rhetorical declamation; see A. Cain, “Jerome’s Epistula 117 on the Subintroductae: Satire, Apology, and Ascetic Propaganda in Gaul,” Augustinianum 49 (2009): 119–43. ¹³³ Ecclesia Christi non de Academia et Lyceo, sed de vili plebecula congregata est (Comm. Gal., lib. 3, prol. ll. 53–4). ¹³⁴ Quotusquisque nunc Aristotelem legit? Quanti Platonis vel libros novere vel nomen? Vix in angulis otiosi eos senes recolunt; rusticanos vero et piscatores nostros totus orbis loquitur (Comm. Gal., lib. 3, prol. ll. 78–80). ¹³⁵ Tract. Ps. 77 ll. 200–1, 131 l. 72; Alt. Luc. et orth. 11; Dial. adv. Pel. 1.15; Epp. 14.11.1–2, 70.4.3. ¹³⁶ On the enormous impact, pace Jerome, that Plato and Aristotle actually had on late antique philosophy, see H. J. Blumenthal, Aristotle and Neoplatonism in Late Antiquity: Interpretations of the De Anima (Ithaca, NY, 1996); C. Brittain, “No Place for a Platonist Soul in Fifth-Century Gaul? The Case of Mamertus Claudianus,” in R. Mathisen and D. Shanzer (eds.), Society and Culture in Late Antique Gaul: Revisiting the Sources (Aldershot, 2001), 239–62; T. Leinkauf and C. Steel (eds.), Plato’s Timaeus and the Foundations of Cosmology in Late Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Ithaca, NY, 2005); M. Edwards, Aristotle and Early Christian Thought (London, 2019).

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at least to wonder if Jerome also is making a cryptic criticism of Victorinus, whose literary output included translations of Aristotle’s works.¹³⁷ Read in this light, Jerome’s subsequent remark about how “only a few idle old men study [these philosophers] in out-of-the-way places” assumes fresh significance, for he relates elsewhere that Victorinus converted to Christianity “in extreme old age” (in extrema senectute),¹³⁸ and thus by his reckoning Victorinus was engaged in secular philosophical pursuits in the twilight of his life, leading up to his conversion. Why did Jerome feel the need to define his own exegetical work on Paul in such sharp contradistinction to that of Victorinus? Undoubtedly one of the factors motivating his polemical impulse was a deeply felt insecurity. We must bear in mind that the self-assured tone he adopts when he dismisses Victorinus as a rank amateur in Pauline interpretation is ironic, to say the least. When Jerome composed his four Pauline commentaries in 386, he was very far from being the seasoned biblical expert he would become widely recognized as starting in the middle to late 390s.¹³⁹ In fact, his Pauline commentaries constitute his first major effort at the systematic exegesis of whole biblical books; prior to that, he had produced only shorter expositions of miscellaneous biblical passages. Therefore, contrary to the impression he conveys by his seemingly self-confident rhetoric in the first Galatians preface, the little practical experience Jerome had accrued leading up to 386 made him, realistically speaking, not much more than an amateur himself. He admits as much at the beginning of his Philemon commentary: “Until now I have not dared to make even a peep (as the saying goes) about [Paul].”¹⁴⁰ It is not just that Jerome was challenging the legacy of Marius Victorinus the commentator on Paul. Victorinus had been the most prominent professor of rhetoric in mid-fourth-century Rome, holding its public chair of rhetoric during the reign of Constantius. In 354 he was elevated to the senatorial order, becoming a vir clarissimus, and a statue in his honor was erected in Trajan’s Forum.¹⁴¹ He converted to Christianity a year or two afterward, late in life, and within another year he became an outspoken advocate of Nicene theology, writing theological treatises against the Arians,¹⁴² and these were followed later by his commentaries

¹³⁷ See above, p. 64. ¹³⁸ Vir. ill. 101.1. ¹³⁹ A revealing marker of his growing reputation as a biblical exegete during this period is the number of Christians throughout the Roman empire who wrote letters to him requesting answers to their questions about scriptural conundra. See A. Cain, “Defending Hedibia and Detecting Eusebius: Jerome’s Correspondence with Two Gallic Women (Epp. 120–121),” MP 24 (2003): 15–34. ¹⁴⁰ Ne muttum quidem, ut dicitur, ante hanc diem in eum facere ausus (Comm. Phlm. 1–3). ¹⁴¹ Jerome, Chron. 354 ; Augustine, Conf. 8.2.3; on Trajan’s Forum during this period, see H.I. Marrou, “La vie intellectuelle au forum de Trajan et au forum d’Auguste,” MEFRA 49 (1932): 93–110. As suggested by M. Tardieu, Recherches sur la formation de l’Apocalypse de Zostrien et les sources de Marius Victorinus (Leuven, 1996), 23, Victorinus was awarded both the clarissimate and statue in conjunction with each other. ¹⁴² P. Henry and P. Hadot (eds.), Marius Victorinus, Traités théologiques sur la trinité (Paris, 1960); P. Henry and P. Hadot (eds.), Marius Victorinus. Pars I: Opera theologica (Vienna, 1971).

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on Paul. Decades after his death Victorinus was still fondly remembered in some sectors for being a pivotal figure in fourth-century western Christianity.¹⁴³ When confronting Victorinus’s legacy, Jerome refused to concede to him the seminal place in the history of Pauline exegesis that was properly his.¹⁴⁴ Instead, he heralded his own opus Paulinum as something unprecedented in the Latin West and virtually unparalleled in the Greek East. To believe his revisionist account in the first Galatians preface, the relatively young tradition of the Pauline commentary in Latin had made a false start with Victorinus, and what it needed now was not reinvigoration or a breath of fresh air; it needed a completely new beginning. The literary historian in him accordingly recalibrated this tradition, brazenly stripping Victorinus of his canonical status within it and anachronistically conferring this status on himself. In the Galatians preface he justified this radical move to supersede Victorinus and be recognized as the premier authority on Paul in the Latin-speaking world by hitching his wagon to the Greek exegetical tradition, and especially to Origen.¹⁴⁵

Negotiating Crisis Jerome’s Pauline prefaces are distinct from the ones authored by the rest of his Latin cohort because they often address personal issues having nothing to do with the epistles in question. In all of his rhetorical posturing we can detect palpable insecurities, simmering just below the surface of the text, which concern how his commentaries, and indeed how he as a Christian intellectual authority, will be received in Rome (and, by extrapolation, the broader Christian world). Apprehension about the reception of his writings is a trait characteristic of Jerome’s authorial persona in general, yet it is especially pronounced in the Pauline prefaces. The question, put simply, is: why? This is a deceptively simple question, and in order to answer it properly we must wind back the clock of his life to his recent stay in Rome, from the summer of 382 to August of 385.¹⁴⁶ For Jerome, these three years in Rome were the best of times, and they were the worst of times. On the one hand, he enjoyed proximity to Pope Damasus as his

¹⁴³ For instance, in his Confessions (8.2.3–8.4.9) Augustine famously cites Victorinus as a role model for his own conversion. ¹⁴⁴ Thus, for instance, his entry on Victorinus in De viris illustribus (101) is dismissively short and mentions his Pauline commentaries in passing (scripsit . . . commentarios in apostolum), as an afterthought to his other named writings and without mentioning on which of the epistles he commented. ¹⁴⁵ See Chapter 6. ¹⁴⁶ For overviews of this formative period in his life, see J. N. D. Kelly, Jerome: His Life, Writings, and Controversies (New York, 1975), 80–115; Rebenich, Jerome, 31–40; Y.-M. Duval, “Sur trois lettres méconnues de Jérôme concernant son séjour à Rome,” in A. Cain and J. Lössl (eds.), Jerome of Stridon: His Life, Writings, and Controversies (Aldershot, 2009), 29–40.

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personal scriptural advisor and sometime secretary,¹⁴⁷ and he also forged strategic connections with some women ascetics from the senatorial class, including Marcella and Paula, whose literary patronage would prove to be integral to the success of his scholarly vocation.¹⁴⁸ On the other hand, a series of disappointments, setbacks, and controversies cast a pall over his Roman years. For one thing, his satire of secularized Christianity scandalized lay and clerical Christians who did not subscribe to his extreme ascetic ideology; certain of his positions even prompted accusations of crypto-Manichaeism.¹⁴⁹ He stirred up a hornet’s nest on other fronts as well. His revision of the Old Latin Gospels according to the Greek, despite having been commissioned by Pope Damasus, was criticized severely in some quarters for being a dangerous novelty.¹⁵⁰ As a result, his reputation as an up-and-coming biblical scholar took a hard hit. Jerome’s reputation as a self-styled authority on the ascetic life took an even harder hit. By the summer of 385, during his final months in Rome, he had become dogged by rumors that he was using his profession of monasticism as a guise for seducing women ascetics of the Christian aristocracy and gaining access to their fortunes—and bedchambers. Because he was an ordained priest, the Roman episcopal court intervened and handed down a verdict that evidently amounted to Jerome’s expulsion from its diocese.¹⁵¹ He left Rome that August, never to return, yet for years to come he would be forced to live down insinuations of being an immoral moralist.¹⁵² By the time he began composing his Pauline commentaries in Bethlehem the following year, he was, in all historical reality, a disgraced clergyman and fledgling biblical scholar newly installed in Bethlehem, an agrarian village situated hundreds of miles from Rome. Rome was where most of his literary patrons still resided, including Marcella, to whom he makes flattering overtures in multiple Pauline prefaces in the stated hope that she will act as his literary agent and use her influence to ensure a positive reception for his commentaries once they reach Italy’s shores. Rome also was where Marius Victorinus, although he had died some two decades earlier, was still a respected intellectual icon in the local Christian community and held the distinction of being the first Latin-speaking Christian on record to comment on Paul. Needless to say, his was a formidable legacy with which any aspiring biblical commentator writing in Latin inevitably had to contend.

¹⁴⁷ Cain, The Letters of Jerome, 43–67. Cf. Y.-M. Duval, La décrétale Ad Gallos Episcopos: son texte et son auteur. Texte critique, traduction française et commentaire (Leiden, 2005). ¹⁴⁸ For the textual medium (i.e., a collection of his personal correspondence) whereby he introduced himself to these women, see Cain, The Letters of Jerome, 13–42; Cain, “The Letter Collections of Jerome of Stridon,” in C. Sogno, B. Storin, and E. Watts (eds.), A Critical Introduction and Reference Guide to Late Antique Letter Collections (Berkeley, 2016), 221–38. ¹⁴⁹ See below, pp. 116n82, 135. ¹⁵⁰ See below, pp. 84–6. ¹⁵¹ Cain, The Letters of Jerome, 99–128. ¹⁵² Cain, The Letters of Jerome, 130–4.

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 ’      

Victorinus was not the only rival Pauline commentator with whom Jerome had to compete for an audience in mid-380s Rome. There also was the anonymous priest now known by the moniker “Ambrosiaster,” who commented on the entire Pauline corpus in the late 370s and early 380s. Now, nowhere in his Pauline prefaces or commentaries does Jerome appear to hurl so much as an allusive criticism Ambrosiaster’s way, nor does he even register the slightest awareness of his commentaries. Nevertheless, his complete silence is not in fact surprising or unexpected. In other contexts, too, he simply pretends that Ambrosiaster does not exist so as to avoid legitimizing him by even mentioning him at all.¹⁵³ Because Jerome kept close tabs on his literary rivals, and also because he had locked horns with Ambrosiaster over ascetic ideology and biblical scholarship during his recent stay in Rome,¹⁵⁴ he is bound to have been aware of his work on Paul and reckoned it a rival to his own.¹⁵⁵ The four Pauline commentaries were Jerome’s first substantial literary productions since he left Rome and took up residence in Bethlehem. With these, the embattled monk-scholar tried to assert his intellectual authority on arguably the most ambitious scale yet in his career. And, as I have argued in this chapter, their prefaces are vital (though too often under-appreciated) components of his broader campaign to shape how his opus Paulinum would be received by Christian readers in Rome and beyond.

¹⁵³ This serial dismissal is akin to a literary damnatio memoriae; see H. Vogels, “Hieronymus und Ambrosiaster,” RBén 66 (1956): 14–19 (15); A. Cain, “In Ambrosiaster’s Shadow: A Critical ReEvaluation of the Last Surviving Letter-Exchange between Pope Damasus and Jerome,” REAug 51 (2005): 257–77 (273). Cf. Adv. Helv. 1: Jerome says that he initially hesitated to refute Helvidius for fear of making him appear worthy of being refuted in the first place. ¹⁵⁴ Cain, The Letters of Jerome, 51–62. ¹⁵⁵ One important indicator of Ambrosiaster’s contemporary reputation as a Pauline commentator (and in indirect support of my suggestion that Jerome was aware of his work) is his influence on Augustine. See E. Plumer, Augustine’s Commentary on Galatians: Introduction, Text, Translation, and Notes (Oxford, 2003), 53–6.

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3 Ad fontes Greek and Hebrew Philology

In the spring or early summer of 394, Paulinus of Nola wrote to Jerome for advice about studying Scripture.¹ In his reply Jerome pulled out all of the stops and made a thinly disguised offer to mentor his distinguished correspondent, even inviting him to move to Bethlehem so that the two of them could be scholastic comrades (comites).² In the body of the letter Jerome offers Paulinus a foretaste of what was to come, giving him a book-by-book rundown of the Bible’s hermeneutical mysteries to convince him that he needs a guide to show him the way.³ He also drops seemingly casual, yet in fact strategically planted, references to the biblical text in Hebrew and Greek to display his linguistic credentials in an unassuming way.⁴ For in Jerome’s view, scriptural interpretation is a highly specialized craft (an ars, as he puts it to Paulinus⁵) that entails a mastery of the biblical languages. Jerome professed to possess this technical expertise in spades, and indeed it is one of the main pillars of his exegetical authority as he constructs it for readers across the vast corpus of his writings.⁶

¹ On their epistolary relations, see P. Courcelle, “Paulin de Nole et Saint Jérôme,” REL 25 (1947): 250–80; P. Nautin, “Études de chronologie hiéronymienne (393–7): III. Les premières relations entre Jérôme et Paulin de Nole,” REAug 19 (1973): 213–39; Y.-M. Duval, “Les premiers rapports de Paulin de Nole avec Jérôme: moine ou philosophe? Poète ou exégète?,” StudTard 7 (1989): 177–216; G. Guttilla, “Paolino di Nola e Girolamo,” Orpheus n.s. 13 (1992): 278–94; A. Canellis, “Les rapports de Paulin de Nole avec Jérôme au-delà de 400: la Lettre 39 de Paulin et le Commentaire sur Joël 1, 4 de Jérôme,” Augustinianum 39 (1999): 311–35; D. Trout, Paulinus of Nola: Life, Letters, and Poems (Berkeley, 1999), 90–101 and passim. ² Jerome, Ep. 53.10.2. Trout, Paulinus of Nola, 92, sensibly suggests that in encouraging Paulinus to divest himself of his wealth, Jerome was hoping to secure him as a patron for his monastic establishment at Bethlehem. ³ Jerome thus caps this rundown: Haec a me perstricta sunt breviter . . . ut intellegeres te in scripturis sanctis sine praevio et monstrante semitam non posse ingredi (Ep. 53.6.1). ⁴ Greek: Ep. 53.4.1 (meaning of logos; cf. Jn. 1.1). Hebrew (mostly etymologies of Old Testament proper names): Ep. 53.3.6, 8.5, 8.9, 8.18, 8.19. ⁵ I.e., the ars Scripturarum (Ep. 53.7.1), an expression whereby Jerome evokes Horace’s ars poetica and thus appropriates for his own scholarship the Horatian ideal of laborious art. See M. Vessey, “Quid facit cum Horatio Hieronymus? Christian Latin Poetry and Scriptural Poetics,” in W. Otten and K. Pollmann (eds.), Poetry and Exegesis in Premodern Latin Christianity: The Encounter between Classical and Christian Strategies of Interpretation (Leiden, 2007), 29–48 (40–4). ⁶ Similarly, strong philological skills are a necessity in Origen’s educational mandate for the ideal biblical interpreter; see P. W. Martens, Origen and Scripture: The Contours of the Exegetical Life (Oxford, 2012), 28–33; cf. B. Neuschäfer, Origenes als Philologe, 2 vols. (Basel, 1987).

Jerome’s Commentaries on the Pauline Epistles and the Architecture of Exegetical Authority. Andrew Cain, Oxford University Press. © Andrew Cain 2021. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192847195.003.0004

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Jerome’s back-to-the-sources approach to biblical exegesis has been extensively researched,⁷ yet his Pauline commentaries tend not to figure that prominently in the conversation, an oversight which obscures the valuable insight they offer into his intellectual development at a critical early juncture in his scholarly career. In this chapter I therefore closely examine his critical treatment of the Septuagint (LXX) and the Vetus Latina (VL) translation(s) of Paul’s epistles and argue that he used his four commentaries as a platform for making the case—for the first time in a running commentary as opposed to shorter exegetical set pieces (a genre with which he had experimented earlier in the 380s)—that the study of Hebrew and Greek is absolutely vital to New Testament studies.

Graeca veritas and the Vetus Latina In 384 Jerome completed one of the most monumental scholarly projects of his early career, a revision of the four canonical Gospels according to the Greek.⁸ He based his edition on the VL text type I,⁹ which was dominant in northern Italy at the time and which he corrected according to the Greek.¹⁰ Addressing the project’s commissioner Pope Damasus in the preface, he represents his mission as a truth-seeking one—quite literally so, as he calls the Greek original of the New Testament text Graeca veritas. This “truth” is the absolute standard by which all Latin translations are to be judged, and only by taking it as our guide are we able to salvage the New Testament writers’ intended meaning from errors introduced by translators and scribes.¹¹ ⁷ On this, as well as on his exegetical technique more generally, see A. Penna, Principi e carattere dell’esegesi di S. Gerolamo (Rome, 1950); L. N. Hartmann, “St. Jerome as an Exegete,” in F. X. Murphy (ed.), A Monument to Saint Jerome: Essays on Some Aspects of His Life, Works, and Influence (New York, 1952), 37–81; P. Jay, L’exégèse de saint Jérôme d’après son Commentaire sur Isaïe (Paris, 1985); D. Brown, Vir Trilinguis: A Study in the Biblical Exegesis of Saint Jerome (Kampen, 1992); A. Canellis, “Jerome’s Hermeneutics: How to Exegete the Bible,” in T. Toom (ed.), Patristic Theories of Biblical Interpretation: The Latin Fathers (Cambridge, 2016), 49–76; É. Ayroulet and A. Canellis (ed.), L’exégèse de saint Jérôme (Saint-Étienne, 2018). ⁸ On the general characteristics of this revision, see H. F. D. Sparks, “Jerome as Biblical Scholar,” in P. R. Ackroyd and C. F. Evans (eds.), The Cambridge History of the Bible, vol. 1: From the Beginnings to Jerome (Cambridge, 1970), 510–41 (523–4). Cf. R. Harrison, “Jerome’s Revision of the Gospels” (Ph. D. diss.: University of Michigan, 1986). ⁹ On the various versions of the Old Latin New Testament, see R. T. Schäfer, Die altlateinische Bibel (Bonn, 1957); B. Fischer, “Das neue Testament in lateinischer Sprache,” in K. Aland (ed.), Die alten Übersetzungen des Neuen Testaments, die Kirchenväterzitate und Lektionare (Berlin, 1972), 1–92; B. M. Metzger, Early Versions of the New Testament (Oxford, 1977), 285–374; J. Gribomont, “Les plus anciennes traductions latines,” in J. Fontaine and C. Pietri (eds.), La Bible de tous les temps, vol. 2: Le monde latin antique et la Bible (Paris, 1985), 43–65; J. K. Elliott, “The Translations of the New Testament into Latin: The Old Latin and the Vulgate,” ANRW II.26.1 (1992): 198–245; P. Burton, The Old Latin Gospels: A Study of Their Texts and Language (Oxford, 2000). ¹⁰ H. A. G. Houghton, The Latin New Testament: A Guide to Its Early History, Texts, and Manuscripts (Oxford, 2016), 30–5. ¹¹ Novum opus facere me cogis ex veteri, ut post exemplaria scripturarum toto orbe dispersa quasi quidam arbiter sedeam et, quia inter se variant, quae sint illa quae cum Graeca consentiant veritate

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Two years later Jerome brought this same sensitivity to Graeca veritas to bear on his exegetical work on Paul. His commentaries on all four epistles appear to be based on a version of the VL (possibly text type I), though he often translates his own Pauline lemmata directly from Origen’s commentaries.¹² In fact, whenever he cites the Greek text of Paul in his own commentaries, he likely is referring to Origen’s baseline text (rather than to a different Greek recension he possibly had in hand and consulted alongside the one preserved by Origen), and in that case, Origen’s comments furnished him with occasional variant readings he reports for the Greek. Thus, when he quotes 1 Cor. 13.3 (Si tradidero corpus meum ut glorier, “If I hand over my body that I may boast”), he points out that the VL has “burn” (ardeam) instead of “boast” (glorier) and attributes the discrepancy among the Latin translators to the divergent readings of καυθήσομαι (“burn”) and καυχήσομαι (“boast”) in the Greek manuscripts (apud ipsos Graecos exemplaria); Origen likely is his source for these variants.¹³ Jerome’s standard operating procedure is to take the Greek (presumably Origen’s lemma) as the benchmark for assessing the reliability of the received Latin text. On a handful of occasions he is either positive or neutral in his verdict on the VL readings,¹⁴ but by and large he is decidedly critical. Sometimes he objects to the translator adding words in Latin that have no counterpart in the Greek text.¹⁵ Jerome notes, for instance, that adultery, immodesty, and murder are listed among the “deeds of the flesh” (Gal. 5.19–21) in the Latin manuscripts yet they are not found in the Greek,¹⁶ and a little earlier in the same chapter he declines to comment on a phrase in the lemma of Gal. 5.7 because it is not attested

decernam . . . Sin autem veritas est quaerenda de pluribus, cur non ad Graecam originem revertentes ea quae vel a vitiosis interpretibus male edita vel a praesumptoribus inperitis emendata perversius vel a librariis dormitantibus aut addita sunt aut mutata corrigimus? (R. Weber (ed.), Biblia Sacra iuxta Vulgatam Versionem (Stuttgart, 1983), 1515–16). ¹² H. J. Frede, Vetus Latina, vol. 25/1: Epistulae ad Thessalonicenses, Timotheum, Titum, Philemonem, Hebraeos (Freiburg, 1975), 140, notes that Jerome’s Pauline lemmata are of limited value for reconstructing the VL tradition on account of his strong dependence on Greek sources (i.e., Origen) and his own freestyle handling of the biblical wording. See H. A. G. Houghton, “The Biblical Text of Jerome’s Commentary on Galatians,” JThS n.s. 65 (2014): 1–24, who demonstrates that Jerome’s Galatians commentary preserves quite a few Old Latin readings not adopted by Raspanti in his 2006 critical edition (CCSL 77A). See further H. A. G. Houghton, C. M. Kreinecker, R. F. MacLachlan, and C. J. Smith (eds.), The Principal Pauline Epistles: A Collation of Old Latin Witnesses (Leiden, 2019). ¹³ Scio in Latinis codicibus in eo testimonio quod supra posui, si tradidero corpus meum ut glorier, ardeam habere pro glorier, sed ob similitudinem verbi, quia apud Graecos ardeam et glorier, id est καυθήσομαι et καυχήσομαι, una litterae parte distinguitur, apud nostros error inolevit. Sed et apud ipsos Graecos exemplaria sunt diversa (Comm. Gal. 5.26). For καυχήσομαι as the preferred reading, see G. Zuntz, The Test of the Epistles (London, 1953), 35–6; B. M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 2nd ed. (Stuttgart, 2005), 497–8. ¹⁴ See, e.g., Comm. Gal. 5.24, 5.26; Comm. Eph. 1.5b, 2.1–5a; Comm. Tit. 3.10–11. ¹⁵ For examples not discussed above, see Gal. 5.13a; Eph. 3.14–15. ¹⁶ In Latinis codicibus adulterium quoque et impudicitia et homicidia in hoc catalogo vitiorum scripta referuntur. Sed sciendum non plus quam quindecim carnis opera nominata, de quibus et disseruimus (Comm. Gal. 5.19–21).

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in either his Greek text or previous (Greek) commentaries on Galatians.¹⁷ To cite another example, in the lemma of Eph. 5.22–3a (Mulieres viris suis subditae sint sicut Domino quoniam vir caput est mulieris sicut et Christus caput ecclesiae), the VL has the superfluous verb subditae sint, which Jerome says should be omitted because it is not found in the Greek.¹⁸ Likewise, in Eph. 3.14, whose lemma Jerome gives as Propterea curvo genua mea ad Patrem Domini nostri Iesu Christi, the VL adds Domini nostri Iesu Christi after ad Patrem, but he says that this phrase should be left out.¹⁹ Jerome’s most persistent complaint about the VL is its failure to capture the essence of the Greek original.²⁰ Hence he criticizes its rendition of Gal 5.4 (Evacuati estis a Christo qui in lege iustificamini, a gratia excidistis), pointing out that evacuati estis a Christo (“you have been made void of Christ”) misses the mark and that in Christi opere cessastis (“you have ceased in the work of Christ”) is closer to Paul’s κατηργήθητε ἀπὸ τοῦ Χριστοῦ (“you have been separated from Christ”). This distinction is important, he argues, because there is a larger issue at stake: if anyone believes that he will be justified by keeping some part of the Law, he derives no benefit when it comes to doing the work of Christ.²¹ In Tit. 1.8 Paul prescribes that the church elder be σώφρων. Jerome criticizes the VL for translating this adjective as prudens (“prudent,” “judicious”) and replaces it with pudicus (“chaste”),²² thus taking σώφρων into the conceptual realm of sexual ¹⁷ Sed quia nec in Graecis libris nec in his qui in apostolum commentati sunt hoc scriptum invenimus, praetereundum videtur (Comm. Gal. 5.7). ¹⁸ Hoc quod in Latinis exemplaribus additum est, subditae sint, in Graecis codicibus non habetur: siquidem ad superiora refertur, et subauditur: subiecti invicem in timore Christi, ut ἀπὸ κοινοῦ resonet subiectae, et mulieres viris suis sicut Domino. Sed hoc magis in Graeco intellegitur quam in Latino (Comm. Eph. 5.22–3a). Although several ancient witnesses (Origen, Jerome, and some Greek manuscripts) begin Eph. 5.22 without a main verb (with it being understood that the force of ὑποτασσόμενοι carries over from the preceding verse), others read either ὑποτάσσεσθε or ὑποτασσέσθωσαν after γυναῖκες τοῖς ἰδίοις ἀνδράσιν, and most manuscripts of the Vulgate read mulieres viris subditae sint (Metzger, Textual Commentary, 608–9). ¹⁹ Porro quod sequitur, ad Patrem ex quo omnis paternitas in coelis et in terra nominatur, non ut Latinis codicibus additum est, ad Patrem Domini nostri Iesu Christi, sed simpliciter, ad Patrem, legendum, ut Dei Patris nomen, non Domino nostro Iesu Christo, sed omnibus creaturis rationabilibus coaptetur (Comm. Eph. 3.14–15). ²⁰ For linguistic features in Greek that cannot adequately be translated into Latin (e.g., a differentiation between the aorist and perfect tenses), see Metzger, Early Versions, 362–74. ²¹ Quomodo nemo potest duobus dominis servire, sic umbram pariter et veritatem legis implere difficile est: umbra in lege veteri est donec aspiret dies et amoveantur umbrae; veritas in Evangelio Christi: Gratia enim et veritas per Iesum Christum factae sunt. Perdit ergo gratiam Christi et Evangelium quod tenuerat amittit qui in aliqua observatione legis se iustificari putat et, cum gratiam amiserit, a Christi fide destituitur et in eius opere conquiescit: κατηργήθητε enim ἀπὸ τοῦ Χριστοῦ non, ut in Latino male interpretatum est, evacuati estis a Christo, sed in Christi opere cessastis magis intellegitur, ut id quod supra specialiter de circumcisione praeceperat dicens si circumcidamini, Christus vobis nihil prodest nunc de tota lege generaliter comprehendat: nihil eos in Christi opere proficere qui in quacumque observatione legis se crediderint iustificandos (Comm. Gal. 5.4). ²² Sit autem episcopus et pudicus, quem Graeci σώφρονα vocant et Latinus interpres, verbi ambiguitate deceptus, pro “pudico” “prudentem” transtulit. Si autem laicis imperatur ut propter orationem abstineant se ab uxorum coitu, quid de episcopo sentiendum est qui cotidie pro suis populique peccatis illibatas Deo oblaturus est victimas? (Comm. Tit. 1.8–9).

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morals.²³ Also, in the same commentary (on Tit. 1.10–11), he asserts that the VL’s deceptores for φρεναπάται is insufficient and suggests instead mentium deceptores,²⁴ which is a more literal translation of φρεναπάται. In another passage Jerome blames the faulty understanding of a Greek adjective on translators’ ineptness (simplicitas interpretum), and in this particular case the misunderstanding has consequences for Christology: Someone may query and say: “If [Christ] was born under the Law to redeem those under it because they were not able to be redeemed unless he had been born under it, then either he was born without the Law to redeem those not under it, or, if he was not born without it, then he did not redeem those who had not been under it, because if those without the Law were able to be redeemed (but not with him being born without the Law), then it was pointless for him to be born under it so as to redeem those who were under it.” This quandary can be cleared up in short order by citing the verse: “He was numbered among those who were without the Law” (Is. 53.12; Lk. 22.37). In the Latin manuscripts the reading “he was numbered among the transgressors” has been corrupted due to the translators’ ineptness, but nevertheless we should realize that ἄνομος, which is found in the Greek manuscripts, means something different than ἄδικος, the equivalent of which is contained in the Latin manuscripts. For the person who is ἄνομος is not under the Mosaic law and in fact is not bound by any law, while the person who is ἄδικος is unjust or unrighteous. Hence the Apostle says elsewhere: “Although I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law” (1 Cor. 9.21). Indeed, ἄνομος is used in the Greek in this passage as well, and the one who translated it correctly here was capable of translating the same word correctly in another passage, unless the ambiguity had confused him. Quaerat quispiam et dicat: si ideo sub lege factus est ut eos qui sub lege erant redimeret quod videlicet impossibile fuerit redimi eos qui erant sub lege nisi factus fuisset ipse sub lege, aut sine lege factus est ut redimeret eos qui sub lege non erant aut si non est factus ipse sine lege non redemit eos qui sub lege non fuerant, quod si possibile erat eos qui sine lege erant redimi ita ut sine lege ipse non fieret, ergo superflue sub lege factus est ut redimeret eos qui sub lege erant. Breviter solvet hanc quaestionem si quis illo utatur exemplo et cum his qui sine lege erant reputatus est: nam licet in Latinis codicibus propter simplicitatem interpretum male editum sit et cum iniquis reputatus est, tamen sciendum aliud apud Graecos significare ἄνομον quod hic scriptum est, aliud ἄδικον quod in Latinis voluminibus habetur; ἄνομος enim dicitur ille qui sine lege est et nullo iure constringitur; ἄδικος vero iniquus

²³ Cf. below, pp. 121–2. ²⁴ Sed bonam mentium sementem, quae naturaliter habet notitiam Dei, inani persuasione pervertant (hoc quippe mihi Paulus videtur sensisse cum dicit φρεναπάται: non ut simpliciter Latinus interpres transtulit “deceptores,” sed “mentium deceptores”) (Comm. Tit. 1.10–11).

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 ’       sive iniustus. Vnde et ipse apostolus in alio loco: Cum non essem, ait, sine lege Dei, sed in lege essem Christi, et certe in hoc quoque testimonio ἄνομος in Graeco scriptum est, et qui hic bene interpretatus est potuit idem verbum et ibi similiter interpretari, nisi eum ambiguitas fefellisset.²⁵

Jerome voices his concern about translational inaccuracy also when he comments on Eph. 1.14. He presents the VL text as his lemma (Qui est pignus hereditatis nostrae in redemptionem adoptionis in laudem gloriae ipsius) and takes issue with not one but two aspects of its rendering of the Greek (Ὅ ἐστιν ἀρραβὼν τῆς κληρονομίας ἡμῶν, εἰς ἀπολύτρωσιν τῆς περιποιήσεως, εἰς ἔπαινον τῆς δόξης αὐτοῦ): The Latin translator rendered arrabon [ἀρραβών] as pignus. However, ἀρραβῶν does not mean the same thing as pignus, for arrabon [“earnest money”] is given to certify and establish an obligation for a future purchase. By contrast, pignus [“security”], that is ἐνέχυρον, is pledged for a loan so that when the loan has been repaid, the security owed to the borrower is repaid by the creditor. Again, where it says, “for the redemption of the adoption,” the Greek text does not have υἱοθεσία [“adoption”] but περιποίησις, which we can call “acquisition” or “possession,” and yet we have not captured the word’s force. For there are many words which cannot be translated from Greek into Latin, or from Hebrew into Greek, or conversely from Latin into Greek or from Greek into Hebrew. Pignus Latinus interpres pro arrabone posuit; non idipsum autem arrabon quod pignus sonat: arrabon enim futurae emptioni quasi quoddam testimonium et obligamentum datur. Pignus vero, hoc est, ἐνέχυρον, pro mutua pecunia opponitur, ut cum illa reddita fuerit reddenti debitum pignus a creditore reddatur. Rursum in eo ubi ait in redemptionem adoptionis non habet in Graeco υἱοθεσίαν, sed περιποίησιν, quam nos adquisitionem sive possessionem possumus dicere nec tamen vim sermonis expressimus. Multa enim verba sunt quae nec de Graeco in Latinum transferri valent nec de Hebraico in Graecum et reciproce, nec de Latino in Graecum, nec de Graeco in Hebraeum.²⁶

Jerome points out that the VL’s adoptio is a flatly incorrect translation of περιποίησις, and he submits either adquisitio or possessio as a clear improvement. Yet, he admits that even these two suggestions fail to capture fully the essence of Paul’s intended meaning, and he blames the inadequacy of the translation process itself for this. This excuse should probably be read less as an aporetic resignation than as a subtle argument that native Latin-speaking biblical scholars (and otherwise serious students of Scripture) should be fluent enough in the biblical

²⁵ Comm. Gal. 4.4–5.

²⁶ Comm. Eph. 1.14.

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languages to understand their idiom on their own terms rather than through the imperfect filter of translation. In the rest of his comments on Eph. 1.14 Jerome in fact models this very principle for his readers. As we see in the above-quoted passage, he opens his remarks on the verse by objecting to the VL’s choice of pignus for arrabon (ἀρραβών),²⁷ though he does not offer an alternative translation. After concluding his text-critical analysis with the critique of adoptio and his statement about the occasional inefficacy of translation, he embarks on a robust discussion of the verse’s content. In particular, he probes what Paul means when he calls the Holy Spirit the ἀρραβών (“deposit,” “earnest money”) that guarantees believers’ heavenly inheritance, and, instead of risking a potentially ineffectual Latin translation of this Greek word,²⁸ he reverts to the Latin transliteration of it,²⁹ which he proceeds to employ seven times in his exposition.³⁰ The concentrated repetition of arrabon, which is intended to bolster Jerome’s argument in favor of transliterating untranslatable biblical Greek words,³¹ seems remarkable when we consider its otherwise sparse occurrence in ancient Latin literature. It is attested less than two dozen times prior to the fifth century—and almost exclusively in late Republican and early Imperial authors, at that³²—and only one other time in Jerome, later in the same commentary when he likewise characterizes the Holy Spirit as the arrabon of Christians’ salvation.³³ ²⁷ Pignus is the VL reading attested in other fourth-century writers; cf. Marius Victorinus, Comm. Eph. 1.14; Ambrosiaster, Comm. Eph. 1.14; Ambrose, Spir. sanc. 1.6.78. ²⁸ Cf. A. Capone, “Rebus enim novis nova fingenda sunt nomina: esegesi, rinnovamento e dialogo nel cristianesimo dei primi secoli,” Paideia 75 (2020): 653–74. ²⁹ In his annotations on this passage, Erasmus agrees with Jerome and treats the transliterated arrabon as a loan word instead of translating it as pignus. See R. A. Faber (trans.), Collected Works of Erasmus: Annotations on Galatians and Ephesians (Toronto, 2017), 127. ³⁰ Quicumque igitur non tantum Spiritum Sanctum, sed Spiritum Sanctum repromissionis acceperit, simul consequetur et arrabonem hereditatis, quae hereditas vita perpetua est. Et quomodo ex arrabone aestimatur qualis emptio sit futura et quae possessio (verbi causa: ex decem solidis centum solidorum villa et ex centum solidis mille solidorum possessio) ita ex varietate arrabonis hereditatis quoque postea secuturae magnitudo cognoscitur. Quamvis autem sanctus sit aliquis atque perfectus et omnium iudicio beatitudine dignus putetur, tamen ad futuram hereditatem nunc arrabonem est Spiritus consecutus. Si autem arrabon tantus, quanta erit ipsa possessio? Quomodo autem arrabon qui nobis tribuitur non est extra nos, sed intra nos est sic et ipsa hereditas—hoc est regnum Dei quod intra nos est—in nobis versatur intrinsecus. Quae enim potest esse maior hereditas quam contemplari et videre sensu pulchritudinem sapientiae et verbi et veritatis et luminis et ipsius ineffabilem et magnificam Dei considerare naturam omniumque quae ad similitudinem Dei condita sunt substantiam contueri? Iste autem Spiritus repromissionis Sanctus qui est arrabon hereditatis nostrae, idcirco nunc sanctis datur ut redimantur et copulentur Deo in laudem gloriae ipsius. Non quo Deus laude alicuius indigeat, sed quo laus Dei laudatoribus prosit et dum per singula opera maiestatem ipsius magnitudinemque cognoscunt ad laudandum eum miraculo stuporis erumpant. ³¹ He makes the same argument in Comm. Eph. 1.10b (Recapitulare omnia in Christo quae in caelis et quae in terra in ipso): Pro recapitulare in Latinis codicibus scriptum est, instaurare et miror cur ipso verbo Graeco non usi sint translatores, cum istiusmodi licentia, dialectica et philosophia sicut in Graeco habentur, assumptae sint. ³² E.g., Plautus, Most. 646; Rud. 44; Poen. 1359; Terence, Heaut. 603; Aulus Gellius, Noct. Att. 17.2.21; Apuleius, Met. 1.21; cf. Thesaurus Linguae Latinae II, 633.6–65. ³³ Potest autem et hoc dici ut quomodo arrabonem Spiritus Sancti accepimus, necdum totam eius plenitudinem consecuti, sic et sedere nos cum Christo atque regnare, necdum perfectam sessionem in caelestibus obtinentes (Comm. Eph. 2.6).

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In most instances when he criticizes the VL’s rendering of a word or phrase, Jerome registers his disapproval in his comments on the lemmatized text but leaves the lemma itself unaltered, though in a handful of cases he emends the lemma to reflect these criticisms.³⁴ For example, the lemma he gives for Eph. 1.6 is: In laudem gloriae gratiae suae in qua gratificavit nos in dilecto (“To the praise of the glory of his grace, in which he has shown grace to us in the Beloved”). He remarks that the phrase “in his beloved Son” (in dilecto Filio suo), which is found in the Latin manuscripts, should be discarded in favor of “in the Beloved” (in dilecto) to reflect the Greek ἐν τῷ ἠγαπημένῳ,³⁵ and he makes this correction himself. The lemma he gives for Eph. 4.29 reads: Omnis sermo malus de ore vestro non procedat, sed si quis bonus ad aedificationem opportunitatis, ut det gratiam audientibus (“Let no evil speech proceed from your mouth but rather what is edifying for the occasion, that it may give grace to the hearers”). We learn from his comments that the VL has ad aedificationem fidei but that he has emended it to ad aedificationem opportunitatis, which he says better approximates the Greek.³⁶ Additionally, on Gal. 3.1a (“You foolish Galatians, who has cast a spell on you?,” O insensati Galatae, quis vos fascinavit?) he notes that “in certain manuscripts” of the VL there is the continuation “that you should not obey the truth” (non credere veritati),³⁷ but because this is not found in Origen’s (Greek) text, he leaves it out of his own lemma.³⁸ Another example of a VL lemma that Jerome alters to reflect his own textcritical work is the one for Gal. 5.9: Modicum fermentum totam conspersionem fermentat (“A little yeast leavens the entire dough”): A faulty translation is given in our [Latin] manuscripts: “A little yeast spoils (corrumpit) the entire dough (massam).” Rather than render the Apostle’s words faithfully, the translator has imported his own sense. Paul uses this same sentence ³⁴ Houghton, “The Biblical Text,” 4–6. ³⁵ Nec putandum quod in latinis codicibus habetur scriptum esse, in dilecto Filio suo, sed simpliciter, in dilecto; et si quidem esset additum, dilecto Dei, vel dilecto Patris, esset simplex intelligentia, et omnium opinione vulgata, quod Dominus noster Iesus Christus diligeretur a Patre; sed non magnum aliquid proprietati Filii concederemus, cum sic Filius diligeretur, ut caetera (Comm. Eph. 1.6). ³⁶ Bonus sermo est ad aedificationem opportunitatis, dans gratiam audientibus, qui docet virtutes sequendas, vitia fugienda; malus qui ad peccata provocat et pronos magis incitat ad ruinam. Pro eo autem quod nos posuimus ad aedificationem opportunitatis, hoc est quod dicitur Graece τῆς χρείας, in Latinis codicibus propter euphoniam mutavit interpres, et posuit ad aedificationem fidei (Comm. Eph. 4.29). ³⁷ The Textus Receptus, following numerous manuscripts of the Greek and of the Vulgate, adds τῇ ἀληθείᾳ μὴ πείθεσθαι from Gal. 5.7, but modern editors of the Vulgate, like Jerome, omit this phrase; see B. M. Metzger, “St. Jerome’s References to Variant Readings in the New Testament,” in E. Best and R. M. Wilson (eds.), Text and Interpretation: Studies in the New Testament Presented to Matthew Black (Cambridge, 1979), 179–90 (185); Metzger, Textual Commentary, 593. S. Carlson, The Text of Galatians and Its History (Tübingen, 2015), 221, points out that this variant dates back to at least the fourth century. ³⁸ Legitur in quibusdam codicibus: Quis vos fascinavit non credere veritati? Sed hoc, quia in exemplaribus Adamantii non habetur, omisimus (Comm. Gal. 3.1).

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in his epistle to the Corinthians when he orders that the man who consorted with his father’s wife be removed from the congregation and be handed over for repentance’s sake to destruction and bodily tribulation through fasting and infirmity, so that his spirit may be saved on the day of the Lord Jesus Christ. He says, “Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little yeast spoils (corrumpit) the entire dough (massam)?” (1 Cor. 5.6)—or, as I have already emended it, “leavens (fermentat) the entire dough (conspersionem)?” He immediately added, “Get rid of the old yeast so that you may be new dough (conspersio), as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Therefore, let us keep the festival, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and wickedness, but with unleavened bread, the bread of sincerity and truth” (1 Cor. 5.7–8). Paul now uses this same sentence to show that the spiritual bread of the church, which comes down from heaven (cf. Jn. 6.32–3), must not be defiled by a Jewish interpretation. Male in nostris codicibus habetur modicum fermentum totam massam corrumpit et sensum potius interpres suum quam verba apostoli transtulit. Hac autem ipsa sententia Paulus et ad Corinthios utitur ubi praecipit eum qui uxorem patris sui habeat tolli de medio et tradi paenitentiae in interitum et vexationem carnis per ieiunia et aegrotationes, ut spiritus salvus fiat in die Domini Iesu Christi; ait quippe: Non bona gloriatio vestra. Nescitis quia modicum fermentum totam massam corrumpit? Sive (ut iam emendavimus) totam conspersionem fermentat? Et statim intulit: Expurgate vetus fermentum ut sitis nova conspersio sicut estis azymi; etenim pascha nostrum immolatus est Christus. Itaque epulemur non in fermento veteri neque in fermento malitiae et nequitiae, sed in azymis sinceritatis et veritatis. Nunc autem per hanc eamdem sententiam docet panem ecclesiae spiritalem qui de caelo descendit non debere Iudaica interpretatione violari.³⁹

In his text-critical remarks Jerome quotes the VL text (modicum fermentum totam massam corrumpit) but makes his own emended text the lemma (modicum fermentum totam conspersionem fermentat). Although he does not quote any of the Greek that underlies his lemma (μικρὰ ζύμη ὅλον τὸ φύραμα ζυμοῖ), he nevertheless clearly has it in mind when he alleges that the Latin translator has distorted Paul’s meaning. He makes two corrections. He replaces corrumpit with fermentat, which aligns more closely with Paul’s ζυμοῖ (“leavens”) than does corrumpit;⁴⁰ the sequence fermentum . . . fermentat has the added advantage of preserving Paul’s paronomasiac ζύμη . . . ζυμοῖ. Jerome also replaces massa with conspersio in his lemma, which initially seems a negligible emendation because both nouns mean the same thing (“dough”) in this context and correspond exactly ³⁹ Comm. Gal. 5.9. ⁴⁰ Corrumpit is the lectio that is widely attested in contemporary church writers (Ambrosiaster, Chromatius, Augustine, etc.).

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to φύραμα. However, it makes perfect sense when we consider it in the light of his follow-up quotation of 1 Cor. 5.7–8 (Expurgate vetus fermentum ut sitis nova conspersio), in which the VL version he quotes contains conspersio (consparsio in some manuscripts) for Paul’s φύραμα (Ἐκκαθάρατε τὴν παλαιὰν ζύμην, ἵνα ἦτε νέον φύραμα), despite the fact that the preceding verse in the very same VL text renders φύραμα as massa. So, then, Jerome emends massa to conspersio in his lemma for Gal. 5.9 as well as in his in-line quotation of 1 Cor. 5.6 for the sake of consistency, so that φύραμα is rendered as conspersio in all three places (Gal. 5.9, 1 Cor. 5.6, 1 Cor. 5.7). Moreover, given Jerome’s copious and often trenchant criticisms of the VL, many examples of which we tracked above, an intriguing question looms: why did he not translate the four epistles himself to create an authoritative Latin text on which to base his commentaries? After all, as a comparandum, he typically based his Old Testament commentaries on his Vulgate translation according to the Hebrew, which (in sometimes slightly revised form) served as his lemmatized text.⁴¹ As for the Pauline commentaries, there are many possible answers. One is that he simply did not have the inclination to do such a translation, and indeed throughout his long career he focused his translational activity exclusively on the Old Testament and did not freshly translate any of the New Testament books into Latin;⁴² even his Gospels edition of 384 is only a revision of the VL and not a de novo translation.⁴³ Another possible reason, relating more to necessity than to choice, is that Jerome may have lacked the codicological resources (i.e., a sufficient variety of Greek manuscripts) he felt he needed to produce a translation that could credibly supersede the VL version(s) of Galatians, Ephesians, Titus, and Philemon in circulation at the time. He may also have lacked another crucial resource: time. He was working under a hard deadline, evidently wanting to finish his opus Paulinum so that it would reach Italy before the close of the sailing season in mid-autumn of 386.⁴⁴ Producing a new translation would have been very timeintensive, and likely prohibitively so. It was not as straightforward a matter as rendering Paul’s Greek into idiomatic Latin, but rather it involved making decisions about how to handle variant readings in the manuscripts, text-critical ⁴¹ Penna, Principi e carattere, 38; Jay, L’exégèse de saint Jérôme, 89; J. M. Dines, “Jerome and the Hexapla: The Witness of the Commentary on Amos,” in A. Salvesen (ed.), Origen’s Hexapla and Fragments (Tübingen, 1998), 421–36 (424–5); M. Graves, “Vulgate,” in A. Lange and E. Tov (eds.), Brill’s Textual History of the Bible, vol. 1B: Pentateuch, Former and Latter Prophets (Leiden, 2017), 645–6. ⁴² On the origins of the Vulgate New Testament, see W. Thiele, “Probleme der Versio Latina in den katholischen Briefen,” in K. Aland (ed.), Die alten Übersetzungen des Neuen Testaments, die Kirchenväterzitate und Lektionare (Berlin, 1972), 93–119 (116–19); Metzger, Early Versions, 356–62. ⁴³ Interestingly, in his commentary on Matthew (398) Jerome did not even use his Gospels revision, but instead the VL, as his lemmatized text. See A. Souter, “Notes on Incidental Gospel Quotations in Jerome’s Commentary on St. Matthew’s Gospel,” JThS 42 (1941): 12–18. ⁴⁴ See above, pp. 18–19.

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conundra in the Greek, and other potential complicating factors that could cause unforeseen delays and distract from what he clearly viewed as his top priority, the exegesis itself. A somewhat less time-consuming option than translating the four epistles afresh would have been to revise (according to the Greek) the VL version he had at his disposal. Yet, even with a revision he would be presenting his readers with a text of Paul that in some instances would be unfamiliar to them, and he therefore would be opening himself up to the charge, especially from those who did not see the relevance of Graeca veritas, that he was dispensing irreverently with a widely accepted text. This would have been a very real and present concern for him, even a case of déjà vu. His path-breaking Gospels revision was not given a universally warm welcome in Rome at the time. In a letter to Marcella written shortly after its release, he complained bitterly about critics who had accused him of tampering with the Lord’s words for having emended passages in the Gospels “against the authority of the ancients and the opinion of the entire world” (adversus auctoritatem veterum et totius mundi opinionem).⁴⁵ He defended himself by pointing out that he “wanted to restore the corruption of the Latin manuscripts, which is evident from the variations present in them all, to their Greek original, from which my critics do not deny they were translated.”⁴⁶ Most scholars agree that the biblical exegete Ambrosiaster, who was active in Rome during this period, was one of the anonymous critics to whom Jerome alludes in the letter to Marcella.⁴⁷ As we learn from a revealing passage in his commentary on Romans, which postdates the appearance of the Gospels edition, Ambrosiaster objected to Jerome’s brand of textual criticism (without actually naming him) on the ground that an editor can too easily adulterate the accepted biblical text and adopt readings that further his own special interests: They want to pontificate to us from the Greek manuscripts, as if these did not differ from one another. This makes for a controversial issue. When someone is not able to score a victory by relying on his own authority, he tampers with the words of Scripture to impose his own meaning on them, with the end result that (his own) authority, and not sound judgment, seems to decide the matter. It is well known, moreover, that there are some (Old) Latin manuscripts, translated a while ago from Greek ones, which the innocence of the times has preserved and validates as incorrupt. For today things that are condemned in the (Old) Latin

⁴⁵ Ep. 27.1.1. ⁴⁶ Latinorum codicum vitiositatem, quae ex diversitate librorum omnium conprobatur, ad Graecam originem, unde et ipsi translata non denegant, voluisse revocare (Ep. 27.1.2). ⁴⁷ E.g., H. Vogels, “Ambrosiaster und Hieronymus,” RBén 66 (1956): 14–19; J. N. D. Kelly, Jerome: His Life Writings, and Controversies (New York, 1975), 89–90; S. Lunn-Rockliffe, Ambrosiaster’s Political Theology (Oxford, 2007), 22–3.

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 ’       manuscripts are found to have been regarded as true by writers of old— Tertullian, Victorinus, and Cyprian. Sic praescribere nobis volunt de Graecis codicibus, quasi non ipsi ab invicem discrepent. Quod facit studium contentionis. quia enim propria quis auctoritate uti non potest ad victoriam, verba legis adulterat, ut sensum suum quasi verbis legis adserat, ut non ratio, sed auctoritas praescribere videatur. Constat autem quosdam Latinos porro olim de veteribus Graecis translatos codicibus, quos incorruptos simplicitas temporum servavit et probat. postquam autem a concordia animis dissidentibus et hereticis perturbantibus torqueri quaestiones coeperunt, multa inmutata sunt ad sensum humanum, ut hoc contineretur in litteris, quod homini videretur. Vnde etiam ipsi Graeci diversos codices habent. hoc autem verum arbitror, quando et ratio et historia et auctoritas conservatur. nam hodie quae in Latinis reprehenduntur codicibus, sic inveniuntur a veteribus posita, Tertulliano et Victorino et Cypriano.⁴⁸

Jerome must have had a sense of the controversial nature of his revision and even took steps in its preface to insulate himself pre-emptively from criticism. He opens this preface by emphasizing Pope Damasus’s ultimate accountability for the project: “You force me to make a new work out of an old one” (novum opus facere me cogis ex veteri).⁴⁹ He strategically places novum as the very first word of the entire preface so as to call special attention to his edition’s innovativeness, and at the same time he affirms with the forceful cogis that it was undertaken not presumptuously at his own initiative but rather at Damasus’s prodding.⁵⁰ Because he had faced withering criticism for his Gospels revision just two years earlier, one can imagine Jerome being wary of embarking on a comparable project involving another segment of the New Testament text (albeit one that, unlike the revision, would not be its own free-standing work but would be partnered with commentaries). Another round of controversy is exactly what he would not want because it would draw attention away from the exegesis itself, which Jerome hailed as an outstanding and indeed unprecedented achievement in the Latin West.⁵¹ Moreover, his Gospels project had come with a papal seal of approval, and if that could not save him from the fall-out he experienced, then he could not reasonably expect a revision (or translation) of the Pauline epistles, which lacked any such high-profile endorsement, to fare any better.⁵² Rather than produce a revision or original translation of Galatians, Ephesians, Titus, and Philemon to accompany his commentaries, Jerome chose what in the ⁴⁸ Comm. Rom. 5.14. ⁴⁹ Weber (ed.), Biblia Sacra, 1515. ⁵⁰ Later in the preface he uses another strong verb of compulsion (iubere) to underscore yet again how Damasus was the impetus behind the work: Tu qui summus sacerdos es fieri iubes. ⁵¹ See above, pp. 63–4. ⁵² Another seal of approval from Damasus was out of the question because he had died on 11 December 384 at the age of seventy-nine, after having served as pope since 366.

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long view was a strategically sensible approach to promoting Graeca veritas as being foundational to New Testament studies. He embedded within discussions of individual passages ad hoc critiques of the VL as well as references to the Greek text and explained the rationale of his choices and suggested emendations within the context of the Pauline passage at hand. The cumulative impression conveyed by these scores of case studies is that the VL, despite being the widely accepted text, is in many instances misleading and unreliable at best, and that the Greek original therefore should be privileged.

Hebraica veritas and the Septuagint Jerome began learning Hebrew between c.375 and c.377,⁵³ when he was living as a monk near the desert of Chalcis some thirty miles from Antioch.⁵⁴ In the years to follow his interest deepened, as is evident from correspondence he wrote in Rome in the early and middle 380s. Of his twenty-five extant letters covering this period, eight (or, about one third) provide either technical explanations of words or phrases in the Hebrew Bible (Epp. 25, 26, 28, 29, 30, 34) or Hebrew-informed expositions of Old Testament passages (Epp. 20, 36). In all of these he privileges the Hebrew text as the final arbiter in all text-critical and interpretive matters relating to the Old Testament, and hence this text conveys truth, a concept he expresses through the phrase Hebraica veritas.⁵⁵ He often characterizes the Hebrew original as the fons,⁵⁶ and translations and interpreters’ opinions based

⁵³ A. Kamesar, Jerome, Greek Scholarship, and the Hebrew Bible: A Study of the Quaestiones Hebraicae in Genesim (Oxford, 1993), 41–9. ⁵⁴ S. Rebenich, Hieronymus und sein Kreis: Prosopographische und sozialgeschichtliche Untersuchungen (Stuttgart, 1992), 85–91; A. Cain, The Letters of Jerome: Asceticism, Biblical Exegesis, and the Construction of Christian Authority in Late Antiquity (Oxford, 2009), 13–42. ⁵⁵ Jay, L’exégèse de saint Jérôme, 89–102; C. Bammel, “Die Hexapla des Origenes: Die Hebraica veritas im Streit der Meinungen,” Augustinianum 28 (1988): 125–49; G. Miletto, “Die Hebraica veritas in S. Hieronymus,” in H. Merklein, K. Müller, and G. Stemberger (eds.), Bibel in jüdischer und christlicher Tradition (Frankfurt am Main, 1993), 56–65; S. Rebenich, “Jerome: The vir trilinguis and the Hebraica veritas,” VChr 47 (1993): 50–77; C. Markschies, “Hieronymus und die Hebraica Veritas: Ein Beitrag zur Archäologie des protestantischen Schriftverständnisses,” in M. Hengel and A. M. Schwemer (eds.), Die Septuaginta zwischen Judentum und Christentum (Tübingen, 1994), 131–81; E. Prinzivalli, “Sicubi dubitas, Hebraeos interroga: Girolamo tra difesa dell’Hebraica veritas e polemica antigiudaica,” AnnSE 14 (1997): 179–206; M. Graves, Jerome’s Hebrew Philology: A Study Based on His Commentary on Jeremiah (Leiden, 2007); M. Ozóg, “Saint Jerome and Veritas Hebraica on the Basis of the Correspondence with Saint Augustine,” VoxP 30 (2010): 511–19; S. Weigert, Hebraica veritas: Übersetzungsprinzipien und Quellen der Deuteronomiumübersetzung des Hieronymus (Stuttgart, 2016); M. Kraus, Jewish, Christian, and Classical Exegetical Traditions in Jerome’s Translation of the Book of Exodus: Translation Technique and the Vulgate (Leiden, 2017); T. E. Hunt, Jerome of Stridon and the Ethics of Literary Production in Late Antiquity (Leiden, 2020), 124–46. ⁵⁶ E.g., Epp. 28.5.1, 34.4.1; cf. N. Adkin, “Ad fontem sermonis recurramus Hebraei: Jerome, Marcella and Hebrew (Epist. 34),” Euphrosyne 32 (2004): 215–22.

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on them as puny, derivative rivuli.⁵⁷ In a letter to Marcella explaining the word selah, he juxtaposes this very metaphor and the truth-falsehood binary: I have drawn these meanings from the deepest fountain of the Hebrews. I have neither followed the streams of opinions nor been deterred by the multiplicity of false interpretations with which the entire world is filled, but rather I am eager to know and to teach the things that are true. Haec nos de intimo Hebraeorum fonte libavimus non opinionum rivulos persequentes neque errorum, quibus totus mundus expletus est, varietate perterriti, sed cupientes et scire et docere, quae vera sunt.⁵⁸

In a contemporaneous letter to Pope Damasus on the meaning of the phrase “Hosanna to the son of David,” Jerome again inculcates how the Hebrew text of the Old Testament is the sole benchmark against which commentators’ opinions must be assessed: It remains therefore for us to neglect the streams of opinions and rush back to the very fountain from which the Gospel writers drew . . . The Hebrew words themselves must be presented and the opinion of all interpreters must be laid out so that the reader, after considering everything, may more readily discover for himself the proper way of thinking about this [issue at hand]. Restat ergo, ut omissis opinionum rivulis ad ipsum fontem, unde ab evangelistis sumptum est, recurramus . . . Ipsa Hebraea verba ponenda sunt et omnium interpretum opinio digerenda, quo facilius, quid super hoc sentiendum sit, ex retractatione cunctorum ipse sibi lector inveniat.⁵⁹

The phrase “streams of opinions” refers dismissively to Hilary of Poitiers and other Christian authorities mentioned elsewhere in the letter who, in Jerome’s view, are rank amateurs at biblical exegesis because they do not know Hebrew,⁶⁰ and so their interpretive judgments, no matter how learned or sensible they otherwise may seem, are to be set aside as ill-informed. In a very real sense, what Jerome is calling for is nothing short of a paradigm shift in how power is brokered in the realm of Latin-language biblical exegesis. No longer are ecclesiastical rank and a reputation for piety necessarily reliable markers of an interpreter’s competence, unless of course these happen to be paired with a working knowledge of Hebrew. The implication is clear. Because Jerome was, as far as we know, the only Latin-speaking Christian biblical scholar in the late fourth century ⁵⁷ E.g., Epp. 27.1.3, 28.5.1. Cf. B. Marti, Übersetzer der Augustin-Zeit (Munich, 1974), 157. ⁵⁸ Ep. 28.5.1. ⁵⁹ Ep. 20.2.1, 3. ⁶⁰ Cf. Ep. 34.3.2, where Jerome deems Hilary an untrustworthy exegete because he did not know Hebrew.

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able to read the Old Testament in its original language, he was, by the standard of excellence he himself set, the one person best equipped to explain the Bible to fellow western Christians.⁶¹ In the above-quoted passage, Jerome reminds Damasus of the critical relevance of Hebraica veritas to New Testament studies by asserting that the Hebrew Bible is the very fons from which the Gospel writers themselves drew.⁶² He brings to his Pauline commentaries this same linguistic prioritization, working Hebrew philology into them in a variety of ways. He might furnish a gloss of a (transliterated) Hebrew word that appears in the lemmatized Latin text. Hence in two different places he explains the meaning of amen,⁶³ and he notes that the Aramaic ’abbā is equivalent to pater.⁶⁴ Such glosses sometimes serve simply to garnish his interpretation of a given passage with an informative, if incidental, tidbit.⁶⁵ Jerome might also give the Hebrew meaning of a person’s name to illustrate how it coincides with a defining trait of his or her personality.⁶⁶ In some cases ⁶¹ Just how proficient Jerome really was in Hebrew, especially by 386, remains a matter of debate among scholars. Most nevertheless are willing to grant that even though his reading knowledge probably would not be considered fluent by modern scholarly standards, it certainly was commendable for a Christian in his historical context. See H. I. Newman, “How Should We Measure Jerome’s Hebrew Competence?,” in A. Cain and J. Lössl (eds.), Jerome of Stridon: His Life, Writings, and Legacy (Aldershot, 2009), 131–40. ⁶² Cf. T. Kato, “Jerome’s Understanding of Old Testament Quotations in the New Testament,” VChr 67 (2013): 289–315. ⁶³ Comm. Gal. 1.1: Quod autem prologus Pauli amen Hebraeo sermone concluditur, amen Septuaginta transtulerunt γένοιτο, id est fiat; Aquila πεπιστωμένως, vere sive fideliter; 1.4–5: Haec autem gratia Domini Iesu non cum omnibus est, sed cum his qui fratres ab apostolo merentur vocari, fratres fideles fratresque germani: quod amen verbum significat Hebraeum. Amen enim Septuaginta interpretes fiat; Aquila, Symmachus et Theodotion fideliter sive vere interpretati sunt. ⁶⁴ Abba Hebraicum est idipsum significans quod pater (Comm. Gal. 4.6). The (Aramaic) word ’abbā as an address to God the Father appears three times in the New Testament (Mk. 14.36; Gal. 4.6; Rom. 8.15). There is disagreement among scholars about its precise lexical range. Some, such as Joachim Jeremias (Abba: Studien zur neutestamentlichen Theologie und Zeitgeschichte (Göttingen, 1966)), understand it as approximating the informal and intimate English “daddy,” while others, notably James Barr (“’Abbā Isn’t Daddy,” JThS n.s. 39 (1988): 28–47)—and Jerome—take it as a solemn, respectful address essentially equivalent to “father.” Cf. M. R. D’Angelo, “Abba and ‘Father’: Imperial Theology and the Jesus Traditions,” JBL 111 (1992): 611–30. ⁶⁵ E.g., Comm. Eph. 1.5b: Hunc autem sermonem de Hebraico reson, Septuaginta interpretes transtulerunt, rebus novis nova verba fingentes; 3.14–15: Aliud est enim appellationem paternitatis mereri, aliud naturae habere consortium, paternitatem quae in Graeco πατριά, in Hebraeo misphahath, id est cognatio vel familia, dicitur, legimus et in Numeris: tollite, inquit, summam omnis synagogae Israel, iuxta cognationes et populos, secundum domos paternitatum, iuxta numerum nominum eorum; 4.27: Diabolus Graecum verbum est, quod Latine dicitur criminator: lingua vero Hebraea satan appellatur, id est adversarius, sive contrarius, et ab apostolo belial, hoc est, absque iugo quod de collo suo Dei abiecerit servitutem: quem Aquila apostatam transtulit; Comm. Phlm. 20: Sicut enim anna illud Hebraicum, pro quo frequenter Septuaginta interpretes ὦ δή transtulerunt, in lingua sua significat deprecantis affectum, unde nonnumquam Symmachus pro anna δέομαι, hoc est obsecro, transtulit, ita et nos eamdem in Graeca lingua vim patimur, quam Graeci sustinent in Hebraea. ⁶⁶ See, e.g., Comm. Gal. 1.1: Apostolus autem, hoc est missus, Hebraeorum proprie vocabulum est quod Silas quoque sonat, cui a mittendo misso nomen impositum est; 4.6: Et hanc consuetudinem in pluribus locis Scriptura conservat ut Hebraicum verbum cum interpretatione sua ponat: Bartimeus, filius Timei, Aser, divitiae, Tabitha, Dorcas, et, in Genesi, Mesech, vernaculus, et caetera his similia. Cf. Comm. Gal. 2.11–13: Non quo aliud significet Petrus aliud Cephas, sed quo quam nos Latine et Graece petram vocemus hanc Hebraei et Syri propter linguae inter se viciniam cephan nuncupent.

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these onomastic insights are intended to edify the reader by pointing the way toward a spiritualized meaning. A prime example is the end of his commentary on Philemon where he gives a roll call of all of the proper names mentioned in this epistle along with their alleged etymological meanings: Moreover, according to the Hebrews, [these names] mean the following: Paul, “wonderful;” Timothy, “generous;” Philemon, “amazingly bestowed” or “mouth of bread,” from os (mouth), not os (bone); Apphia, “continent” or “freedom;” Archippus, “length of work;” Onesimus, “responding;” Epaphras, “fruitful” and “seeing” or “increasing;” Mark, “lofty through command;” Aristarchus, “mountain of ampler work;” Demas, “silent;” Luke, “the one who rises up.” If you want to comprehend these names in their meaning, it is not hard for “wonderful” [Paul] and “generous” [Timothy] to write particularly to him of whom all vices have been pardoned (and his mouth is open to the heavenly bread); and to write to “continent” and “free” [Apphia] as well as to “length of work” [Archippus], because he never ceases from holy toil; and also to write on behalf of him who may “respond” [Onesimus] on his own account. He to whom the epistle is specially addressed is greeted by “growing abundance” [Epaphras], and by him who was made “loftier through commands” [Mark], and by him who “through greater works grew into a mountain” [Aristarchus], and also by him who has placed a guard on his own mouth and a fortified door on his own lips (cf. Ps. 140.3) and was “silent” [Luke] perhaps because he had abandoned the Apostle for a little while. Finally, he is greeted by him who, rising on his own [Luke], is increased daily and makes progress while the world is being filled with his gospel, and he grows whenever he edifies through being heard and read. Interpretantur autem secundum Hebraeos Paulus, “admirabilis;” ⁶⁷ Timotheus, “beneficus;” ⁶⁸ Philemon, “mire donatus,” sive “os panis,” ⁶⁹ ab ore, non ab osse; Appia, “continens,” aut “libertas;” ⁷⁰ Archippus, “longitudo operis;” ⁷¹ Onesimus, “respondens;” ⁷² Epaphras, “frugifer” et “videns,” sive “succrescens;” ⁷³ Marcus, “sublimis mandato;”⁷⁴ Aristarchus, “mons operis amplioris;”⁷⁵ Demas, “silens;”⁷⁶ ⁶⁷ Cf. Jerome, Lib. int. Heb. nom. p. 73: Paulus mirabilis; p. 74: Paulus mirabilis sive electus; Comm. Phlm. 1–3: Si autem et interpretatio nominis quaeritur, Paulus in hebraeo “mirabilem” sonat. ⁶⁸ Cf. Jerome, Lib. int. Heb. nom. p. 75: Timotheus beneficus. ⁶⁹ Cf. Jerome, Lib. int. Heb. nom. p. 80: Philemon mire donatus vel certe os panis eorum. ⁷⁰ Cf. Jerome, Lib. int. Heb. nom. p. 80: Appia continens sive continentia vel libera. ⁷¹ Cf. Jerome, Lib. int. Heb. nom. p. 80: Archippus longitudo operis. ⁷² Cf. Jerome, Lib. int. Heb. nom. p. 77: Onesimus decorus vel respondens; p. 80: Onesimus respondens. ⁷³ Cf. Jerome, Lib. int. Heb. nom. p. 77: Epaphra frugifer vel equidem videns; p. 80: Epaphras quem nos crescentem sive augentium possumus dicere. ⁷⁴ Cf. Jerome, Lib. int. Heb. nom. p. 70: Marcus excelsus mandatus; p. 72: Marcus sublimis mandatus; p. 73: Marcus sublimis mandatus sive defricatus aut amarus; p. 77: Marcus sublimis mandatus sive amarus vel certe adtritus atque limatus. ⁷⁵ Cf. Jerome, Lib. int. Heb. nom. p. 77: Aristarchus mons facturae superfluae; p. 78: Aristarchus mons facturae superfluae. ⁷⁶ Cf. Jerome, Lib. int. Heb. nom. p. 80: Demas silens.

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Lucas, “ipse consurgens.” ⁷⁷ Quae nomina, si iuxta interpretationem suam volueritis intellegere, non est difficile admirabilem atque beneficum praecipue ad eum scribere cui universa concessa sint vitia, et os eius pateat ad caelestem panem; deinde ad continentem et liberam, et ad longitudinem operis, quod numquam a sancto labore desistat; scribere autem pro eo qui respondeat testimonio suo, nec non eum, cui specialiter epistula dedicatur, salutari ab ubertate crescente. Et eo qui factus sit per mandata sublimior, illoque qui per maiora opera in montem usque succreverit; ab eo quoque qui posuit custodiam ori suo et ostium munitum labiis suis, qui idcirco forsitan siluit, quia ad modicum apostolum dereliquerat. Et ad extremum ab eo qui per se ipse consurgens cotidie augeatur, processusque habeat, dum evangelio eius orbis impletur, et totiens crescit, quotiens auditus et lectus aedificat.⁷⁸

Jerome weaves together all of these onomastic glosses into a tidy narrative in order to show his readers that Philemon does indeed conceal mystical truths beneath the surface of its text.⁷⁹ These truths matter because they edify, and given Jerome’s avowal to highlight the epistle’s utility as a practical teaching tool for the general Christian reader,⁸⁰ it probably is not a coincidence, but rather a deliberately symbolic gesture on his part, that the very last word of this passage, and thus the very last word of the commentary, is the verb aedificare. Here too we may detect a (perhaps intentional) ring composition: early on in his preface to this commentary Jerome uses the same verb when noting how heretics denied Philemon’s edificatory utility.⁸¹ In a number of cases when he discusses Old Testament words or passages, Jerome critically compares readings from the Hebrew alongside those from the LXX and usually also the recentiores, the post-LXX Greek translations of the Hebrew Bible by Aquila, Theodotion, and Symmachus.⁸² It was, after all, the textual discrepancies between the Hebrew and these four translations that initially led him to conclude, before he had ever undertaken his work on Paul, that the Hebrew text is the foundation of any serious research on the Old Testament.⁸³ In explaining why Paul calls himself a “slave of God” (servus Dei), he quotes Is. 49.6

⁷⁷ Cf. Jerome, Lib. int. Heb. nom. p. 77: Lucas ipse consurgens sive ipse elevans; p. 79: Lucas ipse consurgens aut ipse elevans. ⁷⁸ Comm. Phlm. 25. ⁷⁹ Jerome undoubtedly is following Origen’s lost commentary on Philemon, for the etymological exegesis of proper names was one of the hallmark techniques of his allegorical exposition of Scripture. Origen, in turn, would have been following one or more Christian and/or Jewish etymology handbooks, on which see I. Opelt, “Etymologie,” RAC 6 (1966): 822–32. ⁸⁰ See above, pp. 19–30. ⁸¹ His et ceteris istiusmodi volunt aut epistulam non esse Pauli, quae ad Philemonem scribitur, aut, si etiam Pauli sit, nihil habere quod aedificare nos possit (Comm. Phlm., prol. ll. 27–9). For Jerome’s emphasis on Philemon’s utility, see above, pp. 22–30. ⁸² Comm. Gal. 1.4–5, 3.10, 3.11–12, 3.13b–14, 6.18; Comm. Eph. 5.3–4; Comm. Tit. 2.11–14, 3.9, cf. Comm. Phlm. 20. ⁸³ Kamesar, Jerome, 44–5.

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from the Greek, which offers an ambiguous reading of a word that the Hebrew clarifies.⁸⁴ Jerome is presented with more of a challenge by Paul’s λαὸν περιούσιον in Tit. 2.14,⁸⁵ which is translated in his lemma as populum egregium (“outstanding people”). When commenting on this verse he lingers over the adjective περιούσιος: I often have pondered what the word περιούσιον means and have questioned the wise men of this world to see if by chance they had read it anywhere, but I was never able to find anyone who could explain its meaning to me. I therefore was forced to have recourse to the Old Testament, from which I figured the Apostle had taken what he said. For because he was a Jew and a Pharisee according to the Law (cf. Phil. 3.5), he assuredly wrote in his epistle what he knew from his reading of the Old Testament. Saepe mecum considerans quid sibi vellet verbum περιούσιον et a sapientibus saeculi huius interrogans si forte alicubi legissent, numquam invenire potui qui mihi quid significaret exponeret. Quamobrem compulsus sum ad vetus instrumentum recurrere, unde arbitrabar et apostolum sumpsisse quod dixerat. Hebraeus enim cum esset et secundum legem Pharisaeus, utique id ponebat in epistula sua quod in veteri testamento legisse se noverat.⁸⁶

Jerome gives a ringing endorsement of his own ad fontes methodology; it came to the rescue when secular authorities had failed him.⁸⁷ After then comparing Ps. 135.4 in the LXX, Theodotion, Aquila, and Symmachus, he finds that περιούσιος is the word given by Symmachus in this passage for ‫( סגלה‬sgullah), meaning “valued property” or “peculiar treasure (which Yahweh has chosen and taken to himself).”⁸⁸ Jerome therefore concludes that Paul’s περιούσιος must mean peculiaris.⁸⁹ In another instance Jerome synoptically compares a passage in the LXX and the Hebrew and uncovers what he believes to be malicious tampering on the part of

⁸⁴ Nec mirum, quamvis sanctos homines, tamen Dei servos nobiliter appellari, cum per Esaiam prophetam Pater loquatur ad Filium: Magnum tibi est vocari te puerum meum, quod Graece dicitur: Μέγα σοί ἐστι τοῦ κληθῆναί σε παῖδά μου. Puer autem, hoc est παῖς, quia potest secundum Graecos et famulum et filium significare, in Hebraeo quaesivimus et invenimus non filium meum scriptum esse, sed servum meum, id est abdi (Comm. Tit. 1.1). ⁸⁵ This verse reads: Ὅς ἔδωκεν ἑαυτὸν ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν ἵνα λυτρώσηται ἡμᾶς ἀπὸ πάσης ἀνομίας καὶ καθαρίσῃ ἑαυτῷ λαὸν περιούσιον, ζηλωτὴν καλῶν ἔργων (“He gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good deeds”). ⁸⁶ Comm. Tit. 2.11–14. ⁸⁷ περιούσιος is in fact attested for the first time in ancient Greek literature in the LXX (Ex. 19.5, 23.22; Deut. 7.6, 14.2, 26.18). ⁸⁸ F. Brown, S. Driver, and C. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (repr., Peabody, 1996), sv 1 ‫סגלה‬. ⁸⁹ Jerome then shifts to a discussion of Mt. 6.16 (Τὸν ἄρτον ἡμῶν τὸν ἐπιούσιον δὸς ἡμῖν σήμερον) and the adjective ἐπιούσιος, which he regarded as a synonym of περιούσιος. See T. Isaka, “Jerome’s Interpretation of the Bread in the Lord’s Prayer: ἐπιούσιος and supersubstantialis,” JGRChJ 14 (2018): 182–203.

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Jewish scribes.⁹⁰ At the beginning of the second book of his Galatians commentary he picks up at Gal. 3.10, a verse which reads: “Whoever relies on keeping the Law is under a curse, for it is written: ‘Cursed is everyone who does not continue in all of the things written in the book of the Law and do them’ ” (Ἐπικατάρατος πᾶς ὃς οὐκ ἐμμένει πᾶσιν τοῖς γεγραμμένοις ἐν τῷ βιβλίῳ τοῦ νόμου τοῦ ποιῆσαι αὐτά). Jerome immediately launches into a programmatic statement about his sourcecritical methodology, which is eye-catching for the simple reason that it opens a book of the commentary: “Whenever the apostles quote from the Old Testament, it is my custom to revert to the original sources [books] and to scrutinize the quotations in their context.”⁹¹ He then quotes versions of the verse Paul is quoting (Deut. 27.26) that are found in the recentiores and also in the LXX, which he renders into Latin as: Maledictus omnis homo qui non permanserit in omnibus sermonibus legis huius ut faciat illos (“Cursed is everyone who does not continue in all the words of this Law such that he does them”) (cf. LXX: ᾿Επικατάρατος πᾶς ἄνθρωπος, ὃς οὐκ ἐμμενεῖ ἐν πᾶσιν τοῖς λόγοις τοῦ νόμου τούτου τοῦ ποιῆσαι αὐτούς). He continues: From this we infer that the Apostle, here as on other occasions, has captured the sense of a passage rather than its mere words. We do not know for certain whether the Seventy added “everyone” (omnis homo) and “in all” (in omnibus) or whether these words had been present in the original Hebrew text but were later excised by the Jews. I am inclined to believe that the Apostle, a man of Hebrew learning and exceptionally well-versed in the Law, would never have added these words, as if they were necessary to prove that all who rely on keeping the Law are under a curse, unless they were in the Hebrew manuscripts. This led me to reread the Hebrew manuscripts of the Samaritans. I found the word khol (‫)כל‬, which means “everyone” or “all” and agrees with the Septuagint translators. The Jews expunged these words so as to avoid looking like they were under a curse for failing to comply with everything that is written. However, their efforts were in vain, for the ancient literature of another nation testifies that these words had originally been present. Ex quo intellegimus apostolum, ut in caeteris, sensum magis testimonii posuisse quam verba, et incertum habemus utrum Septuaginta interpretes addiderint “omnis homo” et “in omnibus” an in veteri Hebraico ita fuerit et postea a Iudaeis deletum sit. In hanc me autem suspicionem illa res stimulat quod verbum

⁹⁰ On early Christian allegations of Jewish tampering with biblical manuscripts, see W. Adler, “The Jews as Falsifiers: Charges of Tendentious Emendation in Anti-Jewish Christian Polemic,” in Translation of Scripture: Proceedings of a Conference at the Annenberg Research Institute, May 15–16, 1989 (Philadelphia, 1990), 1–27. Cf. J. Pakkala, God’s Word Omitted: Omissions in the Transmission of the Hebrew Bible (Göttingen, 2013). ⁹¹ Hunc morem habeo ut quotienscumque ab apostolis de veteri instrumento aliquid sumitur recurram ad originales libros et diligenter inspiciam quomodo in suis locis scripta sint.

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 ’       “omnis” et “in omnibus” quasi sensui suo necessarium ad probandum illud quod quicumque ex operibus legis sunt sub maledicto sint apostolus, vir Hebraeae peritiae et in lege doctissimus, numquam protulisset nisi in hebraeis voluminibus haberetur. Quam ob causam Samaritanorum Hebraea volumina relegens inveni “khol,” quod interpretatur “omnis” sive “omnibus,” scriptum esse et cum Septuaginta interpretibus concordare. Frustra igitur illud tulerunt Iudaei ne viderentur esse sub maledicto si non possent omnia complere quae scripta sunt, cum antiquiores alterius quoque gentis litterae id positum fuisse testentur.

Jerome catches on to a discrepancy between the Masoretic text (MT) and the Samaritan Pentateuch (SP), the Samaritanorum Hebraea volumina he mentions above.⁹² These texts read: MT: ‫ ארור אשר לא יקים את דברי התורה הזאת לעשות אותם‬⁹³ Cursed is the one who does not confirm the words of the law by doing them SP: ‫ארור אשר לא יקים את כל דברי התורה הזאת לעשות אותם‬ Cursed is the one who does not confirm all the words of the law by doing them (my italics) There is only one difference between the two versions: ‫“( כל‬all”) is present in the SP but absent from the MT. Triangulating between these two texts and the LXX, which he cites as his control, Jerome surmises that Paul quoted Deut. 27.26 from a version of the Hebrew that had been altered by the Jews to exclude ‫כל‬, a word preserved by the SP and reflected in the LXX.⁹⁴ Most modern scholars think that Paul is quoting from the LXX rather than from a corrupted Hebrew text.⁹⁵ Jerome assumed otherwise because he uniformly prioritized the Hebrew over the LXX,⁹⁶ believing that the Hebrew version current

⁹² On the Samaritan Pentateuch, see R. T. Anderson and T. Giles, The Samaritan Pentateuch: An Introduction to Its Origins, History, and Significance for Biblical Studies (Atlanta, 2012); S. Schorch, “A Critical Editio Maior of the Samaritan Pentateuch: State of Research, Principles, and Problems,” HBAI 1 (2013): 100–20. On the Samaritans more generally, see R. Pummer, The Samaritans: A Profile (Grand Rapids, 2015), and for Jerome’s references to them and their version of the Pentateuch, see R. Pummer, Early Christian Authors on Samaritans and Samaritanism: Texts, Translations, and Commentary (Tübingen, 2002), 184–208. ⁹³ A. F. von Gall, Der hebräische Pentateuch der Samaritaner, 5 vols. (Giessen, 1914–18), 5.417. ⁹⁴ The seventeenth-century biblical scholar Jean Morin followed Jerome in attributing the absence of ‫ כל‬from the MT to the ulterior motives of Jewish scribes; see his Exercitationes ecclesiasticae in utrumque Samaritanorum Pentateuchum (Paris, 1631), 219–21. ⁹⁵ E.g., F. F. Bruce, The Epistle to the Galatians (Grand Rapids, 2013), 167; Anderson and Giles, The Samaritan Pentateuch, 155. ⁹⁶ Cf. Jerome, Comm. Es., lib. 15, prol. ll. 1–6: Crebro, Eustochium, dixisse me novi, apostolos et evangelistas ubicumque de veteri instrumento ponunt testimonia, si inter Hebraicum et Septuaginta nulla diversitas sit, vel suis vel Septuaginta interpretum verbis uti solitos. Sin autem aliter in Hebraico, aliter in veteri editione sensus est, Hebraicum magis quam Septuaginta interpretes sequi.

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in his day represented the original form of this text (except, of course, in rare cases of Jewish scribal falsification).⁹⁷ In his above-quoted exposition, he subtly registers his favoritism for the Hebrew by referencing Paul’s linguistic and cultural heritage with the fulsome epithet “a man of Hebrew learning and very well versed in the Law” (vir Hebraeae peritiae et in lege doctissimus). Baked into his solution to the source-critical problem at hand is an affirmation of his credentials as a rarefied Hebrew philologist. Not only does he have the linguistic acumen and text-critical know-how to detect Jewish fraudulence and to restore the meaning of the original text, but he also has unfiltered access to the relevant manuscripts—itself a marker of privileged status for a Christian at the time—to make this fact-finding mission possible in the first place. A little later in the same commentary, in his exposition of Gal. 3.13–14, Jerome revisits the theme of Jewish scribal tampering, again concerning a line Paul quotes from Deuteronomy: “For it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree’ (Deut. 21.23). He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit.” Before delving into the exegesis proper of this passage, Jerome juxtaposes the different versions of the Deuteronomy verse in the translations of Symmachus, Aquila, and Theodotion as well as in the LXX, which has: Κεκατηραμένος ὑπὸ θεοῦ πᾶς κρεμάμενος ἐπὶ ξύλου (“Everyone hanging on a tree is cursed by God”). He draws attention to the fact that the LXX’s ὑπὸ θεοῦ is not found in the Hebrew and he tries to account for this inconsistency: I cannot ascertain why the Apostle either added to or took away from the statement, “Everyone who hangs on a tree is cursed by God.” For if he was exclusively following the authority of the Septuagint translators, he was obligated to insert the phrase “by God,” just as they had done. But if, as a Hebrew among Hebrews, he thought that what he had read in his own language was the closest to the truth, he had to omit both “everyone” and “on a tree,” which are not found in the Hebrew original. This leads me to believe that either the ancient manuscripts of the Hebrews contained a different reading than they do now, or the Apostle (as I said above) captured the sense rather than literal meaning of Scripture. It is more plausible that after Christ had suffered on the cross, someone added “by God” to both the Hebrew manuscripts and our own so as to shame us for believing in Christ, who [according to this reading] was cursed by God.

⁹⁷ E. L. Gallagher, Hebrew Scripture in Patristic Biblical Theory: Canon, Language, Text (Leiden, 2012), 200–2. On Jerome’s belief in the stability and authenticity of the Hebrew text of his day, see further O. Wermelinger, “Le canon des latins au temps de Jérôme et d’Augustin,” in J.-D. Kaestli and O. Wermelinger (eds.), Le canon de l’Ancien Testament (Geneva, 1984), 153–96 (187); Graves, Jerome’s Hebrew Philology, 129.

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 ’       Scire non possum quare Apostolus in eo quod scriptum est: Maledictus a Deo omnis qui pendet in ligno vel subtraxerit aliquid vel addiderit. Si enim semel auctoritatem Septuaginta interpretum sequebatur, debuit, sicut ab illis editum est, et Dei nomen adiungere; si vero ut Hebraeus ex Hebraeis id quod in sua lingua legerat putabat esse verissimum, nec omnis nec in ligno, quae in Hebraeo non habentur, adsumere. Ex quo mihi videntur aut veteres Hebraeorum libri aliter habuisse quam nunc habent aut Apostolum, ut ante iam dixi, sensum Scripturarum posuisse non verba aut, quod magis est aestimandum, post passionem Christi et in Hebraeis et in nostris codicibus ab aliquo Dei nomen appositum ut infamiam nobis inureret qui in Christum maledictum a Deo credimus.⁹⁸

Jerome assumes that Paul is quoting Deut. 21.23 from the Hebrew, an assumption driven by his own conviction that the Hebrew original preceded in time and therefore is intrinsically superior to the LXX (he does nevertheless give a nod to the “authority of the Septuagint translators”). He emphasizes the priority of the Hebrew by noting that Paul, a “Hebrew among Hebrews” who was fluent in Hebrew, would have preferred to quote from it because it is “the closest to the truth.”⁹⁹ Yet, there is a problem: Deut. 21.23 MT contains ‫“( קללת אלהים‬a curse of God”),¹⁰⁰ which corresponds to the LXX’s κεκατηραμένος ὑπὸ θεοῦ, whereas Paul’s quotation lacks the phrase “by God.”¹⁰¹ Some modern scholars suggest that Paul, whether he was quoting Deut. 21.23 from the LXX or the Hebrew, deliberately omitted this phrase so as to suggest that Torah, not God, pronounced Jesus accursed through his crucifixion.¹⁰² Jerome, however, ascribes the discrepancy to nefarious motives: the reference to every crucified person being accursed by God

⁹⁸ Comm. Gal. 3.13b–14. ⁹⁹ In other places Jerome also argues that the apostles quoted from the Hebrew rather than from the LXX (e.g., Transl. Pent., prol. ll. 11–19; Apol. c. Ruf. 2.34); cf. A. Fürst, “Veritas Latina: Augustins Haltung gegenüber Hieronymus’ Bibelübersetzungen,” REAug 40 (1994): 105–26 (114–15n27). ¹⁰⁰ M. Bernstein, “Deut. 21:23: A Study in Early Jewish Exegesis,” JQR 74 (1983): 21–45, rightly notes that ‫ קללת אלהים‬is an ambiguous phrase which can be rendered as “a curse towards God” (objective genitive) or “a curse from God” (subjective genitive), and he demonstrates that rabbinical sources tend to favor the objective genitive. ¹⁰¹ Cf. G. L. Archer and G. Chirichigno, Old Testament Quotations in the New Testament (Chicago, 1983), 43. ¹⁰² E.g., G. Jeremias, Der Lehrer der Gerechtigkeit (Göttigen, 1963), 133; J. L. Martyn, “A LawObservant Mission to the Gentiles: The Background of Galatians,” SJTh 38 (1985): 307–24 (320–1); D. A. DeSilva, The Letter to the Galatians (Grand Rapids, 2018), 295–6. For the argument that Paul was quoting the versicule from a non–LXX Greek translation or even from a current form of the Hebrew text, see M. Wilcox, “Upon the Tree: Deut. 21:22–23 in the New Testament,” JBL 96 (1977): 85–99. N. A. Dahl, “The Atonement: An Adequate Reward for the Aqedah (Ro. 8.32),” in E. E. Ellis and M. Wilcox (eds.), Neotestamentica et Semitica: Studies in Honour of Matthew Black (London, 1969), 15–29 (23), suggests that Gal. 3.13a–14 is a fragment of Jewish-Christian midrash taken over by Paul. Cf. further P. Fredriksen, “Judaism, the Circumcision of the Gentiles, and Apocalyptic Hope: Another Look at Galatians 1 and 2,” JThS n.s. 42 (1991): 532–64 (551–2), on how in antiquity crucified Jews were not widely viewed as being cursed, apart from the justice of their death sentence.

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was an interpolation by Jewish scribes who wanted to defame Christ and his followers.¹⁰³ In summary, Jerome incrementally builds the case that Hebrew philology has several important practical applications for Christian hermeneutics. It provides informational insight into the meanings of various words of Hebrew derivation that are found in the New Testament. It empowers the interpreter to uncover edifying truths that lie hidden beneath the surface of otherwise routine words. Even more crucially, it enables the textual critic to detect and then to sound the alarm about instances of Jewish scribal falsification which are meant to defame the Christian faith. This is the gist of Jerome’s praise of Origen for assembling the Hexapla and making the Hebrew text of the Old Testament readily available to Christian scholars, who, armed with this potent tool, have no reason to fear the Jews’ haughtiness.¹⁰⁴ Moreover, in offering his readers a steady diet of Hebrew Bible references Jerome tries to persuade them not only that Hebrew philology is directly relevant to the study of the New Testament, but also that he himself is a trustworthy exegetical guide. In addition to these numerous concrete demonstrations of his methodology in action, he firms up his credentials as a Hebrew philologist in another important but rather unconventional way. He opens the preface to Book 3 of his commentary on Galatians by complaining about how the churches of his day crave meretricious eloquence and scoff at the simplicity of Paul’s plain style.¹⁰⁵ He then says: But what am I to do? Keep quiet? But it is written, “You shall not appear emptyhanded in the sight of the Lord your God” (Ex. 23.15). And Isaiah laments, “Woe to me, a wretch, because I remained silent” (Is. 6.5); this at any rate is how the passage reads in the Hebrew manuscripts. I could speak up, but the grating sound of reading Hebrew has spoiled every vestige of elegance in my speech and of charm in my Latin style . . . Moreover, what progress I have made in my unceasing study of that language I leave to others’ judgment. I know what I have lost in my own language.

¹⁰³ Militating against Jerome’s theory is the fact that there is virtually no evidence that Deut. 21.23 factored prominently in Jewish criticism of Christians and their Messiah; see K. S. O’Brien, “The Curse of the Law (Galatians 3.13): Crucifixion, Persecution, and Deuteronomy 21.22–23,” JSNT 29 (2006): 55–76 (71). ¹⁰⁴ Haec immortale illud ingenium suo nobis labore donavit, ut non magnopere pertimescamus supercilium Iudaeorum, solutis labiis et obtorta lingua et stridente saliva et rasa fauce gaudentium (Comm. Tit. 3.9). ¹⁰⁵ For Jerome’s general criticisms of this contemporary trend, see A. Cain, Jerome and the Monastic Clergy: A Commentary on Letter 52 to Nepotian, with an Introduction, Text, and Translation (Leiden, 2013), 191–4. John Chrysostom also complained about Christian congregations craving only sermons that were heavy on rhetorical fluff and light on substance. See B. Leyerle, Theatrical Shows and Ascetic Lives: John Chrysostom’s Attack on Spiritual Marriage (Berkeley, 2001), 63–4 (with references to primary sources).

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 ’       Verum quid agam? Taceam ne? Sed scriptum est: Non apparebis in conspectu Domini Dei tui vacuus; et Esaias (sicut in Hebraeis tamen habetur voluminibus) ingemiscit: Vae mihi misero quia tacui. Loquar, sed omnem sermonis elegantiam et Latini eloquii venustatem stridor lectionis Hebraicae sordidavit . . . Quid autem profecerim ex linguae illius infatigabili studio aliorum iudicio derelinquo: ego quid in mea amiserim scio.¹⁰⁶

Jerome heroicizes his hard-won acquisition of Hebrew as a form of rigorous intellectual askesis.¹⁰⁷ The manufactured claim that his Latin has been ruined by this “unceasing study” is supposed to be proof that he has mastered Hebrew.¹⁰⁸ His seemingly casual (though undoubtedly deliberate) reference to the Hebrew of the Isaiah passage reinforces this point, giving the impression that he has the Old Testament in its original language by his side—or, better yet, firmly embedded in his memory.¹⁰⁹ All of this self-presentation is choreographed ultimately to inspire confidence in his readers that he is an eminently qualified interpreter of the Bible.¹¹⁰ In his second Ephesians preface Jerome also flashes his Hebrew credentials, but in a less overt way and also in a polemical context: It is one thing to compose specialized books—for example, on avarice, on faith, on virginity, and on widows—and to join eloquence with Scriptural passages gathered from here and there on any given subject matter, and to show off a pompous style with rather mundane topics. It is another thing to decipher a prophet and apostle, to understand why they wrote, how they supported their arguments, and what unique role is played in the Old Testament by the Idumaeans, Moabites, Ammonites, Tyrians, Philistines (Philistiim), Egyptians, ¹⁰⁶ Comm. Gal., lib. 3, prol. ll. 16–27. ¹⁰⁷ In a letter of 412 to the Gallic monk Rusticus he similarly portrays his learning of Hebrew in the Syrian desert as an ascetic exercise that helped him to tame his lust: Dum essem iuvenis et solitudinis me deserta vallarent, incentiva vitiorum ardoremque naturae ferre non poteram; quae cum crebris ieiuniis frangerem, mens tamen cogitationibus aestuabat. Ad quam edomandam cuidam fratri, qui ex Hebraeis crediderat, me in disciplinam dedi, ut . . . stridentia anhelantiaque verba meditarer. Quid ibi laboris insumpersim, quid sustinuerim difficultatis, quotiens desperaverim quotiensque cessaverim et contentione discendi rursus inceperim, testis est conscientia tam mea, qui passus sum, quam eorum, qui mecum duxere vitam (Ep. 125.12.1–2). See also Ep. 108.26.3: . . . Hebraeam linguam, quam ego ab adulescentia multo labore ac sudore ex parte didici et infatigabili meditatione non desero, ne ipse ab ea deserar. ¹⁰⁸ He expresses the same conceit in an exegetical letter to Marcella: Nos, ut scis, Hebraici sermonis lectione detenti in Latina lingua rubiginem obduximus in tantum, ut loquentibus quoque nobis stridor quidam non Latinus interstrepat (Ep. 29.7.2). For Jerome, native-like pronunciation of a foreign language represents mastery of that language; see A. Cain, Jerome’s Epitaph on Paula: A Commentary on the Epitaphium Sanctae Paulae, with an Introduction, Text, and Translation (Oxford, 2013), 423–4. ¹⁰⁹ In the commentaries themselves he occasionally mentions that he has consulted physical manuscripts (e.g., Comm. Eph. 2.10). ¹¹⁰ This is not to say that his linguistic expertise does not fail him in the Pauline commentaries. For a clear of example of when it does, see Newman, “Jerome’s Hebrew Competence,” 139–40.

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and Assyrians, and in the New Testament by the Romans, Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, Thessalonians, Hebrews, Colossians, and Ephesians, the epistle we now have in our hands. . . . aliud sit proprios libros componere—verbi gratia de avaritia, de fide, de virginitate, de viduis—et super unaquaque materia testimoniis Scripturarum hinc inde quaesitis eloquentiam iungere saecularem et paene in communibus locis pompaticum iactare sermonem; aliud in sensum prophetae et apostoli ingredi, intellegere cur scripserint, qua sententiam suam ratione firmaverint, quid habeant in veteri lege proprium Idumaei, Moabitae, Ammonitae, Tyrii, Philistiim, Aegyptii et Assyrii; quid rursum in novo testamento Romani, Corinthii, Galatae, Philippenses, Thessalonicenses, Hebraei, Colossenses et quam nunc ad Ephesios epistulam habemus in manibus.¹¹¹

Most scholars agree that Jerome is allusively criticizing Ambrose and that the “specialized books . . . on avarice, on faith, on virginity, and on widows” correspond to Ambrose’s treatises De Tobia (before 380), De fide (378–80), De virginitate (377/8), and De viduis (c.377).¹¹² From the many anonymized jabs he directs at the bishop of Milan in his writings throughout the 380s and 390s it is abundantly clear that Jerome harbored contempt for him as a churchman, ascetic theorist, and interpreter of the Bible.¹¹³ In the passage quoted above he dismisses Ambrose for writing inconsequential books on “rather mundane topics” and for being an exegetical lightweight who strings together scriptural florilegia instead of treating the biblical text in any kind of depth or systematized fashion.¹¹⁴ By contrast, Jerome represents himself as a serious commentator with a comprehensive grasp of both Testaments, and, for added measure, he uncharacteristically employs the Hebrew ending in Philistiim (elsewhere he uses the forms Philisthini

¹¹¹ Comm. Eph., lib. 1, prol. ll. 49–60. ¹¹² E.g., S. Oberhelman, “Jerome’s Earliest Attack on Ambrose: On Ephesians, Prologue (ML 26:469D–70A),” TAPA 121 (1991): 377–401 (393–8); N. Adkin, “Jerome on Ambrose: The Preface to the Translation of Origen’s Homilies on Luke,” RBén 107 (1997): 5–14 (11–12); R. Layton, “Recovering Origen’s Pauline Exegesis: Exegesis and Eschatology in the Commentary on Ephesians,” JECS 8 (2000): 373–411 (402); D. G. Hunter, “The Raven Replies: Ambrose’s Letter to the Church at Vercelli (Ep. extra collectionem 14) and the Criticisms of Jerome,” in A. Cain and J. Lössl (eds.), Jerome of Stridon: His Life, Writings, and Legacy (Aldershot, 2009), 175–89 (177–8). ¹¹³ A. Paredi, “S. Gerolamo e S. Ambrogio,” in Mélanges Eugène Tisserant, Studi e Testi 235 (Vatican City, 1964), 183–98; G. Nauroy, “Jérôme, lecteur et censeur de l’exégèse d’Ambroise,” in Y.-M. Duval (ed.), Jérôme entre l’Occident et l’Orient: XVIe centenaire du départ de saint Jérôme de Rome et de son installation à Bethléem (Paris, 1988), 173–203; Oberhelman, “Jerome’s Earliest Attack on Ambrose;” N. Adkin, “Ambrose and Jerome: The Opening Shot,” Mnemosyne 46 (1993): 364–76; Hunter, “The Raven Replies”; Cain, Jerome and the Monastic Clergy, 14, 66–7. ¹¹⁴ Ironically, in his letter to the Gallic noblewoman Geruchia Jerome describes his compositional technique in terms reminiscent of the florilegium approach he condemns: Saepe ad viduas scripsimus et in exhortatione earum multa de scripturis sanctis exempla repetentes varios testimoniorum flores in unam pudicitiae coronam texuimus (Ep. 123.1.1).

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and Philisthaei), both as a nod to his own polyglottism and as an implied criticism of Ambrose’s ignorance of Hebrew.¹¹⁵ We saw in the previous section that Jerome’s notion of Graeca veritas came with significant risks. His notion of Hebraica veritas was no less problematic, but for a different set of reasons. For one thing, it challenged the authoritative status of the LXX, which was widely believed by Christians to have been divinely inspired.¹¹⁶ It also seemed to put the Old Testament back into the hands of the Jews, for they were the ones who could read Hebrew;¹¹⁷ even Jerome learned it from Jewish tutors.¹¹⁸ Jerome’s overarching aim was to reclaim the Hebrew Bible from the Jews as a properly Christian holy book. It was after all for him the vetus testamentum, the precursor to and the inseparable partner of the novum testamentum. Nevertheless, he still was accused of promoting the cause of the Jews.¹¹⁹ He was vulnerable on another front as well. By not basing his exegesis on the version of the Bible (LXX) that was embraced by the church at large, he risked opening the floodgates to any number of heresies which ecclesiastical authorities had tamped down by appealing to this commonly accepted text.¹²⁰ Well aware of the controversial nature of the back-to-the-sources methodology he championed, Jerome took steps to legitimize it before a skeptical Christian readership. In the mid-380s, when he was living in Rome, he released both sides of his selected exegetical correspondence with Pope Damasus, in which he displayed his application of Hebrew verity to Old and New Testament texts, in order to give the impression that his scholarship came with a papal stamp of approval.¹²¹ ¹¹⁵ Adkin, “Jerome on Ambrose,” 12. ¹¹⁶ M. Müller, “Graeca sive Hebraica Veritas? The Defence of the Septuagint in the Early Church,” SJOT 1 (1989): 103–24; J. Lössl, “A Shift in Patristic Exegesis: Hebrew Verity in Augustine, Jerome, Julian of Aeclanum and Theodore of Mopsuestia,” AugStud 32 (2001): 157–75; cf. W. Schwarz, Principles and Problems of Biblical Translation: Some Reformation Controversies and Their Background (Cambridge, 1970), 17–44; Gallagher, Hebrew Scripture, 189–97. ¹¹⁷ Despite their elevation of the LXX over the Hebrew Bible, most patristic authors accorded the Hebrew language a special status as both the primordial language of the human race and the original language of Scripture; see Gallagher, Hebrew Scripture, 123–37. ¹¹⁸ G. Bardy, “Saint Jérôme et ses maîtres hébreux,” RBén 46 (1934): 145–64; I. Opelt, “S. Girolamo ed i suoi maestri ebrei,” Augustinianum 28 (1988): 327–38. In Comm. Gal. 3.13–14 Jerome mentions “a Jew who gave me some instruction in Scripture” and gave him insight into how to translate a particular Hebrew phrase. This Jewish teacher would almost certainly have communicated with Jerome in Greek. On Jerome’s conversational fluency in Greek by this time, see P. Hamblenne, “L’apprentissage du grec par Jérôme: quelques ajustements,” REAug 40 (1994): 353–64, and on the prevalence of Greek, especially among rabbis, in late antique Palestine, see S. Lieberman, Greek in Jewish Palestine (New York, 1942); D. Sperber, “Rabbinic Knowledge of Greek,” in S. Safrai et al. (eds.), The Literature of the Sages: Second Part (Minneapolis, 2006), 627–40. ¹¹⁹ See, e.g., Rufinus, Apol. c. Hier. 2.35–38; cf. H. I. Newman, “Jerome’s Judaizers,” JECS 9 (2001): 421–52 (444–5). ¹²⁰ G. Raspanti, “The Significance of Jerome’s Commentary on Galatians in his Exegetical Production,” in A. Cain and J. Lössl (eds.), Jerome of Stridon: His Life, Writings, and Legacy (Aldershot, 2009), 163–71. ¹²¹ A. Cain, “In Ambrosiaster’s Shadow: A Critical Re-Evaluation of the Last Surviving LetterExchange between Pope Damasus and Jerome,” REAug 51 (2005): 257–77; Cain, The Letters of Jerome, 43–67.

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Several years later he mounted a multilevel defense of his Hebrew scholarship, and specifically of his translation of the Hebrew Bible into Latin. As Adam Kamesar has shown, his bottom-line approach was to voice support for the Origenian recension of the LXX, then to make his own translation based on the Hebrew original and to promote its use as an auxiliary to the LXX, and finally to put forward his own translation as a replacement of the LXX and its VL translations.¹²² In the years before he would embark on this coordinated justification of his Vulgate translation from the Hebrew, Jerome was busy laying the groundwork for Hebraica veritas as an indispensable tool of the interpretive trade, for Old and New Testament studies alike. While in Rome he experimented with it in numerous exegetical set pieces on individual biblical words and passages from the Hebrew Bible. He continued this bold experiment in his Pauline commentaries, which are noteworthy moments in the continuum of his intellectual development because they mark the first time he incorporated Hebrew philology into running commentaries on whole biblical books, and New Testament books, at that. His overall objective was to argue for the primacy of the Hebrew text in Old Testament studies, and of the Greek text in New Testament studies, and to show through case studies why interpreters must not rely on translations (not even the widely revered LXX), which can be misleading or downright wrong. Truth, veritas, lies only in the original-language version, which, per the Hieronymian model, affords the scholar unfettered access to the ipsissima verba of Scripture.

¹²² Kamesar, Jerome, 41–72.

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4 The Ascetic Apostle Biblical exegetes in the early church viewed their interpretive task as having an ultimately practical goal: to foster in their audience the life of faith as set forth in Scripture.¹ This outlook was predicated of course on the notion of the Bible being the end-all compendium of edificatory precepts for Christians. In his early fifthcentury treatise Introduction to the Divine Scriptures, the otherwise unknown Adrian thus states that “anyone who is pious will agree that, taken together, all the passages of divinely inspired Scripture, whether through words or deeds, reasonably seem to promote this end [i.e., exhortation to virtue].”² Theodore of Mopsuestia, himself a commentator on Paul, similarly says of Scripture: “The teaching of those good things plainly bestowed on us by Christ’s coming and expounded in the form of a thanksgiving is the proof of the doctrines, while it also unfolds the exhortation of what pertains to virtue.”³ Even though all commentators shared the same general goal of distilling edifying teachings from the Bible, each one brought to the table individualized visions of what exactly constitutes the life of faith in its most authentic form. In particular, the late fourth and early fifth centuries witnessed an efflorescence of spirited debate about whether or to what extent the Christian life should be regulated by ascetic principles and practices. The authors in question endeavored to justify their respective approaches by naturally appealing to Scripture, and especially to Paul’s epistles, which were the nexus of much of this ideological debate.⁴ Jerome is a fascinating case study in this respect because his asceticizing hermeneutic put him on the more extreme end of the spectrum among his exegetical colleagues. ¹ B. Studer, “Zu einem Schlüsselwort der patristischen Exegese,” in Mémorial Dom Jean Gribomont (Rome, 1988), 555–81; F. Young, Biblical Exegesis and the Formation of Christian Culture (Cambridge, 1997), 248–64; H. de Lubac, History and Spirit: The Understanding of Scripture according to Origen, trans. A. Englund Nash (San Francisco, 2007), 204–22. ² P. W. Martens (ed.), Adrian’s Introduction to the Divine Scriptures: An Antiochene Handbook for Scriptural Interpretation, Edited with a Study, Translation, and Commentary (Oxford, 2017), 269. ³ R. A. Greer (ed. and trans.), Theodore of Mopsuestia: The Commentaries on the Minor Epistles of Paul (Atlanta, 2010), 174–5. ⁴ E. A. Clark, Reading Renunciation: Asceticism and Scripture in Early Christianity (Princeton, 1999); Y.-M. Duval, L’affaire Jovinien: d’une crise de la société romaine à une crise de la pensée chrétienne à la fin du IVe et au début du Ve siècle (Rome, 2003); D. G. Hunter, Marriage, Celibacy, and Heresy in Ancient Christianity: The Jovinianist Controversy (Oxford, 2007); L. van der Sypt, “The Use of 1 Cor 7:36–38 in Early Christian Asceticism,” in H.-U. Weidemann (ed.), Asceticism and Exegesis in Early Christianity: The Reception of New Testament Texts in Ancient Ascetic Discourses (Göttingen, 2013), 148–62.

Jerome’s Commentaries on the Pauline Epistles and the Architecture of Exegetical Authority. Andrew Cain, Oxford University Press. © Andrew Cain 2021. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192847195.003.0005

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This chapter begins by situating Jerome’s opus Paulinum as a textualized extension of his instruction of his discipulae in Scripture and practical spirituality. From here I argue that he strategically utilized his four commentaries as platforms for promulgating, on the authority of Paul, his own peculiar brand of ascetic spirituality, which centers sexual purity (and especially lifelong virginity) in the canon of Christian virtues. Along this same line I argue that Jerome took the epistle to Titus as his point of departure to advocate his radical theory of the monastic clergy, according to which all ordained clergymen should double as practicing monks. Yet, for all of his concerted efforts to give his teachings a biblicizing veneer, Jerome’s sometimes marginal positions, combined with his rhetorical excesses, left him vulnerable to accusations of crypto-Manichaeism, and in the final section of this chapter we look at how he deployed his Pauline project to push back at these accusations and to defend his carefully constructed literary identity as a vir orthodoxus.

Meditatio Scripturarum and the Ascetic Life In August of 385, a year before he composed his Pauline commentaries, Jerome wrote a letter to his Roman discipula Asella as he was about to board an eastbound ship out of Rome’s harbor Portus.⁵ In it he gives an idyllic snapshot of the camaraderie he recently had enjoyed in Rome with upper-class Christian women who, as he tells it, looked to him as their trusted mentor: “A great crowd of virgins frequently surrounded me. To some of them I often explained the divine books as best I could. Study had brought about constant companionship, companionship comfortableness, and comfortableness a sense of mutual trust.”⁶ He undoubtedly is exaggerating when he characterizes his following as being indeterminately large (multa turba), but he does at any rate send greetings in his valediction to several of these women, among them his literary patrons Marcella and Paula.⁷ Jerome’s extant letters to Marcella and Paula, which were sent in Rome between 382 and 385, give us rare glimpses into his live interactions with them, or at least as he recreates them textually after the fact. In one letter to Paula he punctiliously rehashes the proceedings of their private tutorial on the Psalms from two days ⁵ The main point of this letter is to fend off charges of salacious conduct that had been leveled against him by his critics. See A. Cain, The Letters of Jerome: Asceticism, Biblical Exegesis, and the Construction of Christian Authority in Late Antiquity (Oxford, 2009), 99–128. ⁶ Multa me virginum crebro turba circumdedit; divinos libros, ut potui, nonnullis saepe disserui; lectio adsiduitatem, adsiduitas familiaritatem, familiaritas fiduciam fecerant (Ep. 45.2.2). ⁷ He also mentions Paula’s daughter Eustochium, Albina, Marcellina, and Felicitas (Ep. 45.7.1); and, of course, Asella is the nominal addressee. On the low likelihood that this Marcellina was Ambrose’s sister by the same name, see N. Adkin, “Is the Marcellina of Jerome Ep. 45.7 Ambrose’s Sister?,” Phoenix 49 (1995): 68–70.

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earlier and reminds her about the question she had posed then about the arrangement of the alphabetic psalms,⁸ a question he proceeds to answer in the remainder of this letter. In a missive to Marcella he recalls with similar vividness how earlier that day he was about to explain Psalm 72 to her when they were interrupted suddenly by a messenger bringing news about the death of a mutual friend.⁹ From other contemporaneous correspondence we learn that Jerome gave scriptural lessons to Marcella not only in person but also, at her request, via letter.¹⁰ He even affectionately would call her his “taskmaster” (ἐργοδιώκτης) for keeping him occupied with questions.¹¹ He was well aware that answers given viva voce can have a certain personability and liveliness to them: “The living voice possesses an unknown, hidden power, and after gliding from the speaker’s mouth into the pupil’s ears it leaves a more forceful impression.”¹² By the same token, the written text possesses its own unique qualities, not least of which is a stability, a permanence that the (unrecorded) viva vox simply lacks, which indefinitely extends the life of the content it imparts to the reader. One important practical advantage, then, is that written replies can serve as aides-mémoire which their recipients can review as often as they wish so as not to forget any of the material that has been communicated.¹³ Even while he was living in the same city as his discipulae, and especially after he had left Rome for distant Bethlehem, Jerome relied on the epistolary text as an indispensable teaching mechanism.¹⁴ Through this communicative medium he was able to maintain in absentia an abiding, authoritative presence among these women as their spiritual and scriptural guide. For the epistula itself, in the view of the ancients, almost mystically projects the virtual presence of its physically absent ⁸ Nudius tertius, cum centesimum et octavodecimum psalmum tibi insinuare conarer et dicerem omnem moralem locum in eo esse conprehensum et, quomodo philosophi solerent disputationes suas in physicam et ethicam logicamque partiri, ita et eloquia divina aut de natura disputare, ut in Genesi et Ecclesiaste, aut de moribus, ut in Proverbiis et in omnibus sparsim libris, aut de logica, pro qua nostri θεολογικὴν sibi vindicant, ut in Cantico canticorum et Evangeliis—licet et apostolus saepe proponat, adsumat, confirmet atque concludat, quae proprie artis dialecticae sunt—, studiosissime perquisisti, quid sibi velint Hebraeae litterae, quae psalmo, quem legebamus, videbantur insertae (Ep. 30.1.1–2). ⁹ Cum hora ferme tertia hodiernae diei septuagesimum secundum psalmum, id est tertii libri principium, legere coepissemus et docere cogeremur tituli ipsius partem ad finem secundi libri, partem ad principium tertii libri pertinere . . . repente nobis nuntiatum est sanctissimam Leam exisse de corpore (Ep. 23.1.1). ¹⁰ E.g., Epp. 25.1.1, 29.1.1–2. ¹¹ See pp. 61–2. ¹² Habet nescio quid latentis ἐνεργείας viva vox et in aures discipuli de auctoris ore transfusa fortius insonat (Ep. 53.2.2); cf. Comm. Gal. 2.4: Magnam siquidem vim habet vox viva: vox de auctoris sui ore resonans, quae illa pronuntiatione profertur atque distinguitur qua in hominis sui corde generata est. The superiority of the spoken word to the written word, in terms of vivacity, was proverbial in GrecoRoman antiquity (cf. Seneca, Epp. 6.5, 33.9; Quintilian, Inst. orat. 2.2.8; Pliny, Ep. 2.3.9). ¹³ Thus Jerome wrote to Paula: Identidem flagitasti, ut tibi interpretationes singularum edicerem litterarum. Dixi, fateor; verum, quia propter barbariem linguae memoria elabitur omne, quod diximus, desideras commentariolum fieri, ut, si in aliquo forte titubaris, oblivionem lectio consoletur (Ep. 30.2.2). ¹⁴ Thus in a Roman letter to Marcella, Jerome tells her that he is forwarding her two letters he had already sent to Paula and Eustochium so that she could benefit from the teaching (doctrina) in them and even regard them as having been addressed personally to her (ut . . . putes tibi quoque scripta esse, quae scripta sunt) (Ep. 32.1.3).

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author.¹⁵ In Jerome’s conception, the biblical commentary qua text performs this same essential function of conveying specialist knowledge while acting as a surrogate for its author. He illustrates his awareness of this functionality in the preface to his commentary on Ecclesiastes, a work he produced at the tail end of the 380s and dedicated, in loving memory of Blesilla,¹⁶ to her mother Paula and younger sister Eustochium. He describes how the commentary came into being: I recall that about five years ago, when I was still in Rome and was reading Ecclesiastes to the holy Blesilla, with the object of challenging her to disregard this age and to regard everything she saw in the world as worthless, I was asked by her to explain all its obscurities in the form of a brief commentary, so that she could understand what she was reading without me by her side. Memini me ante hoc ferme quinquennium, cum adhuc Romae essem et Ecclesiasten sanctae Blesillae legerem, ut eam ad contemptum istius saeculi provocarem, et omne quod in mundo cerneret, putaret esse pro nihilo, rogatum ab ea, ut in morem commentarioli obscura quaeque dissererem, ut absque me posset intellegere quae legebat.¹⁷

As Jerome movingly explains,¹⁸ what eventually was to take shape as a formal, textualized exposition of Ecclesiastes offered up in Blesilla’s memory initially had been an informal, face-to-face guided reading of it with her. He characterizes these private lessons as protreptic drills to persuade her—at the time in her late teens— to adopt the same world-renouncing mindset that her mother had espoused years earlier.¹⁹ The finished product, needless to say, now could benefit a far broader readership. Like the commentary on Ecclesiastes, the four Pauline commentaries were the direct outgrowth of Jerome’s private instruction of a rather small circle of religious women. One indication of this is a passing comment he makes in his commentary on Titus. When reviewing the Mosaic laws on theft, he directly addresses Paula ¹⁵ K. Thraede, Grundzüge griechisch-römischer Brieftopik (Munich, 1970), 162–4; G. Constable, Letters and Letter Collections (Turnhout, 1976), 13–14; A. Garzya, Il mandarino e il quotidiano: saggi sulla letteratura tardoantica e bizantina (Naples, 1983), 132–3. ¹⁶ Sometime between the middle of September and late October of 384, within four months of her conversion to a life of extreme asceticism, Blesilla died unexpectedly at the age of twenty, apparently from carrying her fasting regimen to an unhealthy extreme. See Cain, The Letters of Jerome, 74–6. ¹⁷ Comm. Eccl., prol. ll. 1–6; R. J. Goodrich and D. J. D. Miller (trans.), St. Jerome, Commentary on Ecclesiastes (New York, 2012), 33. ¹⁸ As evidence of his paternal affection for Blesilla, Jerome referred to himself, when she was still alive, as her “father in spirit” (pater spiritu) and “foster father in affection” (nutricius caritate) (Ep. 39.2.2). ¹⁹ On the ascetic message of this commentary as it relates to Blesilla, see J. Matthews, “Four Funerals and a Wedding: This World and the Next in Fourth-Century Rome,” in P. Rousseau and M. Papoutsakis (eds.), Transformations of Late Antiquity: Essays for Peter Brown (London, 2009), 129–46 (138–46). Many years later Jerome instructed Laeta to read Ecclesiastes to her young daughter: In Ecclesiaste consuescat calcare, quae mundi sunt (Ep. 107.12.1).

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and Eustochium and refers to a recent in-person tutorial he conducted for them: “I recall that I recently explained these things to you on Leviticus.”²⁰ From his prefaces we gain an even clearer sense of how he envisaged his Pauline exegesis to have a practical bearing on these women’s spirituality. He thus opens the programmatic first preface to his Ephesians commentary with an elegantly worded reminder of how scriptural study in general is vital to the daily life of the Christian: If there is anything, Paula and Eustochium, to sustain the wise man in this life and to induce him to persevere with a steady mind amid the world’s tumults and storms, I believe that it is, above all else, the contemplation and knowledge of the Scriptures. For since we differ from all other living things in that we are a rational being and are able to speak, and since all reasoning and language are encompassed by the divine books—through which we become acquainted with God and are informed about why we have been created—I am stunned that some people make themselves conspicuous by either resigning themselves to laziness and idleness and refusing to learn about sublime things, or by reckoning that others who engage in this pursuit ought to be censured. Si quicquam est, Paula et Eustochium, quod in hac vita sapientem virum teneat et inter pressuras et turbines mundi aequo animo manere persuadeat, id esse vel primum reor meditationem et scientiam Scripturarum. Cum enim a ceteris animantibus hoc vel maxime differamus, quod rationale animal sumus et loqui possumus, ratio autem omnis et sermo divinis libris contineatur, per quos et Deum discimus et quare creati sumus non ignoramus, miror quosdam exstitisse qui aut ipsi se inertiae et somno dantes, nolint quae praeclara sunt discere aut ceteros qui id studii habent reprehendendos putent.²¹

Jerome evokes the Stoic notion of the impervious vir sapiens and transposes it into a Christian context,²² slipping in apt allusions to Cicero’s philosophical prose for good measure.²³ In his reconfiguration of this ideal, the “wise man” is the ascetic Christian, and the mechanism whereby this vir sapiens weathers the vagaries of

²⁰ De quibus nuper vobis in Levitico exposuisse me memini (Comm. Tit. 2.9–10). ²¹ Comm. Eph., lib. 1, prol. ll. 1–11. ²² On his appropriation of Stoic philosophical ideas elsewhere in his writings, see A. Canellis, “Saint Jérôme et les passions: sur les quattuor perturbationes des Tusculanes,” REAug 54 (2000): 178–203; M. T. Messina, “Passio e perturbatio: Cicerone, Varrone e Girolamo,” Acme 57 (2004): 253–68; A. Cain, Jerome and the Monastic Clergy: A Commentary on Letter 52 to Nepotian, with an Introduction, Text, and Translation (Leiden, 2013), 242, 245, 248. ²³ I.e., the theme of rationality and language as specifically human prerogatives. Cf. Cicero, Orat. 1.32: Hoc enim uno praestamus vel maxime feris, quod conloquimur inter nos et quod exprimere dicendo sensa possumus; Fin. 2.45: Homines enim, etsi aliis multis, tamen hoc uno plurimum a bestiis differunt, quod rationem habent a natura datam mentemque acrem et vigentem celerrimeque multa simul agitantem et, ut ita dicam, sagacem, quae et causas rerum et consecutiones videat.

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human existence, and also understands humankind’s place in the grand scheme of things, is “the contemplation and knowledge of the Scriptures.”²⁴ The expression meditatio et scientia Scripturarum which Jerome employs above entails total immersion in the biblical text, a staple activity of the Hieronymian ascetic program. Hence he exhorted Eustochium to read Scripture often and to fall asleep with it in her hands,²⁵ and also to get up throughout the night to review the parts of it she knew by heart.²⁶ To Eustochium’s sister-in-law Laeta he gave detailed instructions about the order in which she should have her young daughter Paula, a consecrated virgin, commit to memory the books of the Bible, starting with Psalms and Proverbs and ending with the Song of Songs.²⁷ He likewise enjoined the priest Nepotian: “Read divine Scripture continually, or rather, never let the sacred book leave your hands.”²⁸ Knowing Scripture by heart, moreover, is a feat Jerome praised in Origen,²⁹ Hilarion of Gaza,³⁰ and the elder Paula.³¹ For Jerome, meditatio Scripturarum does not consist merely in rote memorization of the Bible. It involves reflection, rumination, and constant study, which translate into action, amounting to what Mark Vessey aptly calls “an allconsuming askesis, a mortification of the body and a rejection of the world [that is] naturally the province of monks [but] can be prosecuted by clergy or laypeople

²⁴ In Comm. Tit. 1.8–9 Jerome revives his criticism, voiced in the passage quoted above, of people— presumably secularized Christians—who, “resigning themselves to laziness, inactivity, and idleness, consider it a sin if they have read the Scriptures and despise as garrulous and useless those who meditate on the law of the Lord day and night” (inertiae se et otio et somno dantes, putant peccatum esse si scripturas legerint, et eos qui in lege Domini meditantur die ac nocte quasi garrulos inutilesque contemnunt). Note that he recycles the same formulation se inertiae et somno dare from the first Ephesians preface, a turn of phrase already attested in Pliny, Ep. 3.5.19: Quis ex istis, qui tota vita litteris adsident, collatus illi non quasi somno et inertiae deditus erubescat? ²⁵ Crebrius lege et disce quam plurima. Tenenti codicem somnus obrepat et cadentem faciem pagina sancta suscipiat (Ep. 22.17.2). ²⁶ Noctibus bis terque surgendum, revolvenda de Scripturis, quae memoriter tenemus (Ep. 22.37.2). ²⁷ Discat primum psalterium, his se canticis avocet et in Proverbiis Salomonis erudiatur ad vitam. In Ecclesiaste consuescat calcare, quae mundi sunt; in Iob virtutis et patientiae exempla sectetur. Ad Evangelia transeat numquam ea positura de manibus; Apostolorum Acta et Epistulas tota cordis inbibat voluntate. Cumque pectoris sui cellarium his opibus locupletarit, mandet memoriae Prophetas et Heptateuchum et Regum ac Paralipomenon libros Hesdraeque et Hester volumina, ut ultimum sine periculo discat Canticum canticorum (Ep. 107.12.1–2). Cf. C. Horn and J. Martens, “Let the Little Children Come to Me”: Childhood and Children in Early Christianity (Washington, D.C., 2009), 116–65; R. Aasgaard, “Childhood in 400 : Jerome, John Chrysostom, and Augustine on Children and Their Formation,” in R. Aasgaard and C. Horn (eds.), Perceptions of Children in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds (London, 2018), 157–73. ²⁸ Divinas Scripturas saepius lege, immo numquam de manibus tuis sacra lectio deponatur (Ep. 52.7.1). ²⁹ Ep. 84.8.1. ³⁰ V. Hilar. 4.3. ³¹ Scripturas tenebat memoriter (Ep. 108.26.1). Of Paula he also said that Scripturarum semper amore flagravit (Comm. Os. lib. 1, prol. ll. 132–3) and that the entire contents of the Old and New Testaments come bubbling up out of her heart (totam veteris et novi testamenti supellectilem ex illius corde fervere) (Ep. 54.13.5).

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only if they are prepared to follow a monastic way of life.”³² In his Pauline commentaries Jerome emphasizes more than once the practical outcome of this meditatio.³³ He points out that Jesus commanded his followers not only to reflect deeply on and internalize the Scriptures but also to put into action their teachings.³⁴ Jerome also underscores the close connection between pious self-discipline and scriptural study: “Let our body not be subject to sins, and wisdom will enter into us. Let our emotions be trained, and let our mind daily feed on the reading of Scripture.”³⁵ He further notes that Christ has a boundless love “for those who desire to know themselves, who meditate on his law day and night (cf. Ps. 1.2b)³⁶ and who turn words into actions.”³⁷ To know Christ, he says, is to know virtue, and the Christian who acts on this knowledge will not fall into sexual sin.³⁸

Championing Chastity During his recent three-year stay in Rome (382–5), Jerome had followed his twin literary pursuits of biblical scholarship and promulgation of ascetic ideals, the latter in various letters³⁹ and treatises such as the Libellus de virginitate servanda (= Ep. 22) and the Adversus Helvidium de Mariae virginitate perpetua. Not surprisingly, his ascetic advocacy bleeds into his exegetical work on Paul. ³² M. Vessey, “Conference and Confession: Literary Pragmatics in Augustine’s Apologia contra Hieronymum,” JECS 1 (1993): 175–213 (184). ³³ Cf. Jerome, Tract. Ps. 1, ll. 84–90: Meditatio ergo legis non in legendo est, sed in faciendo . . . Si porrigo elemosinam, legem Dei meditor: si aegrotantem visito, pedes mei legem Dei meditantur: si ea facio quae praecepta sunt, quod alii ore meditantur, ego corpore meditor. ³⁴ Salvatore praecipiente discipulis non solum in meditatione Scripturarum eos laborare debere, ut quae scripta sunt replicent et condant in memoriae thesauro, sed prius faciant quae praecepta sunt (Comm. Tit. 2.1). ³⁵ Non sit corpus nostrum subditum peccatis et ingredietur in nos sapientia. Exerceatur sensus, mens cotidie divina lectione pascatur (Comm. Tit. 3.9). For a similar approach by Origen, see C. M. Chin, “Who Is the Ascetic Exegete? Angels, Enchantments, and Transformative Food in Origen’s Homilies on Joshua,” in H.-U. Weidemann (ed.), Asceticism and Exegesis in Early Christianity: The Reception of New Testament Texts in Ancient Ascetic Discourses (Göttingen, 2013), 203–18. ³⁶ Jerome references Ps. 1.2b often in his writings to give a biblical casing to his ascetic ideal of meditatio Scripturarum; cf. Comm. Eccl. 8.15; Comm. Eph. 3.16–19, 4.31; Comm. Tit. 1.8–9, 2.1; Ep. 21.37.2. ³⁷ Ex quo animadvertendum quia grandem et immensam Christus scientiae habeat caritatem, id est eorum qui se scire desiderant, qui in lege eius meditantur die ac nocte, qui verba vertunt in opera (Comm. Eph. 3.16–19). ³⁸ Discere autem Christum idipsum est quod nosse virtutem et audire illum non differt ab eo si diceret: audire sapientiam, iustitiam, fortitudinem, temperantiam et cetera quibus Christus vocatur. Si quis ergo Christum audivit et didicit, non ambulabit in vanitate sensus sui, nec obscuratus mente gradietur neque erit abalienatus a vita Dei: habebit etiam scientiam ignoratione discussa et immisso tenebris lumine omnis de oculis cordis eius caecitas auferetur. Quod cum habuerit, non se tradet impudicitiae nec operabitur omnem immunditiam in avaritia, concessos fines praetergrediens nuptiarum (Comm. Eph. 4.20–1a). Cf. Comm. Es., lib. 1, prol. ll. 11–13: Qui nescit Scripturas, nescit Dei virtutem eiusque sapientiam, ignoratio Scripturarum, ignoratio Christi est. ³⁹ See, e.g., A. Cain, “Rethinking Jerome’s Portraits of Holy Women,” in A. Cain and J. Lössl (eds.), Jerome of Stridon: His Life, Writings and Legacy (Aldershot, 2009), 47–57.

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Although he favorably mentions other practices traditionally associated with the ascetic life, such as fasting,⁴⁰ almsgiving,⁴¹ and prayer vigils,⁴² sexual abstinence is the one that receives the most attention by a fairly wide margin, whether in the context of consecrated virginhood, chaste widowhood, or celibate marriage.⁴³ This preoccupation is characteristic of Jerome in general, but it also is a function of the broader lively debate in the late fourth century about the value of sexual renunciation,⁴⁴ a debate in which Jerome became one of the most vocal (and controversial) proponents of extreme asceticism.⁴⁵ Intermittently throughout his Pauline commentaries Jerome expresses his provirginity stance. When commenting on Paul’s statement to Philemon, “Confident of your obedience, I am writing to you, knowing that you will do even more than I say,” he makes an allusion to 1 Cor. 7.25 and works in the rather gratuitous assertion that virginity is crowned with a greater reward because it is taken on voluntarily rather than under divine mandate.⁴⁶ In Gal. 6.1 Paul instructs mature believers (“you who are spiritual”) to admonish gently anyone who is caught up in sin. When he discusses this verse, Jerome illustrates this principle of mild rebuke by casting the lifelong ascetic as Paul’s model Christian: “If anyone remains a virgin until old age, he should forgive a person once led astray by adolescent passion, keeping in mind how many difficulties he encountered when passing through his own youth.”⁴⁷ When treating Eph. 4.2b, where Paul encourages Christians to be patient with one another in love, Jerome takes a more subtle approach to advocating the supremacy of the celibate life: If someone offers assistance to an ailing brother, he bears with him in love. If someone who lives the happy life in celibacy helps and encourages, in any way he can, a married man who can barely provide food for himself and his children, he will be praised for having carried another’s burden. As for a man who watches his mother or widowed sister languish in poverty and cannot help them, if someone will have extended a helping hand to him, he has supported him in love . . . He encourages neither a sinning brother nor a needy one who does not have love and

⁴⁰ Comm. Gal. 4.17–18, 5.26. ⁴¹ Comm. Gal. 4.17–18, 5.26. ⁴² Comm. Gal. 5.13b–14, 5.26. ⁴³ In Comm. Gal. 5.26 he combines all three of these sexless states in a triptych in which chastity is the underlying unifying principle: castitas in matrimonio, viduitate, virginibus. ⁴⁴ See, e.g., P. Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York, 1988); V. Vuolanto, “Single Life in Late Antiquity? Virgins between the Earthly and the Heavenly Family,” in S. Huebner and C. Laes (eds.), The Single Life in the Roman and Later Roman World (Cambridge, 2019), 276–91. ⁴⁵ Hunter, Marriage, Celibacy, and Heresy, passim; K. Shuve, The Song of Songs and the Fashioning of Identity in Early Latin Christianity (Oxford, 2016), 173–208. ⁴⁶ Virginitas quoque propterea maiori praemio coronatur, quia praeceptum Domini non habet, et ultra imperata se tendit (Comm. Phlm. 21). ⁴⁷ Si quis virgo ad senectam usque permanserit, ignoscat ei qui adolescentiae quondam calore deceptus est sciens quantis difficultatibus illam transierit aetatem (Comm. Gal. 6.1).

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who disregards the words of the Apostle, who admonishes: “We who are stronger must bear the infirmities of the weaker and not please ourselves” (Rom. 15.1). Si quis aegrotanti fratri praebet obsequium, suffert eum in caritate. Si quis in caelibatu beatam transigens vitam, alium qui et uxorem habet et liberos et seipsum vix potest pascere adiuvarit et utcumque potest fuerit consolatus, alienum onus portasse laudabitur. Est qui matrem vel sororem viduam cernens egestate tabescere non potest adiuvare, huic si quis porrexerit manum, sustinuit eum in caritate . . . nec peccantem fratrem nec inopem consolatur qui non habet caritatem et contemnit verba apostoli commonentis: debemus autem nos qui fortiores sumus infirmitates imbecilliorum portare et non nobismetipsis placere.⁴⁸

Of the three charitable helpers profiled here, the second one is given the spotlight. First of all, he is celibate, and from this readers are to infer that he is a monk (either a layman or clergyman). He also is characterized not simply as caelebs but as in caelibatu beatam transigens vitam. The phrase beata vita evokes the traditional philosophical theme of happiness and the summum bonum, a theme explored by many Latin writers both pagan (e.g., Seneca⁴⁹) and Christian (e.g., Lactantius,⁵⁰ Ambrose,⁵¹ and Augustine⁵²). In evoking this theme Jerome implicitly elevates the ascetic life as an existence of the highest purpose and meaning, and he therefore also puts it above the married life. Furthermore, the married man’s budget is stretched so thin from supporting his wife and children that he can barely feed himself, whereas the celibate ascetic, unencumbered by the financial burdens of household management,⁵³ is free to exercise the charity that Paul demands; Jerome underscores his resourcefulness (utcumque potest) and diligence with two different verbs (adiuvare and consolari). The follow-up quotation of Rom. 15.1 crystalizes this hierarchy by scripting the ascetic as the “stronger” Christian and the married man as the “weaker” one who shoulders “infirmities” in the form of his family. Moreover, another important message ⁴⁸ Comm. Eph. 4.2b. ⁴⁹ F.-H. Mutschler, “Seneca’s De vita beata,” JAC 5 (1990): 187–206; A. L. Motto, “Seneca’s Quest for the vita beata,” Athenaeum 97 (2009): 187–96. ⁵⁰ S. Freund, Divinae institutiones, Buch 7: De vita beata/Laktanz. Einleitung, Text, Übersetzung und Kommentar (Berlin, 2009). ⁵¹ L. Felici, “Il De lacob et vita beata di S. Ambrogio e il De vita beata di Seneca: rapporti di contenuto e forma,” in S. Felici (ed.), Humanitas classica e sapientia cristiana: scritti offerti a Roberto Iacoangeli (Rome, 1992), 163–73; I. J. Davidson, “The Vita Beata: Ambrose, De officiis 2, 1–21 and the Synthesis of Classical and Christian Thought in the Late Fourth Century,” RecTh 63 (1996): 199–219. ⁵² M. E. Miotti, “Il De beata vita di Agostino: rapporto con il V libro delle Tusculanae Disputationes di Cicerone,” in S. Felici (ed.), Humanitas classica e sapientia cristiana: scritti offerti a Roberto Iacoangeli (Rome, 1992), 203–25; M. P. Foley, “Cicero, Augustine, and the Philosophical Roots of the Cassiciacum Dialogues,” REAug 45 (1999): 51–77; P. van Geest, “Stoic against His Will? Augustine on the Good Life in De beata vita and the Praeceptum,” Augustiniana 54 (2004): 533–50; E. Kenyon, Augustine and the Dialogue (Cambridge, 2018), 82–100. ⁵³ Jerome often cites these burdens as major drawbacks of matrimony (Epp. 22.2.1, 22.38.1, 49.18.2; Adv. Helv. 20; Adv. Iov. 1.13); cf. Basil, Ep. 2.2; Socrates, Hist. eccl. 4.23.

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encoded in Jerome’s example of the celibate is that ascetics should be active in showing charity to their fellow human beings in tangible ways, whether through moral support (consolari) or material assistance (implied by adiuvare).⁵⁴ In his discussion of Tit. 1.6, where Paul says that the church elder should be the husband of one wife (unius uxoris vir), Jerome draws a contrast between the chaste widower and the husband in a long-term marriage.⁵⁵ The widower is a young man, an adulescentulus.⁵⁶ After his wife dies, he succumbs to his sexual urges and immediately remarries, but his second wife dies soon thereafter and he decides to live from that point on in a celibate state (vixerit continenter . . . pudice et sancte conversatus est). The other man is married only once yet throughout his long marriage and into old age he regularly has intercourse with his wife (numquam a carnis opere cessasse . . . ab uxoris amplexu nec in senili est separatus aetate), an act Jerome calls the “work of the flesh” (carnis opus). Of the two men, he concludes unambiguously that the “better, chaster, and more continent” one is the young man who forgoes sex for the remainder of his life. For Jerome, the biblical paragon of lifelong virginitas, and indeed the role model par excellence for all Christian virgins, is Mary.⁵⁷ As a Pauline commentator he finds ample opportunity to affirm her perpetual virginity,⁵⁸ a doctrine which was by no means universally accepted by western Christians in the late fourth century. One of many dissenting voices was a certain Helvidius, who in the early 380s composed a now-lost treatise arguing that Mary had been a virgin prior to Jesus’s birth but afterward consummated her marriage to Joseph and then gave birth to more children. In 383 Jerome wrote a rejoinder in the form of a treatise entitled Adversus Helvidium de Mariae virginitate perpetua. Pushing back against the suggestion that Mary ceased to be a virgin at any point in her life, he contended that whenever Scripture refers to James and others as “brothers” of Jesus, it means cousins and not brothers in the strict sense of the word (Helvidius, by contrast, thought that James was the half-brother of Jesus and that both shared

⁵⁴ Cf. Ep. 52.3.2, where Jerome lists labor manuum unde praebeantur elemosynae among the monastic virtues. For his view of how almsgiving fits into the economy of salvation, see D. Shanzer, “Jerome, Tobit, Alms, and the Vita Aeterna,” in A. Cain and J. Lössl (eds.), Jerome of Stridon: His Life, Writings, and Controversies (Aldershot, 2009), 87–103. ⁵⁵ Esto quippe aliquem adulescentulum coniugem perdidisse et, carnis necessitate superatum, accepisse uxorem secundam quam et ipsam statim amiserit et deinceps vixerit continenter; alium vero usque ad senectam habuisse matrimonium et uxoris usum, ut plerique aestimant, felicitatem, numquam a carnis opere cessasse; quis nobis videtur e duobus esse melior, pudicior, continentior? Vtique ille qui infelix etiam in secundo matrimonio fuit et postea pudice et sancte conversatus est, et non is qui ab uxoris amplexu nec in senili est separatus aetate (Comm. Tit. 1.6). ⁵⁶ In Hieronymian parlance an adulescens generally is anyone between the ages of twenty and thirty-three (P. Hamblenne, “La longévité de Jérôme: Prosper avait-il raison?,” Latomus 28 (1969): 1081–1119 (1087–8)), and so the diminutive adulescentulus would denote someone in his early twenties. ⁵⁷ Hunter, Marriage, Celibacy, and Heresy, 187–8. ⁵⁸ E.g., Comm. Gal. 3.19–20, 4.4–5, 4.24b–26, 5.18; Comm. Eph. 1.15–18a, 4.21b.

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a mother but not a father).⁵⁹ Three years later, when he was poring over the Pauline epistles, Jerome mentioned this treatise in the context of explaining the identity of “James, the brother of the Lord” (Gal. 1.19): I recall that when I was in Rome I composed a book, at the brothers’ instigation, on holy Mary’s perpetual virginity, and in it I had to discuss those who are called the “Lord’s brothers.” I therefore ought to be content with what I wrote— whatever it may be worth. For now let it suffice that James is called the “Lord’s brother” on account of his outstanding character, incomparable faith, and superior wisdom and because he was the first to preside over the inaugural church of Jewish Christians. Memini me dum Romae essem impulsu fratrum librum de sanctae Mariae virginitate edidisse perpetua, in quo mihi necesse fuit de his qui fratres Domini dicti sunt diutius disputare; unde qualiacunque sunt illa quae scripsimus his contenti esse debemus. Nunc hoc sufficiat ut propter egregios mores et incomparabilem fidem sapientiamque non mediam frater dictus sit Domini et quod primus ei ecclesiae praefuerit quae prima in Christum credens ex Iudaeis fuerat congregata.⁶⁰

Instead of rehashing his argument from Against Helvidius, Jerome obliquely invites his readers to consult this treatise to obtain the full account.⁶¹ Needless to say, his very act of citing it in the first place is an implicit validation of its argument, even if he seems to temper this endorsement with the conventionally self-depreciatory qualiacunque sunt. Furthermore, he portrays himself, just as he had done during his pamphlet war with Helvidius,⁶² as the duly appointed spokesperson of a collective of ascetics who represent the majority opinion, even though in point of historical fact they represented the minority opinion.⁶³ Jerome,

⁵⁹ On Jerome’s controversy with Helvidius, see J. McHugh, The Mother of Jesus in the New Testament (London, 1975), 223–33; G. Rocca, L’Adversus Helvidium di san Girolamo nel contesto della letteratura ascetico-mariana del secolo IV (Bern, 1998); G. Stefanelli, “Lessico polemico e strategie retoriche nell’Adversus Helvidium di Gerolamo,” in A. Capone and A. Beccarisi (eds.), Aliter: controversie religiose e definizioni di identità tra tardoantico e medioevo (Rome, 2015), 73–90; cf. V. Milazzo, “L’utilizzazione della Scrittura nell’Adversus Helvidium di Gerolamo: tra grammatica ed esegesi biblica,” Orpheus 15 (1994): 21–45. ⁶⁰ Comm. Gal. 1.19. ⁶¹ He adopts the same tactic when he cross-references this treatise in other writings. See, e.g., Comm. Mt. 1.20, 24: Iam et supra diximus sponsas uxores appellari quod plenius liber adversus Helvidium docet . . . Lege supra dictum libellum adversus Helvidium. For similar examples, cf. Adv. Iov. 1.13; Ep. 22.22.1; Comm. Hiez. 43.23–7; Comm. Mt. 12.47, 13.56. ⁶² Cf. Adv. Helv. 1: Nuper rogatus a fratribus, ut adversus libellum cuiusdam Helvidii responderem . . . ⁶³ He justifies the writing of his Adversus Iovinianum and Dialogus adversus Pelagianos using the same tactic. Cf. Adv. Iov. 1.1: Pauci admodum dies sunt, quod sancti ex urbe Roma fratres cuiusdam mihi Ioviniani commentariolos transmiserunt, rogantes, ut eorum ineptiis responderem, et Epicurum Christianorum, evangelico atque apostolico vigore contererem; Dial. adv. Pel., prol.: Crebra fratrum expostulatio fuit, cur promissum opus ultra differrem.

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then, subtly centers himself as an authoritative and eminently trusted proponent of Marian doctrine. Even though he advocated lifelong virginity as the ideal Christian condition, Jerome also conceded grudgingly that sex has its place, albeit only because the human race would go extinct without it. As a commentator on Paul he had to come to grips with the issue of conjugal sex, but he began from the premise that ascetic principles govern even the marital bed. In Tit. 2.4–5 Paul instructs older women to “encourage the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be self-controlled, chaste, good managers of the household, kind, being submissive to their husbands, so that the word of God may not be discredited.” This passage presents an obvious problem for Jerome because the young women are expected to be good spouses rather than good virgins. Nevertheless, he picks up on the words “chastity” and “chaste” in the lemmatized text (ut ad castitatem erudiant adulescentulas, ut ament viros suos, ut ament filios; pudicas, castas) and turns the passage in a different direction: They should teach the younger women, as if they were their own daughters, first of all chastity, because the Enemy rages against this more in blossoming youth, and all his power against women is in the belly’s navel (cf. Job 40.16b). Then they should teach the younger women to love their husbands and have affection for their children. What is the teaching to love husbands, seeing that this act rests not in the declaration of the teacher but in the heart of the one who loves? He wants them to love their husbands chastely. He wants there to be an affection between husband and wife that is characterized by modesty, so that with modesty, bashfulness, and the necessity of sex (as it were) she may render what is owed to the husband rather than demand it from him (cf. 1 Cor. 7.3), and so that she may trust that she performs the labors leading to children before God’s and the angels’ eyes and not be ashamed even of the private marriage bed, the night’s darkness, and her own closed-off bedroom, since she will have pondered how everything lies open to God’s eyes. Ceterum adulescentulas doceant, quasi filias suas: primum castitatem, quia adversus hanc magis in aetate florenti pugnat inimicus et virtus eius omnis contra feminas in umbilico ventris est; deinde ut ament viros suos, diligant filios. Quae doctrina est amare viros, cum hoc non in eloquio docentis, sed in corde amantis sit constitutum? Vult eas amare viros suos caste, vult inter virum et mulierem esse pudicam dilectionem, ut cum pudore et verecundia et quasi necessitate sexus reddat potius debitum viro quam ipsa exigat ab eo et opera liberorum ante oculos Dei et angelorum perpetrare se credat; ne illa erubescat etiam secretum cubile et noctis tenebras et clausum cubiculum suum, cum omnia patere Dei oculis cogitarit.⁶⁴

⁶⁴ Comm. Tit. 2.3–5.

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Jerome first puts into play the ancient stereotype that adolescent girls are prone to prurience,⁶⁵ and he gives it the appearance of biblical credibility through his allusion to Job 40.16b (“its power is in its belly’s navel”), where God warns Job about Behemoth’s strength. Jerome thus continues the exegetical tradition, dating at least as far back as Origen, of taking the “belly’s navel” in this passage to denote the genital region as the gateway to concupiscence.⁶⁶ Young wives must resist their ingrained sexual urges, he says, and “love (amare) their husbands chastely.” What “chastely” (caste) is supposed to mean here is explained in the very next sentence, where Jerome downgrades conjugal “love” from amor, with its potentially erotic connotation,⁶⁷ to dilectio, “affection,”⁶⁸ and he further neutralizes this “affection” by linking it to the ascetic virtues of pudor and verecundia.⁶⁹ He also speaks of marital sex as a necessity (necessitas) for the sake of procreation, which he indicates by his circumlocution for conception (opera liberorum perpetrare = “to perform the labors leading to children”). Finally, he emphasizes that the utmost modesty is required even on the marriage bed, for God and the angels keep their eyes on it.⁷⁰ Jerome’s most involved discussion of sexual ethics within Christian marriage is found in the part of his commentary on Ephesians that covers Paul’s comparison of the human nuptial bond to Christ’s “marriage” to the church (Eph. 5.22–7).⁷¹ Taking his cue from this analogy, Jerome reasons that because the mystical union between Christ and the church is without spot or wrinkle (Eph. 5.27), the bond between man and wife should also be holy (sancta).⁷² This sanctitas consists, above all, in abstinence from sex; the devout married couple ideally will never give in to sexual desire.⁷³ Some, he says, may object that Paul instructed Christian ⁶⁵ Cf. p. 133. ⁶⁶ Cf. Origen, Hom. Iob, p. 100; Athanasius, V. Ant. 5.3; Ps.-Athanasius, Virg. 33; Basil of Ancyra, Virg., p. 684; Jerome, Adv. Iov. 2.4; John Cassian, Coll. 5.4; Eucherius, Form. spir. intell. 6; Julian, Comm. Iob, pp. 282–3; Olympiodorus, Comm. Iob, p. 360. On the belly in Pauline thought, see K. O. Sandnes, Belly and Body in the Pauline Epistles (Cambridge, 2002). ⁶⁷ H. Pétré, Caritas: étude sur le vocabulaire latin de la charité chrétienne (Louvain, 1940), 25–100; V. Limone, “Amore e bellezza in Origene: una ricerca sui lessici erotico ed estetico nella traduzione latina del Commento al Cantico dei Cantici,” RivCCM 58 (2016): 123–42. ⁶⁸ See OLD s.v. diligo 2: “a milder emotion than amo”; cf. R. T. Otten, “Amor, caritas and dilectio: Some Observations on the Vocabulary of Love in the Exegetical Works of St. Ambrose,” in L. J. Engels, H. W. F. M. Hoppenbrouwers, and A. J. Vermeulen (eds.), Mélanges offerts à Christine Mohrmann (Utrecht, 1963), 73–83. ⁶⁹ Cf. K. Harper, From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, 2013), 37–42; K. Wilkinson, Women and Modesty in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, 2015), 58–9. ⁷⁰ Cf. pp. 210–11. ⁷¹ Cf. F. Ledegang, Mysterium Ecclesiae: Images of the Church and Its Members in Origen (Leuven, 2001), 141–6. ⁷² Sed videndum ut quomodo in Christo et in ecclesia sancta coniunctio est, ita et in viro et in muliere sancta sit copula (Comm. Eph. 5.22–3a). ⁷³ Erit sancta coniunctio et numquam corporis servient passionibus (Comm. Eph. 5.24). Jerome is echoing here Origen’s comments on this same passage that wives ought to be subject to their husbands living in a holy, passionless, and sinless manner (ἁγίως καὶ ἀπαθῶς καὶ ἀναμαρτήτως) (Origen, Comm. Eph. 5.24).

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husbands and wives at Corinth rarely to deprive each other of intercourse, lest Satan tempt them (1 Cor. 7.5). However, he points out that this is a concession Paul reluctantly made to their fleshly weakness (1 Cor. 7.6). Unlike the Corinthian Christians, to whom Paul wrote as “little children and sucklings” (parvuli atque lactantes), the Ephesian believers were spiritually enlightened and therefore were able to apprehend his teaching about conjugal sex. Jerome exhorts his readers to emulate the Ephesians in their spiritual freedom rather than the Corinthians in their spiritual servitude.⁷⁴ In his comments on the next verse (Eph. 5.28a), where Paul admonishes husbands to love their wives as they do their own bodies, Jerome again imposes an asceticizing reading: “Nobody loves his own body in a shameful way or esteems himself due to sexual intercourse, but he nourishes and takes care of his body as the vessel of his soul, so that the vessel does not break and its contents do not flow forth and spill out.”⁷⁵ He goes on to say that women should shun motherhood in order to become spiritually masculinized and Christlike: “But if she wants to serve Christ more than the world, she will cease to be a woman and will be called a man because we all desire to attain to the perfect man (cf. Eph. 4.13).”⁷⁶ In taking an extreme position against sex within marriage, Jerome acknowledged that he was putting himself in an uncomfortable spot: “In saying these things we are giving a foothold to heretics who think that all marriages without exception should be repudiated.”⁷⁷ The “heretics” in question are the Encratites, Gnostic Christians who abstained from marriage, wine, and meat as intrinsically evil things.⁷⁸ Elsewhere in his Pauline commentaries he also explicitly distances himself from Julius Cassianus, “the most astute heresiarch among the Encratites [who] considers every sexual union a man has with a woman to be foul.”⁷⁹

⁷⁴ Quod si nobis aliquis illud quod ad Corinthios scribitur opposuerit virum uxori debitum reddere et uxorem viro, animadvertat magnam inter Corinthios et Ephesios esse distantiam: illis, quasi parvulis atque lactantibus scribitur . . . et propterea eis conceditur ut post orationem ad idipsum redeant, ne temptentur a Satana, licet et ibi in consequentibus, non iuxta voluntatem, sed iuxta συγκατάβασιν se eis dicat ignoscere. Ephesii vero . . . omnia eis Christi aperuit sacramenta, aliter erudiuntur et habet unusquisque arbitrii liberam potestatem, vel Corinthios sequi, vel Ephesios et salvari aut servitute Corinthii, aut Ephesii libertate . . . Omni labore nitendum ut magis Ephesios quam Corinthios aemulemur (Comm. Eph. 5.24). ⁷⁵ Nemo autem corpus suum turpiter amat aut semetipsum propter coitum diligit; sed quasi vasculum animae suae fovet corpus et nutrit, ne fracto vase id quod continebatur effluat et erumpat (Comm. Eph. 5.28a). ⁷⁶ Sin autem Christo magis voluerit servire quam saeculo, mulier esse cessabit et dicetur vir, quia omnes in perfectum virum cupimus occurrere (Comm. Eph. 5.28a). ⁷⁷ Ista dicentes occasionem haereticis damus qui omnes omnino nuptias repudiandas putant (Comm. Eph. 5.25–7). ⁷⁸ See Irenaeus, Adv. haer. 1.28. ⁷⁹ Omnem coniunctionem masculi ad feminam immundam arbitratur Encratitarum vel acerrimus haeresiarches (Comm. Gal. 6.8). Cassianus taught in Egypt around 170. According to Clement of Alexandria (Strom. 3.13.92), he wrote two books, one an exegetical work of some kind and the second entitled On Abstinence or Eunuchry (Περὶ ἐγκρατείας ἢ περὶ εὐνουχίας).

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Jerome’s response to the specter of heresy is succinct: it is wanton lust between spouses that Paul condemns, not a holy union,⁸⁰ and furthermore, “the pleasures that are experienced from the embraces of prostitutes are condemned in a wife.”⁸¹ His Paul, then, does not tow the heretical line, and neither does he.⁸² As we have seen, Jerome stakes out his familiar position about the inherent superiority of virginity to all other forms of the Christian life, and often he does so explicitly, but at other times implicitly. Yet, for all that, he exercises restraint and does not try to force a square peg into a round hole by reading virginity into every imaginable verse, or at least not as frequently as we might expect from the prolific ascetic propagandist that he was. Consider, for example, his remarks on Gal. 6.9 (“Let us not give up doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up”): [Paul] exhorts those to persevere who are expecting a reward in this life for their good work. They do not realize that just as there is a time for sowing and for harvesting, so also in the present life the sowing concerns works which are sown in the Spirit or the flesh, whereas the harvest concerns the future judgment of works. They also do not realize that, depending on the quality and variety of the seeds that are sown, we produce in varying measures a hundredfold, sixtyfold, and thirtyfold crop (cf. Mt. 13.8). Nobody can harvest this field if he gives up, “for whoever perseveres until the end will be saved” (Mt. 10.22), and [Scripture] says, “Do not be one who gives up” (Is. 5.27). Moreover, how can we tire out doing good works when sinners rack up more evil works by the day? Cohortatur eos ad studium perseverantiae qui in hac vita mercedem boni operis exspectant nescientes quia, sicut in semine aliud sationis aliud messis est tempus, sic et in praesenti vita sementis est opera (quae nunc vel in Spiritu vel in carne mittuntur), messis vero operum futurum iudicium: et pro qualitate vel diversitate sementis diversas nos facere mensuras, centesimum, sexagesimum et tricesimum fructum. Quam segetem nemo potest metere deficiens: Qui enim perseveraverit usque ad finem, hic salvus erit et: Esto, ait, non deficiens. Quale est autem ut, cum peccatores cotidie in malis operibus augeantur, nos in bono opere lassemur?

Jerome connects the Galatians verse with the parable of the farmer who sows seed that yields a thirty-, sixty-, and hundredfold crop.⁸³ Most Christian authors before him had interpreted this fructification as the reward for widowhood, virginity, and ⁸⁰ Quibus breviter respondendum, passiones hic et immunditiam et luxuriam ab apostolo inter maritum et uxorem vetari, non sanctam coniunctionem (Comm. Eph. 5.25–7). ⁸¹ Voluptates autem quae de meretricum capiuntur amplexibus, in uxore damnatae (Comm. Eph. 5.25–7). ⁸² Jerome nevertheless was accused of being a crypto-Encratite; see Hunter, Marriage, Celibacy, and Heresy, 247, 285. ⁸³ Mt. 13.1–23; Mk. 4.1–20; Lk. 8.4–15.

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martyrdom, respectively.⁸⁴ Jerome, however, often referred it to the distinction between married women, widows, and virgins,⁸⁵ and in fact he had done so some two years earlier in Rome in his Libellus de virginitate servanda,⁸⁶ and so this interpretation certainly was familiar to him when he commented on Galatians. Yet, he opted not to voice it here, and his silence could be construed as a missed opportunity given that this was one of his favorite biblical proof texts for the ascetic hierarchy.

Toward a Monastic Clergy In the early 390s, a twenty-something priest named Nepotian, who was serving the church in Altinum in northeastern Italy, wrote a series of letters to Jerome. The nephew of Jerome’s lifelong friend Heliodorus, who had been bishop of Altinum since at least 381, Nepotian also was a practicing monk, and he was requesting guidance from the monk of Bethlehem about how best to integrate his own clerical and monastic vocations. In mid-393,⁸⁷ Jerome finally replied in the form of Ep. 52, as it is numbered in modern editions of his correspondence. This letter is an exemplary specimen of the epistolary genre παραινετικός,⁸⁸ a kind of letter in which the sender presents a positive model of behavior for the addressee to embrace alongside a negative model of behavior to reject.⁸⁹ The letter to Nepotian exhibits this defining feature of paraenesis from its opening period, where Jerome visualizes the life dedicated to Christ as a straight path and sins as the byways that diverge from it.⁹⁰ This feature recurs throughout the body of the letter with the opposition he sets up between the conduct recommended to Nepotian—e.g., on dress (9.1), fasting (12.1–2), alcohol consumption (11.3–4),

⁸⁴ A. Quacquarelli, Il triplice frutto della vita cristiana: 100, 60, e 30 (Matteo XIII, 8 nelle diverse interpretazioni) (Rome, 1953); P. F. Beatrice, “Il sermone De centesima, sexagesima, tricesima dello Ps. Cipriano e la teologia del martirio,” Augustinianum 19 (1979): 215–43; P. Sellew, “The Hundredfold Reward for Martyrs and Ascetics: Ps.-Cyprian, De centesima, sexagesima, tricesima,” StudPatr 36 (2001): 94–8. ⁸⁵ E.g., Epp. 66.2.1, 123.8.3; Adv. Iov. 1.3. ⁸⁶ Ep. 22.15.2. ⁸⁷ For this dating, see P. Nautin, “Études de chronologie hiéronymienne (393–397),” REAug 20 (1974): 251–84 (251–3, 277); S. Rebenich, Hieronymus und sein Kreis: Prosopographische und sozialgeschichtliche Untersuchungen (Stuttgart, 1992), 202n382. The letter is dated to 394 by J. Cavallera, Saint Jérôme: sa vie et son oeuvre, 2 vols. (Louvain, 1922), 1.183n2, and J. N. D. Kelly, Jerome: His Life, Writings, and Controversies (New York, 1975), 190n59. ⁸⁸ For a classification of Jerome’s letters according to ancient rhetorical standards, see Cain, The Letters of Jerome, 207–19. ⁸⁹ S. Stowers, Letter Writing in Greco-Roman Antiquity (Philadelphia, 1986), 94–106; J. Gammie, “Paraenetic Literature: Toward the Morphology of a Secondary Genre,” Semeia 50 (1990): 41–77. ⁹⁰ Petis, Nepotiane carissime, litteris transmarinis et crebro petis ut tibi brevi volumine digeram praecepta vivendi et qua ratione is qui saeculi militia derelicta vel monachus coeperit esse vel clericus rectum Christi tramitem teneat ne ad diversa vitiorum diverticula rapiatur (Ep. 52.1.1).

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gift-receipt etiquette (16.1), and how to act around women (5.4–8, 15.1)—and the conduct of sham clerics who have a dark side as businessmen (5.3), womanizers (5.5, 5.7), finely coiffed dandies (5.6), gluttonous gourmands (6.3), predatory legacy-hunters (6.4–5), blowhard preachers (8.1–2), and greedy almoners (9.2). The thrust of Jerome’s admonitions is to draw a sharp distinction between clergymen who are monks and those who are not,⁹¹ and there is no middle ground: they are either committed ascetics or morally bankrupt impostors. This polarity is articulated early on in the letter: “You despise gold, another loves it; you trample riches underfoot, he relentlessly hunts for them. You cherish silence, meekness, seclusion; he prefers garrulity, shamelessness, public places, busy streets, and doctors’ offices. When your ways of life are so much at odds, what solidarity can there be between you and him?”⁹² Now, Jerome did not believe that asceticism is the only prerequisite for presbyterial legitimacy—theological and scriptural competence also are essential—, but he did set it as the most foundational qualification. Not only that, but he also extended this requirement to everyone who takes holy orders, from the lowest-ranking (lectors) to the highest-ranking (bishops). This was not the first time that Jerome theorized in writing about the monastic clergy. Some seven years earlier, when he was working on his commentary on Titus, he found a biblical sounding board for his evolving ideas in Paul’s inventory of the church elder’s moral qualifications (Tit. 1.5–9).⁹³ He begins his exposition of this passage by arguing that in the primitive church “presbyter” and “bishop” were interchangeable titles for the same office and that the monarchical episcopate, the model of church governance in which the bishop holds the highest rank, emerged later as a result of schism.⁹⁴ This means that presbyters and bishops are of equal standing in the eyes of God in terms of their sacerdotal vocation.⁹⁵ Jerome encapsulates this principle for Nepotian when he says: Vnus Dominus, unum templum, unum sit etiam ministerium (“Let there be one Lord, one temple, and also one ministry”).⁹⁶ This tricolon is derived from the Pauline formula εἷς κύριος, ⁹¹ P. Rousseau, Ascetics, Authority, and the Church in the Age of Jerome and Cassian (Oxford, 1978), 126. ⁹² Tu aurum contemnis, alius diligit; tu calcas opes, ille sectatur. Tibi cordi est silentium mansuetudo secretum; illi verbositas adtrita frons fora placent et plateae ac medicorum tabernae. In tanta morum discordia quae potest esse concordia? (Ep. 52.5.4). ⁹³ As he does in the letter to Nepotian, Jerome employs a paraenetic approach, which he acknowledges mimics the structure of Paul’s argument: Hucusque quid non debeat habere episcopus sive presbyter apostoli sermone praeceptum est; nunc e contrario quid habere debeat explicatur (Comm. Tit. 1.6–7). ⁹⁴ Comm. Tit. 1.5b. Jerome held this view throughout his literary career (Epp. 69.3.4, 146.1–2); see R. Hennings, “Hieronymus zum Bischofsamt,” ZKG 108 (1997): 1–11. ⁹⁵ Ambrosiaster also believed that the “priesthood” (sacerdotium) is one ordo shared by presbyters and bishops, though he classified the bishop as essentially a first among equals (primus presbyter or summus sacerdos). See D. G. Hunter, “Rivalry between Presbyters and Deacons in the Roman Church,” VChr 71 (2017): 495–510. ⁹⁶ Ep. 52.7.3.

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μία πίστις, ἓν βάπτισμα, or unus Dominus, una fides, unum baptismum in the Latin version available to Jerome.⁹⁷ He retains the essence of Paul’s polyptotic anaphora but changes fides to templum to evoke the Aaronic spiritual lineage to which Christian ministers belong.⁹⁸ He also replaces baptismum with ministerium, and with the phrase unum ministerium he fits presbyters and bishops under the very same rubric as peer ministers of sacramental grace.⁹⁹ In his commentary on Titus, Jerome punctuates his argument about sacerdotal egality with both veiled and open censures of bishops who lord it over presbyters. He quotes 1 Pet. 5.1–2b,¹⁰⁰ the same passage he later would reference in other works to inculcate how bishops should treat presbyters as their ministerial equals.¹⁰¹ Bishops, he insists, should recognize that any hierarchical distinction is purely a matter of human custom and not of divine mandate and that they must preside over the church together with presbyters.¹⁰² Striking a more polemical note, he casts aspersions on “those who become puffed up from the episcopate and think that they have obtained not the stewardship of Christ but the power to command,”¹⁰³ and he adds that they “are not superior to all who have not been ordained bishops” but should consider themselves humbly appreciative of their vocation.¹⁰⁴ ⁹⁷ Eph. 4.5. ⁹⁸ Cf. Cyprian, Vnit. eccl. 4, who expands on Paul’s wording: Vnum corpus et unus Spiritus, una spes vocationis vestrae, unus Dominus, una fides, unum baptisma, unus Deus? ⁹⁹ John Chrysostom was of the same opinion (Hom. 1 Tim. 11.3 [PG 62:553]), as was Augustine, who believed that “to be a bishop, presbyter, or deacon was to belong to a ministering community, a college of clerics distinct from one another in function and rank but joined together by mutual affection for a single purpose” (A. Holder, “Styles of Clerical Address in the Letters of Augustine,” StudPatr 33 (1997): 100–4 (103–4)). ¹⁰⁰ “Now as an elder myself and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, as well as one who shares in the glory to be revealed, I exhort the elders among you to tend the flock of God that is in your charge, exercising the oversight, not under compulsion but willingly.” ¹⁰¹ Comm. Tit. 1.5b; cf. Ep. 52.7.4; Comm. Am. 8.4–6. ¹⁰² Sicut ergo presbyteri sciunt se ex ecclesiae consuetudine ei qui sibi praepositus fuerit esse subiectos, ita episcopi noverint se magis consuetudine quam dispositionis dominicae veritate presbyteris esse maiores et in commune debere ecclesiam regere (Comm. Tit. 1.5b). Similarly, he says that all clergymen must remember that they are fellow slaves with, not rulers over, their lay brothers and sisters in Christ: Sciat itaque episcopus et presbyter sibi populum conservum esse, non servum (Comm. Tit. 1.6–7; cf. Comm. Eph. 5.21). ¹⁰³ Despot-like arrogance on the part of bishops is condemned by other ecclesiastical writers as well, including Gregory of Nazianzus (Orat. 21.9), Julian Pomerius (V. cont. 1.13.1; cf. 1.21.3, on corrupt priests exercising a dominatio tyrannica over their flock), and Gregory the Great (Reg. past. 2.6). Likewise, Origen says that bishops should remember that they are called non ad principatum . . . sed ad servitutem totius ecclesiae (Ruf. trans. Hom. vis. Is. 6 6.1 [PG 13:239]), and Ambrose adds that they should treat their lower clergy as members of their own body (Off. 2.134); cf. R. Gryson, Le prêtre selon saint Ambroise (Louvain, 1968), 311–17. John Chrysostom extends this ideal to the priest’s relations with the members of his congregation: he must act tenderly toward them as if they were his own children (Sacerd. 5.4) and must not regard himself as a lord over their faith but as their counselor (Hom. Eph. 11.5 [PG 62:87]). ¹⁰⁴ Deinde etiam illud est inferendum adversum eos qui de episcopatu intumescunt et putant se non dispensationem Christi, sed imperium consecutos: quia non statim omnibus his meliores sint, quicumque episcopi non fuerint ordinati et ex eo quod ipsi electi sunt se magis existiment comprobatos (Comm. Tit. 1.6–7).

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Once he collapses the hierarchical distinction between priests and bishops, Jerome argues that the moral character of the individual clergyman is the only thing that counts in the end, and Paul’s catalogue of clerical virtues—refracted of course by the Hieronymian ascetic prism, as we will see below—serves as the measuring stick for moral excellence. Jerome repeatedly emphasizes how all higher clergymen are held to the same strict standard and must behave in a way that befits their calling. They must excel the laity in how they live and speak, for “it severely undermines Christ’s church for laypeople to be morally superior to clergymen,”¹⁰⁵ and if their conduct is not above reproach, then they lose the moral authority to rebuke others.¹⁰⁶ He adopts the Origenian idea that in Scripture “sons” metaphorically refer to thoughts and “daughters” to deeds,¹⁰⁷ and that the clergyman, like an attentive father, must keep both of these under control so that he is not blemished by any surreptitious vices.¹⁰⁸ The closely related ideal that one’s deeds and words always be in lockstep, a topos of early Christian moral exhortation,¹⁰⁹ is given a clerical turn by Jerome: “He who will be a ruler of the church should have eloquence accompanied by integrity of life, lest works be mute without speech and words be ashamed in the absence of deeds.”¹¹⁰

¹⁰⁵ Vnde non solum episcopi, presbyteri et diaconi debent magnopere providere ut cunctum populum cui praesident conversatione et sermone praecedant . . . quia vehementer ecclesiam Christi destruit meliores laicos esse quam clericos (Comm. Tit. 2.15b). The usage of the substantive clericus (κληρικός) to mean any ordained minister of the church is attested already in Cyprian and had become standard by the late fourth century. It is derived from the Christian neologism clerus (κλῆρος), whose meaning as “clergy” is attested for the first time in Latin literature starting in the early third century; see J. Congar, Jalons pour une théologie du laïcat (Paris, 1961), 19–45; D. Rankin, Tertullian and the Church (Cambridge, 1995), 127–8. The first Greek author on record to employ κλῆρος in the sense of “clergy” appears to have been Clement of Alexandria (Q. div. salv. 42.2). ¹⁰⁶ Quomodo enim potest praeses ecclesiae auferre malum de medio eius qui in delictum simile corruerit? Aut qua libertate corripere peccantem, cum tacitus sibi ipse respondeat eadem admisisse quae corripit? (Comm. Tit. 1.6–7); cf. Comm. Tit. 2.6–7: Denique qui impudicus est, quamvis disertus sit, si ad castitatem audientes cohortetur, sermo eius infirmus est et auctoritatem non habet cohortandi. He revisits this theme in other writings; cf. Ep. 52.7.2: Non confundant opera sermonem tuum, ne cum in ecclesia loqueris tacitus quilibet respondeat: cur ergo haec ipse non facis?; 69.8.4: Perdit enim auctoritatem docendi, cuius sermo opere destruitur; Comm. Agg. 1.11. Many other early Christian writers voice this same concern that clergymen (or any Christian, for that matter) lose all credibility for failing to practice what they preach; cf. Polycarp, Ep. ad Php. 11.2; Gregory of Nazianzus, Orat. 2.71; John Chrysostom, Sacerd. 5.3; Ambrose, Off. 2.86–90; Ep. 1.6.2; Augustine, Doctr. chr. 4.27; Julian Pomerius, V. cont. 1.15. ¹⁰⁷ Cf. Origen, Hom. Hier. 5.7 (SC 232:296–8); Frag. Hier. 48.27 (GCS 6:222–3). ¹⁰⁸ Ad extremum hoc dicendum est: in Scripturis “filios” λογισμούς id est “cogitationes,” “filias” vero πράξεις id est “opera” intellegi, et eum nunc praecipi debere episcopum fieri qui et cogitationes et opera in sua habeat potestate et vere credat in Christo et nulla subrepentium vitiorum labe maculetur (Comm. Tit. 1.6–7). ¹⁰⁹ Cf. Cyprian, Bon. pat. 3; Basil, Ep. 42.4; Gregory of Nyssa, Virg. 23.1; Gregory of Nazianzus, Orat. 2.69; Jerome, Epp. 79.2.4, 125.7.1, 133.13.3; Anon., Hist. mon. Aeg. 8.16, 60; Augustine, Enarr. in Ps. 30 2.2.3; Palladius, Hist. Laus. 47.13–14; Salvian, Ad eccl. 3.18.80; Theodoret, Hist. rel. 17.8; Julian Pomerius, V. cont. 1.17; Caesarius of Arles, Serm. 75.2. For discussion of this topos, see Cain, Jerome and the Monastic Clergy, 174–7. ¹¹⁰ Qui ecclesiae futurus est princeps habeat eloquentiam cum vitae integritate sociatam, ne opera absque sermone sint tacita et dicta, factis deficientibus, erubescant (Comm. Tit. 1.10–11).

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Jerome’s stipulation that personal holiness be the most important criterion for appointment to the higher clergy did not always jibe with contemporary reality as he saw it. In his commentary on Galatians he complains about “a great many appointed to the episcopate not because God has deemed them worthy but because they have garnered the favor of the common people.”¹¹¹ In his commentary on Titus he again vents about bogus episcopal appointments: We currently observe a great many people bestowing appointments through favor: they do not seek out candidates who can be of good use to the church . . . but rather those either they themselves like or who have won them over by flattery, or people for whom one of the church elders has campaigned and—to keep quiet about more heinous doings—those who have become clergymen through bribery. At nunc cernimus plurimos hanc rem beneficio facere, ut non quaerant eos qui possunt ecclesiae plus prodesse . . . sed quos vel ipsi amant, vel quorum sunt obsequiis deliniti, vel pro quibus maiorum quispiam rogaverit et, ut deteriora taceam, qui ut clerici fierent muneribus impetrarunt.¹¹²

One of Paul’s prescriptions for the church elder is that he be σώφρων (Tit. 1.8), an adjective which modern English translations of the Bible render here as “prudent” (NRSV), “sensible” (NASB), “self-controlled” (NIV, NRSV), and the like. The Latin version Jerome had in hand translated σώφρων as prudens, but he criticizes this choice and emends it to pudicus, “chaste.”¹¹³ Reflecting the tendency of patristic writers to label σωφροσύνη as the virtue of chastity,¹¹⁴ Jerome puts an asceticizing slant on it and from there argues for the compulsory sexual continence of priests and bishops, an idea which was gaining currency in the late fourth century owing to the influence of the writings of Ambrosiaster, Ambrose, Popes

¹¹¹ Nunc videmus plurimos non Dei iudicio, sed redempto favore vulgi in sacerdotium subrogari (Comm. Gal. 1.1); for a similar criticism, see Jerome, Adv. Iov. 1.34. See also Ep. 69.9.4, where Jerome decries spontaneous acclamations of inexperienced laymen to the episcopate, a not uncommon phenomenon in his day; see R. Gryson, “Les élections épiscopales en Occident au IVe siècle,” RHE 75 (1980): 257–83. ¹¹² Comm. Tit. 1.5b. ¹¹³ Sit autem episcopus et pudicus, quem Graeci σώφρονα vocant et Latinus interpres, verbi ambiguitate deceptus, pro “pudico” “prudentem” transtulit. Si autem laicis imperatur ut propter orationem abstineant se ab uxorum coitu, quid de episcopo sentiendum est qui cotidie pro suis populique peccatis illibatas Deo oblaturus est victimas? (Comm. Tit. 1.8–9). ¹¹⁴ H. F. North, Sophrosyne: Self-Knowledge and Self-Restraint in Greek Literature (Ithaca, NY, 1966), 312–79; V. Wimbush, “Sophrosyne: Greco-Roman Origins of a Type of Ascetic Behavior,” in J. E. Goehring (ed.), Gnosticism and the Early Christian World (Sonoma, 1990), 89–102; K. Chew, “The Chaste and the Chased: ΣΩΦΡΟΣΥΝΗ, Female Martyrs and Novelistic Heroines,” SyllCl 14 (2003): 205–22; M. B. Zorzi, “The Use of the Terms ἁγνεία, παρθενία, σωφροσύνη, and ἐγκράτεια in the Symposium of Methodius of Olympus,” VChr 63 (2009): 138–68. Cf. A. Rademaker, Sophrosyne and the Rhetoric of Self-Restraint: Polysemy and Persuasive Use of an Ancient Greek Value Term (Leiden, 2005).

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Damasus and Siricius, and especially Jerome himself,¹¹⁵ who regarded celibacy as the cardinal clerical virtue. After setting his definitional terms for σώφρων, Jerome summarizes 1 Sam. 21.1–6, where David asks the priest Ahimelech for some bread to feed his hungry troops, and Ahimelech gives him the only food he has, the bread of the Presence, but only after being assured that the soldiers have kept themselves ritually pure through sexual abstinence. He proceeds to make a typological connection between this episode and the offering of the Eucharist, stating that the bread of the Presence prefigures Christ’s body as the Eucharistic host.¹¹⁶ His point is that if laymen are required to abstain from sex before eating consecrated bread, then an ordained minister of God certainly should abstain so that he does not defile the Eucharistic elements.¹¹⁷ To solidify his case, Jerome brings in 1 Cor. 7.5, a favorite Pauline text among ascetic writers,¹¹⁸ and says: “If laymen are commanded to abstain from sexual intercourse with their wives for the sake of prayer (cf. 1 Cor. 7.5), what ought one to think of a bishop, who daily is to offer spotless sacrifices for his own sins and the people’s?”¹¹⁹ The church’s minister, moreover, must possess exemplary chastity (castitas propria) and a sexual purity befitting his clerical state (pudicitia sacerdotalis).¹²⁰ ¹¹⁵ J.-P. Audet, Mariage et célibat dans le service pastoral de l’église (Paris, 1967), 165–71; Hunter, Marriage, Celibacy, and Heresy, 213–19. ¹¹⁶ Quantum interest inter propositionis panes et corpus Christi? Quae differentia inter umbram et corpora, inter imaginem et veritatem, inter exemplaria futurorum et ea ipsa quae per exemplaria praefigurabantur (Comm. Tit. 1.8–9). Several years later Jerome cited 1 Sam. 21.4 together with Ex. 19.15 in the same Eucharistic context: Panes enim propositionis, quasi corpus Christi, de uxorum cubilibus consurgentes edere non poterant. Et nobis in transitu est contemplandum quod dixit: Si mundi sunt pueri ab uxoribus? Videlicet quod ad munditias corporis Christi, omnis coitus immundus sit (Adv. Iov. 1.20). ¹¹⁷ . . . sic et castitas propria et, ut ita dixerim, pudicitia sacerdotalis, ut non solum ab opere se immundo abstineat, sed etiam a iactu oculi et cogitationis errore mens Christi corpus confectura sit libera (Comm. Tit. 1.8–9). As Jerome later reminded Nepotian, the higher clergyman not only should be celibate himself but also should persuade others to be celibate: Praedicator continentiae nuptias ne conciliet. Qui apostolum legit: “superest ut et qui habent uxores sic sint quasi non habentes,” cur virginem cogit ut nubat? Qui de monogamia sacerdos est quare viduam hortatur ut digama sit? (Ep. 52.16.1). ¹¹⁸ Clark, Reading Renunciation, 308–12, 355–7, 362–3; D. G. Hunter, “The Reception and Interpretation of Paul in Late Antiquity: 1 Corinthians 7 and the Ascetic Debates,” in L. di Tommaso and L. Turescu (eds.), The Reception and Interpretation of the Bible in Late Antiquity (Leiden, 2008), 163–91. For Jerome’s deployment of 1 Cor. 7 in the debate about virginity’s superiority, see Duval, L’affaire Jovinien, 54, 56, 140–1, 147–8, 171, 187, 328. ¹¹⁹ Si autem laicis imperatur ut propter orationem abstineant se ab uxorum coitu, quid de episcopo sentiendum est qui cotidie pro suis populique peccatis illibatas deo oblaturus est victimas? (Comm. Tit. 1.8–9). The linkage of 1 Cor. 7.5 and the David-Ahimelech story had already been made by Origen (Clark, Reading Renunciation, 279–81; Duval, L’affaire Jovinien, 120–1). Jerome connects these two texts again in his homily De exodo in vigilia Paschae ll. 120–30: Vt autem sciatis, quoniam quicumque uxori debitum reddit, vacare non potest orationi nec de carnibus agni comedere . . . et David cum venisset ad Abimelech sacerdotem, interrogatur si mundi sunt pueri, ad quem respondit purificatos eos esse ab heri et nudiustertius. Si autem panes propositionis non poterant ab iis qui uxores suas tetigerant comedi, quanto magis panis ille, qui de caelo descendit, non potest ab his, qui coniugalibus paulo ante haesere conplexibus, violari atque contingi? ¹²⁰ Quomodo itaque mansuetudo, patientia, sobrietas, moderatio, abstinentia lucri, hospitalitas quoque et benignitas praecipue esse debent in episcopo et inter cunctos laicos eminentia, sic et castitas

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Slightly further on, when commenting on Paul’s injunction in Tit. 1.8 that the bishop be abstinens (ἐγκρατής), Jerome again emphasizes the model bishop’s sexual abstinence, describing his resilience against lust in terms reminiscent of the Stoic ideal of the wise man who is unmoved by the emotional disturbances (perturbationes animi) of anger, melancholy, fear, and elation.¹²¹ Jerome also again mentions his exceptionality vis-à-vis the laity: virtuousness is demanded of all Christians, but the higher clergyman is held to a much higher standard as a leader of the flock and therefore he must set the right example by his continence.¹²² Elaborating on Paul’s requirement that the bishop not be an alcoholic (non vinolentum; μὴ πάροινον) (Tit. 1.7),¹²³ Jerome leads with colorful sketches of obnoxious drunken antics—first of the bishop’s cycling through wine-fueled laughing and crying fits,¹²⁴ and then of other outrageous behaviors that drunkards exhibit.¹²⁵ What is worse, he adds, alcohol spikes lust (libido) and makes it impossible for the clergyman to remain chaste (castus) as long as he is under its influence.¹²⁶ He continues:

propria et, ut ita dixerim, pudicitia sacerdotalis, ut non solum ab opere se immundo abstineat, sed etiam a iactu oculi et cogitationis errore mens Christi corpus confectura sit libera (Comm. Tit. 1.8–9). ¹²¹ Sit quoque episcopus et abstinens, non tantum, ut quidam putant, a libidine et ab uxoris amplexu, sed ab omnibus animi perturbationibus: ne ad iracundiam concitetur, ne illum tristitia deiciat, ne terror exagitet, ne laetitia immoderata sustollat (Comm. Tit. 1.8–9); note the fourfold asyndetic anaphora, which enhances the rhetorical force of Jerome’s point. In Ep. 52.13.1 he similarly describes the ideal priest’s imperviousness to the emotional fluctuations of the human condition: Nec laude extollitur nec vituperatione frangitur, non divitiis tumet non contrahitur paupertate, et laeta contemnit et tristia (cf. John Cassian, Inst. coen. 9.13; Julian Pomerius, V. cont. 1.8.1). The Stoics taught that the wise man must rid himself completely of all passions in order to live a perfectly rational existence in accordance with nature; see M. Nussbaum, “The Stoics on the Extirpation of the Passions,” Apeiron 20 (1987): 129–77. In the way he conceived of the passions and their adverse effect on the soul Jerome was influenced by Stoicism but also by other philosophical traditions; see Canellis, “Saint Jérôme et les passions.” ¹²² Et si exigitur ab omnibus, quanto magis ab episcopo, qui patiens et mansuetus debet vitia ferre peccantium, consolari pusillanimes, sustentare infirmos, nulli malum pro malo reddere, sed vincere in bono malum (Comm. Tit. 1.8–9). ¹²³ Cf. A. Merkt, “Reading Paul and Drinking Wine,” in H.-U. Weidemann (ed.), Asceticism and Exegesis in Early Christianity: The Reception of New Testament Texts in Ancient Ascetic Discourses (Göttingen, 2013), 69–77. ¹²⁴ Quale est autem episcopum videre vinolentum, ut sensu occupato vel exaltet risum contra grauitatis decorem et labiis dissolutis cachinnet, vel, si paululum tristis cuiusdam rei fuerit recordatus, inter pocula in singultus prorumpat et lacrimas (Comm. Tit. 1.6–7). For another satiric description of drunken churchmen, see Jerome, Comm. Es. 5.11–12. ¹²⁵ Longum est ire per singula et insanias quas ebrietas suggerit explicare: videas alios, pocula in tela vertentes, scyphum in faciem iacere convivae, alium scissis vestibus in vulnera aliena proruere, alios clamare, alios dormitare; qui plus biberit fortior computatur; accusationis occasio est adiuratum per regem frequentius non bibisse; vomunt ut bibant, bibunt ut vomant; digestio ventris et guttur uno occupantur officio (Comm. Tit. 1.6–7). ¹²⁶ Et ubicumque saturitas atque ebrietas fuerit, ibi libido dominatur. Specta ventrem et genitalia: pro qualitate vitiorum ordo membrorum; numquam ego ebrium castum putabo qui, et si vino consopitus dormierit, tamen potuit peccare per vinum (Comm. Tit. 1.6–7). Jerome repeats this claim elsewhere: see Comm. Gal. 5.19–21; Comm. Es. 5.22; Adv. Iov. 1.34; Epp. 52.11.4, 69.9.1. For other iterations of this idea, cf. Tertullian, Ieiun. 1; Julian Pomerius, V. cont. 3.6.1.

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Are we surprised that the Apostle condemned drunkenness in bishops and priests, given that the old Law stipulates that priests drink no wine at all when they enter the temple to make offerings to God (cf. Lev. 10.9), and that the Nazirite—during the time he keeps his sacred hair long and does not look on anything ceremonially unclean or dead—abstain from wine, raisins, weaker drinks usually made from grape-skins, and all alcoholic beverages which remove the mind from a state of complete soundness? (cf. Num. 6.1–6) Each person can say what he wants, I speak my own conscience: I know that abstinence has done me harm when interrupted but has benefited me once renewed. Miramur autem apostolum in episcopis sive presbyteris damnasse vinolentiam, cum in veteri quoque lege praeceptum sit sacerdotes, cum ingrediuntur templum ministrare Deo, vinum omnino non bibere et Nazaraeum, quamdiu sanctam comam nutriat et nihil contaminatum, nihil mortale conspiciat, et a vino abstinere et ab uva passa et a dilutiori quae solet ex vinaceis fieri potione omnique sicera quae mentem ab integra sanitate pervertit? Dicat quisque quod volet, ego loquor conscientiam meam: scio mihi abstinentiam et nocuisse intermissam et profuisse repetitam.¹²⁷

Jerome here makes a subtle shift from Paul’s condemnation of clerical intoxication to two Levitical laws that forbid the consumption of any alcohol whatsoever. He thus elides both Testaments to make it sound as if Scripture as a whole instates a blanket prohibition against God’s ministers drinking alcohol. As a finishing touch, he weighs in with his own personal authority as a practicing ascetic to recommend the clergy’s complete abstention from all alcoholic beverages on the ground that these “remove the mind from a state of complete soundness.”¹²⁸ When writing to Nepotian several years later, he recycled this same line of argumentation but presented it in a more streamlined and unambiguous way: “Never smell of wine . . . Both the Apostle and the old Law condemn priests who drink wine: those who serve the altar should not drink wine . . . Whatever intoxicates and upsets the equilibrium of the mind, avoid as you would wine.”¹²⁹ ¹²⁷ Comm. Tit. 1.6–7. ¹²⁸ In Hom. 1 Tim. 11.1 (PG 62:555) John Chrysostom similarly explains why the clergyman should avoid wine: Παραφορὰν γὰρ ἐργάζεται . . . καὶ κἂν μὴ μέθην ἐργάσηται, διαχεῖ τὸ τῆς ψυχῆς εὔτονον, διαλύει τὸ συγκεκροτημένον. Jerome frequently speaks of the mind-altering effects of wine and other potable intoxicants (e.g., Comm. Es. 5.11–12, 24.7–13, 28.5–8; Comm. Hiez. 13.44; Comm. Am. 2.9–11, 4.1–3). ¹²⁹ Numquam vinum redoleas . . . Vinolentos sacerdotes et apostolus damnat et vetus lex prohibet. Qui altari serviunt vinum et siceram non bibant. Sicera Hebraeo sermone omnis potio nuncupatur quae inebriare potest . . . Quidquid inebriat et statum mentis evertit fuge similiter ut vinum (Ep. 52.11.2–3). Julian Pomerius’s prohibition is as far-reaching as Jerome’s: In vini enim usu non a vino tantum sed ab omnibus quae accipientes inebriant . . . abstinebit (V. cont. 2.23.2). The word sicera (σίκερα) ultimately comes from the Hebrew ‫( שׁכר‬šēkār), which probably is best taken as a generic term for “intoxicants”; see J. M. Sasson, “The Blood of Grapes: Viticulture and Intoxication in the Hebrew Bible,” in L. Milano (ed.), Drinking in Ancient Societies (Padova, 1994), 399–419 (400). In Ep. 52.11.3 Jerome glosses sicera as “any beverage that is able to intoxicate, whether it is made from grain or fruit juices, or from

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Like sobriety, shunning wealth is one of the main regulations set down for clergymen in the New Testament,¹³⁰ and Jerome and other theorists of clerical officia joined this chorus.¹³¹ In Tit. 1.7 Paul says that the church elder should not be αἰσχροκερδής, “fond of dishonest gain” or “greedy.” Jerome steers his comments in an ascetic direction: The pursuit of dishonest gain must be anathema to the bishop-to-be . . . The bishop who desires to be an imitator of the Apostle must be content with having only food and clothing (cf. 1 Tim. 6.8). Those who serve at the altar live from the altar (cf. 1 Cor. 9.13). They “live,” he says; they do not get rich. This is why our money-belt has no money and we wear only one tunic (cf. Mt. 10.9–10), and we do not think about tomorrow (cf. Mt. 6.34). The longing for dishonest gain is thinking more than one should about present things. Turpis quoque lucri appetitus ab eo qui episcopus futurus est esse debet alienus . . . Episcopus, qui imitator esse apostoli cupit, habens victum et vestitum his tantum debet esse contentus. Qui altario serviunt de altario vivunt. Vivunt, inquit, non divites fiunt. Vnde et aes nobis excutitur zona et una tantum tunica induimur nec de crastino cogitamus. Turpis lucri appetitio est plusquam de praesentibus cogitare.¹³²

In Jerome’s day, the incomes of higher clergy were supplied by their individual church’s revenue,¹³³ the two principal sources of which typically were rents from properties bequeathed by wealthy benefactors and offertory donations by the faithful.¹³⁴ Clergymen serving affluent churches in urban centers could probably expect to live without much worry on their ecclesiastical salarium, but many who served small rural churches received such paltry stipends that they had to practice

honeycomb boiled down into a crude, sweet drink, or from the juice of pressed dates, or from the thick syrup strained from a decoction of corn” (sicera Hebraeo sermone omnis potio nuncupatur quae inebriare potest, sive illa frumento conficitur sive pomorum suco aut favi decoquuntur in dulcem et barbaram potionem aut palmarum fructus exprimuntur in liquorem coctisque frugibus aqua pinguior colatur); cf. Comm. Gal. 5.19–21: Ebrietas autem tam ex vino quam ex caeteris bibendi generibus quae vario modo conficiuntur potest accidere; ex quo et de sanctis dicitur: vinum et siceram non bibet. Sicera interpretatur ebrietas et, ne quis vinum non bibens aliud sibi putaret bibendum, exclusa causatio est, dum omne quod inebriare potest cum vino pariter aufertur. ¹³⁰ Cf. 1 Tim. 3.8; 2 Tim. 2.4; Tit. 1.11; 1 Pet. 5.2. For this theme in subapostolic literature, see also Polycarp, Ep. ad Php. 6.1, 11.1. ¹³¹ Gregory of Nazianzus, Orat. 2.8, 21.9; Jerome, Epp. 52.9.1–2, 69.9.2; Ambrose, Off. 1.28, 184, 246; 2.67, 133; 3.9; John Chrysostom, Sacerd. 4.1–2; Paulinus of Milan, V. Ambr. 41.1; John Cassian, Coll. 4.20; Gregory the Great, Reg. past. 1.8; Isidore of Seville, Eccl. off. 2.2.1; cf. Gryson, Le prêtre, 301–5; cf. Athanasius, V. Ant. 30.2. ¹³² Comm. Tit. 1.6–7. ¹³³ R. Finn, Almsgiving in the Later Roman Empire: Christian Promotion and Practice, 313–450 (Oxford, 2006), 49–50. ¹³⁴ On clerical salaries in Late Antiquity, see A. H. M. Jones, “Church Finance in the Fifth and Sixth Centuries,” JThS n.s. 11 (1960): 84–94; M. Réveillaud, “Pastorat et salariat au cours des premiers siècles de l’Église,” EThR 41 (1966): 27–41; G. Scöllgen, Die Anfänge der Professionalisierung des Klerus und das kirchliche Amt in der Syrischen Didaskalie (Münster, 1998), 34–100.

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a secular occupation alongside their sacerdotal one in order to make ends meet.¹³⁵ Nevertheless, in the above-quoted passage Jerome envisages not small-town clergymen who scrape by with modest supplemental incomes but rather greedy clergymen who are on the make to get rich through “dishonest gain.” He does not mention any contemporary money-making schemes, such as selling church offices,¹³⁶ embezzling the church’s treasury,¹³⁷ or pursuing lucrative business ventures on the side.¹³⁸ He instead speaks in generalizing terms about how higher clergymen should live solely off their ecclesiastical incomes, which, he implies by his quotations of 1 Tim. 6.8 and 1 Cor. 9.13,¹³⁹ should be just enough to provide for the basic necessities of life.¹⁴⁰ The showing of hospitality to strangers was considered one of the most important virtues in early Christian asceticism. The anonymous author of the Life of Olympias, for instance, dubbed it the “crown of the virtues” (κορωνὶς τῶν κατορθωμάτων).¹⁴¹ In fourth-century Egyptian monastic culture it was regarded as a duty of the highest priority.¹⁴² Apollo of Bawit would encourage this practice, citing the biblical precedents of Abraham and Lot,¹⁴³ and giving his fellow monks the pithy reminder: “You have seen your brother, you have seen your God.”¹⁴⁴ Jerome, too, included hospitality among the requisite virtues of the monastic clergyman,¹⁴⁵ enjoining Nepotian: “Your modest table should host the poor and

¹³⁵ See G. Schmelz, Kirchliche Amtsträger im spätantiken Äegypten nach den Aussagen der griechischen und koptischen Papyri und Ostraka (Munich, 2002), 232–41. ¹³⁶ S. Huebner, “Currencies of Power: The Venality of Offices in the Later Roman Empire,” in A. Cain and N. Lenski (eds.), The Power of Religion in Late Antiquity (Aldershot, 2009), 167–79. ¹³⁷ As a case in point, Augustine’s episcopal colleague Paul of Cataquas undewrote his own extravagant lifestyle by swindling funds from his own church, committing tax evasion, and purchasing real estate through fraudulent means (Augustine, Ep. 85.2, 96.2). ¹³⁸ For proscriptions against clergymen engaging in commerce for profit, see Cyprian, Ep. 1.1.2; Ambrosiaster, Quaest. 46.1; Comm. 2 Tim. 2.4; Ambrose, Off. 1.185, 2.67; Jerome, Ep. 52.5.3; John Chrysostom, Sacerd. 6.4; Subintr. 6; Julian Pomerius, V. cont. 1.13.2, 1.21.1. ¹³⁹ He quotes these two verses in tandem, and in the very same context, in his letter to Nepotian (Ep. 52.5.2). He references 1 Tim. 6.8 over a dozen other times in his works, in most cases as a biblical proof text for monastic poverty or to condemn avarice. In Ep. 69.9.2 he applies it specifically to clerical poverty, and in Ep. 53.11.3 he evokes this verse to say that food and clothing constitute the Christian’s divitiae (cf. Gregory of Nyssa, V. Macr. 11, 29; Gregory of Nazianzus, Orat. 18.8, 43.60). ¹⁴⁰ Basil likewise maintains that the clergy should not possess more than is absolutely necessary; see Reg. mor. 47, 48, 70, with K. Koschorke, Spuren der alten Liebe: Studien zum Kirchenbegriff des Basilius von Caesarea (Freiburg, 1991), 214–15; cf. Julian Pomerius, V. cont. 2.10.2, 2.11. ¹⁴¹ Anon., V. Olymp. 1; A.-M. Malingrey (ed.), Jean Chrysostome, Lettres à Olympias; Vie anonyme d’Olympias (Paris, 1968), 406. ¹⁴² A. Cain, The Greek Historia monachorum in Aegypto: Monastic Hagiography in the Late Fourth Century (Oxford, 2016), 237–9. ¹⁴³ In early monastic literature Abraham frequently is held up as a scriptural paradigm for monastic hospitality; cf. Apoph. patr. Nisterus 2; Theodoret, Hist. rel. 17.7. On Lot’s hospitality, see Anon., 1 Clem. 11.1–2; cf. T. D. Alexander, “Lot’s Hospitality: A Clue to his Righteousness,” JBL 104 (1985): 289–91. Like Apollo, Evagrius of Pontus cites both Abraham and Lot as archetypal hosts; see R. Sinkewicz, Evagrius of Pontus: The Greek Ascetic Corpus (Oxford, 2003), 20, 51, 241. ¹⁴⁴ Anon., Hist. mon. Aeg. 8.55–6. ¹⁴⁵ Jerome, Ep. 52.3.2: Ieiunia, chameuniae, huc illucque discursus, peregrinorum susceptio, defensio pauperum, standi in oratione perseverantia, visitatio languentium, labor manuum unde praebeantur

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travelers, and Christ should be a dinner guest along with them.”¹⁴⁶ Jerome was taking his cue from Paul, who lists being hospitable (φιλόξενος) first in his catalogue of clerical virtues (Tit. 1.8–9). In commenting on this attribute, Jerome mentions its frontal position in Paul’s list and traces the principle of generous hospitality back to Jesus’s words in Mt. 25.35 (“For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me”), and he emphasizes that the bishop must receive every guest who comes his way, without exception.¹⁴⁷ However, he laments that many bishops fall short of this and are condemned by their contemporary Christians for it, and to give his point an air of biblical authority, he quotes several passages that reprove church authorities for failing to show hospitality (3 Jn. 5–7, 9–11; Rev. 1.1). He then turns up the temperature of his critique and rebukes petty priests and bishops who harass and even excommunicate laypeople out of jealousy for being more financially generous to the community than they are.¹⁴⁸ After listing the church elder’s moral qualifications in Tit. 1.8, Paul turns his attention in the next verse to teaching credentials: “He must have a firm grasp of the word that is trustworthy in accordance with the teaching, so that he may be able both to preach with sound doctrine and to refute those who contradict it.” In the Hieronymian model of the monastic clergy, the clergyman must be a trained expert in Scripture so that he can ably defend orthodox doctrine. Jerome thus wrote to Nepotian: “Read divine Scripture continually, or rather, never let the sacred book leave your hands. Learn, that you may teach. Get a firm grasp of the word that is trustworthy in accordance with the teaching so that you may be able to preach sound doctrine and refute those who contradict it.”¹⁴⁹ In the second half of this quotation Jerome paraphrases Tit. 1.9 to make the same conceptual link elemosynae . . . Cf. Cyprian, Ep. 7.2; Ambrose, Off. 1.39, 86; 2.103, 107, 109, 126–7; John Chrysostom, Sacerd. 3.16; Julian Pomerius, V. cont. 1.25.1. ¹⁴⁶ Mensulam tuam pauperes et peregrini et cum illis Christus conviva noverit (Ep. 52.5.3). Cf. Paulinus of Nola, Carm. 16.287–9: St. Felix’s only dinner guests were the poor. Nepotian is said to have excelled at offering hospitality (Ep. 60.10.5); Possidius makes a similar claim about Augustine (V. Aug. 22.2, 6). Chrysostom likewise says that Bishop Flavian was so generous in hosting strangers that his home was even said to belong to them (Hom. 1 Gen. (PG 54:585)). Theodoret praises Abraham the monastic bishop of Carrhae, who while he adopted a very severe ascetic regimen for himself nevertheless was extraordinarily generous to the strangers he hosted, giving them the finest wine he could procure and meals with choice fish and vegetables (Hist. rel. 17.7). ¹⁴⁷ Ante omnia hospitalitas futuro episcopo denuntiatur. Si enim omnes illud de evangelio audire desiderant: Hospes fui et suscepistis me, quanto magis episcopus cuius domus omnium commune esse debet hospitium! Laicus enim unum aut duos aut paucos recipiens implebit hospitalitatis officium. Episcopus, nisi omnes receperit, inhumanus est (Comm. Tit. 1.8–9). ¹⁴⁸ Vere nunc est cernere quod praedictum est in plerisque urbibus episcopos sive presbyteros, si laicos viderint hospitales, amatores bonorum, invidere, fremere, excommunicare, de ecclesia expellere, quasi non liceat facere quod episcopus non faciat et tales esse laicos damnatio sacerdotum sit. Graves itaque eos habent, et quasi cervicibus suis impositos, ut a bono abducant opere, variis persecutionibus inquietant (Comm. Tit. 1.8–9). ¹⁴⁹ Divinas Scripturas saepius lege, immo numquam de manibus tuis sacra lectio deponatur. Disce quod doceas. Obtine eum qui secundum doctrinam est fidelem sermonem ut possis exhortari in doctrina sana et contradicentes revincere (Ep. 52.7.1).

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that Paul himself does in Tit. 1.8–9 between personal holiness, knowledge of Scripture, and sound theology.¹⁵⁰ In his commentary on these two verses he highlights how closely these three elements are integrated: If only the bishop’s life is holy, he can be of benefit to himself by living this way. Furthermore, if he has been trained in both theology and speaking, he can instruct himself and others . . . but also strike back at adversaries who, unless they be refuted and vanquished, can easily corrupt the hearts of the simple. Si episcopi tantum sancta sit vita, sibi potest prodesse sic vivens.¹⁵¹ Porro si et doctrina et sermone fuerit eruditus, potest se ceterosque instruere . . . sed et adversarios repercutere qui, nisi refutati fuerint atque convicti, facile queunt simplicium corda pervertere.¹⁵²

As we have seen from the foregoing discussion, by the time Jerome was writing his commentary on Titus in the early autumn of 386, he had become convinced that higher clergymen should double as practicing monks. A decade earlier, however, he had viewed the clerical and monastic vocations as being fundamentally incompatible with each other.¹⁵³ To what, then, are we to attribute this pendulum swing in his perspective? He did not arrive at his radical theory of the monastic clergy out of nowhere. His change in opinion was influenced partly, I suggest, by his recent life experience in Rome. In particular, he was disillusioned with the secularized lifestyles of the local Christians, especially the clergy, whom he satirized in some of his writings from this period.¹⁵⁴ The only real solution to this widespread problem, as he saw it, was large-scale reform of the clerical system that would instate a rigorous monastic moral code as a non-negotiable prerequisite for membership in the clergy. Another factor which also must have aggravated Jerome and shaped his thinking about the relationship between the monastic and clerical vocations is the changing tides of papal politics during his final year in Rome. On December 11, 384, Pope Damasus died at the age of seventy-nine, and Jerome all of a sudden was left without a key literary patron as well as a powerful ideological ally.¹⁵⁵ Unlike his predecessor, Pope Siricius (December 384–November 399) was ¹⁵⁰ Other theorists on clerical officia follow suit; cf. John Chrysostom, Sacerd. 3.15; Augustine, Mor. eccl. cath. 1.1; Leo the Great, Serm. 1.1; Julian Pomerius, V. cont. 1.18. See also Gregory of Nazianzus, Orat. 2.47, 21.9, for criticism of clergymen who only begin to study the faith after being ordained. ¹⁵¹ For a comparable notion, see Cicero, Off. 3.62 and Ep. ad fam. 7.6.2, who quotes the maxim Qui ipse sibi sapiens prodesse non quit nequiquam sapit (“The wise man who does not benefit himself is wise in vain”) from Ennius’s Medea; cf. H. D. Jocelyn, The Tragedies of Ennius: The Fragments Edited with an Introduction and Commentary (Cambridge, 1967), 119, 347. ¹⁵² Comm. Tit. 1.8–9. ¹⁵³ Cain, Jerome and the Monastic Clergy, 6–7. ¹⁵⁴ Cf. below, pp. 130–1. ¹⁵⁵ Damasus promoted ascetic ideals in prose and especially in verse (Jerome, Ep. 22.22.3; Vir. ill. 103.1); cf. D. Trout (ed.), Damasus of Rome: The Epigraphic Poetry. Introduction, Texts, Translations, and Commentary (Oxford, 2015).

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lukewarm toward the monastic movement and made his sentiments evident very soon after assuming office.¹⁵⁶ In the first piece of official legislation of his pontificate, a decretal addressed to Bishop Himerius of Tarragona, he issued a canon regarding monks who want to enter holy orders: We expect and desire that monks of high reputation for the soberness of their characters and the holy manner of their lives and faith should join the ranks of the clergy. Those under thirty years of age should be promoted through the lower orders, step by step, as time passes, and thus reach the distinction of the diaconate or the priesthood with the consecration of their maturer years. They should not at one bound rise to the height of the episcopate until they have served out the terms which we have just prescribed for each office. Monachos quoque quos tamen morum gravitas et vitae ac fidei institutio sancta commendat clericorum officiis aggregari et optamus et volumus; ita ut qui intra tricesimum aetatis annum sunt, in minoribus per gradus singulos, crescente tempore, promoveantur ordinibus: et sic ad diaconatus vel presbyterii insignia, maturae aetatis consecratione, perveniant. Nec saltu ad episcopatus culmen ascendant, nisi in his eadem, quae singulis dignitatibus superius praefiximus, tempora fuerint custodita.¹⁵⁷

The thrust of Siricius’s mandate is that the very same regulations governing advancement within the clerical ranks are binding on everyone. A monk’s reputation for sanctity does not entitle him to take shortcuts through the ecclesiastical cursus honorum; at best, it enables him to pass the same preliminary moral litmus test that is applied to all clergymen anyway. What this really means is that a monastic pedigree does nothing at all to enhance a clergyman’s formation and therefore it is essentially irrelevant to clerical office.¹⁵⁸ Siricius’s decretal to Himerius was enacted on February 10 (or 11), 385, some six months prior to Jerome’s departure from Rome. Jerome could not have been at all pleased by the anti-ascetic tenor that the new pope was already setting for his pontificate and clerical culture at Rome (and beyond). His discontent with Siricius’s legislation and its broader implications was, I propose, a catalyst in motivating him to devise a new model,¹⁵⁹ which to some extent is a direct inversion of the one promulgated by Siricius. Whereas Siricius eliminated the need for a monastic profession and instead emphasized adherence to the strict

¹⁵⁶ For an overview of his papal tenure, see C. Hornung, “Siricius and the Rise of the Papacy,” in G. Dunn (ed.), The Bishop of Rome in Late Antiquity (Farnham, 2015), 57–72. ¹⁵⁷ Ep. 1.13.17 (PL 13:1144–5); trans. J. Shotwell and L. Loomis, The See of Peter (New York, 1965), 706. ¹⁵⁸ D. G. Hunter, “Rereading the Jovinianist Controversy: Asceticism and Clerical Authority in Late Ancient Christianity,” JMEMS 33 (2003): 453–70 (455). ¹⁵⁹ This is to say nothing of Jerome’s personal contempt for Siricius, on which see N. Adkin, “Pope Siricius’ ‘Simplicity’ (Jerome, Epist. 127.9.3),” VetChr 33 (1996): 25–38.

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procedural protocol of ecclesiastical promotion, Jerome subordinated ecclesiastical rank to monastic profession. The Hieronymian monastic clergy does in fact have its own tidy ordo, but it is based on degree of personal holiness, not on ecclesiastical rank.¹⁶⁰ Jerome’s model not only subverts Siricius’s but also affirms his own self-constructed spiritual authority. For if the clergy is reconceived as a basically monastic body wherein personal holiness achieved through asceticism trumps all else, then to whom else can their formation, which traditionally is the bishop’s prerogative, be entrusted but to a veteran monk such as Jerome?

Hieronymus haereticus Jerome’s polarizing views about ascetic Christianity, combined with his penchant for bellicose rhetoric, often made him a lightning rod of controversy. We saw earlier in this chapter how he used his Pauline commentaries to reaffirm a controversial theological position (about Mary’s perpetual virginity) he had propounded recently in Rome in his Adversus Helvidium. He deployed these commentaries as a forum for defending another controversial ascetic writing from his Roman period as well. In the spring of 384, a few months after he had penned Adversus Helvidium, Jerome composed his Libellus de virginitate servanda (Ep. 22),¹⁶¹ which he dedicated to Paula’s teenage daughter Eustochium as a guidebook for how to live as a consecrated virgin. Within months of its release, the Libellus created something of a sensation in Rome.¹⁶² Almost a decade later, in 393, Jerome reflected on how “the treatise on virginity I wrote for the saintly Eustochium at Rome has already been attacked with stones,”¹⁶³ and some twenty years after that, in 414, he admitted that the work’s language had offended a great many.¹⁶⁴ The Libellus ¹⁶⁰ Thus in Ep. 52.4.3 Jerome characterizes Nepotian’s ascetic life as a gradual progression to ever higher levels of sanctity: “Listen [to one] . . . who can guide you from the cradle of faith to the perfect age and can institute rules of life appropriate for each and every stage along the way (Audi . . . qui te ab incunabulis fidei usque ad perfectam ducat aetatem et per singulos gradus vivendi praecepta constituens in te ceteros erudiat).” It is telling that Jerome employs the word gradus, which in contemporary ecclesiastical idiom was a technical term denoting a rank or position within the clerical hierarchy (Gryson, Le prêtre, 127–8). He thus conceptualizes the life of the monastic priest in terms reminiscent of gradual promotion through the church’s cursus honorum (interestingly, Siricius uses the phrase per gradus singulos (cf. Jerome’s per singulos gradus) in this sense in the above-cited canon). ¹⁶¹ For a microtextual study of this work, see N. Adkin, Jerome on Virginity: A Commentary on the Libellus de virginitate servanda (Letter 22) (Chippenham, 2003). ¹⁶² By the turn of the fifth century, the Libellus had found its fair share of critics in Gaul as well. See R. J. Goodrich, “Vir maxime catholicus: Sulpicius Severus’ Use and Abuse of Jerome in the Dialogi,” JEH 58 (2007): 189–210. ¹⁶³ . . . lapidato iam virginitatis libello, quem sanctae Eustochiae Romae scripseram . . . (Ep. 52.17.1); this figurative usage of the verb lapidare is attested only in late Latin (see Thesaurus Linguae Latinae VII, 2, 945.33–43). Cf. Cain, Jerome and the Monastic Clergy, 267–8. ¹⁶⁴ Ante annos circiter triginta de virginitate servanda edidi librum, in quo necesse mihi fuit ire contra vitia et propter instructionem virginis, quam monebam, diaboli insidias patefacere, qui sermo offendit

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was poorly received in various quarters for a number of reasons.¹⁶⁵ Jerome’s satirical caricatures of secularized lay and clerical Christians certainly did not endear him to readers who suspected that they were the butt of his jokes,¹⁶⁶ though pagans allegedly applauded him for airing the dirty laundry of Roman Christianity for all to see.¹⁶⁷ Elitist-sounding comments such as his advice to Eustochium that she learn a “holy arrogance” and realize that she is better than other Christians no doubt put off some readers as well.¹⁶⁸ Theological moderates, who far outnumbered those in Jerome’s camp,¹⁶⁹ had serious reservations about certain of the positions he had taken in the Libellus. For instance, he insinuated that marriage is a necessary evil reserved for inferior Christians,¹⁷⁰ and this suggestion did not sit well with critics such as Ambrosiaster, who found Jerome’s extreme ascetic ideology offensive enough to refute it in his writings.¹⁷¹ Jerome’s prohibition against wine-drinking in the Libellus also rankled critics: I urge this first of all, I make this appeal, that Christ’s spouse avoid wine as if it were poison. This is the demons’ first weapon against youth. Greed does not batter, nor pride puff up, nor ambition allure, like it does. We are easily free of

plurimos, dum unusquisque in se intellegens, quod dicebatur, non quasi monitorem libenter audivit, sed quasi criminatorem sui operis aversatus est (Ep. 130.19.3–4). Cf. A. Cain, “Liber manet: Pliny, Epist. 9.27.2 and Jerome, Epist. 130.19.5,” CQ 58 (2008): 708–10. ¹⁶⁵ Within a decade of the Libellus’s release, Jerome’s friend Sophronius translated it into Greek (Jerome, Vir. ill. 134.2), though the precise extent of its influence in the East is not known. In its Latin version it circulated widely in the West and had a profound impact on the development of female monasticism; see A. de Vogüé, Histoire littéraire du mouvement monastique dans l’antiquité, vol. 1 (Paris, 1991), 325. Jerome himself recommended it as essential reading to several ascetically inclined women who wrote to him for spiritual advice (e.g., Epp. 123.17.3, 130.19.3–4). He also vigorously defended its legacy in the face of withering criticism; see Jerome, Ep. 117.1.2–3, with A. Cain, “Jerome’s Epistula 117 on the Subintroductae: Satire, Apology, and Ascetic Propaganda in Gaul,” Augustinianum 49 (2009): 119–43. ¹⁶⁶ On his satirizing of these “worldly” Christians, see J. Curran, “Jerome and the Sham Christians of Rome,” JEH 48 (1997): 213–29; P. Laurence, “L’épître 22 de Jérôme et son temps,” in L. Nadjo and É. Gavoille (eds.), Epistulae antiquae: actes du Ier colloque Le genre épistolaire antique et ses prolongements (Paris, 2000), 63–83. On Jerome’s polemical satire more generally, see M. E. Pence, “Satire in St. Jerome,” CJ 36 (1941): 322–66; D. S. Wiesen, St. Jerome as a Satirist (Ithaca, NY, 1964); B. Clausi, Bibbia e polemica negli scritti controversiali di Gerolamo: problemi e piste di ricerche (Brescia, 1997); M. Kahlos, “Rhetorical Strategies in Jerome’s Polemical Works,” in O. Wischmeyer and L. Scornaienchi (eds.), Polemik in der frühchristlichen Literatur: Texte und Kontexte (Berlin, 2011), 621–49; I. Schaaf, “Polemik, Unfreundlichkeit und Invektivität in den Briefen des Hieronymus am Beispiel der jovinianischen Kontroverse,” ZAC 22 (2018): 125–50. ¹⁶⁷ Rufinus reported this fascinating detail around 400 in the context of scolding Jerome for the abrasive tone of the Libellus (Apol. c. Hier. 2.5, 43). ¹⁶⁸ Disce in hac parte superbiam sanctam, scito te illis esse meliorem (Ep. 22.16.1). On Jerome’s concept of ascetic nobilitas, see J. van ’t Westeinde, Roman nobilitas in Jerome’s Letters: The Adaptation of Roman Values in Jerome’s Epistolary Exchange with Contemporary Socialites (Tübingen, 2021). ¹⁶⁹ C. Pietri, “Le mariage chrétien à Rome,” in J. Delumeau (ed.), Histoire vécue du peuple chrétien (Toulouse, 1979), 105–31. ¹⁷⁰ Ep. 22.2, 15, 19. In Ep. 49.18.3 he confesses that in the Libellus he wrote multo duriora de nuptiis than he had in his Against Helvidius. ¹⁷¹ D. G. Hunter, “On the Sin of Adam and Eve: A Little-Known Defense of Marriage and Childbearing by Ambrosiaster,” HThR 82 (1989): 283–99.

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other vices; this adversary is confined within us, and wherever we go, we take the enemy with us. Wine and youth stoke the twofold fire of sensual pleasure. Why do we throw oil on the flame? Why do we add kindling to a poor body that is ablaze? Hoc primum moneo, hoc obtestor, ut sponsa Christi vinum fugiat pro veneno. Haec adversus adulescentiam prima arma sunt daemonum. Non sic avaritia quatit, inflat superbia, delectat ambitio. Facile aliis caremus vitiis; hic hostis intus inclusus est. Quocumque pergimus, nobis cum portamus inimicum. Vinum et adulescentia duplex incendium voluptatis. Quid oleum flammae adicimus? Quid ardenti corpusculo fomenta ignium ministramus?¹⁷²

In the late Roman world wine was a staple beverage particularly among the upper classes.¹⁷³ In the ascetic culture of the period, however, there often were severe restrictions placed on its consumption. Although some monks might sip diluted wine on rare occasions because they thought it would improve their health,¹⁷⁴ most did not partake on a regular basis or even at all.¹⁷⁵ Generally speaking, their rationale for abstinence was twofold: to eliminate any potential for drunkenness, and to avoid a spike in body temperature that they believed would stoke sexual desire.¹⁷⁶ Prohibitions against wine-drinking and other alcoholic beverages thus are commonplace in the monastic literature of Late Antiquity.¹⁷⁷ Jerome, himself a proponent of hardline asceticism, frowned on alcohol consumption by ascetics, especially younger ones. His impassioned appeal to Eustochium (note the emphatic anaphoric hoc moneo, hoc obtestor) reflects this concern, for at the time she was in her early teens. In its sociocultural context, his plea was relevant inasmuch as wine-drinking was an acceptable practice among upper-class youth in late Roman society.¹⁷⁸ He insists that Eustochium avoid wine

¹⁷² Ep. 22.8.1–2. ¹⁷³ J. André, L’alimentation et la cuisine à Rome (Paris, 1981), 162–74. According to one estimate, the average Roman adult male consumed between 0.5–1 liter of wine per day; see A. Tchernia, Le vin de l’Italie romaine: essai d’histoire économique d’après les amphores (Rome, 1986), 23–6. On the types of wines consumed by Italian elites in the late Roman period, see P. Komar, Eastern Wines on Western Tables: Consumption, Trade, and Economy in Ancient Italy (Leiden, 2020), 188–98. ¹⁷⁴ See Palladius, Hist. Laus., prol. 10–12; Callinicus, V. Hyp. 1.6, 26.1; Mark the Deacon, V. Porph. 10; cf. L. Regnault, La vie quotidienne des Pères du désert en Egypte au IVe siècle (Paris, 1990), 89–92. On wine’s medicinal properties as perceived by early Christian authorities, see J. T. Fitzgerald, “Paul, Wine in the Ancient Mediterranean World, and the Problem of Intoxication,” in C. Breytenbach (ed.), Paul’s Graeco-Roman Context (Leuven, 2015), 331–56; J. Penniman, “The Health-Giving Cup: Cyprian’s Ep. 3 and the Medicinal Power of Eucharistic Wine,” JECS 23 (2015): 189–211. ¹⁷⁵ See Jerome, Ep. 108.21.2–3; Apoph. patr. Paphnutius 2, Peter the Pionite 1; Anon., V. Pach. SBo 10; Bede, V. Cuth. 6; George of Sykeon, V. Theod. Syk. 73; John Moschus, Prat. spir. 17, 35, 184. ¹⁷⁶ V. Grimm, From Feasting to Fasting, the Evolution of a Sin: Attitudes to Food in Late Antiquity (London, 1996), 107–9, 167–8, 175–7. ¹⁷⁷ Cf. Jerome, Ep. 52.11.4; Apoph. patr. Antony 22, Xious 1, Poemen 19; cf. J. Raymond, The Teaching of the Early Church on the Use of Wine and Strong Drink (New York, 1927). ¹⁷⁸ C. Laes, Children in the Roman Empire: Outsiders Within (Cambridge, 2011), 81. On Pompeiian children’s ready access to local bars for food and drink, see R. Laurence, “Children and the Urban

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at all costs because it is a gateway to lasciviousness, and he invokes the stereotypical association of adolescence with a high sex drive; in his view, teenage girls are particularly susceptible to lust.¹⁷⁹ Finally, to give his injunction more verve, he poses two pithy rhetorical questions which draw on proverbial expressions and employ arresting fire imagery: “Why do we throw oil on the flame?”¹⁸⁰ and “Why do we add kindling to a poor body that is ablaze?”¹⁸¹ It was not long before Jerome’s words came back to haunt him. By the time he was writing his Pauline commentaries a mere two years later, he felt compelled to respond to critics’ charges. When he explains the “deeds of the flesh” (Gal. 5.19–21) and comes to drunkenness, he mentions lust being ignited (libido succenditur) as one of the side effects of intoxication, and he goes on to say: Although some think that I ought to be chastised for saying in the book I wrote on preserving virginity that young girls should flee from wine as if it were poison, I do not regret the opinion I voiced there. For it was not so much a creation of God that I condemned as it was the behavior that stemmed from indulgence in wine. I took away from the virgin inflamed by her own adolescent passions the excuse to drink more wine (when she should be drinking less) and as a result perish. Licet me quidam in eo libro quem de servanda virginitate conscripsi reprehendendum putent quod dixerim adolescentulas ita vinum debere fugere ut venenum, non me sententiae paenitebit. Opus quippe ibi magis vini quam Dei a nobis creatura damnata est et licentiam tulimus virgini proprio aetatis calore ferventi ne sub occasione parum bibendi plus biberet et periret.¹⁸²

In his commentary on Ephesians, which he composed immediately after the one on Galatians, Jerome again stands his ground and faults his critics for failing to understand what really is at stake: Just as we cannot serve two masters, God and mammon, so we cannot be filled with the Spirit and wine at the same time. One who is filled with the Spirit possesses wisdom, meekness, modesty, and chastity, but one who is filled with wine possesses foolishness, rage, shamelessness, and lust. I consider luxuria (“debauchery”) to express this in one word. If certain persons understood this, they would never have accused me of indiscretion and heresy because I said in

Environment: Agency in Pompeii,” in C. Laes and V. Vuolanto (eds.), Children and Everyday Life in the Roman and Late Antique World (London, 2016), 27–42 (33–4). ¹⁷⁹ See above, p. 114. ¹⁸⁰ Cf. A. Otto, Die Sprichwörter und sprichwörtlichen Redensarten der Römer (Leipzig, 1890), 253 s. v. oleum 2. Jerome recycles this expression at Ep. 77.7.1 in connection with Fabiola’s zeal for scriptural knowledge, and also at Ep. 125.11.1 for how sumptuous foods aggravate the monk’s spiritual peace. ¹⁸¹ For the proverbial ignis in igne, see Otto, see Die Sprichwörter, 170 s.v. ignis 3. ¹⁸² Comm. Gal. 5.19–21.

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Preserving Virginity that wine is to be avoided by the young, oil is not to be thrown on the flame, and the natural fire of the flesh is not to be fed by the kindling of sensual pleasure. Quomodo non possumus duobus dominis servire Deo et mammonae, sic non possumus Spiritu impleri pariter et vino. Qui enim Spiritu impletur, habet prudentiam, mansuetudinem, verecundiam, castitatem; qui vino, habet insipientiam, furorem, procacitatem, libidinem. Hoc quippe aestimo uno verbo significare luxuriam. Quod si quidam intellegerent, numquam me temeritatis et haereseos arguissent quod in Virginitate Servanda dixerim vinum adulescentibus declinandum et non mittendum super flammam oleum, nec naturalem carnis ardorem fomentis voluptatis augendum.¹⁸³

The “heresy” to which Jerome alludes above is Manichaeism, and the particular allegation leveled at him is the Manichean rejection of matter as something intrinsically evil; hence he protests in the Galatians passage that he does not condemn wine as a “creation of God.”¹⁸⁴ Jerome does not add fuel to the fire by explicitly naming this heresy because he criticizes Mani throughout his Pauline commentaries and does not want to be associated with him in any way.¹⁸⁵ To be accused of Manichaeism was a matter of grave consequence in the later Roman empire. By the late fourth century this religious movement had a firmly established presence in its eastern and western halves.¹⁸⁶ Yet, as recently as 381, just five years before Jerome composed his Pauline commentaries, the Catholic emperor Theodosius I had issued a series of decrees which aimed essentially to criminalize its practice by denying Manichaeans the right to assembly and other rights.¹⁸⁷ One high-profile victim of these Theodosian edicts was the ¹⁸³ Comm. Eph. 5.18. ¹⁸⁴ During this period critics of Christian asceticism often labeled ascetics “Manichaeans” in an attempt to discredit them. See Hunter, Marriage, Celibacy, and Heresy, 130–46; R. Lim, “The Nomen Manichaeorum and Its Uses in Late Antiquity,” in E. Iricinschi and H. M. Zellentin (eds.), Heresy and Identity in Late Antiquity (Tübingen, 2008), 143–67. ¹⁸⁵ Comm. Gal. 1.1, 1.4–5, 4.24b–6; Comm. Tit. 3.10–11. ¹⁸⁶ A. Vööbus, History of Asceticism in the Syrian Orient, 2 vols. (Leuven, 1958), 2.109–37; G. Stroumsa, “Gnostics and Manichaeans in Byzantine Palestine,” StudPatr 10 (1985): 273–8; R. Lim, “Unity and Diversity among Western Manichaeans: A Reconsideration of Mani’s sancta ecclesia,” REAug 35 (1989): 231–50. On the missionary impulse of the Manichaean movement, see P. Brown, “The Diffusion of Manichaeism in the Roman Empire,” JRS 59 (1969): 92–103. On the Manichaeans’ social interactions with other groups, see R. Lim, Public Disputation, Power, and Social Order in Late Antiquity (Berkeley, 1995), 70–108. In Conf. 5.10.19 Augustine attests to the presence of a Manichaean community in Rome in the early 380s. See further H. O. Maier, “The Topography of Heresy and Dissent in Late-Fourth-Century Rome,” Historia 44 (1995): 232–49; N. Baker-Brian, Manichaeism: An Ancient Faith Rediscovered (London, 2011), 129–30. ¹⁸⁷ S. N. C. Lieu, Manichaeism in the Later Roman Empire and Medieval China (Tübingen, 1985), 1425–51; P. Beskow, “The Theodosian Laws against Manichaeism,” in P. Bryder (ed.), Manichaean Studies: Proceedings of the First International Conference on Manichaeism, August 5–9, 1987, Department of History of Religions, Lund University, Sweden (Lund, 1988), 1–11. There were two earlier phases of fourth-century imperial legislation against the Manichaeans, initiated by Diocletian (303) and Valentinian and Valens (372); see M. Brand, “In the Footsteps of the Apostles of Light:

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Spanish bishop and ascetic Priscillian of Avila, who was executed by imperial authorities on charges relating to sorcery and Manichaeism.¹⁸⁸ The stakes were especially high for Catholic public figures who prided themselves on their carefully crafted public images as defenders of the orthodox Christian faith. Hence Augustine, after he had embarked on his ecclesiastical career, went out of his way to distance himself from his Manichaean past,¹⁸⁹ and he did so partly in his capacity as a commentator on Paul.¹⁹⁰ Jerome was no less adamant about defending his own orthodoxy. When he was accused of crypto-Manichaeism for certain controversial remarks he made in his treatise Against Jovinian, he desperately scrambled to repair his public image and appease his scandalized literary patrons in Rome.¹⁹¹ Likewise, not once but twice in his Pauline commentaries—writings also headed to Rome—he repelled insinuations that he had flirted with Manichaeism in his Libellus, and he seized the opportunity to reaffirm his original teaching about the mortal danger that alcohol consumption poses to the virgin’s chastity.

Persecution and the Manichaean Discourse of Suffering,” in É. Fournier and W. Mayer (eds.), Heirs of Roman Persecution: Studies on a Christian and Para-Christian Discourse in Late Antiquity (New York, 2019), 112–34 (115–17). ¹⁸⁸ H. Chadwick, Priscillian of Avila: The Occult and the Charismatic in the Early Church (Oxford, 1976), 20–56, 111–48; R. van Dam, Leadership and Community in Late Antique Gaul (Berkeley, 1985), 87–106; V. Burrus, The Making of a Heretic: Gender, Authority, and the Priscillianist Controversy (Berkeley, 1995), 47–78. ¹⁸⁹ C. Bammel, “Pauline Exegesis, Manichaeism, and Philosophy in the Early Augustine,” in L. Wickham and C. Hammond Bammel (eds.), Christian Faith and Greek Philosophy in Late Antiquity: Essays in Tribute to George Christopher Stead (Leiden, 1993), 1–25; L. Ferrari, “Young Augustine: Both Catholic and Manichee,” AugStud 26 (1995): 109–28; J. BeDuhn, Augustine’s Manichaean Dilemma, vol. 1: Conversion and Apostasy, 373–388  (Philadelphia, 2009) and Augustine’s Manichaean Dilemma, vol. 2: Making a “Catholic” Self, 388–401  (Philadelphia, 2013). ¹⁹⁰ On the anti-Manichaean strand of his commentary on Galatians, see E. Plumer, Augustine’s Commentary on Galatians: Introduction, Text, Translation, and Notes (Oxford, 2003), 61–8. ¹⁹¹ Cain, The Letters of Jerome, 137–40. Cf. Jerome, Ep. 49.2.4: Dum contra Iovinianum presso gradu pugno, a Manicheo mea terga confossa sunt. Rufinus later accused Jerome of teaching the “dogma of the Manicheans” in Against Jovinian (Apol. c. Hier. 2.39, 43). Cf. Adv. Iov. 1.3, 5, where Jerome responds to Jovinian’s charge that he is a crypto-Manichean. Later in his career he continued to be hypersensitive to the accusation of Manichaean sympathy (cf. Jerome, Ep. 133.9.1–5).

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5 Orthodoxy and Heresy Tertullian famously called Paul “the heretics’ apostle” (haereticorum apostolus).¹ This epithet was meant not as a slight to Paul but as a cynical acknowledgment that some teachers—Tertullian was thinking most immediately of Marcion²— claim him as their own and cite his authority to justify their own belief systems. In antiquity many religious groups, from the Marcionites and Manichaeans to the various Gnostic sects (e.g., Valentinians and Basilidians), did indeed regard themselves as legitimate Christians in the Pauline tradition.³ Still other Christians, whose “orthodox” beliefs would end up more or less winning the day by the mid-fourth century, made their own unique claims to absolute truth and tried to sideline their theological opponents, branding their teachings as “heresies,”⁴ or aberrations from the pristine faith they believed had been vouchsafed to them by Jesus and the apostles in an unbroken line of succession.⁵ In their effort to marginalize their doctrinal opponents, orthodox intellectuals harnessed the power of the written word. One of the most effective weapons in their arsenal was the religious blacklist known as the heresy catalogue.⁶ Another, less sensationalistic one was the biblical commentary. To take one early example, ¹ Adv. Marc. 3.5; cf. Ps.-Tertullian, Adv. haer. 23–4. On Tertullian’s reception of Paul, see the collection of essays in T. Still and D. E. Wilhite (eds.), Tertullian and Paul (London, 2013). ² On his anti-Marcionite polemic, see E. P. Meijering, Tertullian contra Marcion: Gotteslehre in der Polemik: Adversus Marcionem I–II (Leiden, 1977). ³ M. F. Wiles, The Divine Apostle: The Interpretation of St. Paul’s Epistles in the Early Church (Cambridge, 1967), 5–6, 26–48; E. Pagels, The Gnostic Paul: Gnostic Exegesis of the Pauline Letters (Philadelphia, 1992); W. A. Löhr, Basilides und seine Schule: Eine Studie zur Theologie- und Kirchengeschichte des zweiten Jahrhunderts (Tübingen, 1996); B. Aland, “Seele, Zeit, Eschaton bei einem frühen christlichen Theologen: Basilides zwischen Paulus und Platon,” in J. Holzhausen (ed.), Ψυχή—Seele—anima: Festschrift für Karin Alt zum 7. Mai 1998 (Stuttgart, 1998), 255–78; H.-F. Weiss, Frühes Christentum und Gnosis: Eine rezeptionsgeschichtliche Studie (Tübingen, 2008), 416–27; I. Dunderberg, Gnostic Morality Revisited (Tübingen, 2015), 149–68. ⁴ In recent decades scholars have become increasingly sensitive to the fact that “heresy” and “orthodoxy” are rhetorically constructed categories. For an overview of this trend, see E. Iricinschi and H. M. Zellentin, “Making Selves and Marking Others: Identity and Late Antique Heresiologies,” in E. Iricinschi and H. M. Zellentin (eds.), Heresy and Identity in Late Antiquity (Tübingen, 2008), 1–27. ⁵ As noted by B. D. Ehrman, Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faith We Never Knew (Oxford, 2003), 135–6, “orthodox” Christianity did not constitute a monolithic or static entity; there was considerable heterogeneity in belief and practice among its adherents. ⁶ J. McClure, “Handbooks against Heresy in the West,” JThS n.s. 30 (1979): 186–97; W. A. Löhr, “The Continuing Construction of Heresy: Hippolytus’ Refutatio in Context,” in G. Aragione and E. Norelli (eds.), Des évêques, des écoles et des hérétiques: actes du colloque international sur la Réfutation de toutes les hérésies, Genève, 13–14 juin 2008 (Lausanne, 2011), 25–42; G. S. Smith, Guilt by Association: Heresy Catalogues in Early Christianity (Oxford, 2015); Y. R. Kim, “The Transformation of Heresiology in the Panarion of Epiphanius of Cyprus,” in H. Elton and G. Greatrex (eds.), Shifting

Jerome’s Commentaries on the Pauline Epistles and the Architecture of Exegetical Authority. Andrew Cain, Oxford University Press. © Andrew Cain 2021. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192847195.003.0006

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Origen composed his compendious commentary on John to provide an interpretation of the fourth Gospel that would appeal to Christian intellectuals in general,⁷ but his more specific aim evidently was to offer a rebuttal of the Johannine commentary that the Valentinian exegete Heracleon had authored between c.160 and c.180.⁸ To Origen’s mind, heresy arises when Scripture is erroneously interpreted, and so the only logical remedy to heresy is the orthodox, or right-thinking, interpretation of Scripture.⁹ Jerome shared this outlook and viewed the stamping out of heresy as one of the biblical exegete’s principal goals.¹⁰ In fact, none of the other five late antique Pauline commentators in Latin devotes nearly as much space to this as he does.¹¹ In this chapter we explore the pervasive anti-heretical rhetoric in his opus Paulinum, beginning with the literary techniques he uses to demonize theological opponents as the unholy “other” and, conversely, to heroicize himself as a pious vir orthodoxus. We then examine in turn three prominent anti-heretical thematic strands in his commentaries and interrogate how he deploys the doctrines under criticism as foils for solidifying his own hermeneutical priorities.

Heretics as the Pernicious “Other” From the start to the finish of his decades-long literary career, Jerome consistently represented himself as a fierce champion of (what for him constituted) theological orthodoxy. This certainly is the literary persona he projects by a declaration made in one of his last surviving writings: “I have never spared heretics, and I have done

Genres in Late Antiquity (Burlington, 2015), 53–65; T. Berzon, Classifying Christians: Ethnography, Heresiology, and the Limits of Knowledge in Late Antiquity (Berkeley, 2016), 218–45. ⁷ C. Blanc (ed.), Origène: Commentaire sur saint Jean I, SC 120 (Paris, 1966), 10; J. Trigg, Origen (London, 1998), 149. ⁸ E.g., in Comm. Ioan. 5.8.1 Origen says that as a man of the church he has the duty to refute “heretical fabrications” (αἱρετικὰ ἀναπλάσματα) with the “sublimity of the Gospel message” (τὸ ὕψος τοῦ εὐαγγελικοῦ κηρύγματος). For a reconstruction of Heracleon’s commentary, see E. Pagels, The Johannine Gospel in Gnostic Exegesis: Heracleon’s Commentary on John (Nashville, 1973). For a comparative study of Origen’s and Heracleon’s exegetical methods, see J.-M. Poffet, La méthode exégétique d’Héracleon et d’Origène commentateurs de Jn. 4: Jésus, la Samaritaine, et les Samaritains (Fribourg, 1985); cf. A. Wucherpfennig, Heracleon Philologus: Gnostische Johannesexegese im zweiten Jahrhundert (Tübingen, 2002); C. J. Berglund, “Origen’s Vacillating Stances toward His ‘Valentinian’ Colleague Heracleon,” VChr 71 (2017): 541–69. ⁹ P. W. Martens, Origen and Scripture: The Contours of the Exegetical Life (Oxford, 2012), 112–13. Cf. M. Simonetti, “Eresia ed eretici in Origene,” Augustinianum 25 (1985): 735–48. ¹⁰ Similarly, Augustine became intensely interested in the “proper” interpretation of Paul after 392 in direct response to Fortunatus’s use of the Pauline writings to support Manichaean doctrine. See J. BeDuhn, Augustine’s Manichaean Dilemma, vol. 2: Making a “Catholic” Self, 388–401 .. (Philadelphia, 2013), 192–238. ¹¹ Even if we do not count references to named individuals and sects, his heresiological lexicon in the commentaries is robustly populated by key words such as haeresis (42), haereticus as a noun or adjective (39), heresiarches (2), and schisma (10).

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my best to make the enemies of the church my own.”¹² Even though he never authored his own heresiological handbook, anti-heretical polemic permeates his works across the board,¹³ and this indeed is true of his four Pauline commentaries. Jerome mobilizes Paul against theological opponents in an array of topical areas including theology (dualism,¹⁴ cosmogonic myth,¹⁵ Christology¹⁶), anthropology (doctrine of fixed natures¹⁷), the scriptural text (rejection of the Old Testament,¹⁸ relationship between Law and Gospel,¹⁹ authenticity of Paul’s epistles,²⁰ textual criticism²¹), and ritual (remarriage,²² second baptism,²³ post-baptismal repentance,²⁴ Christian circumcision²⁵). The roll call of Jerome’s opponents likewise is fulsome and diverse. Tables 5.1 and 5.2 give a bird’s-eye view of the eleven heretical and schismatic sects (Table 5.1) as well as of the seventeen heresiarchs and arch-schismatics (Table 5.2) mentioned in his Pauline commentaries (in the latter table, asterisks mark references in which the individuals in question are alluded to but not actually named). Table 5.1 Heretical and schismatic sects Heretical sect

Schismatic sect

Arians

Comm. Eph. 3.10–11, 4.5–6

Artotyrites

Comm. Gal. lib. 2, prol. l. 114

Borborites Ebionites

Comm. Gal. lib. 2, prol. l. 112 Comm. Gal. 5.3

Montanists

Encratites

Comm. Gal. 6.8; Comm. Tit., prol. l. 18 Comm. Gal. 1.4–5; Comm. Gal., lib. 2, prol. l. 112; Comm. Eph. 1.4 Comm. Gal. lib. 2, prol. l. 112

Comm. Gal. lib. 2, prol. ll. 111–12 Comm. Gal. 4.19; Comm. Tit. 1.6 Comm. Gal. lib. 2, prol. l. 114

Manichaeans Ophites

Novatianists Passalorynchites Tascodrougites

Comm. Gal. lib. 2, prol. l. 114

¹² . . . numquam me haereticis pepercisse et omni egisse studio ut hostes ecclesiae mei quoque hostes fierent (Dial. adv. Pel., prol. 2). Cf. Y.-M. Duval, “Jérôme ennemi de l’hérésie, non de l’hérétique: de la proclamation d’un principe à son application pratique,” in J.-M. Poinsotte (ed.), Les chrétiens face à leurs adversaires dans l’Occident latin au IVe siècle (Rouen, 2001), 211–31. In this Jerome likely was influenced by Origen, who styled himself a man of the church in perpetual conflict with heretics; see H. de Lubac, History and Spirit: The Understanding of Scripture according to Origen, trans. A. Englund Nash (San Francisco, 2007), 60–1; Martens, Origen and Scripture, 111–13. ¹³ The definitive study of Jerome as a heresiologist is B. Jeanjean, Saint Jérôme et l’hérésie (Paris, 1999). ¹⁴ Comm. Gal. 1.4–5, 1.6–7, 1.8–9, 3.8–9, 3.13a, 4.8–9, 5.9, 5.12, 6.1–3; Comm. Eph. 3.8–9; Comm. Phlm., prol. l. 57; cf. Comm. Gal. 6.8. ¹⁵ Comm. Gal. 1.4–5; Comm. Eph. 1.4. ¹⁶ See pp. 149–54. ¹⁷ See pp. 154–60. ¹⁸ Comm. Gal. 3.1a, 5.12, 5.31, 6.1–3; Comm. Eph. 3.5–7; Comm. Tit., prol. l. 2. ¹⁹ Comm. Gal. 3.13a; Comm. Eph. 2.19–22. ²⁰ Comm. Tit., prol. ll. 18, 21; Comm. Phlm., prol. ll. 61–2. ²¹ Comm. Gal. 3.6, 4.24b–6. ²² Comm. Tit. 1.6. ²³ Comm. Eph. 4.5–6. ²⁴ Comm. Gal. 4.19. ²⁵ Comm. Gal. 5.3.

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Table 5.2 Heretics and schismatics Apelles Apollinaris Arius Basilides Ebion Eunomius Julius Cassianus Macedonius Mani Marcion Montanus Novatian Philumene Photinus Sabellius Tatian Valentinus

Comm. Gal. 1.8–9; Comm. Tit. 3.10–11; Comm. Phlm., prol. l. 57 Comm. Gal. 1.1*; Comm. Tit. 2.12–14*, 3.10–11* Comm. Gal. 5.9; Comm. Eph. 3.10–11, 4.5–6; Comm. Tit. 2.12–14, 3.10–11 Comm. Gal. 1.11–12; Comm. Tit., prol. l. 2 Comm. Gal. 1.1, 1.11–12, 5.3; Comm. Eph. 4.10; Comm. Tit. 3.10–11 Comm. Eph. 4.5–6; Comm. Tit. 2.12–14, 3.10–11 Comm. Gal. 6.8 Comm. Eph. 4.5–6 Comm. Gal. 1.1, 1.4–5*, 4.24b–6; Comm. Tit. 3.10–11 Comm. Gal. 1.1, 1.6–7, 1.8–9*, 1.11–12, 3.1a, 3.6, 3.13a, 4.4–5, 4.8–9*, 4.24b–6, 5.12, 6.6; Comm. Eph. 2.19–22, 3.8–9, 5.9, 5.31, 6.1–3*; Comm. Tit., prol. ll. 2, 21, 3.10–11; Comm. Phlm., prol. ll. 57, 61–2 Comm. Eph. 3.5–7; Comm. Tit. 1.6, 3.10–11 Comm. Gal. 4.19; Comm. Tit. 1.6 Comm. Gal. 1.8–9 Comm. Gal. 1.1, 1.11–12; Comm. Eph. 4.10 Comm. Eph. 4.5–6 Comm. Tit., prol. l. 18 Comm. Gal. 1.4–5, 1.15–16*, 2.15*, 3.1a*, 5.12, 6.1*; Comm. Eph. 2.3*, 2.19–22*, 3.8–9, 4.5–6, 4.17–19*, 5.8a*; Comm. Tit. 3.10–11; Comm. Phlm., prol. l. 57

Jerome’s anti-heretical references can be organized into two broad categories. Belonging to the one are criticisms of a doctrine using the words of Scripture (usually of Paul) as his point of departure or proof text. The other category, discussed in this section, encompasses denunciations of a more generic kind: he does not specify on what theological grounds his opponents are deemed haeretici but takes it for granted that they are heretics and invokes heresiological stereotypes to demean their personhood. One of his preferred delegitimization techniques is to insinuate that someone acts under demonic inspiration.²⁶ Thus he insists that Apelles (who was Marcion’s disciple²⁷) and his collaborator, the prophetess Philumene,²⁸ were possessed by ²⁶ Jeanjean, Saint Jérôme et l’hérésie, 295–6, 374–7. On the heresiological cliché of heretics being demon-inspired, see A. Yoshiko Reed, “The Trickery of the Fallen Angels and the Demonic Mimesis of the Divine: Aetiology, Demonology, and Polemics in the Writings of Justin Martyr,” JECS 12 (2004): 141–71 (154). ²⁷ É. Junod, “Les attitudes d’Apelles, disciple de Marcion, à l’égard de l’Ancien Testament,” Augustinianum 22 (1982): 113–33; R. Grant, Heresy and Criticism: The Search for Authenticity in Early Christian Literature (Louisville, 1993), 75–88; K. Greschat, Apelles und Hermogenes: Zwei theologische Lehrer des zweiten Jahrhunderts (Leiden, 2000). ²⁸ Tertullian (Praescr. haer. 30) insinuates that Apelles became estranged from the Marcionite community in Rome after he seduced the prophetesss Philumene and made her his concubine. Apelles edited a collection of Philumene’s revelations (Φανερώσεις). On the close association between Apelles and Philumene in patristic literature, see Tertullian, Carn. Chr. 6.1–2; 24.2; Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 5.13.2; Jerome, Ep. 133.4.2; cf. R. Hanig, “Der Beitrag der Philumene zur Theologie der Apelleianer,” ZAC 3 (1999): 241–77.

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the very demon Paul had anathematized in Gal. 1.8 long before either one of them was born.²⁹ As accomplices of the devil, heretical teachers naturally do not possess the Holy Spirit. Jerome employs this rhetoric of exclusion when he says that “Marcion, Basilides, and the other heretical plagues do not possess the Gospel of God because they do not have the Holy Spirit, and without the Spirit the Gospel ceases to be divine.”³⁰ Without the Holy Spirit’s guidance, these teachers sound out words that lack spiritual substance,³¹ and they resort to vacuous casuistry in order to deceive.³² They concoct doctrines that are absurdities and fanciful tales (deliramenta et fabulae),³³ and their theories are laughable and nonsensical (ridicula et inepta).³⁴ Because heretics are purveyors of perverse teaching (perversa doctrina),³⁵ which is at complete variance with the lex ecclesiae,³⁶ they are not genuine members of the church.³⁷ Their theological bankruptcy extends to their morality because in Jerome’s reckoning, doctrinal persuasion is bound up with character.³⁸ Heretics, then, really cannot help but live lasciviously (sordide victitant),³⁹ and there are more carnal vices among them than among the orthodox faithful (plura quippe apud eos corporis sunt vitia quam apud nostros).⁴⁰ Jerome thus resorts to the classic heresiological tactic of slandering ideological opponents with allegations of sexual misconduct.⁴¹ Jerome employs various shades of dehumanizing discourse to villainize heretics. He adverts to a combustion analogy, for example, to compass the destructiveness of Arius’s doctrine, comparing him to a tiny ember which erupted into a raging inferno and devoured Alexandria.⁴² With a nautical metaphor he describes how the church, imperiled on all sides by dangerous Christological heresies, is ²⁹ Comm. Gal. 1.8–9. The assigning of a diabolical origin to heresies is a commonplace of early Christian heresiology; see A. Le Boulluec, La notion d’hérésie dans la littérature grecque IIe–IIIe siècles, 2 vols. (Paris, 1985), 1.29–31, 64–7. ³⁰ Marcion et Basilides et caeterae haereticorum pestes non habent Dei evangelium, quia non habent Spiritum Sanctum, sine quo humanum fit evangelium quod docetur (Comm. Gal. 1.11–12). ³¹ Comm. Tit. 3.9. ³² Comm. Gal. 6.8. ³³ Comm. Gal. 1.4–5; cf. Comm. Gal. 6.1; Comm. Eph. 5.8. ³⁴ Comm. Gal. 2.15. ³⁵ Comm. Tit. 1.10–11. ³⁶ Comm. Gal. 1.6–7. ³⁷ Comm. Eph. 5.22–3; cf. Comm. Eph. 4.3–4. ³⁸ Origen had the same outlook; see Lubac, History and Spirit, 68–76. ³⁹ Comm. Gal. 3.27–8. ⁴⁰ Comm. Eph. 2.1–5. Cf. Jerome, Comm. Os., lib. 2, ll. 354–5: Raro haereticus diligit castitatem, et quicumque pudicitiam simulant se amare, ut Manichaeus et Marcion, et Arius et Tatianus, et instauratores veteris haereseos, venenato ore mella promittunt. ⁴¹ Cf. A. Momigliano, “Empietà ed eresia nel mondo antico,” RSI 83 (1971): 771–91; B. D. Ehrman, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament (Oxford, 1993), 15–17; Jeanjean, Saint Jérôme et l’hérésie, 352–5; J. W. Knust, Abandoned to Lust: Sexual Slander and Ancient Christianity (New York, 2006); T. J. Whitley, “Poison in the Panarion: Beasts, Heretics, and Sexual Deviants,” VChr 70 (2016): 237–58. Loose living was a stock charge also leveled by Christian authors at pagans; see I. Opelt, Die Polemik in der christlichen lateinischen Literatur von Tertullian bis Augustin (Heidelberg, 1980), 226, 237–40. ⁴² Scintilla res parva est et paene dum cernitur non videtur; sed si fomitem comprehenderit et nutrimenta sui quamvis parvus ignis invenerit, moenia, urbes, latissimos saltus regionesque consumit . . . Arius in Alexandria una scintilla fuit; sed quia non statim oppressa est, totum orbem eius flamma populata est (Comm. Gal. 5.9).

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trapped among formidable “shipwrecks of false teachings.”⁴³ He brands Arius a “serpent” and Eunomius a “snake,”⁴⁴ both traditional heresiological epithets which cast their designees as insidious, vicious, and toxic creatures.⁴⁵ Jerome also calls Marcion, Basilides, and others of their ilk “plagues” (pestes),⁴⁶ a common polemical image for heretics.⁴⁷ He also makes this sweeping denunciation of a corolla of sects: It would be tedious to produce from Paul’s epistles and the rest of Scripture a roll call of the virtues and vices of individual nations, for we have returned to the original point that the Galatians were pronounced foolish and senseless. Anyone who has visited Ancyra, the capital city of Galatia, knows, like I do,⁴⁸ by how many schisms it has been ripped apart and with how many doctrinal differences it has been blotted. I say nothing of the Kataphrygians, Ophites, Borborites, and Manichaeans, for these names of human woe are already well known. Who has ever heard of the Passalorynchites, Tascodrougites, and Artotyrites, and other groups which are monstrosities rather than mere names in another part of the Roman world? The vestiges of ancient foolishness subsist down to the present day. Longum est si velim de apostolo et de Scripturis omnibus singularum gentium vel virtutes observare vel vitia, cum ad haec ipsa quae diximus inde devoluti simus quod Galatae stulti et vecordes pronuntiati sint. Scit me cum qui vidit Ancyram, metropolim Galatiae civitatem, quot nunc usque schismatibus dilacerata sit, quot dogmatum varietatibus constuprata. Omitto Cataphrygas, Ophitas, Borboritas et Manichaeos: nota enim iam haec humanae calamitatis vocabula sunt. Quis

⁴³ Subrepunt hoc loco caeterae haereses, quae putativam Christi carnem vindicantes Deum aiunt Christum esse, non hominem; necnon et nova haeresis, quae dimidiatam Christi adserit dispensationem, atque ita ecclesiae fides, inter tanta falsorum dogmatum naufragia constituta, si Christum fateatur hominem (Comm. Gal. 1.1). On Jerome’s use of seafaring metaphors, see L. M. Kaiser, “Imagery of Sea and Ship in the Letters of St. Jerome,” Folia 5 (1951): 56–60; J. W. Smit, Studies on the Language and Style of Columba the Younger (Columbanus) (Amsterdam, 1971), 172–89; G. J. M. Bartelink, Hieronymus: Liber de optimo genere interpretandi (Epistula 57): Ein Kommentar (Leiden, 1980), 112–13. ⁴⁴ Vbi est serpens Arius? Vbi Eunomius coluber? (Comm. Tit. 2.11–14). ⁴⁵ Earlier heresiologists sometimes used such imagery (e.g., Irenaeus, Adv. haer. 1.27.3: Marcion is a serpent), but Epiphanius was the first to employ it systematically to degrade theological opponents; see J. Dummer, “Ein naturwissenschaftliches Handbuch als Quelle für Epiphanius von Constantia,” Klio 55 (1978): 289–99; A. Pourkier, L’hérésiologie chez Épiphane de Salamine (Paris, 1992), 79–81. Christian writers also compared some pagan adversaries to venomous animals such as snakes and scorpions; see Opelt, Die Polemik, 214; M. Kahlos, “The Shadow of the Shadow: Examining Fourth- and FifthCentury Christian Depiction of Pagans,” in M. Kahlos (ed.), The Faces of the Other: Religious Rivalry and Ethnic Encounters in the Later Roman World (Turnhout, 2011), 165–95 (178–80). ⁴⁶ Marcion et Basilides et caeterae haereticorum pestes non habent Dei evangelium, quia non habent Spiritum Sanctum, sine quo humanum fit evangelium quod docetur (Comm. Gal. 1.11–12). ⁴⁷ Cf. Cyprian, Ep. 74.2.4; Ambrosiaster, Comm. Eph. 4.14; Augustine, C. litt. Pet. 1.26.28; Gest. Pel. 6.18; C. Cresc. 4.64.79; Jerome, Alt. Luc. et orth. 23. Cf. D. Loewenstein, Treacherous Faith: The Specter of Heresy in Early Modern English Literature and Culture (Oxford, 2013), 202–3. ⁴⁸ Jerome passed through Ancyra during the early 370s on his way to Antioch; see J. N. D. Kelly, Jerome: His Life, Writings, and Controversies (New York, 1975), 37.

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umquam Passalorynchitas et Ascodrobos et Artotyritas et caetera magis portenta quam nomina in alia parte Romani orbis audivit? Antiquae stultitiae usque hodie manent vestigia.⁴⁹

Jerome delegitimizes these sects on several levels. He assigns to them derogatory labels—“names of human woe” (humanae calamitatis vocabula) and “monstrosities” (portenta)⁵⁰—which dramatize them as scourges on humanity.⁵¹ Even the very names he reports for most of them are mocking nicknames bestowed by orthodox heresiologists. The Tascodrougites (Τασκοδρουγῖται, “Peg-noses”), apparently a sect of the Montanists,⁵² were so called for their habit of placing their forefinger on their nose when they prayed;⁵³ “Passalorynchites,” or “Pegsnouts” (πάσσαλος, “peg”; ῥύγχος, “snout”), is another sobriquet for them. Another sect of the Montanists was the Artotyrites, or “Bread-and-cheesers” (ἀρτός + τυρός), who were called this because they celebrated the Eucharist with bread and cheese (or possibly yogurt).⁵⁴ “Ophites” (ὄφις, “serpent”) was a generic designation for any number of Gnostic sects in Syria and Egypt that honored the serpent of Genesis 3 as a revealer of redemptive knowledge,⁵⁵ while “Borborites” (βόρβορος, “filth”) is the pejorative moniker for an offshoot of the Ophites alleged to be libertines.⁵⁶ In addition to polemical labeling, Jerome denigrates the above-named sects in other, subtler ways. To the first group, consisting of Kataphrygians (i.e., Montanists⁵⁷), Ophites, Borborites, and Manichaeans, he draws negative attention

⁴⁹ Comm. Gal., lib. 2, prol. ll. 111–17. ⁵⁰ For portentum as an “other”-izing tag for heretics, cf. Ambrose, Fid. 2.13.120; Jerome, C. Vig. 6; Augustine, Ep. 7.4. ⁵¹ On labeling as a heresiological strategy, see V. Burrus, The Making of a Heretic: Gender, Authority, and the Priscillianist Controversy (Berkeley, 1995), passim. ⁵² In the passage quoted above, the Montanists are referred to more generally as “Kataphrygians” (Cataphrygae). Epiphanius links the Tascodrougites to the Montanists (Pan. 48.14); cf. C. Trevett, “Fingers up Noses and Pricking with Needles: Possible Reminiscences of Revelation in Later Montanism,” VChr 49 (1995): 258–69. Various heresiological writers refer to this sect alternatively as Tascodrogitae, Ascodrugitae, Ascodrobi, Ascodrogi, and Ἀσκοδρούτοι. ⁵³ This at any rate is how Epiphanius parses their name (τασκός + δροῦγγος) (Pan. 48.14). Pace Epiphanius’s etymology, J. Katz, “How the Mole and Mongoose Got Their Names: Sanskrit Ākhú- and nakulá-,” JAOS 122 (2002): 296–310 (299), demonstrates on linguistic grounds that this name did not originally mean “Peg-noses” at all but rather “Badger-noses” or “Mole-noses,” though how this sect might have acquired such nicknames to begin with is a mystery. The Tascodrougites were active in Jerome’s day and in fact were targets of two laws (issued in 383 and 428) barring them from assembly; see R. Flower, “ ‘The Insanity of Heretics Must Be Restrained’: Heresiology in the Theodosian Code,” in C. Kelly (ed.), Theodosius II: Rethinking the Roman Empire in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, 2013), 172–94 (185–7). ⁵⁴ Epiphanius, Pan. 49.2.6; Augustine, Haer. 86; Praedestinatus, Haer. 1.28. ⁵⁵ T. Rasimus, “Ophite Gnosticism, Sethianism and the Nag Hammadi Library,” VChr 59 (2005): 235–63. ⁵⁶ Epiphanius, Pan. 25.2–5. ⁵⁷ See A. Zisteren, “Phrygier oder Kataphrygier?,” TQ 74 (1892): 475–82.

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through the rhetorical figure of praeteritio (omitto . . . ), bringing them up while pretending to ignore them.⁵⁸ The second group he dismisses for their obscurity (quis umquam . . . audivit?), and he further emphasizes their fringe status by locating them in a geographically ambiguous part of the Roman world (in alia parte Romani orbis). Finally, he asserts that all of these sects exhibit “the vestiges of ancient foolishness” and thereby he traces their error directly back to first-century Galatia. He thus establishes a genealogy of heresy:⁵⁹ they are spiritual descendants of Paul’s contemporary opponents, while he, as the documenter of their error, belongs to Paul’s spiritual lineage.

Marcion and the Unity of Scripture Few figures in the early church better succeeded at steering the collective conversation about Paul than Marcion.⁶⁰ As Wiles puts it: “He is like a figure standing just off-stage but casting his shadow over every player on it.”⁶¹ Marcion was born in the late first century and grew up in Sinope in Pontus, in modern-day Turkey.⁶² He purportedly was a well-off merchant; Tertullian says that he was a shipowner (ναύκληρος) who ran a successful transport business.⁶³ Epiphanius relates that in his youth Marcion seduced a virgin, was excommunicated by his father, who was a bishop, and then fled Sinope in embarrassment.⁶⁴ This story almost certainly was fabricated to discredit Marcion,⁶⁵ who actually had a reputation later in life for asceticism. Most modern scholars take the virgin as a metaphor for the church, the pristine bride of Christ whom Marcion “corrupted” with his heresy.⁶⁶ ⁵⁸ For Jerome’s use of this rhetorical figure, see J. N. Hritzu, The Style of the Letters of St. Jerome (Washington, D.C., 1939), 70–1. ⁵⁹ On intellectual genealogies as a polemical tool among orthodox Christian writers, see Boulluec, La notion d’hérésie, 1.40–1, 48–51, 84–91; Berzon, Classifying Christians, 120–4. On Jerome’s use of them, see A. Ferreiro, Simon Magus in Patristic, Medieval and Early Monastic Traditions (Leiden, 2005), 85–7. ⁶⁰ For one recent perspective on his (for the time) innovative reception of Paul, see J. W. Marshall, “Misunderstanding the New Paul: Marcion’s Transformation of the Sonderzeit Paul,” JECS 20 (2012): 1–29. For a thorough treatment of Marcion’s life and thought, see S. Moll, The Arch-Heretic Marcion (Tübingen, 2010), and for an overview of his teachings and legacy, see H. C. Ward, “Marcion and His Critics,” in P. M. Blowers and P. W. Martens (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Biblical Interpretation (Oxford, 2019), 366–82. ⁶¹ The Divine Apostle, 49. ⁶² Hippolytus, Haer. 7.17; Tertullian, Adv. Marc. 5.17; Epiphanius, Pan. 42.1, 4. For an analysis of traditions about Marcion’s early life, see J. Regul, Die antimarcionitischen Evangelienprologe (Freiburg, 1969), 177–95. ⁶³ Praescr. haer. 30; Adv. Marc. 4.9, 5.1. Tertullian’s use of the Greek term rather than the Latin navicularius possibly suggests that he is preserving a tradition of the Greek-speaking Christian community in Rome, where Marcion was active during the 140s and 150s. ⁶⁴ Pan. 42.2. ⁶⁵ On the tendency of orthodox writers to smear their heretical opponents with accusations of lasciviousness, see above (p. 140). ⁶⁶ G. Lüdemann, Heretics: The Other Side of Early Christianity, trans. J. Bowden (Louisville, 1996), 159.

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Marcion left his native Pontus around 139,⁶⁷ though his exact reasons for doing so remain unclear. He turned up in Rome, which was home to the most powerful church in the world at that time. In 144, he had a falling out with local church authorities, who were not receptive to the radical new theology he had been preaching since at least 130. He severed ties with the Roman church and established his own church, which essentially was a mirror image of the orthodox church with a comparable hierarchy (e.g., Marcion served as bishop) and ritualistic practices. Sometime during the 150s or thereafter Marcion returned to Asia Minor and lived out the rest of his days until his death in c.160. If Marcion’s theology can be said to pivot around one central premise, it is that the Jewish Law and the Gospel of Christ are fundamentally irreconcilable; Tertullian called this his “chief work” (principale opus).⁶⁸ A hyper-Paulinist, Marcion explained their alleged incongruity by positing the existence of two diametrically opposed deities who govern them. On the one hand, there is Yahweh, the God of the Old Testament. He is an inferior deity, the Creator (Demiurge) of humankind who is a warmonger, an instigator of strife among humans, and an all-around capricious divinity.⁶⁹ He also is the exacting judge who imposed the Law on the Jews and inflicted harsh penalties for their failure to comply with it. On the other hand, there is the God of the New Testament. He is the supreme deity, the good God and Father of Jesus who out of boundless mercy sent his Son to save humanity from the Law of the Creator.⁷⁰ Marcion called him the “Stranger” because he is a transcendent deity who was unknown to the human race prior to his self-revelation in Christ.⁷¹ This alien God also has no connection with the material universe and all the suffering therein, which are the handiwork and domain of the Demiurge.⁷²

⁶⁷ Precise dating of events and milestones in Marcion’s career is problematic, but see the illuminating reappraisal of the evidence in J. B. Tyson, Marcion and Luke-Acts: A Defining Struggle (Columbia, 2006), 24–31. ⁶⁸ Adv. Marc. 1.19. ⁶⁹ P. Lampe, From Paul to Valentinus: Christians at Rome in the First Two Centuries, trans. M. G. Steinhauser (Minneapolis, 2003), 241–9, suggests that Marcion’s perception was partly a projection of his personal experience living under the reign of Trajan (98–117). During times of crisis and war, private ship-owners were obligated to allow the state to use their ships for transporting foodstuffs and other goods. Lampe speculates that Marcion may have resented this burdensome compulsory service to the state and that he in turn demonized the Roman imperial administration as the Demiurge. ⁷⁰ Cf. W. A. Löhr, “Did Marcion Distinguish between a Just God and a Good God?,” in G. May and K. Greschat (eds.), Marcion und seine kirchengeschichtliche Wirkung (Berlin, 2002), 131–46. There is evidence of a shift in thinking on this subject among some later Marcionites. In Adamantius’s dialogue De recta in deum fide, which dates to the late third or early fourth century, one of the interlocutors, the Marcionite Megethius, posits three divine principles, rather than Marcion’s two: the good God and father of Christ, the Demiurge, and the evil God (Rect. fid. 1.2, 2.6). For the text of this work, see R. A. Pretty, Adamantius: Dialogue on the True Faith in God (Leuven, 1997). ⁷¹ Tertullian, Adv. Marc. 1.9. ⁷² Cf. A. McGowan, “Marcion’s Love of Creation,” JECS 9 (2001): 295–311, who argues against the prevailing view that Marcion viewed matter as being inherently evil.

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Of the nearly dozen and a half heresiarchs whom Jerome criticizes in his Pauline commentaries, it is Marcion who consistently emerges as his principal foil. In fact, he explicitly names Marcion a total of twenty-one times (and alludes to him many more times), a robust figure when we consider that these make up about one quarter of the direct references to Marcion in his entire extant literary corpus, which spans more than four decades. In most cases he takes specific aim at Marcion’s dualism. He tailors his entire exposition of Eph. 5.9 (“For the fruit of the light is in all goodness and justice and truth”) to this end: Let us bring forth this passage against Marcion, who distinguishes between a just God and a good God and thinks that the Creator is just but that some other God, whose son is the Christ who has come, is the sole good one. For indeed “the fruit of the light” is not only “in goodness” but also “in justice and truth.” Where therefore there is goodness, there also is justice, and where justice, there naturally also is truth. Thus there is “goodness and truth” with the good father of Christ, as even they acknowledge. Moreover, where there is “goodness and truth,” with this same one and not with another, there is “justice,” as the Apostle now teaches. Let Marcion also understand that Christ himself is called “goodness,” “truth,” and “justice”—“goodness” because he gives grace to those who believe in him not according to their works but according to his mercy, “justice” because he gives to each one what he deserves, and finally “truth” because he alone knows the meanings underlying all creatures and things. Adversus Marcionem (qui iustum Deum a bono separat et putat creatorem esse iustum; alium vero nescio quem, cuius Christus iste qui venit filius sit, bonum tantummodo esse Deum) hoc testimonium proferamus. Siquidem fructus lucis non solum est in bonitate; sed et in iustitia et in veritate. Vbi itaque bonitas est, ibi et iustitia; ubi iustitia, ibi consequenter et veritas. Apud bonum ergo Christi patrem, ut ipsi quoque fatentur, est bonitas et veritas. Vbi autem bonitas et veritas, apud ipsum et non apud alium, ut nunc apostolus docet, iustitia est. Intellegat quoque Marcion ipsum Christum bonitatem, veritatem et iustitiam nuncupari: bonitatem in eo quod non secundum opera, sed secundum misericordiam det gratiam credentibus in se; iustitiam in eo, dum unicuique retribuit quod meretur; porro veritatem, dum ipse solus causas creaturarum omnium rerumque cognoscit.⁷³

Like Origen,⁷⁴ Jerome operated under the assumption that the Old and New Testaments together comprise one unified, internally cohesive written revelation

⁷³ Comm. Eph. 5.9. ⁷⁴ Martens, Origen and Scripture, 201–5; J. Lieu, Marcion and the Making of a Heretic: God and Scripture in the Second Century (Cambridge, 2015), 139–40.

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of one and the same God.⁷⁵ In prophetic terms, this means that the Old Testament is a veiled Christian document which foreshadows Christ and the dispensation of grace.⁷⁶ This hermeneutical approach is diametrically opposed to that of Marcion,⁷⁷ who rejected the Old Testament in toto as a Jewish text with no prophetic relation whatsoever to the New Testament, and with no ethical or other relevance for Christians.⁷⁸ In Jerome’s words, Marcion “repudiates the prophets”⁷⁹ and asserts that the Old Testament “has nothing at all to do with Christ”⁸⁰ because he denies that the Old Testament emanates from the “good God.”⁸¹ When expounding Eph. 3.8–9 (“To me . . . has been given this grace, to preach the unsearchable riches of Christ . . . the mystery which has been hidden from the ages in God who created all things”), Jerome accordingly emphasizes the seamless unity of the two Testaments: These riches of his goodness had been concealed from all ages past in God who is the creator of everything. Where are Marcion, Valentinus, and all the heretics who assert that the maker of the world—that is, of things visible—is one entity ⁷⁵ Cf. Jerome, Comm. Am., lib. 1, prol. ll. 21–2: Idem enim qui per omnes prophetas in eo Spiritus sanctus loquebatur. ⁷⁶ P. Jay, L’exégèse de saint Jérôme d’après son Commentaire sur Isaïe (Paris, 1985), 385–7. Origen and Jerome were by no means the only exegetes who interpreted the Old Testament as a Christian document. To take just two other examples, Augustine does so in his commentary on Galatians (E. Plumer, Augustine’s Commentary on Galatians: Introduction, Text, Translation, and Notes (Oxford, 2003), 90–9), and both Theodore of Mopsuestia and Cyril of Alexandria read the Minor Prophets through a Christian lens (H. T. Ondrey, The Minor Prophets as Christian Scripture in the Commentaries of Theodore of Mopsuestia and Cyril of Alexandria (Oxford, 2018), 147–212). Cf. J. T. Lienhard, “Origen and the Crisis of the Old Testament,” Pro Ecclesia 9 (2000): 355–66. ⁷⁷ F. Pieri (ed.), “L’esegesi di Girolamo nel Commentario a Efesini: aspetti storico–esegetici e storico–dottrinali: testo critico e annotazioni” (Ph.D. diss.: Università di Bologna, 1996), xl–xlv. ⁷⁸ Hence Marcion’s only known original literary production, the Antitheses (Ἀντιθέσεις), or “Contradictory Propositions,” in which he juxtaposed seemingly conflicting verses from both Testaments. Only fragments are preserved in the writings of his orthodox opponents; see A. von Harnack, Marcion: Das Evangelium vom fremden Gott. Eine Monographie zur Geschichte der Grundlegung der katholischen Kirche (Leipzig, 1924), 74–92; Lieu, Marcion and the Making of a Heretic, 270–89; cf. F. C. Burkitt, “The Exordium of Marcion’s Antitheses,” JThS 30 (1929): 279–80. Interestingly, some scholars suspect that this work is explicitly referenced in 1 Tim. 6.20, where Timothy is told to be on guard against the ἀντιθέσεις τῆς ψευδωνύμου γνώσεως. According to this view, the Greek should be construed as “Antitheses of falsely called knowledge.” However, this theory is unconvincing for two reasons. First, it assumes quite a late date for this epistle and thus non-Pauline authorship; on the modern scholarly debate about its authorship, see P. Towner, The Letters to Timothy and Titus (Grand Rapids, 2006), 9–27. Second, the false teachers condemned in this epistle are of a decidedly Jewish bent (1 Tim. 1.7; cf. Tit. 1.10, 14; 3.9); see P. Hartog, Polycarp and the New Testament: The Occasion, Rhetoric, Theme, and Unity of the Epistle to the Philippians and Its Allusions to New Testament Literature (Tübingen, 2002), 91. ⁷⁹ Interrogemus hoc loco Marcionem, qui prophetas repudiat, quomodo interpretetur id quod sequitur (Comm. Gal. 3.1a). ⁸⁰ Interrogemus Marcionem, qua consequentia locum istum, qui de veteri usurpatus est instrumento, in Christum et in ecclesiam interpretari queat, cum, iuxta illum, scriptura vetus omnino non pertineat ad Christum (Comm. Eph. 5.31). ⁸¹ Simul et haereticos coarctabimus, nolentes vetus testamentum esse Dei boni, cuius Filius Christus sit, qua ratione apostolus Christi, boni Dei filii, Scriptura creatoris utatur et oboedientiam filiorum de veteri lege praesumat (Comm. Eph. 6.1–3).

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and that the maker of things invisible is another entity, and who say that one is just and that the other (I know not whom since he is always unknown) is alone good and the father of Christ? Behold God, in whom the mystery of Christ had been hidden from all ages past is proclaimed to be the creator of all. This shows that the God of the New and Old Testaments is the same. Hae bonitatis eius divitiae ab omnibus retro saeculis absconditae fuerunt in Deo qui creator est omnium. Vbi est Marcion et Valentinus et omnes haeretici qui alterum mundi, id est visibilium, et alterum adserunt invisibilium conditorem, hunc iustum esse dicentes illum nescio quem semper ignotum tantum bonum qui pater Christi sit? Ecce Deus, in quo mysterium Christi ab omnibus retro saeculis absconditum fuit, creator esse omnium praedicatur. Ex quo ostenditur idem esse Deus novi et veteris testamenti.⁸²

Jerome disapproved of not only Marcion’s devaluation of the Old Testament but also his treatment of the canonical New Testament. Marcion constructed his own scriptural canon consisting of two parts, the Euangelion, a heavily redacted version of the Gospel of Luke,⁸³ and the Apostolikon, a collection of ten Pauline epistles from which alleged Judaistic interpolations had been excised.⁸⁴ The Apostolikon excluded Hebrews and the three Pastoral Epistles (Titus, 1 & 2 Timothy),⁸⁵ though whether Marcion omitted the Pastorals by design or out of ignorance of their existence remains a matter of scholarly debate.⁸⁶ In the first half of the preface to his commentary on Titus, Jerome attacks Marcion for rejecting the canonicity of Titus and considers this to be yet another example of his mutilation of the biblical text.⁸⁷ In this same context he criticizes Marcion for deleting from Paul’s remaining epistles anything inimical to his own teaching.⁸⁸ ⁸² Comm. Eph. 3.8–9. ⁸³ For a recent reconstruction of it, see D. Roth, The Text of Marcion’s Gospel (Leiden, 2015). Cf. M. Vinzent, “Der Schluss des Lukasevangelius bei Marcion,” in G. May and K. Greschat (eds.), Marcion und seine kirchengeschichtliche Wirkung (Berlin, 2002), 79–94. ⁸⁴ On Marcion’s editorial principles, see E. W. Scherbenske, Canonizing Paul: Ancient Editorial Practice and the Corpus Paulinum (Oxford, 2013), 71–112. Cf. U. Schmid, Marcion und sein Apostolos: Rekonstruktion und historische Einordnung der marcionitischen Paulusbriefausgabe (Berlin, 1995), who argues that Marcion’s editing was not nearly as extensive as usually is supposed. For a reconstruction of the pre-Marcionite text of Paul, see J. Clabeaux, A Lost Edition of the Letters of Paul: A Reassessment of the Text of the Pauline Corpus Attested by Marcion (Washington, D.C., 1989). A critique of Schmid and Clabeaux is given by G. Quispel, “Marcion and the Text of the New Testament,” VChr 52 (1998): 349–60. According to Origen, Marcion not only tampered with the text of the Gospels (C. Cels. 2.27) but he also deleted material from the later chapters of Paul’s epistle to the Romans (Comm. Rom. 10.43.2; cf. Comm. Ioan. 5.7). ⁸⁵ Tertullian, Adv. Marc. 5.21. ⁸⁶ F. F. Bruce, The Canon of Scripture (Downers Grove, 1988), 131, 138–9; H. Gamble, The New Testament Canon: Its Making and Meaning (Philadelphia, 1985), 42. On Marcion’s possible reason(s) for excluding Hebrews, see C. Rothschild, Hebrews as Pseudepigraphon: The History and Significance of the Pauline Attribution of Hebrews (Tübingen, 2009), 24–6. ⁸⁷ Comm. Tit., prol. ll. 1–22. ⁸⁸ Comm. Tit., prol. ll. 10–12. Jerome repeats this charge in Comm. Phlm., prol. ll. 63–4. On Marcion’s reception of Paul, see E. Samek Lodovici, “Sull’interpretazione di alcuni testi della Lettera

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In his commentary on Galatians he also alerts readers about several instances where Marcion tampered with Paul’s text, deleting certain phrases inconsonant with his own doctrine.⁸⁹ Moreover, Jerome’s preoccupation with Marcion did not stem from any apprehension that his late fourth-century followers viably challenged the theological (and political) dominance of the Theodosian-era orthodox church.⁹⁰ The church he had founded in the mid-second century did not pose anywhere near the kind of imminent threat to the mainstream church’s vitality that it had posed some two hundred years earlier—a time when “for many, whether Christian believers or outside observers, the word ‘Christianity’ would have meant ‘Marcionite Christianity’.”⁹¹ In fact, even though by Jerome’s time the Marcionite church continued to flourish in rural pockets throughout the East (particularly in Syria),⁹² it seems to have more or less fizzled out in the West.⁹³ Jerome’s real quarrel, then, was not really with Marcion’s later followers. It was not even with Marcion the historical figure. It was with a notional “Marcion” as a timeless heretical icon. Of this icon status Lieu observes: “Marcion survives within the [early Christian] tradition as, and only as, a heretic; if he had not been so constructed his name would have long been forgotten.”⁹⁴ Marcion is a bête noire in the exegetical writings of Origen,⁹⁵ who had enshrined him, along with Basilides and Valentinus, in his triumvirate of archetypal heretics.⁹⁶ And, because ai Galati in Marcione e in Tertulliano,” Aevum 46 (1972): 371–401; E. Norelli, “La funzione di Paolo nel pensiero di Marcione,” RivB 34 (1986): 578–86. ⁸⁹ Comm. Gal. 1.1, 3.6, 3.13a, 4.4–5, 4.24b–6. Cf. T. Baarda, “Marcion’s Text of Gal. 1:1 Concerning the Reconstruction of the First Verse of the Marcionite Corpus Paulinum,” VChr 42 (1988): 236–56. See also R. Clements, “Origen’s Readings of Romans in Peri Archon: (Re)Constructing Paul,” in K. L. Gaca and L. L. Welborn (eds.), Early Patristic Readings of Romans (New York, 2005), 159–79 (160). ⁹⁰ Mutatis mutandis, the same can be said for Gregory of Tours’s polemic against Arianism. See E. James, “Gregory of Tours and ‘Arianism’,” in A. Cain and N. Lenski (eds.), The Power of Religion in Late Antiquity (Aldershot, 2009), 327–38. ⁹¹ S. G. Wilson, Related Strangers: Jews and Christians 70 ..–170 .. (Minneapolis, 1995), 208. ⁹² H. J. W. Drijvers, “Marcionism in Syria: Principles, Problems, Polemics,” SCent 6 (1987–8): 153–72; S. K. Ross, Roman Edessa: Politics and Culture on the Eastern Fringes of the Roman Empire, 114–242  (London, 2001), 121, 128. ⁹³ Writing around 377, Epiphanius mentioned a Marcionite presence in Rome but did not elaborate on its scope (Pan. 42.1.2). The Roman priest Ambrosiaster, writing around the same time, records that the Marcionites “have almost died out” (paene defecerunt) in his contemporary Rome (Comm. 1 Tim. 4.5). ⁹⁴ Lieu, Marcion and the Making of a Heretic, 433. ⁹⁵ A. Le Boulluec, “La polémique contre les hérésies dans les Homélies sur les Psaumes d’Origène (Codex Monacensis Graecus 314),” Adamantius 20 (2014): 256–74; C. Aloe Spada, “Aspetti della polemica antimarcionita nel Commento al Vangelo di Giovanni,” in R. Daly (ed.), Origeniana quinta: Historica, Text and Method, Biblica, Philosophica, Theologica, Origenism and Later Developments: Papers of the 5th International Origen Congress (Boston College, 14–18 August 1989) (Leuven, 1992), 85–91; F. Cocchini, “Aspetti del paolinismo origeniano,” Augustinianum 30 (1991): 245–75; J. RuisCamps, “Origenes y Marción: carácter preferentemente antimarcionita del prefacio y del segundo ciclo del Peri Archôn,” in H. Crouzel, G. Lomiento, and J. Ruis-Camps (eds.), Origeniana: premier colloque international des études origéniennes (Montserrat, 18–21 septembre 1973) (Bari, 1975), 297–312. ⁹⁶ See Origen, Princ. 2.9.5; Hom. 7 Ies. 7; Hom. Ps. 36 3.11. Cf. Boulluec, La notion d’hérésie, 2.550; Lubac, History and Spirit, 54–7; Lieu, Marcion and the Making of a Heretic, 136.

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Jerome’s Pauline commentaries are so heavily derivative of Origen’s,⁹⁷ it comes as no surprise that Jerome would follow Origen’s lead in so frequently anathematizing Marcion.⁹⁸

Christology From the earliest documented stages of his literary career Jerome had been a staunch proponent of Nicene Christology.⁹⁹ In a letter of c.377 written from his monastic retreat in rural Syria to Pope Damasus in Rome, he complained about some local Arian monks who were pressuring him to confess a Trinitarian formula contrary to the Nicene one, and he asked Damasus to settle the matter by enacting a new decree to reaffirm the Nicene Creed.¹⁰⁰ Three years later, when he was living in Constantinople, he translated some of Origen’s homilies on Isaiah but emended them in places where their theology did not sync with contemporary Trinitarian orthodoxy.¹⁰¹ Around this same time he also produced a Latin translation and continuation of Eusebius’s Chronicle,¹⁰² crafting it as a piece of proNicene propaganda intended for consumption at the highest levels of the Theodosian court.¹⁰³ In his Pauline commentaries, composed several years after the abovementioned works, Jerome evinces the same enthusiasm to promote Nicene theology. For instance, he detects in numerous passages implicit formulations of Trinitarian doctrine.¹⁰⁴ A good example of this eisegetical tendency is one of the ⁹⁷ See Chapter 6. ⁹⁸ A. Souter, The Earliest Latin Commentaries on the Epistles of St. Paul (Oxford, 1927), 119; M. Schatkin, “The Influence of Origen upon St. Jerome’s Commentary on Galatians,” VChr 24 (1970): 49–58 (57); Jeanjean, Saint Jérôme et l’hérésie, 125; G. Raspanti, “Adgrediar opus intemptatum: l’Ad Galatas di Girolamo e gli sviluppi del commentario biblico latino,” Adamantius 10 (2004): 194–216 (204). ⁹⁹ In recent decades scholars increasingly have rejected a strict, simplistic division between uniform “Nicene” and “Arian” camps and have become more attuned to the nuanced diversity of belief that existed within each of these two broad groups. See M. Simonetti, La crisi ariana nel IV secolo (Rome, 1975); R. P. C. Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God: The Arian Controversy, 318–381  (Edinburgh, 1988); L. F. Ayres, Nicaea and Its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth-Century Trinitarian Theology (Oxford, 2004). ¹⁰⁰ Ep. 15.3–4. For the theological background of this letter, see T. Lawler, “Jerome’s First Letter to Damasus,” in P. Granfield and J. Jungmann (eds.), Kyriakon: Festschrift Johannes Quasten, 2 vols. (Münster, 1970), 2.548–52; B. Conring, Hieronymus als Briefschreiber: Ein Beitrag zur spätantiken Epistolographie (Tübingen, 2001), 198–215; S. Rebenich, Jerome (London, 2002), 70–4. ¹⁰¹ A. Fürst, “Jerome Keeping Silent: Origen, Jerome, and the Patristic Exegesis of Isaiah,” in A. Cain and J. Lössl (eds.), Jerome of Stridon: His Life, Writings, and Legacy (Aldershot, 2009), 141–52. ¹⁰² This work made available to Latin readers for the first time a chronological compendium of world history from Abraham to 378 . On its unique place in western Christian historiography, see M. Vessey, “Reinventing History: Jerome’s Chronicle and the Writing of the Post-Roman West,” YCS 34 (2010): 265–89. ¹⁰³ S. Rebenich, “Asceticism, Orthodoxy and Patronage: Jerome in Constantinople,” StudPatr 33 (1997): 358–77 (375). ¹⁰⁴ Comm. Gal. 4.6, 6.1; Comm. Tit. 1.1; Comm. Phlm. 1–3.

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interpretations he offers for Tit. 3.4–7 (“When the goodness and lovingkindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us . . . through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit. This Spirit he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life”): Let us pay closer attention and we will discover the Trinity very clearly revealed in the present section. For the goodness and lovingkindness of God our Savior— none other than God the Father—has justified us unto eternal life through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior. The salvation of believers is wrapped up in the mystery of the Trinity. Diligentius adtendamus et inveniemus in praesenti capitulo manifestissimam Trinitatem. Benignitas quippe atque clementia Salvatoris nostri Dei, non alterius quam Dei Patris, per lavacrum regenerationis et renovationem Spiritus sancti, quem effudit super nos abundanter per Iesum Christum salvatorem nostrum, iustificavit nos in vitam aeternam. Salus credentium mysterium Trinitatis est.¹⁰⁵

Jerome finds in other Pauline passages an opportunity to uphold Nicene Trinitarian doctrine and also to go on the offensive against opposing theologies. A case in point is the formula “one Lord, one faith, one baptism” (Eph. 4.5), in which he discovers a panacea for multiple heresies: Just as faith is different from baptism, God, and Lord, so baptism, Lord, and God are different from the three individuals that are named together. I say this on account of Sabellius,¹⁰⁶ who thinks that God the Father and the Son are the same and confuses the persons while he detects the same divinity in each . . . We are immersed three times so that the mystery of the Trinity appears unified. We are not baptized in the names of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit but in one name, which is understood as “God.” I am astonished at how Arius, Macedonius, and Eunomius apprehend a diversity of nature in the same name, the same work, and the same sacrament (with discord being harmonized in impiety), and how, by positing the muddy fountain of a creature in the Son and Holy Spirit, they have produced diverse streams of heresies. Quomodo alia est fides a baptismate, Deo et Domino, sic baptisma Dominus et Deus alia sunt a tribus singulis, quae pariter nominantur. Hoc autem dico propter

¹⁰⁵ Comm. Tit. 3.3–7. ¹⁰⁶ On Sabellius’s theology, which is notoriously difficult to reconstruct, see M. Simonetti, “Sabellio e il sabellianesimo,” SSR 4 (1980): 7–28; W. A. Bienert, “Sabellius und Sabellianismus als historisches Problem,” in H. C. Brennecke, E. L. Grasmuck, and C. Markschies (eds.), Logos: Festschrift für Luise Abramowski (Berlin, 1993), 124–39.

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Sabellium, qui eumdem Deum Patrem arbitratur et Filium confunditque personas, dum eamdem divinitatem in utroque deprehendit . . . Ter mergimur, ut Trinitatis unum appareat sacramentum; et non baptizamur in nominibus Patris et Filii et Spiritus sancti, sed in uno nomine, quod intelligitur Deus. Et miror qua consequentia in uno vocabulo eodem opere et eodem sacramento, naturae diversitatem Arius, Macedonius et Eunomius suspicentur, concordante in impietate discordia, et creaturae in Filio et Spiritu sancto caenosum fontem tenentes diversos haereseon rivulos duxerint.¹⁰⁷

Articulating from Scripture a coherent view of the person of Christ was one of Jerome’s main priorities, just as it was for most other early Christian commentators on Paul.¹⁰⁸ In terms of his anti-heretical polemic, Christological heresiarchs pre-dating the fourth century, who proved especially pestiferous for second- and third-century orthodox writers,¹⁰⁹ receive a modicum of attention. Marcion and Mani, for instance, are condemned in tandem for downplaying the reality of Jesus’s fleshly body.¹¹⁰ Marcion and “other heresies that pretend that the flesh of Christ was imaginary” are said to contradict Paul’s affirmation that Christ was born of a woman.¹¹¹ Likewise, the second-century figure Julius Cassianus, whom Jerome nicknames “the most astute heresiarch among the Encratites,” is condemned for teaching that Christ’s flesh was “imaginary.”¹¹² Jerome pays more attention to Christological heresiarchs closer to his own time,¹¹³ and it hardly is surprising that Arius, arguably the most notorious

¹⁰⁷ Comm. Eph. 4.5–6. ¹⁰⁸ Wiles, The Divine Apostle, 73–93; A. Kofsky and S. Ruzer, “Theodore of Mopsuestia’s Hermeneutics: Transformed Theology in Response to Fourth-Century Crises,” VoxP 34 (2014): 221–38. ¹⁰⁹ E.g., B. D. Ehrman, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament (New York, 1993), 181–261; P. Ashwin-Siejkowski, Clement of Alexandria on Trial: The Evidence of “Heresy” from Photius’ Bibliotheca (Leiden, 2010), 95–114; U. C. van Wahlde, Gnosticism, Docetism, and the Judaisms of the First Century: The Search for the Wider Context of the Johannine Literature and Why It Matters (London, 2015), 61–104; J. Papandrea, The Earliest Christologies: Five Images of Christ in the Postapostolic Age (Downers Grove, 2016), 45–66. ¹¹⁰ Comm. Gal. 1.1. ¹¹¹ Diligenter adtendite quod non dixerit factum per mulierem (quod Marcion et caeterae haereses volunt quae putativam Christi carnem simulant), sed ex muliere ut non per illam sed ex illa natus esse credatur (Comm. Gal. 4.4–5). In ascribing a docetic Christology to Marcion Jerome was following Tertullian’s incorrect portrayal of Marcionite teaching. Nevertheless, there is no credible evidence that Marcion believed that Christ’s body was a phantasm. See D. E. Wilhite, “Was Marcion a Docetist? The Body of Evidence vs. Tertullian’s Argument,” VChr 70 (2016): 1–36. ¹¹² Cassianus, qui putativam Christi carnem introducens . . . Encratitarum vel acerrimus haeresiarches . . . (Comm. Gal. 6.8). ¹¹³ In his Panarion Epiphanius also focuses on contemporary Christological heresiarchs; see Y. R. Kim, “Reading the Panarion as Collective Biography: The Heresiarch as Unholy Man,” VChr 64 (2010): 382–413 (396–400).

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fourth-century one of them all,¹¹⁴ attracts his vitriol and theological critique. Indeed, Jerome regarded his influence as being especially noxious on account of his name recognition, which enabled him to deceive so many people.¹¹⁵ To give to his readers an impression of Arius’s toxicity, Jerome dubs him a serpent,¹¹⁶ and to dramatize the destruction he caused to the body of Christ, he adverts to a combustion simile, comparing Arius to a tiny ember which, because it had not been extinguished in time, erupted into a raging inferno and consumed Alexandria.¹¹⁷ Although his references to Arius mostly are confined to namecalling, Jerome does occasionally take Arian theology to task in an exegesis-based critique, but even then his critique is pitched only briefly and at a fairly superficial level, as it is, for instance, in his above-quoted comments on Eph. 4.5.¹¹⁸ A slightly later Christologian is Photinus, a disciple of Marcellus of Ancyra and bishop of Sirmium in the mid-fourth century who rejected the personal, eternal subsistence of Christ the divine Word.¹¹⁹ During the second half of the fourth century his low Christology proliferated, influencing a young Augustine¹²⁰ and eliciting criticisms from Hilary of Poitiers,¹²¹ Ambrosiaster,¹²² Jerome,¹²³ and many others.¹²⁴ Jerome takes issue with Photinian Christology several times in his Pauline commentaries. In his reading of Eph. 4.10 (“He who descended is also he who ascended above all the heavens”), this verse serves up a decisive rebuttal of Photinus’s denial of Christ’s pre-existence: “If the same one who previously had come down from heaven, ascends into heaven, then how does our Lord Jesus Christ not exist before Mary but only after Mary?”¹²⁵ Paul’s assertion that he was sent as an apostle “through Jesus Christ and God the Father” (Gal. 1.1) blunts

¹¹⁴ See, e.g., E. Muehlberger, “The Legend of Arius’s Death: Imagination, Space, and Filth in Late Ancient Historiography,” P&P 277 (2015): 3–29. On Arius’s reception more generally, see R. Williams, Arius: Heresy and Tradition (rev. ed., Grand Rapids, 2001). ¹¹⁵ Arius et Eunomius et novae auctor haereseos utinam tam noti non essent, minus forsitan plurimos decepissent! (Comm. Tit. 3.10–11). ¹¹⁶ Comm. Tit. 2.11–14. ¹¹⁷ Scintilla res parva est et paene dum cernitur non videtur; sed si fomitem comprehenderit et nutrimenta sui quamvis parvus ignis invenerit, moenia, urbes, latissimos saltus regionesque consumit . . . Arius in Alexandria una scintilla fuit; sed quia non statim oppressa est, totum orbem eius flamma populata est (Comm. Gal. 5.9). ¹¹⁸ For another example, cf. Comm. Eph. 3.11. ¹¹⁹ Simonetti, Studi sull’arianesimo, 135–59; Hanson, Search for the Christian Doctrine, 235–8. ¹²⁰ Augustine, Conf. 7.19.25. Cf. P. Courcelle, “Saint Augustin photinien à Milan (Conf. VII,19,25),” RStR 1 (1954): 63–71. ¹²¹ C. Beckwith, “Photinian Opponents in Hilary of Poitiers’ Commentarium in Matthaeum,” JEH 58 (2007): 611–27. ¹²² L. Speller, “New Light on the Photinians: The Evidence of Ambrosiaster,” JThS n.s. 34 (1983): 99–113. ¹²³ Jeanjean, Saint Jérôme et l’hérésie, 168–77. ¹²⁴ D. Williams, “Monarchianism and Photinus of Sirmium as the Persistent Heretical Face of the Fourth Century,” HThR 99 (2006): 187–206. ¹²⁵ Si enim ipse est ascendens in caelos qui de caelis ante descenderat, quomodo Dominus noster Iesus Christus non ante Mariam est, sed post Mariam? (Comm. Eph. 4.10).

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Photinus’s teaching because Paul denies having been sent by a man.¹²⁶ On a similar note, Jerome argues that Paul’s claim to have received the Gospel not through man but through the revelation of Jesus Christ (Gal. 1.11–12) overturns Photinus’s teaching because it assures us that Christ is not just a man but also God.¹²⁷ Moreover, each time Jerome mentions Photinus in his Pauline commentaries, he pairs him with Ebion,¹²⁸ thus showing his tendency to aggregate kindred heresiarchs. Ebion was not an historical person; orthodox writers such as Tertullian,¹²⁹ Epiphanius,¹³⁰ and Jerome assumed that the name of the Ebionite sect implies an eponymous founder.¹³¹ In any event, Jerome implicates Ebion and Photinus in the same fundamental denial of Jesus’s divinity, as the Ebionites believed that Christ was an angelic power who possessed Jesus from the time of his baptism until just before his passion.¹³² Jerome criticizes Arius and Photinus by name, but another Christologian with whom he spars in the Pauline commentaries is covered by a blanket of anonymity. He is alluded to a total of three times. In his commentary on Galatians Jerome refers cryptically to a nova haeresis and novellum dogma, two denominations for one and the same doctrine which asserts that Christ is more God than man.¹³³ Twice in the commentary on Titus Jerome mentions this nova haeresis and puts its auctor in the same company as Arius and Eunomius.¹³⁴ The author of this “new ¹²⁶ Verum non talis Paulus, qui neque ab hominibus neque per hominem, sed a Deo Patre per Iesum Christum missus est. Ex quo adprobatur Ebionis et Photini etiam hinc haeresis retundenda, quod Dominus noster Iesus Christus Deus sit, dum apostolus, qui a Christo ad praedicationem evangelii missus est, negat se missum esse ab homine (Comm. Gal. 1.1). ¹²⁷ Ex hoc loco Ebionis et Photini dogma conteritur, quod deus sit Christus et non tantum homo. Si enim evangelium Pauli non est secundum hominem neque ab homine accepit illud aut didicit sed per revelationem Iesu Christi, non est utique homo Iesus Christus, qui Paulo evangelium revelavit; quod si non est homo, consequenter Deus est (Comm. Gal. 1.11–12). ¹²⁸ Cf. Vir. ill. 107.1, where he identifies Photinus as a proponent of the “Ebionite heresy.” ¹²⁹ Praescr. haer. 10.8, 33.3–5, 33.11. ¹³⁰ Pan. 30.17. Cf. J. Verheyden, “Epiphanius on the Ebionites,” in P. Tomson and D. Lambers-Petry (eds.), The Image of the Judaeo-Christians in Ancient Jewish and Christian Literature (Tübingen, 2003), 182–208; G. A. Koch, “A Critical Investigation of Epiphanius’ Knowledge of the Ebionites: A Translation and Critical Discussion of Panarion 30” (Ph.D. diss.: University of Pennsylvania, 1976). ¹³¹ Jay, L’exégèse de saint Jérôme, 178n240. According to S. Häkkinen, “Ebionites,” in A. Marjanen and P. Luomanen (eds.), A Companion to Second-Century Christian “Heretics” (Leiden, 2005), 247–78, Hippolytus in his lost Syntagma was the first to coin the proper name “Ebion” as the founder of the Ebionites. See further A. F. J. Klijn and G. J. Reinink, Patristic Evidence for Jewish Christian Sects (Leiden, 1973), 19–43; R. Bauckham, “The Origin of the Ebionites,” in Tomson and Lambers-Petry (eds.), Image of the Judaeo-Christians, 162–81; O. Skarsaune, “The Ebionites,” in O. Skarsaune and R. Hvalvik (eds.), Jewish Believers in Jesus: The Early Centuries (Peabody, 2007), 419–62. On the possibility that the addressees of the New Testament epistle to the Hebrews were Ebionite Christians, see M. Goulder, “Hebrews and the Ebionites,” NTS 49 (2003): 393–406. ¹³² Irenaeus, Adv. haer. 1.26.2; Jerome, Comm. Mt., prol. ll. 42–4; cf. H.-J. Schoeps, “Ebionite Christianity,” JThS n.s. 4 (1953): 219–24 (219–21). ¹³³ Comm. Gal. 1.1. Jerome’s use of the term “new” to characterize this teaching is an expression of the heresiological topos that links heretical error with novelty as opposed to the antiquity of truth (on this trope, see Boulluec, La notion d’hérésie, 1.28–9). ¹³⁴ Comm. Tit. 2.12–14, 3.10–11.

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heresy” is the anti-Arian late fourth-century bishop of Laodicea, Apollinaris, who emphasized Jesus’s divinity to the point of conceding that even though he had a human body, he had a divine mind in place of a human one.¹³⁵ Because Jerome is not shy about name-shaming in his Pauline commentaries, why does he refrain from it in Apollinaris’s case? One reason is suggested by a remark he made a decade and a half later during his pamphlet war with Rufinus. After being pressed by Rufinus about why in his Ephesians commentary he had reported two controversial opinions on Eph. 3.1–4 but had not divulged Origen and Apollinaris as their authors, Jerome said that he did not wish to disparage two of his exegetical models.¹³⁶ Jerome did indeed have a personal reason to be deferential to Apollinaris. Less than a decade before commenting on Paul, he had studied Scripture under him in Antioch,¹³⁷ and even though he distanced himself from Apollinaris’s Christology, he nonetheless gratefully acknowledged an intellectual debt to him.¹³⁸ Jerome’s silence may have been motivated by another pragmatic consideration. He indicates in the prefaces to Book 1 of both his Galatians and Ephesians commentaries that he used Apollinaris’s commentaries as sources for his own commentaries.¹³⁹ Consequently, to condemn Apollinaris by name would be to risk impugning his own orthodoxy as well as his judgment as a biblical interpreter for consulting the “tainted” writings of a suspect theologian.

The Doctrine of Fixed Natures A doctrine Jerome critiques rather often in his Pauline commentaries is one that concerns “different/various natures” (diversae/variae naturae),¹⁴⁰ which— according to his rendition of it—divides the human race into two groups of ¹³⁵ H. de Riedmatten, “La christologie d’Apollinaire de Laodicée,” StudPatr 2 (1957): 208–34; R. Huebner, “Gotteserkenntnis durch die Inkarnation Gottes: Zu einer neuen Interpretation der Christologie des Apollinaris von Laodicea,” Kleronomia 4 (1972): 131–61; K. McCarthy Spoerl, “Apollinarian Christology and the Anti-Marcellan Tradition,” JThS n.s. 45 (1994): 545–68; B. Daley, “ ‘Heavenly Man’ and ‘Eternal Christ’: Apollinarius and Gregory of Nyssa on the Personal Identity of the Savior,” JECS 10 (2002): 469–88. For Jerome’s criticisms of Apollinaris, see Jeanjean, Saint Jérôme et l’hérésie, 239–45. ¹³⁶ Quorum si nomina non posui, ignosce verecundiae meae. Non debui eos carpere quos imitabar ex parte et quorum in Latinam linguam sententias transferebam (Apol. c. Ruf. 1.24). ¹³⁷ P. Jay, “Jérôme auditeur d’Apollinaire de Laodicée à Antioche,” REAug 20 (1974): 36–41. ¹³⁸ Thus in a letter of 400 to Pammachius and Oceanus he gives a nod to his former teacher but disavows his Christology: Cum me in sanctis scripturis erudiret, numquam illius contentiosum super sensu dogma suscepi (Ep. 84.3.1). For Apollinaris’s influence on Jerome’s exegesis, see Jay, L’exégèse de saint Jérôme, 28–31. ¹³⁹ In the Ephesians preface he acknowledges a minor debt to Apollinaris’s commentary: Apollinarem . . . quosdam commentariolos edidisse, e [quo] licet pauca decerpsimus . . . (Comm. Eph., lib. 1, prol. ll. 144–6). In the Galatians preface he also acknowledges having used Apollinaris’s commentary on Galatians, but he does not name him, only alluding to him as Laodicenus de ecclesia nuper egressus (Comm. Gal., lib. 1, prol. ll. 40–1); in Ep. 82.23 Augustine notes this non-naming (cuius nomen taces). ¹⁴⁰ Comm. Gal. 1.15–16, 2.15, 3.1a, 6.1; Comm. Eph. 2.3, 2.19–22, 4.17–19, 5.8a. Cf. Jeanjean, Saint Jérôme et l’hérésie, 216–18.

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people, those who are good by nature and those who are evil by nature. Their souls are hardwired from the start to slant one way or the other, and this inborn proclivity cannot be changed. Correspondingly, their eternal salvation and damnation are predetermined according to their unalterable nature. Jerome never names the adherents of this doctrine but only refers to them vaguely as “heretics.” Nevertheless, the field can be narrowed down to two plausible candidates. One is the Manichaeans of his day, to whom he ascribed a belief in a fixed dualism of natures.¹⁴¹ The other is the Valentinians, to whom this same belief had been ascribed by earlier heresiologists such as Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Tertullian.¹⁴² Irenaeus thus summarizes their position: “Subdividing the souls, they say that some are good by nature and some evil by nature. The good are those that are capable of receiving the seed, whereas those evil by nature are never capable of receiving that seed.”¹⁴³ The belief about good and evil natures was indeed one of the two main anthropological theories promulgated by the Valentinians,¹⁴⁴ who claimed to ground them in Paul’s writings.¹⁴⁵ In slight favor of the Valentinian identification in Jerome’s case is that he designates the anonymous haeretici in question as “those who introduce different/various natures,”¹⁴⁶ virtually the same stock phrase that Origen and Didymus apply to the Valentinians (οἱ τὰς φύσεις εἰσάγοντες, “those who introduce the natures”).¹⁴⁷ Nevertheless, whether Jerome has in mind

¹⁴¹ Cf. Ep. 133.9.1: . . . Manicheorum dogma nos sequi et eorum, qui de diversis naturis ecclesiae bella concinnant, adserentium malam esse naturam, quae inmutari nullo modo possit. ¹⁴² E.g., Origen, Princ. 3.1.8, 3.4.2; Comm. Rom. 4.12.1; cf. J. A. Trumbower, “Origen’s Exegesis of John viii, 19–53: The Struggle with Heracleon over the Idea of Fixed Natures,” VChr 43 (1989): 138–54; W. A. Löhr, “Gnostic Determinism Reconsidered,” VChr 46 (1992): 381–90. As Dunderberg, Gnostic Morality, 137–48, points out, the Valentinians had two anthropological models. One of these, discussed above, is a bipartite one based on the idea of the soul’s double inclination. The other is a tripartite model which posits that humankind is divided into three fixed groups of people, the spiritual (οἱ πνευματικοί), the psychic/animate (οἱ ψυχικοί), and the material (οἱ ὑλικοί). ¹⁴³ Καὶ αὐτὰς μὲν τὰς ψυχὰς πάλιν ὑπομερίζοντες λέγουσιν, ἃς μὲν φύσει ἀγαθὰς, ἃς δὲ φύσει πονηράς. Καὶ τὰς μὲν ἀγαθὰς ταύτας εἶναι τὰς δεκτικὰς τοῦ σπέρματος γινομένας· τὰς δὲ φύσει πονηρὰς μηδέποτε ἂν ἐπιδέξασθαι ἐκεῖνο τὸ σπέρμα (Adv. haer. 1.7.5). ¹⁴⁴ For scholarly reconstructions of the Valentinian school’s thought, see E. Thomassen, The Spiritual Seed: The Church of the “Valentinians” (Leiden, 2006); I. Dunderberg, Beyond Gnosticism: Myth, Lifestyle, and Society in the School of Valentinus (New York, 2008); P. Tite, Valentinian Ethics and Paraenetic Discourse: Determining the Social Function of Moral Exhortation in Valentinian Christianity (Leiden, 2009); P. Linjamaa, The Ethics of the Tripartite Tractate (NHC I,5): A Study of Determinism and Early Christian Philosophy of Ethics (Leiden, 2019). ¹⁴⁵ N. Perrin, “Paul and Valentinian Interpretation,” in M. F. Bird and J. R. Dodson (eds.), Paul and the Second Century (London, 2013), 126–39; J. D. G. Dunn, “ ‘The Apostle of the Heretics’: Paul, Valentinus, and Marcion,” in S. E. Porter and D. I. Yoon (eds.), Paul and Gnosis (Leiden, 2016), 107–18; J.-D. Dubois, “Pauline Reception in Valentinian and Basilidian Gnosis,” in J. Schröter, S. Butticaz, and A. Dettwiler (eds.), Receptions of Paul in Early Christianity: The Person of Paul and His Writings through the Eyes of His Early Interpreters (Berlin, 2018), 623–43. ¹⁴⁶ Qui diversas naturas nituntur introducere (Comm. Eph. 2.19–22); Hi qui naturas varias introducunt (Comm. Eph. 4.17–19). ¹⁴⁷ Origen: C. Cels. 5.61; Comm. Mt. 10.11; Comm. Ioan. 20.8.54, 20.17.135, 28.21.179, 28.21.183; Comm. Eph., fr. 9, l. 220 (J. A. F. Gregg, “The Commentary of Origen upon the Epistle to the Ephesians: Part II,” JThS 3 (1902): 398–420 (404)); cf. H. Strutwolf, Gnosis als System: Zur Rezeption der valentinianischen Gnosis bei Origenes (Göttingen, 1993). Didymus: B. Bennett, “Didymus the Blind’s

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either the Valentinians or the Manichaeans, or is conflating both, makes little difference for our purposes here. What matters, as we will see, is why he found the fixed natures doctrine objectionable enough to criticize it so frequently in his Pauline commentaries. Jerome typically treats this doctrine not with a protracted, point-by-point analysis but with a cursory aside showing how a given Pauline passage under discussion refutes it. He takes this approach when expounding Gal. 2.15 (“We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners”), and he introduces an arboreal analogy to support his case: Sneaking up in this passage are heretics who concoct ridiculous and dim-witted ideas and say that the spiritual nature cannot sin and that the earthly one can do nothing righteous. Let us ask them: why are branches broken off from a cultivated olive tree and then branches from a wild olive tree grafted into its root, if nothing can either fall from a good wild olive tree or grow out of a bad one? Put another way: how could Paul initially have persecuted the church if his nature was spiritual or later have been made an apostle if he came from earthly dregs? Now, if the heretics contend that his nature was not earthly, let us recall his words: “Like the rest, we were by nature sons of divine wrath” (Eph. 2.3). A Jew by nature is someone of Abraham’s stock circumcised by his parents on the eighth day. Someone who is a Jew but not by nature is a Gentile who later became a Jew. Subrepunt hoc loco haeretici¹⁴⁸ qui ridicula quaedam et inepta fingentes aiunt nec spiritalem peccare posse naturam nec iuste aliquid facere terrenam. Quos interrogemus quare de bona oliva rami fracti sint et cur de oleastro in radicem bonae olivae inserti, si nec de bono cadere quicquam potest nec de malo surgere; aut quomodo vel Paulus persecutus sit ante ecclesiam, si de natura spiritali fuit, aut postea apostolus factus, si de terrena faece generatus est. Quod si terrenum eum non fuisse contenderint, ipsius verba ponamus: Eramus filii natura irae, sicut et caeteri. Natura Iudaeus est qui de genere est Abraham et a parentibus die octava circumcisus est; non natura Iudaeus qui postea est factus ex gentibus.¹⁴⁹

Paul’s conversion from persecutor to apostle is adduced as proof that his soul’s nature was neither unmovably good nor evil at its core, for if it had been either,

Knowledge of Manichaeism,” in P. A. Mirecki and J. BeDuhn (eds.), The Light and the Darkness: Studies in Manichaeism and Its World (Leiden, 2001), 38–67 (61–2). ¹⁴⁸ Jerome recycles this phraseology from earlier in the same commentary (subrepunt hoc loco caeterae haereses (Comm. Gal. 1.1)), and he would do so later in one of his homilies (subrepit in hoc loco haeresis (Tract. Ps. 89, l. 32)). ¹⁴⁹ Comm. Gal. 2.15.

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such a dramatic conversion would not have been possible in the first place.¹⁵⁰ Jerome then quotes Eph. 2.3 to counter any claim by the “heretics” that Paul was ever anything but “spiritual.” He revisits this argument when discussing this same verse in his commentary on Ephesians, and he challenges these same “heretics” to reconcile how Paul could have been under divine condemnation at one point even though he undoubtedly had a spiritual nature.¹⁵¹ Later in the same chapter of Ephesians Paul says that Christians used to be alienated from God’s covenant with Israel but now are “citizens with the saints and members of the household of God” (Eph. 2.19). In Jerome’s hands, this verse shows that heretics are wrong for believing that natures are inexorably fixed: how could such a drastic change in spiritual state occur if a soul’s nature cannot be changed for the better or the worse?¹⁵² Likewise, Paul’s statement to the Ephesian believers, “Once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light” (Eph. 5.8a), disproves the heretics’ contention that a soul’s nature is static and cannot experience a change for the better.¹⁵³ In Gal. 6.1 Paul instructs the mature Galatian Christians (“you who are spiritual”) to chastise gently any sinning believer in their midst but also to watch out “that you yourselves are not tempted.” Jerome harnesses this admonition about moral vigilance as a proof text against the theory of fixed natures: We should use this passage against the heretics who concoct different natures and say that the good tree is spiritual and never produces bad fruits (cf. Mt. 7.18; Lk. 6.43). Here the Apostle, whose authority even they follow, says that people who are spiritual can sin if they are puffed up in the haughtiness of their heart and stumble (we, too, affirm this), and he says that the earthly become spiritual if they turn to better things. Vtamur hoc testimonio adversum haereticos qui diversas fingentes naturas aiunt spiritalem bonam esse arborem et numquam malos adferre fructus. Ecce apostolus, cuius et ipsi auctoritatem sequuntur, dicit eos qui spiritales sunt posse peccare, si

¹⁵⁰ Origen, too, cited Paul’s persecution of Christians in his argument against the different natures doctrine (Princ. 1.8.2–3; Comm. Mt. 10.11). ¹⁵¹ Respondeant haeretici, qui diversas naturas esse contendunt, quomodo Paulus, quem utique spiritalis naturae esse non dubium est, fuerit natura filius irae sicut et ceteri qui adhuc in errore sunt positi (Comm. Eph. 2.3). ¹⁵² Hic locus adversus eos vel maxime facit qui diversas naturas nituntur introducere. Quomodo enim peregrini facti sunt cives sanctorum et quomodo domestici Dei fuerunt quondam alieni a conversatione Israel, si non potest vel in melius vel in peius natura mutari? (Comm. Eph. 2.19–22). ¹⁵³ Si possibile est verti in lucem tenebras, non est secundum quosdam haereticos natura quae pereat et recipere nequeat salutem. Interrogemus ergo eos qui illa confingunt, utrumnam omnes impii tenebrae sint, necne de quibus quidam cum propter malitiam tenebrae vocarentur, ad meliora conversi, nunc lux appellentur in Domino (Comm. Eph. 5.8a).

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per altitudinem cordis sui inflentur et corruant (quod et nos quoque fatemur), et choicos spiritales fieri, si ad meliora vertantur.¹⁵⁴

The two-tree analogy from the Gospels was one of the main scriptural texts quoted by both the Valentinians¹⁵⁵ and Manichaeans¹⁵⁶ to support their belief that people are fated to be either good or evil.¹⁵⁷ Orthodox writers argued instead that each person exercises his own free will and chooses whether his soul will be a good or bad tree and what kind of fruit it will produce. Later in his commentary on Galatians Jerome echoes this interpretation when he quotes Mt. 7.18 and says that Jesus is not talking about people and their individual natures but about the fruits of the flesh and the fruits of the Spirit.¹⁵⁸ Above all, the doctrine of fixed natures, according to Jerome, has clear consequences for soteriology because divine sovereignty overrides the individual soul’s free will in assigning to it a good or evil nature according to which it is either saved or damned: Here those heretics seize an opportunity who pretend that there are different natures—a spiritual one which is redeemable, an earthly one which is perishable, and a transient [lit. airy] one which exists between these other two. They contend that a righteous man would never be chosen [by God] before doing something good, nor a sinner hated before sinning, unless the natures of the damned and the

¹⁵⁴ Comm. Gal. 6.1. ¹⁵⁵ See, e.g., Origen, Comm. Rom. 8.10, 33.3–6; Tertullian, An. 21. Cf. M. Simonetti, Biblical Interpretation in the Early Church: An Historical Introduction to Patristic Exegesis (Edinburgh, 1994), 131; F. Ledegang, Mysterium Ecclesiae: Images of the Church and Its Members in Origen (Leuven, 2001), 532–8. ¹⁵⁶ See, e.g., Augustine, Serm. Dom. mon. 2.24.79: Adtendunt quod dictum est: non potest arbor bona fructus malos facere neque arbor mala fructus bonos facere, et ideo putant neque animam malam fieri posse ut in melius commutetur neque bonam in deterius, quasi dictum sit: non potest arbor bona mala fieri neque arbor mala bona fieri. Cf. R. Ferwerda, “Two Souls: Origen’s and Augustine’s Attitude toward the Two Souls Doctrine: Its Place in Greek and Christian Philosophy,” VChr 37 (1983): 360–78; N. A. Pedersen, Studies in the Sermon on the Great War: Investigations of a Manichaean-Coptic Text from the Fourth Century (Aarhus, 1996), 306–7; K. Kaatz, “The Light and the Darkness: The Two Natures, Free Will, and the Scriptural Evidence in the Acta Archelai,” in J. BeDuhn and P. A. Mirecki (eds.), Frontiers of Faith: The Christian Encounter with Manichaeism in the Acts of Archelaus (Leiden, 2007), 103–18 (110–14); J. K. Coyle, “Good Tree, Bad Tree: The Matthean/Lukan Paradigm in Manichaeism and Its Opponents,” in L. DiTommaso and L. Turcescu (eds.), The Reception and Interpretation of the Bible in Late Antiquity: Proceedings of the Montréal Colloquium in Honour of Charles Kannengiesser, 11–13 October 2006 (Leiden, 2008), 121–44. ¹⁵⁷ According to Jerome (Adv. Iov. 2.18), Jovinian argued from Mt. 7.18 that there are only two classes of people, the fleshly (carnales) and the spiritual (spiritales). ¹⁵⁸ Illud quoque quod a Salvatore dicitur: Non potest arbor bona fructus adferre malos neque arbor mala fructus adferre bonos non tam de hominibus quam de fructu carnis et spiritus arbitror pronuntiatum, quia nec spiritus umquam potest ea vitia quae in carnis operibus numerata sunt facere nec caro his fructibus qui oriuntur ex spiritu redundare. Potest autem fieri ut per neglegentiam possidentis et spiritus qui versatur in homine fructus non habeat suos et econtrario caro operibus suis mortificatis peccare desistat. Non tamen illo usque procedunt ut et neglecta arbor spiritus opera carnis adferat et arbor carnis exculta fructus germinet spiritales (Comm. Gal. 5.22–3).

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redeemed were inherently different. There is a simple solution to this. Owing to his foreknowledge, God loves whom he knows will be righteous before he comes out of the womb, and hates whom he knows will be a sinner before he sins. It is not the case that God is acting unjustly in loving and hating, but rather that he must not be otherwise disposed towards those whom he knows will be either sinners or the righteous. We as humans pass judgment only about matters in the present, but God, for whom the future has already happened, determines his verdict on the basis not of how things began but of how they end up. This indeed has been put rather simply and can assuage the reader in every way without the need of a prolonged explanation. Inveniunt locum haeretici qui diversas naturas esse praetendunt, spiritalem videlicet et animalem et choicam, et aliam salvari, aliam perire, aliam inter utramque consistere, quod numquam aut iustus eligeretur antequam aliquid boni faceret aut peccator odiretur ante delictum, nisi esset pereuntium et salvandorum natura diversa. Ad quod potest simpliciter responderi hoc ex Dei praescientia evenire ut quem scit iustum futurum prius diligat quam oriatur ex utero et quem peccatorem oderit antequam peccet, non quo et in amore et in odio iniquitas Dei sit, sed quo non aliter eos habere debeat quos scit vel peccatores futuros esse vel iustos; nos ut homines tantum de praesentibus iudicare, illum, cui futura iam facta sunt, de fine rerum, non de exordiis ferre sententiam. Et haec quidem simplicius dicta sunt et absque altiori dissertione possunt utcumque placare lectorem.¹⁵⁹

Jerome encloses his refutation of the multiple-natures theory between book-end characterizations of it as “a simple solution” and as something “put rather simply”: both remarks simultaneously emphasize his theological virtuosity and delegitimize the “heretics” in question as easily surmountable foes, and this rhetorical effect is only enhanced by the fact that the generalizing plural haeretici implies an indefinitely large ensemble of which Jerome alone handily disposes in short order.¹⁶⁰ Mirroring Origen’s anti-Gnostic polemic, he contends that election depends on the soul’s free agency and the just goodness of God, who foreknows

¹⁵⁹ Comm. Gal. 1.15–16. ¹⁶⁰ Jerome deploys the same tactic to undermine the Novatianists in a Roman letter to Marcella: “The matter should definitely have been discussed at greater length, but because I cannot be inhospitable to friends who came by my little abode and it seemed altogether rude to not reply to you right away, I have compassed a wide-reaching discussion in a short treatment, such that I dictated not so much a letter as an explanatory note” (Fuerat quidem prolixius disserendum, sed quoniam et amicis, qui ad nostrum hospitiolum convenerunt, praesentiam nostram negare non possumus et tibi non statim respondere admodum visum est adrogantis, latam disputationem brevi sermone conprehendimus, ut non tam epistulam quam commentariolum dictaremus) (Ep. 42.3.1). He insinuates that the Novatianists are not worth his time or effort to refute at length, for he has more profitable ways to spend his leisure, in this case by entertaining houseguests, and he also downgrades his reply from a proper “letter” to a “note.”

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all choices that will lead either to salvation or damnation.¹⁶¹ Jerome holds his ground here because the argument has critical implications for his own ascetic theory. For if eternal salvation and damnation depend on any other factors (i.e., an immutable predisposition to be either good or evil) besides a person’s voluntary decisions and behavior, then leading a life of even the most rigorous asceticism is futile because it cannot alter a soul’s predetermined nature or destiny and therefore cannot in itself lead to rewards in the afterlife.¹⁶²

¹⁶¹ Cf. Origen, Princ. 2.9.5, 3.1.6; Comm. Rom. 1.3.3, 2.4.7, 4.12.1, 8.8.7. For a similar argument, see Theodore of Mopsuestia, Comm. Gal. 1.15; Comm. Rom. 9.24, 11.7. In Comm. Eph. 4.17–19 Jerome reiterates that salvation is not a matter of earthly and spiritual natures but of the will (non est choicorum et spiritalium natura varia, sed voluntas). Cf. Irenaeus, Adv. haer. 3.15.2, who accuses the Valentinians of arrogance and elitism because they claim that they comprise the spiritual class of humankind and are saved by virtue of their inherently good nature, no matter how they badly they behave. ¹⁶² Cf. E. A. Clark, “The Place of Jerome’s Commentary on Ephesians in the Origenist Controversy: The Apokatastasis and Ascetic Ideals,” VChr 41 (1987): 154–71 (160). For an overview of Jerome’s position on eternal rewards, see J. P. O’Connell, The Eschatology of Saint Jerome (Mundelein, 1948), 119–32.

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6 In Origen’s Footsteps Greek Sources

In the years leading up to 386, Jerome had been busy making segments of Origen’s exegetical output available in translation to his fellow Latin-speaking Christians. In 380/1, when he was living in Constantinople,¹ he translated some of Origen’s homilies on Jeremiah,² Ezekiel,³ and Isaiah,⁴ and he also composed an Origeninspired interpretation of the vision of Isaiah 6.⁵ During his stay in Rome between 382 and 385 he translated two of Origen’s homilies on the Song of Songs and dedicated this opusculum to Pope Damasus.⁶ Jerome’s high admiration for him as the biblical scholar par excellence only intensified, as evidenced by gushing assessments of him that dot his extant correspondence from this Roman period.⁷ Borderline veneration was morphing rapidly into outright imitation, as Jerome was in the process of cultivating throughout the 380s a literary identity as the Origenes Latinus. As Mark Vessey argued in a pioneering study, an important step he took in this direction was releasing a book of his Roman-era letters to his patron Marcella. Taken as a group, these personal letters, which he may well have retouched for a broader audience, paint a portrait of Origen’s rightful successor, a prolific polyglot who was destined to be for westerners what Origen had been for ¹ J. N. D. Kelly, Jerome: His Life, Writings, and Controversies (New York, 1975), 68–79; S. Rebenich, “Asceticism, Orthodoxy, and Patronage: Jerome in Constantinople,” StudPatr 33 (1997): 358–77. ² P. Nautin and P. Husson (eds.), Origène, Homélies sur Jérémie, SC 232, 238 (Paris, 1976–7); cf. T. Bergren, “Jerome’s Translation of Origen’s Homily on Jeremiah 2.21–22,” RBén 104 (1994): 260–83; J. C. Smith (trans.), Origen, Homilies on Jeremiah, Homily on 1 Kings 28, FOTC 97 (Washington, D.C., 1998), 245–73. ³ M. Borret (ed.), Origène, Homélies sur Ézéchiel, SC 352 (Paris, 1989); cf. P. Nautin, “La lettre Magnum est de Jérôme à Vincent et la traduction des homélies d’Origène sur les prophètes,” in Y.-M. Duval (ed.), Jérôme entre l’Occident et l’Orient, XVIe centenaire du départ de saint Jérôme de Rome et de son installation à Bethléem: actes du colloque de Chantilly, Sept. 1986 (Paris, 1988), 27–39. ⁴ W. A. Baehrens (ed.), GCS Origenes 8 (Leipzig, 1925); cf. A. Fürst, “Jerome Keeping Silent: Origen and His Exegesis of Isaiah,” in A. Cain and J. Lössl (eds.), Jerome of Stridon: His Life, Writings, and Legacy (Aldershot, 2009), 141–52. ⁵ P. Nautin, “Le De Seraphim de Jérôme et son appendice ad Damasum,” in M. Wissemann (ed.), Roma renascens: Beiträge zur Spätantike und Rezeptionsgeschichte: Festschrift Ilona Opelt (Frankfurt, 1988), 257–93. ⁶ O. Rousseau (ed.), Origène, Homélies sur le Cantique des Cantiques, SC 37 (Paris, 1954). Rufinus was under the impression that Damasus had asked Jerome to translate these two homilies for him (see Jerome, Ep. 80.1.1), an impression which Jerome probably was responsible for creating (cf. Jerome, Epp. 27*.2: Duabus homeliis Cantici canticorum quas ammonitu beati Damasi Romae transtuli; 84.2.1: . . . praefatiuncula ad Damasum in omeliis Cantici canticorum). ⁷ E.g., Epp. 26.2.1, 28.5.1, 28.7.1, 34.1.2–3, 34.3.2, 36.1.4, 37.3.1–2, 39.1.3, 43.1.1.

Jerome’s Commentaries on the Pauline Epistles and the Architecture of Exegetical Authority. Andrew Cain, Oxford University Press. © Andrew Cain 2021. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192847195.003.0007

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the Greeks, the ultimate standard by which all biblical scholarship is to be measured.⁸ Jerome’s opus Paulinum should be seen as belonging on this very same continuum of his early-career appropriation of Origen’s legacy. As I argued in Chapter 2, in his first Galatians preface he casts himself in an Origenian mold in order to establish himself as the pre-eminent expert on Paul in the Latin-speaking world. Both in this preface and in the first Ephesians one he says that he “followed” Origen’s commentaries. But, beyond simply aligning himself rhetorically with Origen in these prefaces, to what extent does he in fact “follow” Origen in his commentaries? In this chapter I try to answer this crucial question by doing a source-critical comparison of the fragments of Origen’s Pauline commentaries and their counterparts in Jerome’s, and from there I explore some important implications, for his own self-constructed authority as an interpreter of Paul, of Jerome’s nuanced handling of his Greek exegetical sources.

Commentary on Galatians Of his four Pauline commentaries, it is the one on Galatians for which Jerome claims to have consulted the most number of Greek commentaries in preparing his own interpretive work. In the preface to Book 1 he gives the following inventory of these sources: What, then? Am I foolish or rash to promise what [Marius Victorinus] was incapable of accomplishing? Not at all. I believe that I am more cautious and circumspect because I have recognized the scantness of my own abilities and have followed the commentaries of Origen. He wrote five of his own volumes on Paul’s epistle to the Galatians and rounded out the tenth book of his Miscellanies with a brief section expounding it. He also produced various homilies and scholia which could have been sufficient even by themselves. I say nothing of my seeing guide Didymus, the Laodicean who recently left the church, the ancient heretic Alexander, Eusebius of Emesa, and Theodore of Heraclea, all of whom have left behind modest commentaries of their own on the topic at hand. Even if I were to except a few things from these works, the result would be something praiseworthy. So, to admit frankly, I read all of these books and committed to memory a great many insights, and then I summoned my secretary and dictated either my own or others’ ideas, all the while paying no attention to the method, the words, or the opinions belonging to each. It is now up to the Lord’s mercy to make sure

⁸ “Jerome’s Origen: The Making of a Christian Literary Persona,” StudPatr 28 (1993): 135–45. Cf. A. Cain, The Letters of Jerome: Asceticism, Biblical Exegesis, and the Construction of Christian Authority in Late Antiquity (Oxford, 2009), 68–98.

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that others’ sage sayings are not lost through my incompetence and that they are as commendable somewhere else as they are in their original context. Quid igitur? Ego stultus aut temerarius qui id pollicear quod ille non potuit? Minime. Quin potius in eo, ut mihi videor, cautior atque timidior, quod imbecillitatem virium mearum sentiens Origenis commentarios sum secutus. Scripsit enim ille vir in epistulam Pauli ad Galatas quinque proprie volumina et decimum Stromatum suorum librum commatico super explanatione eius sermone complevit; tractatus quoque varios et excerpta, quae vel sola possent sufficere, composuit. Praetermitto Didymum, videntem meum, et Laodicenum de ecclesia nuper egressum et Alexandrum, veterem haereticum, Eusebium quoque Emesenum et Theodorum Heracleoten, qui et ipsi nonnullos super hac re commentariolos reliquerunt. E quibus vel si pauca decerperem, fieret aliquid quod non penitus contemneretur. Itaque, ut simpliciter fatear, legi haec omnia et in mentem meam plurima coacervans, accito notario, vel mea vel aliena dictavi, nec ordinis nec verborum interdum nec sensuum memor. Iam Domini misericordiae est ne per imperitiam nostram ab aliis bene dicta dispereant et non placeant inter extraneos quae placent inter suos.⁹

Jerome gives the impression that he had memorized a very significant portion of Greek exegesis on Galatians before he set to work on his own commentary, and the reader is left to extrapolate even that he had internalized the Greek interpretive tradition on Paul in its virtual totality. In reality, he perhaps selectively explored some (or all) of these works beforehand in order to gain a preliminary sense of their merits, and then he consulted them in increments along the way as he dictated his comments on each lemmatized Pauline text. In any event, in furnishing this robust catalogue of Greek authors he consulted, Jerome clearly is trying to assure readers of the research-intensiveness of his own work. Without realizing it at the time, of course, he also was providing an invaluable service to modern scholars in divulging the identity of his sources. Before we attempt to assess his indebtedness to the named writers, it will be useful to contextualize each one briefly in the history of early Christian biblical exegesis. The most elusive of the six commentators is Alexander, whom Jerome dubs the “ancient heretic” (vetus haereticus). Alexander Souter,¹⁰ evidently taking his cue from Cuthbert Turner,¹¹ identified him as the homonymous Valentinian teacher who argued that Christ did not possess actual human flesh.¹² This also is whom

⁹ Comm. Gal., lib. 1, prol. ll. 34–50. ¹⁰ The Earliest Latin Commentaries on the Epistles of St. Paul (Oxford, 1927), 108. ¹¹ “Greek Patristic Commentaries on the Pauline Epistles,” in J. Hastings (ed.), A Dictionary of the Bible, Supplement (Edinburgh, 1898), 484–531 (489). ¹² E. Thomassen, The Spiritual Seed: The Church of the “Valentinians” (Leiden, 2006), 496–7.

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’     

Tertullian criticized for his wily syllogisms¹³ and passion for arguing a contrarian viewpoint.¹⁴ Jerome’s derisive epithet theoretically could apply to him: Alexander was a “heretic” and he was “ancient,” which signifies antiquity from Jerome’s perspective (his floruit was the early third century or before). Nevertheless, Jerome’s Alexander is otherwise unattested,¹⁵ none of his literary output survives, and the paucity of independent testimonia makes it impossible for us to form even the vaguest impression of either the range of his exegetical production or his interpretive methods. Theodore, appointed bishop of Heraclea in Thrace between 328 and 334, was one of the leading members of the Eusebian alliance against Athanasius.¹⁶ Jerome records that he authored commentaries on the Psalms, Matthew, John, and the Pauline epistles in “an elegant and precise style which followed mainly the literal interpretation.”¹⁷ Fragments of his commentaries on Matthew and John survive,¹⁸ but nothing of his commentary on Galatians has been preserved. Didymus (c.313–c.398) was one of the most influential Christian teachers in Alexandria in the second half of the fourth century. Some ancient sources suggest that he was the scholarch of the “catechetical school” there.¹⁹ Despite having been blind since the age of four, he supposedly mastered several sight-dependent academic disciplines (e.g., geometry) and also amassed an encyclopedic knowledge of Scripture.²⁰ Rufinus of Aquileia, a warm admirer and former student of his, praised him as a “prophet” and “apostolic man.”²¹ Didymus was very prolific.

¹³ . . . remisso Alexandro cum suis syllogismis, quos in argumentationibus torquet (Carn. Chr. 17.1). ¹⁴ Argumentandi libidine ex forma ingenii haeretici locum sibi fecit ille Alexander (Carn. Chr. 16.1). ¹⁵ Cf. T. D. Barnes, Tertullian: A Historical and Literary Study (Oxford, 1971), 126, who seems unaware of the possible connection between Tertullian’s and Jerome’s Alexanders. ¹⁶ S. Parvis, Marcellus of Ancyra and the Lost Years of the Arian Controversy, 325–345 (Oxford, 2006), 221–2; D. Gwynn, The Eusebians: The Polemic of Athanasius of Alexandria and the Construction of the “Arian Controversy” (Oxford, 2007), 109–15; M. R. Crawford, “On the Divinity and Influence of the Eusebian Alliance: The Case of Theodore of Heraclea,” JEH 64 (2013): 227–57. ¹⁷ Theodorus, Heracleae Thraciarum episcopus, elegantis apertique sermonis et magis historicae intelligentiae edidit sub Constantio principe commentarios in Matthaeum et Iohannem et in apostolum et in Psalterium (Vir. ill. 90.1). In Ep. 119.2.2 Jerome speaks of Theodore’s commentarioli apostoli. ¹⁸ J. Reuss (ed.), Matthäus-Kommentare aus der griechischen Kirche (Berlin, 1957), 55–95; Reuss, Johannes-Kommentare aus der griechischen Kirche (Berlin, 1966); M. R. Crawford, “The Triumph of Pro-Nicene Theology over Anti-Monarchian Exegesis: Cyril of Alexandria and Theodore of Heraclea on John 14.10–11,” JECS 21 (2013): 537–67. ¹⁹ For critical reviews of these sources, see R. Layton, Didymus the Blind and his Circle in LateAntique Alexandria: Virtue and Narrative in Biblical Scholarship (Urbana, 2004), 15–18; J. M. Rogers, Didymus the Blind and the Alexandrian Christian Reception of Philo (Atlanta, 2017), 16–20. Cf. A. Le Boulluec, “L’École d’Alexandrie: de quelques aventures d’un concept historiographique,” in J. Pouilloux (ed.), Ἀλεξανδρινά: hellénisme, judaïsme et christianisme à Alexandrie (Paris, 1987), 403–17. ²⁰ Palladius, Hist. laus. 4.1–2; Jerome, Vir. ill. 109.1. Didymus also was famed as a grammarian; see B. Stefaniw, Christian Reading: Language, Ethics, and the Order of Things (Berkeley, 2019). ²¹ Apol. c. Hier 2.25. Throughout much of the 370s Rufinus divided his time between Alexandria, where he studied Scripture under Didymus, and the renowned monastic establishment at Nitria, which lay sixty miles to the south of Alexandria.

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In addition to various theological treatises,²² he dictated commentaries on Genesis, Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Isaiah, Zechariah, Hosea, Matthew, John, Acts, 1 & 2 Corinthians, Galatians, and Ephesians. Jerome briefly studied under him during his stay in Alexandria in early 386,²³ and he later spoke of their friendship.²⁴ Although his stay lasted under a month,²⁵ Jerome evidently kept his teacher busy—to believe him, Didymus composed commentaries on Zechariah and Hosea at his request.²⁶ In posterity Didymus suffered for his admiration of Origen. When Origen’s works were condemned at the Council of Constantinople in 553, so were his, and consequently his writings largely were neglected during the Middle Ages. Comparatively little of his vast literary production survives in the original Greek.²⁷ Regrettably, his commentary on Galatians is completely lost, and so we have no way of gauging how much Jerome may have drawn from it. Apollinaris (c.315–c.392) was the anti-Arian bishop of Laodicea on the Syrian coast in the latter half of the fourth century.²⁸ According to Jerome, who had attended some of his lectures while living in Antioch in the late 370s,²⁹ Apollinaris wrote “innumerable volumes” on Scripture, including commentaries on Ecclesiastes, Isaiah, Hosea, Malachi, Matthew, Romans, 1 Corinthians, Galatians, and Ephesians.³⁰ Apollinaris’s commentary on Galatians is not extant.³¹ Nevertheless, if

²² E.g., On the Holy Spirit, which survives in a Latin translation completed by Jerome in 387. See L. Doutreleau (ed.), Didyme l’Aveugle: Traité du Saint-Esprit: introduction, texte critique, traduction, notes et index (Paris, 1992); A. Cesareo, “Il Liber de Spiritu sancto di San Gerolamo: una versione latina dell’opera perduta di Didimo Cieco,” Schol(i)a 11 (2009): 31–49. Augustine knew this treatise only through Jerome’s translation; see B. Altaner, “Augustinus und Didymus der Blinde: Eine quellenkritische Untersuchung,” VChr 5 (1951): 116–20. ²³ F. Cavallera, Saint Jérôme: sa vie et son oeuvre, 2 vols. (Paris, 1922), 2.127–30. Jerome mentions this visit in his first Ephesians preface: Denique nuper ob hanc vel maxime causam Alexandriam perrexi ut viderem Didymum et ab eo in Scripturis omnibus quae habebam dubia sciscitarer (Comm. Eph., lib. 1, prol. ll. 46–9). ²⁴ Didymus, cuius amicitiis nuper usi sumus (Comm. Es., lib. 1, prol. ll. 92–3). ²⁵ Rufinus, who had been around Didymus off and on for the better part of a decade, mocked Jerome for having spent no more than thirty days in Alexandria, i.e., in Didymus’s presence, in his entire life (Apol. c. Hier. 2.12). Jerome, interestingly, did not deny this charge; see A. Cain, Jerome’s Epitaph on Paula: A Commentary on the Epitaphium Sanctae Paulae, with an Introduction, Text, and Translation (Oxford, 2013), 300–1. ²⁶ . . . in Osee ad me scribens commentariorum libros tres, et in Zachariam, meo rogatu, libros quinque (Jerome, Vir. ill. 109.2). Cf. A. Canellis, “Le livre III de l’In Zachariam de Saint Jérôme et la tradition alexandrine,” Adamantius 13 (2007): 66–81. ²⁷ For the fragments of his commentaries on Romans, 1 & 2 Corinthians, and Hebrews, see K. Staab (ed.), Pauluskommentare aus der griechischen Kirche aus Katenenhandschriften gesammelt und herausgegeben (Münster, 1933), 1–45. ²⁸ E. Mühlenberg, Apollinaris of Laodicea (Göttingen, 1969). ²⁹ P. Jay, “Jérôme auditeur d’Apollinaire de Laodicée à Antioche,” REAug 20 (1974): 36–41. ³⁰ Vir. ill. 104.1. He may also have written a commentary on Luke; see J. Reuss, “Ist Apollinaris von Laodicea Verfasser eines Lukas-Kommentars?,” OS 26 (1977): 28–34. ³¹ In fact, all that remains of his Pauline exegesis is fragments on Romans; see Staab, Pauluskommentare, 57–82.

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’     

there is truth to Jerome’s statement that his commentaries read more like “chapter summaries” (indices capitulorum) than actual commentarii,³² it seems unlikely that his commentary would have shaped Jerome’s exegesis on Galatians in any substantive way.³³ In his Pauline commentaries Jerome does nevertheless criticize Apollinaris’s Christology, albeit without shaming his former teacher by name.³⁴ As will have become clear by now, four of the Galatians commentaries Jerome claims to have consulted no longer survive, and so we have no way of comparing them synoptically with his to ascertain the extent to which they may have influenced his work on Paul. Fortunately, the prognosis is not quite as bleak for the two remaining commentaries on his list, those of Eusebius of Emesa and Origen. Eusebius, the bishop of Emesa in Phoenicia in the middle of the fourth century,³⁵ composed numerous biblical commentaries.³⁶ These include one on the Pentateuch,³⁷ and, most importantly for our purposes, a compendious, tenbook commentary on Galatians which is lost except for nineteen Greek fragments of varying length preserved in catenae, or “chains” of excerpts from patristic biblical commentaries collected after the sixth century to provide preachers with instructional material for their sermons.³⁸ A comparison of Eusebius’s and Jerome’s comments on Gal. 1.13–14 reveals striking similarities:

³² Apollinaris autem more suo sic exponit omnia, ut universa transcurrat et punctis quibusdam atque intervallis, immo compendiis grandis viae spatia praetervolet, ut non tam commentarios quam indices capitulorum nos legere credamus (Comm. Es., lib. 1, prol. ll. 96–100). Elsewhere Jerome remarks on the brevity of Apollinaris’s commentary on Malachi: Alios commentarios in hunc prophetam legisse me nescio, excepto Apollinaris brevi libello, cuius non tam interpretatio quam interpretationis puncta dicenda sunt (Comm. Mal., prol. ll. 48–50). Cf. E. Mühlenberg, “Zur exegetischen Methode des Apollinaris von Laodicea,” in J. van Oort and U. Wickert (eds.), Christliche exegese zwischen Nicaea und Chalcedon (Kampen, 1992), 132–47. ³³ For Apollinaris’s influence on Jerome’s exegetical formation more generally, see A. Penna, Principi e carattere dell’esegesi di S. Gerolamo (Rome, 1950), 10–11. ³⁴ See above, pp. 153–4. ³⁵ É. M. Buytaert, L’héritage littéraire d’Eusèbe d’Émèse: étude critique et historique (Louvain, 1949); R. B. ter Haar Romeny, A Syrian in Greek Dress: The Use of Greek, Hebrew and Syriac Biblical Texts in Eusebius of Emesa’s Commentary on Genesis (Leiden, 1997); R. Winn, Eusebius of Emesa: Church and Theology in the Mid-Fourth Century (Washington, D.C., 2011). ³⁶ A collection of his sermons also survives in a Latin translation made in either the fourth or the fifth century; see É. M. Buytaert (ed.), Eusèbe d’Emèse: discours conservés en Latin, 2 vols. (Louvain, 1953–7). ³⁷ For the surviving fragments, see R. Devreesse, Les anciens commentateurs grecs de l’Octateuque et des Rois (fragments tirés des chaînes) (Vatican City, 1959), 55–103. Cf. J. A. Novotný, “Les fragments exégétiques sur les livres de l’Ancien Testament d’Eusèbe d’Émèse,” OCP 57 (1991): 27–67. ³⁸ These fragments are printed in Staab, Pauluskommentare, 46–52. On the Pauline catenae, see R. Devreesse, “Les chaînes exégétiques grecques, Saint Paul,” in Dictionnaire de la Bible VI, suppl. I (Paris, 1928), cols. 1209–24.

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 ’ :   Eusebius Ἠκούσατε γὰρ τὴν ἐμὴν ἀναστροφήν ποτε ἐν τῷ Ἰουδαϊσμῷ. Καὶ οὐκ εἶπεν ἐν τῷ νόμῳ.39 Πολλοὺς καὶ οὐ πάντας διὰ τὸ σύμμετρον, συνηλικιώτας δὲ διὰ τὸ μὴ κατὰ τῶν πρεσβυτέρων δοκεῖν ἐπαίρεσθαι . . . πατρικῶν δὲ παραδόσεων εἶπεν καὶ οὐ νομίμων.40

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Jerome Audistis, inquit, conversationem meam aliquando in Iudaismo; conversationem non gratiam, aliquando non modo, in Iudaismo non in lege Dei.41 Nec supra omnes sed supra plurimos, nec supra senes sed supra coaetaneos, ut et studium suum referret in lege et iactantiam declinaret. Paternas autem traditiones, non Domini mandata commemorans . . . 42

In many other instances besides the two quoted above, Jerome’s interpretations resemble Eusebius’s less in wording than in spirit. Caroline Bammel reasonably attributed this to both men’s shared stake in the exegetical tradition leading back to Origen.⁴³ Nevertheless, there is at least one occasion (unrelated to Eusebius’s extant fragments in Greek) on which Jerome can plausibly be shown to have engaged directly with Eusebius’s commentary on Galatians. At the end of his epistle Paul tries to assure them that what they are reading is not a forgery: “See with what large letters I am writing to you with my own hand” (Ἴδετε πηλίκοις ὑμῖν γράμμασιν ἔγραψα τῇ ἐμῇ χειρί).⁴⁴ Jerome interprets this statement to mean not so much that the characters were large (though he concedes that πηλίκοις can have this sense) as it does that Paul’s handwriting was recognizable to the Galatians.⁴⁵ He then quotes an “absurd” explanation of this passage given by someone who is left unnamed: I am astonished that a man in our time so distinguished for his learning said an absurd thing about this verse. He says: “Paul was a Hebrew and was illiterate in Greek. Since circumstances compelled him to sign his epistle in his own hand, he went against his usual custom and with difficulty traced the contours of the characters. Even in this he demonstrated his love for the Galatians in that he attempted to do something for their sake that did not come easy for him.” In hoc loco vir apprime nostris temporibus eruditus miror quomodo rem ridiculam locutus sit: Paulus, inquit, Hebraeus erat et Graecas litteras nesciebat et quia ³⁹ Staab, Pauluskommentare, 48. ⁴⁰ Staab, Pauluskommentare, 48. ⁴¹ Comm. Gal. 1.13–14. ⁴² Comm. Gal. 1.13–14. ⁴³ “Die Pauluskommentare des Hieronymus: die ersten wissenschaftlichen lateinischen Bibelkommentare?,” in Cristianesimo Latino e cultura Greca sino al sec. IV: XXI Incontro di studiosi dell’antichità cristiana, Rome 7–9 maggio 1992 (Rome, 1993), 187–207 (195). Cf. J. A. Novotný, “Eusebius of Emesa as Interpreter of St. Paul,” in Studiorum Paulinorum Congressus internationalis catholicus 1961, 2 vols. (Rome, 1963), 2.471–9, with an emphasis on Eusebius’s exegesis of Galatians. ⁴⁴ Gal. 6.11. ⁴⁵ Propter hoc igitur volens omnem occasionem falsis auferre doctoribus, qui et Galatas a veritate evangelii depravarant, finem epistulae manus suae adnotatione complevit dicens videte qualibus litteris scripsi vobis; non quo grandes litterae fuerint (hoc quippe in Graeco sonat πηλίκοις), sed quo suae manus essent eis nota vestigia, ut dum litterarum apices recognoscunt ipsum se putarent videre qui scripserat (Comm. Gal. 6.11).

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’     

necessitas expetebat ut manu sua epistolam subscriberet, contra consuetudinem curvos tramites litterarum vix magnis apicibus exprimebat etiam in hoc suae ad Galatas indicia caritatis ostendens, quod propter illos id quoque quod non poterat facere conaretur.⁴⁶

We should note first of all that Jerome frames this text as a direct quotation with the postpositive inquit.⁴⁷ Additionally, the quotation is taken from a written work; the verb loquor need not imply a strictly oral source and in fact in such cases it frequently denotes a written source. Thus, for example, in Comm. Eccl. 4.13 Jerome employs the combination loquor + inquam to introduce a quotation from Apollinaris’s commentary on Ecclesiastes.⁴⁸ In his seminal study on the patristic exegesis of Paul, Maurice Wiles assumed that the anonymous author whom Jerome quotes is John Chrysostom.⁴⁹ He based his opinion on remarks by John in two different works. In a homily on 2 Timothy, he calls Paul a poor tentmaker who could speak only Hebrew (σκυτοτόμος, πένης, τῆς ἔξωθεν σοφίας ἄπειρος, Ἑβραῖστὶ μόνον εἰδώς).⁵⁰ In his commentary on Galatians, John interprets Paul’s πηλίκοις γράμμασιν to mean that the characters were poorly formed,⁵¹ as opposed to being inordinately large, because Paul was incapable of writing legible Greek.⁵² Wiles’s Chrysostomian attribution is problematic for more than one reason. First of all, we may disqualify the first Johannine testimonium because Jerome’s use of the phrase in hoc loco indicates that the quotation comes from either a

⁴⁶ Comm. Gal. 6.11. ⁴⁷ For the use of the defective verb inquam to introduce direct discourse in prose, see Thesaurus Linguae Latinae VII, i, 1787–97; J. B. Hofmann, Lateinische Syntax und Stilistik (Munich, 1965), 417–18 (“fast wie ein Doppelpunkt oder Anführungszeichen”). ⁴⁸ Laodicenus interpres res magnas brevi sermone exprimere contendens, more sibi solito etiam hic locutus est: De commutatione, inquiens, bonorum in mala nunc Ecclesiastis sermo est. For the identification of this Laodicenus interpres as Apollinaris, see S. Leanza, “Sulle fonti del Commentario all’Ecclesiaste di Girolamo,” AnnSE 3 (1986): 173–99 (174). ⁴⁹ The Divine Apostle: The Interpretation of St. Paul’s Epistles in the Early Church (Cambridge, 1967), 16–17. ⁵⁰ Hom. 2 Tim. 4.3 (on 2 Tim. 2.10) (PG 62:622). As Wiles, The Divine Apostle, 17, notes, this disparagement of the Apostle’s secular learning, prevalent among his patristic interpreters, “served only to enhance the grace of God, which could use so unskilled a writer to so great effect.” This same observation already had been made by F. H. Chase, Chrysostom: A Study in the History of Biblical Interpretation (Cambridge, 1887), 151–3. ⁵¹ A. Deissmann, Bibelstudien (Marburg, 1895), 262–4, takes πηλίκοις γράμμασιν to mean that Paul was making fun of his own handwriting, which looked like the clumsy script of a manual laborer. H. D. Betz, A Commentary on Paul’s Letter to the Churches in Galatia (Philadelphia, 1979), 314, disagrees and suggests that the Greek phrase indicates that Paul was writing in an ancient version of bold print. Betz has been followed by B. Witherington, Grace in Galatia: A Commentary on Paul’s Letter to the Galatians (Grand Rapids, 1998), 441. ⁵² Τὸ δὲ Πηλίκοις, ἐμοὶ δοκεῖ οὐ τὸ μέγεθος, ἀλλὰ τὴν ἀμορφίαν τῶν γραμμάτων ἐμφαίνων λέγειν, μονονουχὶ λέγων, ὅτι Οὔτε ἄριστα γράφειν εἰδώς (Comm. Gal. 6.3, on Gal. 6.11) (PG 61:678). M. Mitchell, The Heavenly Trumpet: John Chrysostom and the Art of Pauline Interpretation (Louisville, 2002), 245, calls attention here to the interesting self-contradiction in John’s view of Paul, who he very well knew had written his epistles in Greek.

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commentary on Galatians or some (presumably) exegetical work in which the verse in question is treated discursively; for the sake of argument, let us assume the former. As for John’s second remark, it does share with Jerome’s quotation the notion that Paul’s characters were amorphous. However, the resemblance stops here, and because Jerome presents the excerpt as a direct quotation and not as a paraphrase, we may safely rule out Chrysostom from being the source. Although these considerations are enough to close the case, it nevertheless can be added that the exegetical lectures which at an unknown later date came to constitute John’s commentary on Galatians were delivered at Antioch sometime between 386 and 398.⁵³ This means that Jerome could not reasonably have acquired a copy of the revised Galatians lectures by the summer of 386, and in any case if he had, he would surely have listed this work in the preface to Book 1 alongside the other Greek patristic commentaries he had consulted.⁵⁴ If John Chrysostom is not the anonymous author of the quotation, then who is? Marius Victorinus and Ambrosiaster, Jerome’s two predecessors in the western tradition of Pauline interpretation, are excluded from consideration for the simple reason that their Galatians commentaries contain no explanations comparable, either phraseologically or conceptually, to what Jerome reports.⁵⁵ Souter tentatively suggested (without stating his reasons) that “perhaps Didymus may be intended.”⁵⁶ There is nothing inherently objectionable about this conjecture— but a conjecture it must remain, for not a shred of Didymus’s commentary on Galatians survives. What is more, there exists no other piece of evidence, circumstantial or otherwise, to corroborate such an identification. To complicate matters further, the quotation is nowhere to be found in any of the extant Greek (or Latin) literature from the patristic period. Clues must be sought in other quarters. Let us begin by parsing Jerome’s wording in the Latin: In hoc loco vir apprime nostris temporibus eruditus miror quomodo rem ridiculam locutus sit. As was noted above, the collocation locutus sit + inquit suggests that the quotation was lifted from a work in which the verse in ⁵³ J. N. D. Kelly, Golden Mouth: The Story of John Chrysostom—Ascetic, Preacher, Bishop (Grand Rapids, 1995), 91. There is no reliable evidence enabling us to fix the date of the homilies or the subsequent commentary on Galatians: so W. Mayer, The Homilies of St John Chrysostom: Provenance: Reshaping the Foundations (Rome, 2005). In addition, there is uncertainty about who prepared the commentary for release and when. It is possible that John himself did so, but it is just as possible that one of his supporters assumed this responsibility following his exile from Constantinople. ⁵⁴ Jerome evidently had not read John’s commentary prior to the composition of his De viris illustribus in 393. In Vir. ill. 129.1 he signals his awareness of John’s prolific output but claims only to have read his treatise on the priesthood (multa componere dicitur, de quibus Περὶ ἱερωσύνης tantum legi), which was composed between c.388 and c.390. In a letter of 404 to Augustine, he praised the latissimus liber John had written about Paul’s confrontation of Peter at Antioch (Ep. 112.6). This monographic liber surely refers to John’s treatise In faciem ei restiti (PG 51:371–88) and not to the Galatians commentary proper (A. Fürst, Augustins Briefwechsel mit Hieronymus (Münster, 1999), 7). ⁵⁵ Both commentators dwell with characteristic brevity only on Paul’s authentication of the letter by means of his own handwriting and they do not comment on his statement about his characters. ⁵⁶ The Earliest Latin Commentaries, 124.

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question (in hoc loco) is treated, and a commentary on Galatians seems a reasonable assumption. Throughout his oeuvre Jerome applies the phrase nostris temporibus (or nostro tempore) not only to exact contemporaries but also, in a looser sense, to people whose lifespans intersected, however tangentially, with his own. Thus, around 414 he could speak of Hilary of Poitiers as being a confessor nostri temporis,⁵⁷ even though Hilary had died nearly half a century earlier (367),⁵⁸ when Jerome was a little over twenty years old.⁵⁹ In other words, the author was not necessarily living at the time of Jerome’s writing. Finally, the complimentary epithet vir apprime eruditus suggests that Jerome held Anonymous’s learning in high regard, and indeed it is precisely this admiration that occasioned his expressed disappointment at the “absurd” interpretation.⁶⁰ According to the identikit sketch just drawn of him, Anonymous was alive at some point during Jerome’s lifetime, he was a fellow commentator on Galatians, and his erudition earned Jerome’s respect. The case can be made that Eusebius of Emesa is the one who lurks behind the veil of anonymity. Twice in his De viris illustribus Jerome praises his rhetorical finesse, eloquence, and command of secular literature.⁶¹ He nevertheless could be highly critical of his biblical scholarship. For instance, in his Hebrew Questions on Genesis, dated to the early 390s,⁶² he ridicules a suggestion made by Eusebius about the meaning of a Hebrew word in Genesis. He phrases his criticism in wording almost identical to that which he had employed a few years earlier when speaking of Anonymous:

⁵⁷ Comm. Es. 60.13–14. ⁵⁸ So Jerome, Vir. ill. 100.4: Mortuus est Pictavis Valentiniano et Valente regnantibus. ⁵⁹ The date of Jerome’s birth has been a matter of some debate. In his controversial article “La longévité de Jérôme: Prosper avait-il raison?,” Latomus 28 (1969): 1081–119, Pierre Hamblenne argues that Jerome was born in or before 330. P. Jay, “Sur la date de naissance de saint Jérôme,” REL 51 (1973): 262–80, rejects Hamblenne’s chronology and counter-proposes a date of birth sometime between 345 and 347. J. N. D. Kelly, Jerome: His Life, Writings, and Controversies (London, 1975), 337–9, prefers 331. A. D. Booth, “The Date of Jerome’s Birth,” Phoenix 33 (1979): 346–52, argues for the second half of 347 or the early months of 348. S. Rebenich, Hieronymus und sein Kreis: Prosopographische und sozialgeschichtliche Untersuchungen (Stuttgart, 1992), 21, advocates for c.347. Almost all scholars now accept the middle to late 340s as the timeframe of Jerome’s birth. ⁶⁰ Jerome was by no means the only biblical commentator to criticize a fellow exegete anonymously while giving him a complimentary epithet. To take one other example, Cyril of Alexandria strongly disapproved of Hosea’s marriage to a prostitute being allegorized, a position taken by someone he allusively called a “man not without distinction” (ἀνὴρ οὐκ ἄσημος) (Comm. Os. 1.2–3; P. E. Pusey (ed.), Sancti patris nostri Cyrilli archiepiscopi Alexandrini in XII prophetas, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1968), 1.15). According to F.-M. Abel, “Parallélisme exégétique entre S. Jérôme et S. Cyrille d’Alexandrie,” V&P 1 (1941): 94–199, 212–30 (99–105), this “man” is Didymus. Cf. D. Zaganos, “Cyrille d’Alexandrie aux prises avec un exégète allégoriste au début de son In Oseam: Didyme l’Aveugle ou Piérius d’Alexandrie?,” VChr 64 (2010): 480–91, who posits that he is the Alexandrian priest Pierius. ⁶¹ At Vir. ill. 91.1 Jerome characterizes Eusebius as being elegantis et rhetorici ingenii. Cf. Vir. ill. 119.1, on how Eusebius outclassed Diodore of Tarsus in both eloquence and secular learning: Diodorus, Tarsensis episcopus, dum Antiochiae esset presbyter magis claruit. Extant eius in apostolum commentarii et multa alia ad Eusebii magis Emiseni characterem pertinentia, cuius cum sensum secutus sit, eloquentiam imitari non potuit propter ignorantiam saecularium litterarum. ⁶² C. T. R. Hayward, Saint Jerome’s Hebrew Questions on Genesis: Translated with Introduction and Commentary (Oxford, 1995), 26, posits a date of composition between late 391 and early 393.

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“And Abraham lifted up his eyes and behold, a ram behind his back was caught by its horns in the thicket sabech.” Eusebius of Emesa said an absurd thing about this verse: “sabech means a goat which turns its horns upward and stands tall to graze a tree’s leaves.” Et elevavit Abraham oculos suos, et ecce aries post tergum eius tenebatur in virgulto sabech cornibus suis (Gen. 22.13). Ridiculam rem in hoc loco Emisenus Eusebius est locutus, sabech, inquiens, dicitur hircus, qui rectis cornibus et ad carpendas arboris frondes sublimis attollitur.⁶³

An interesting piece of circumstantial evidence lends further support to the identification of Eusebius as Anonymous. Eusebius was born around 300 into a noble family in Edessa, which by the turn of the fourth century had become a melting pot of Hellenistic and Syrian culture and was home to a large Syriacspeaking Christian community.⁶⁴ Although Syriac was his mother tongue,⁶⁵ he received in his hometown a classical education in Greek,⁶⁶ the language in which he would later compose his biblical commentaries. Although he was an extremely literate man, one can imagine how attuned someone with his linguistic profile might have been to the challenges confronting a native speaker of a Semitic language writing in what was essentially a non-native language. Such presumed sensitivity could account for his opinion about Paul’s struggles with bilingualism in Jerome’s anonymous quotation. Furthermore, it is perhaps to Eusebius that John Chrysostom owed the peculiar idea about Paul’s deficient Greek. After all, John was, according to Jerome, an exegetical heir to Eusebius.⁶⁷ Modern scholars, too, recognize that Eusebius was “an important figure in Chrysostom’s literary and ideological circle,”⁶⁸ and that his writings were known to John and influenced him.⁶⁹ So then, with Jerome’s anonymous quotation being ascribed to Eusebius, we now have a new, twentieth fragment of his commentary on Galatians, albeit one preserved in Latin translation—but preserved nonetheless. But, why does Jerome criticize Eusebius anonymously rather than by name? Presumably for the same ⁶³ Quaest. Heb. Gen. 22.13. ⁶⁴ J. B. Segal, Edessa: The Blessed City (Oxford, 1970); H. J. W. Drijvers, Cults and Beliefs at Edessa (Leiden, 1980). ⁶⁵ H. J. Lehmann, “The Syriac Translation of the Old Testament—as Evidenced around the Middle of the Fourth Century (in Eusebius of Emesa),” SJOT 1 (1987): 66–86 (73); Buytaert, Héritage littéraire, 95; Haar Romeny, Syrian in Greek Dress, 9. ⁶⁶ Novotný, “Fragments exégétiques,” 27. Cf. S. P. Brock, “Greek and Syriac in Late Antique Syria,” in A. K. Bowman and G. Woolf (eds.), Literacy and Power in the Ancient World (Cambridge, 1994), 149–60. ⁶⁷ He called John Eusebii Emiseni sectator (Vir. ill. 129.1). For a comparison of Eusebius’s and John’s views on the Jews, see R. Hennings, “Eusebius von Emesa und die Juden,” ZAC 5 (2001): 240–60. ⁶⁸ H. Amirav, Rhetoric and Tradition: John Chrysostom on Noah and the Flood (Leuven, 2003), 34, 85, 108–9. ⁶⁹ R. B. ter Haar Romeny, “Quis sit ὁ Σύρος Revisited,” in A. Salvesen (ed.), Origen’s Hexapla and Fragments (Tübingen, 1994), 360–98 (372); ter Haar Romeny, Syrian in Greek Dress, 27.

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reason he does not criticize either Origen or Apollinaris by name when he dissents from their opinions, reported anonymously, in his Pauline commentaries: “I did not wish to disparage men whom I was partly following and whose opinions I was translating into the Latin tongue.”⁷⁰ In other words, he did not want to appear petty or ungrateful by name-shaming his Greek exegetical models. We turn at last to Origen (c.184–c.254), the most prolific biblical exegete of the early church.⁷¹ He was the first systematic interpreter of Paul,⁷² and he expounded all of the Pauline epistles (except 1 & 2 Timothy) in either exegetical homilies (1 & 2 Corinthians, Galatians, 1 & 2 Thessalonians, Titus) or commentaries (Romans, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 & 2 Thessalonians, Titus, Philemon, Hebrews).⁷³ Jerome regarded Origen as “the [greatest] teacher of the churches after the apostles”⁷⁴ and an “immortal talent” (immortale ingenium).⁷⁵ Among the six commentators Jerome lists in his Galatians preface, Origen is given a privileged place at the very beginning of the catalogue. Additionally, his commentary on Galatians is called commentarii (the plural for a single commentary is a standard patristic usage⁷⁶), as opposed to commentarioli, the term Jerome applies to the expositions of the other five. The diminutive indicates that these other commentaries were shorter than Origen’s, and it likely also is meant to imply that they were less content-rich than his. Origen is the predecessor to whom Jerome says he owes the most debt as a Pauline interpreter,⁷⁷ and in his first Galatians preface he states simply: “I have followed Origen’s commentaries.”⁷⁸ He then summarizes Origen’s output: “He wrote five extraordinary volumes on Paul’s epistle to the Galatians⁷⁹ and rounded ⁷⁰ Non debui eos carpere quos imitabar ex parte et quorum in Latinam linguam sententias transferebam (Jerome, Apol. c. Ruf. 1.24). ⁷¹ P. Nautin, Origène: sa vie et son oeuvre (Paris, 1977); J. Trigg, Origen: The Bible and Philosophy in the Third-Century Church (Atlanta, 1983). ⁷² F. Cocchini, Il Paolo di Origene: contributo alla storia della recezione delle epistole paoline nel III secolo (Rome, 1992). ⁷³ M. Geerard, Clavis Patrum Graecorum, vol. 1 (Turnhout, 1983), 163–7. Cf. E. Klostermann, “Die Schriften des Origenes in Hieronymus’ Brief an Paula,” Sitzungsberichte der preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin (1897): 855–70. ⁷⁴ . . . Origenem, quem post apostolos ecclesiarum magistrum nemo nisi inperitus negat (Lib. int. Heb. nom. p. 1). Didymus had used the same epithet for Origen, and Jerome adopted its Latin form; see G. Bardy, “Post apostolos ecclesiarum magister,” RMAL 6 (1950): 313–16. ⁷⁵ Comm. Tit. 3.9; Vir. ill. 54.8. ⁷⁶ H. A. G. Houghton (trans.), Fortunatianus of Aquileia, Commentary on the Gospels (Berlin, 2017), x. ⁷⁷ Origen had a similarly seminal influence on Jerome’s other commentaries; see H. T. Ondrey, The Minor Prophets as Christian Scripture in the Commentaries of Theodore of Mopsuestia and Cyril of Alexandria (Oxford, 2018), 61–2. ⁷⁸ Aspects of Jerome’s indebtedness to Origen’s commentary on Galatians have been treated by others. See, e.g., Souter, The Earliest Latin Commentaries, 110–25; M. Schatkin, “The Influence of Origen upon St. Jerome’s Commentary on Galatians,” VChr 24 (1970): 49–58; G. Raspanti, “Adgrediar opus intemptatum: l’Ad Galatas di Girolamo e gli sviluppi del commentario biblico latino,” Adamantius 10 (2004): 194–216 (199–207). ⁷⁹ In Ep. 33.4.5 Jerome specifies that Origen’s Galatians commentary comprised fifteen books (In epistulam ad Galatas libros XV).

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out the tenth book of his Miscellanies with a brief section expounding it. He also produced various homilies and scholia which would be sufficient all by themselves.” Of this massive body of work only a few scattered fragments remain. One of these is the excursus at the conclusion of the tenth book of the lost Miscellanies (Stromateis).⁸⁰ Jerome translated and inserted part (or all?) of the original excursus, which runs to a little over three pages in Raspanti’s critical edition,⁸¹ into his commentary on Gal. 5.13 and followed it with his own remarks on this verse. Origen’s commentary on Galatians has come down to us in only five fragments. Three are preserved in their original Greek in Mount Athos, Laura 184 (B. 64), a tenth-century parchment codex of 102 leaves that contains the Acts of the Apostles and the Pauline epistles along with marginal notes from the works of early Christian authors such as Irenaeus and Origen.⁸² However, these three fragments are too lacunose to permit a meaningful comparison with Jerome’s commentary.⁸³ The two remaining fragments have been transmitted through Rufinus’s Latin translation of the Apology for Origen (397), which Pamphilus of Caesarea, in collaboration with Eusebius of Caesarea, had composed in Greek between 307 and 310, in order to defend Origen’s theological integrity on numerous topics by compiling excerpts from his writings.⁸⁴ Pamphilus says that he included two excerpts from the commentary on Galatians to disprove critics’ claim that Origen believed Christ to be only human.⁸⁵ The first one, taken from Origen’s exposition of Gal. 1.1, is juxtaposed below by its closest parallel in Jerome’s commentary on the same verse:

⁸⁰ Origen devoted most of the tenth book to the visions recorded at the end of Daniel, and by way of a conclusion he turned to Galatians. See R. Grant, “The Stromateis of Origen,” in J. Fontaine and C. Kannengiesser (eds.), Epektasis: mélanges patristiques offerts au Cardinal Jean Daniélou (Paris, 1972), 285–92 (289–90). ⁸¹ G. Raspanti (ed.), S. Hieronymi Presbyteri Opera. Pars I. Opera exegetica 6. Commentarii in Epistulam Pauli Apostoli ad Galatas, CCSL 77A (Turnhout, 2006), 169–73. ⁸² E. von der Goltz, Eine textkritische Arbeit des zehnten bezw. sechsten Jahrhunderts herausgegeben nach einem Kodex des Athlosklosters Lawra (Leipzig, 1899). Cf. K. Lake and S. New (eds.), Six Collations of New Testament Manuscripts (Cambridge, MA, 1932), 141–219; B. M. Metzger, Manuscripts of the Greek Bible: An Introduction to Palaeography (Oxford, 1981), 112. See further C. P. Bammel, “A New Witness to the Scholia from Origen in the Codex von der Goltz,” in R. J. Daly (ed.), Origeniana Quinta (Leuven, 1992), 137–41; J. N. Birdsall, “The Text and Scholia of the Codex von der Goltz and its Allies, and Their Bearing upon the Texts of the Works of Origen, especially the Commentary on Romans,” in H. Crouzel, G. Lomiento, and J. Ruis-Camps (eds.), Origeniana: premier colloque international des études origéniennes (Bari, 1975), 215–22. ⁸³ See von der Goltz, Eine textkritische Arbeit, 72–4: [on Gal. 3.7] τετρακόσια καὶ τριάκοντα: ἀββαὰμ ἀπὸ οε΄ ἕως ρ΄: κε΄|ἰσαὰκ ἔτη ξ΄ ἰακὼβ ἔτη α΄|ἰωσὴφ ἔτη ρι΄ ἐν αἰγύπτῳ ἔτη ῥμδ΄; [on Gal. 5.15] . . . εν τισιν αντιγραφοις|εχει· ει δε αλληλους δακνε–|τε και κατεσθιετε . . . |νος . . . |εν τω δε εμω τηρη[μενω] αντι| ρ[αφω]; [on Gal. 6.16] ἐν τῷ τοῦ ὑπομν . . . ⁸⁴ The Greek original has been lost, and only the first book was translated by Rufinus. The critical edition of this translation from which I quote in this chapter is R. Amacker and É. Junod (eds.), Pamphile et Eusèbe de Césarée, Apologie pour Origène, 2 vols. (Paris, 2002). ⁸⁵ Nunc consequenter respondebimus etiam his qui purum hominem, id est sine Deo, ab eo dici adserunt Christum (Pamphilus, Apol. 108).

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Origen From what the Apostle has said, “Paul, an apostle not from men nor through a man but through Jesus Christ,” it is to be understood clearly that Jesus Christ was not a man but was a divine nature. For if he were a man, Paul would not have said what he says, “Paul, an apostle not from men nor through a man.” But by these words Paul clearly separates Jesus from human nature; for it is not sufficient for him to have said “nor through a man,” but he goes on to say, “but through Jesus Christ.” For surely he knew that he was of a more eminent nature, and for that reason he said that he himself had not been chosen “through a man.”86

Jerome [False apostles] claim that the Lord says soand-so, but the Lord has not sent them. Paul is nothing like them, for he is sent not by men nor through human agency but by God the Father through Jesus Christ. The heresy of Ebion and Photinus must be repelled because our Lord Jesus Christ is God: the Apostle, who was sent by Christ to preach the Gospel, denies that he was sent by man. Other heresies creep in the door and insinuate that Christ did not have a real body and that he is God but not man. There is also a new heresy that rips apart the incarnate humanity of Christ. The faith of the church, then, is trapped among formidable shipwrecks of false teaching. If it confesses that Christ is only man, then Ebion and Photinus gain ground. If it contends that he is only God, then Manichaeus [Mani87], Marcion, and the author of the new teaching all bubble up to the surface. Let each and every one of them hear that Christ is both God and man—not that one is God and the other man, but rather that he who is God from all eternity deigned to become man in order to save us.88

Both passages have the same theological thrust and advance the same argument: Paul’s apostolate has divine sanction because the one who sent him, Jesus Christ, is fully God. There is, however, a notable difference. Jerome is more overtly polemical in his tone, producing a roll call of Christological heresiarchs absent from the Origenian fragment. Now, it must be remembered that this short fragment is all that remains of Origen’s exegesis of Gal. 1.1. We do not know where exactly it was situated internally within his comments on this lemma; we are looking at nothing more than a snapshot isolated from its context. That being said, because as a general rule Jerome’s references to second-century heresiarchs probably derive from Origen,⁸⁹ it is more likely than not that he took over Marcion’s name from a nearby (perhaps follow-up?) section of Origen’s ⁸⁶ Pamphilus, Apol. 109; T. Scheck (trans.), St. Pamphilus, Apology for Origen, FOTC 120 (Washington, D.C., 2010), 88. ⁸⁷ Ambrosiaster also refers to Mani as Manichaeus (Quaest. 76.1; Comm. Gal. 1.1; Comm. Php. 1.1). According to Augustine (Haer. 46.1), Mani’s own disciples began to call him Manichaeus because his name in Greek, “Manes,” was too close to the word for “mania.” See J. Tubach and M. Zakeri, “Mani’s Name,” in J. van Oort, O. Wermelinger, and G. Wurst (eds.), Augustine and Manichaeism in the Latin West: Proceedings of the Fribourg-Utrecht International Symposium of the IAMS (Leiden, 2001), 272–86. ⁸⁸ A. Cain, St. Jerome, Commentary on Galatians, FOTC 121 (Washington, D.C., 2010), 63–4. ⁸⁹ Souter, The Earliest Latin Commentaries, 116–20.

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comments on Gal. 1.1 which criticized Marcionite Christology.⁹⁰ The same goes for Ebion, the fictional eponymous founder of the Ebionite sect whom Jerome assumed to have been a real person,⁹¹ though Origen does not seem to have regarded him as such.⁹² The other three heresiarchs—Mani, Photinus, and Apollinaris of Laodicea, who is alluded to as “the author of the new teaching”⁹³— postdate Origen and therefore could not have been named in his commentary; these recentiores are Jerome’s own amendments. The second fragment preserved in Rufinus’s Latin Apology is a snippet from Origen’s comments on Gal. 1.11–12. Jerome has retained Origen’s presumed mention of the Ebionites and added Photinus, and he also packages his argument in a more compressed form than does Origen: Origen Pay attention therefore to what he writes because, in adding these elements to the preceding ones, one will be able to demonstrate handily to those who deny the divinity of Jesus Christ but declare that he is only a man, that Jesus Christ the Son of God is not a man but God. For when the Apostle says that “the Gospel I preached to you is not according to man,” but according to Jesus Christ, he shows clearly that Christ Jesus is not a man, and if he is not a man, he undoubtedly is God (or rather, he will be no other thing except man and God). Again, if what Paul says is true, that “I have not received the Gospel from a man but through the revelation of Jesus Christ,” it is certain that Jesus Christ, who revealed it, is not a man. For it is unnatural for a human being to reveal things that are hidden and concealed. Even if this sometimes does come about through a man, it nevertheless does not originate from a man but from Christ who speaks in the man.94

Jerome This passage annihilates the teaching of Ebion and Photinus because it affirms that Christ is not just a man but also God. For if the Gospel Paul preaches is not man-made, and if he neither received it nor learned it from man but through the revelation of Jesus Christ, then Christ, who revealed it to him, cannot be a man, and if he is not a man, then he must be God. We do not deny that he assumed human form, we simply reject the notion that he was only a man.95

Greek patristic commentaries on Galatians, and predominantly Origen’s, underpin the exegetical content of Jerome’s commentary, but non-exegetical Greek Christian sources also inform aspects of it, though in a more ancillary

⁹⁰ On Origen’s anti-Marcionite polemic, see J. M. Lieu, Marcion and the Making of a Heretic: God and Scripture in the Second Century (Cambridge, 2015), 135–42. ⁹¹ See above, p. 153. ⁹² G. Dorival, “Le regard d’Origène sur les judéo-chrétiens,” in S. C. Mimouni (ed.), Le judéochristianisme dans tous ses états (Paris, 2001), 257–73. ⁹³ Cf. above, pp. 153–4. ⁹⁴ Pamphilus, Apol. 111; trans. Scheck, Apology for Origen, 88–9. ⁹⁵ Trans. Cain, Commentary on Galatians, 77.

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way. A few examples will suffice. Jerome cites Pseudo-Clement’s Travels of Peter for its description of Peter’s appearance,⁹⁶ and the meat of his numerous criticisms of Porphyry may come from Apollinaris of Laodicea’s immense treatise Against Porphyry.⁹⁷ When treating Paul’s confrontation of Peter at Antioch, Jerome reports that there are “some who suppose that the Cephas whom Paul claims to have confronted is not Peter but one of the seventy disciples who went by the same name.”⁹⁸ One of those meant here must be Clement of Alexandria, who made the same argument in the fifth book of his now-lost Hypotyposeis,⁹⁹ a work of which Jerome had firsthand knowledge.¹⁰⁰ Finally, in Comm. Gal. 3.13–14 Jerome writes: “I recall finding in the Debate between Jason and Papiscus, which is written in Greek, the phrase λοιδορία θεοῦ ὁ κρεμάμενος, which means, ‘The one who is hanged is a reproach to God.’ ”¹⁰¹ This second-century fragmentary work,¹⁰² attributed in antiquity alternately to Luke the Evangelist and the Christian apologist Ariston of Pella (fl. c.150),¹⁰³ purports to be the transcript of a debate at Alexandria between a Jewish Christian (Jason) and a Jew (Papiscus) about

⁹⁶ Comm. Gal. 1.18. This reference perhaps was supplied by Origen; see P. Courcelle, Les lettres grecques en Occident de Macrobe à Cassiodore (Paris, 1948), 82; Schatkin, “The Influence of Origen,” 57. ⁹⁷ Fürst, Augustins Briefwechsel, 13; cf. Jerome, Vir. ill. 104.2. ⁹⁸ Sunt qui Cephan, cui hic in faciem Paulus restitisse se scribit, non putent apostolum Petrum sed alium de septuaginta discipulis isto vocabulo nuncupatum (Comm. Gal. 2.11–13). The question about whether Peter and Cephas were the same or different people continues to be debated. Earlier in the twentieth century a handful of scholars (e.g., M. Goguel, K. Lake, D. W. Riddle) argued that they were two separate individuals, and some scholars still argue this; cf. B. D. Ehrman, “Cephas and Peter,” JBL 109 (1990): 463–74. For a rejoinder to this minority position, see D. C. Allison, “Peter and Cephas: One and the Same,” JBL 111 (1992): 489–95. ⁹⁹ On the possible existence (at an unknown location in Egypt) of an important ancient Greek manuscript of the Hypotyposeis, see E. Osborn, “Clement’s Hypotyposeis: Macarius Revisited,” SCent 7 (1989–90): 233–5. For speculation about the work’s original contents, see P. Nautin, “La fin des Stromates et les Hypotyposes de Clément d’Alexandrie,” VChr 30 (1976): 268–302; cf. B. G. Bucur, “The Place of the Hypotyposeis in the Clementine Corpus: An Apology for the Other Clement of Alexandria,” JECS 17 (2009): 313–35. ¹⁰⁰ R. T. France, The Gospel of Mark (Grand Rapids, 2002), 38. Even though Jerome knew the Hypotyposeis, it is conceivable that he gleaned information about Clement’s position from Eusebius, who summarizes it in Hist. eccl. 1.12.2 (without naming Clement). ¹⁰¹ Memini me in Altercatione Iasonis et Papisci, quae Graeco sermone conscripta est, ita repperisse: λοιδορία θεοῦ ὁ κρεμάμενος, id est maledictio Dei qui appensus est. ¹⁰² For the Greek text of the fragments with translation and commentary in Italian, see C. Schiano (ed.), Dialogo di Papisco e Filone guidei con un monaco: testo, traduzione, e commento (Bari, 2005). Since the publication of Schiano’s critical edition a new fragment has been discovered in a sixteenthcentury manuscript housed at the Monastery of St. Catherine on Mt. Sinai (Sinaiticus graecus 1807); see F. Bovon, “A New Greek Fragment from Ariston of Pella’s Dialogue of Jason and Papiscus,” HThR 105 (2012): 457–65. ¹⁰³ H. Tolley, “Clement of Alexandria’s Reference to Luke the Evangelist as Author of Jason and Papiscus,” JThS n.s. 63 (2012): 523–32; S. Borzì, “Sull’attribuzione della Disputa fra Giasone e Papisco ad Aristone di Pella,” VetChr 41 (2004): 347–54. But cf. G. Otranto, “La Disputa fra Giasone e Papisco sul Cristo falsamente attribuita ad Aristone di Pella,” VetChr 33 (1996): 337–51, who argues against Aristonian authorship.

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 ’ :  

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whether Jesus is the Messiah prophesied in the Old Testament (it ends with Papiscus converting to Christianity). If we take Jerome at his word, his reference to the Debate came from his own reading.¹⁰⁴

Commentary on Ephesians As we saw in the previous section, Jerome claims that he consulted the commentaries of six Greek exegetes in preparation for his own interpretive work on Galatians. For his Ephesians commentary, however, he identifies only three sources at the tail end of the preface to Book 1: I also bring this to your attention in the preface so that you may know that Origen, whom we ourselves have followed in part, composed three volumes on this epistle, and Apollinaris and Didymus also produced some modest commentaries. From these we have excerpted—albeit, a few things—and we have added or removed some things at our discretion. Consequently, the diligent reader is aware from the start that this work is both others’ and ours. Illud quoque in praefatione commoneo ut sciatis Origenem tria volumina in hanc epistulam conscripsisse, quem et nos ex parte secuti sumus, Apollinarem etiam et Didymum quosdam commentariolos edidisse. E quibus licet pauca decerpsimus et nonnulla quae nobis videbantur adiecimus sive subtraximus, ut studiosus statim in principio lector agnoscat hoc opus vel alienum esse vel nostrum.¹⁰⁵

Over a decade later, Jerome reiterated that in his Ephesians commentary he followed only Origen, Apollinaris, and Didymus.¹⁰⁶ No fragments of either Didymus’s or Apollinaris’s commentaries have come down to us in their original Greek, and thus a one-to-one comparison of theirs and Jerome’s is impossible. Nevertheless, in his Apology against Rufinus he identifies two different places in his commentary where he had summarized Apollinaris’s position on a given passage (though he does not credit Apollinaris by name in the commentary itself),¹⁰⁷ and so we at least are able to recover these small vestiges of Apollinaris’s exegesis. As for Didymus, his commentary would almost certainly have followed closely in the tracks of Origen’s,¹⁰⁸ and even if a measurable portion ¹⁰⁴ Cf. Courcelle, Les lettres grecques, 87–8. ¹⁰⁵ Comm. Eph., lib. 1, prol. ll. 142–8. ¹⁰⁶ Ego in commentariis ad Ephesios sic Origenem et Didymum et Apollinarem secutus sum (Apol. c. Ruf. 1.16). ¹⁰⁷ Apol. c. Ruf. 1.24, 25. ¹⁰⁸ For Didymus’s reliance on Origen’s commentary on Ephesians, see R. Layton, “Origen as a Reader of Paul: A Study of the Commentary on Ephesians” (Ph.D. diss.: University of Virginia, 1996), 303–47. For his indebtedness to Origen in other hermeneutical contexts, see Penna, Principi e carattere, 13; S. Leanza, “Ancora sull’esegesi origeniana dell’Ecclesiaste,” in E. Livrea and G. A. Privitera (eds.), Studi in onore di Anthos Ardizzoni (Rome, 1978), 493–506; M. Simonetti, “Didymiana,” VetChr 21

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’     

did survive, a comparison of it with Jerome’s commentary likely would be inconclusive for the simple reason that Jerome and Didymus often drew from the same Origenian well.¹⁰⁹ Moreover, we are on much surer footing when it comes to assessing Jerome’s reliance on Origen’s commentary on Ephesians,¹¹⁰ for a fair amount of it has survived in catena manuscripts.¹¹¹ It is worth emphasizing at the outset that Origen’s commentary has survived in a truncated, patchwork form, and therefore we must not assume that all of his comments on a given verse have come down to us. We really are at the mercy of catenists, who excerpted as much or as little as they deemed useful for their purposes.¹¹² In many instances they have preserved for us only a sliver of Origen’s comments on a given verse, but Jerome likely has indirectly preserved more of the original in his own comments. One such case concerns Eph. 5.9 (“For the fruit of the light is in all goodness and justice and truth”). Here a catenist presumably failed to record Origen’s elaboration on the terms “goodness,” “truth,” and “justice” (present in Jerome’s commentary) as well as his naming of Marcion: Origen These words are useful against those who separate the just from the good and think the Creator is just but that there is a good God above him, since the fruit of the light is in goodness and justice and truth. Where goodness is, therefore, there is justice, and where truth is there is justice. If goodness and truth are with the good Father, then justice is also with him and not with

Jerome Let us bring this testimony forward against Marcion (who separates the just God from the good and thinks the Creator is just but that another, I know not who, is alone the good God, whose son is that Christ who comes) since the fruit of light is not only in goodness but also in justice and truth. Where there is goodness, therefore, there is also justice, and where justice, there, it

(1984): 129–55; R. Layton, “Propatheia: Origen and Didymus on the Origin of the Passions,” VChr 54 (2000): 262–82. ¹⁰⁹ See, e.g., R. Layton, “Judas Yields a Place for the Devil: The Appropriation of Origen’s Commentary on Ephesians by Didymus of Alexandria,” in W. A. Bienert and U. Kühneweg (eds.), Origeniana septima: Origenes in den Auseinandersetzungen des 4. Jahrhunderts (Leuven, 1999), 531–41, who argues that Origen’s connection of Judas’s betrayal of Jesus (Jn. 13.27) with Eph. 4.27 was taken up by both Didymus and Jerome (Didymus treats Eph. 4.27 in his commentary on Ecclesiastes). ¹¹⁰ Cf. F. Deniau, “Le commentaire de Jérôme sur Ephésiens nous permet-il de connaître celui d’Origène?,” in H. Crouzel, G. Lomiento, and J. Ruis–Camps (eds.), Origeniana: premier colloque international des études origéniennes (Montserrat, 18–21 septembre 1973) (Bari, 1975), 163–79; R. Heine, “Recovering Origen’s Commentary on Ephesians from Jerome,” JThS n.s. 51 (2000): 478–514. ¹¹¹ The Greek fragments were compiled by J. A. F. Gregg, “The Commentary of Origen upon the Epistle to the Ephesians,” JThS 3 (1902): 233–44, 398–420, 554–76. For a parallel-column English translation of these fragments and Jerome’s complete Ephesians commentary, see R. Heine (trans.), The Commentaries of Origen and Jerome on St. Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians (Oxford, 2002), 75–272. ¹¹² On the challenges of working with catena fragments, see H. de Riedmatten, “Le texte des fragments exégétiques d’Apollinaire de Laodicée,” RSR 45 (1956): 560–6; R. Heine, “Can the Catena Fragments of Origen’s Commentary on John be Trusted?,” VChr 40 (1986): 118–34.

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 ’ :   another. Consider these words also from the standpoint that Christ is “justice” (1 Cor. 1.30).113

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follows, is also truth. There is goodness and truth, therefore, with the good Father of Christ, as they themselves acknowledge. But where there is goodness and truth, with this same one and not with another, there is justice, as the Apostle now teaches. Let Marcion also understand that Christ himself is called goodness, truth, and “justice” (1 Cor. 1.30): goodness in that he gives graces to those who believe in him not in accordance to their works but according to his mercy; justice in that he gives to each one what he deserves; and truth since he alone knows the causes of all creatures and things.114

Two main trends emerge from a synoptic scrutiny of Origen’s and Jerome’s commentaries on Ephesians. The first is that in his comments on ten different verses or verse groups Jerome follows Origen’s wording closely and even translates his prose verbatim in some instances,¹¹⁵ though generally speaking his indebtedness amounts to “a loose paraphrase” of Origen,¹¹⁶ but nevertheless there is overall a closer mirroring of Origen than what he characterizes, in the preface to Book 1, as having followed him only “in part” (ex parte). The second trend is that Jerome tends to quote the same biblical passages in the same order as Origen.¹¹⁷ His exposition of Eph. 1.7b–8 typifies these two broad trends: Origen He who has understood the meaning of, “You have been saved by grace and not from works” (Eph. 2.8, 9) and “comparing” trespasses with trespasses (cf. 1 Cor. 2.13), might consider the parable which speaks of the five hundred denarii (Lk. 7.41–3). Which man ought to confess more gratitude to the householder who forgave the debt? And considering further how “the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory about to be revealed to us” (Rom. 8.18), he might comprehend the wealth of God’s grace and how

Jerome The person who understands the saying, “You have been saved by grace and not by works” (Eph. 2.8, 9), and that he who is forgiven more loves more in relation to the debtor who owed fifty denarii and five hundred in the Gospel (Lk. 7.41–3), can understand that, according to his wealth, the grace of God abounds in us, especially in the church gathered from the Gentiles. This church was alien to the covenant and promises to Israel, on the basis of whose transgression we Gentiles have obtained salvation. Or is there not a magnitude of

¹¹³ Trans. Heine, The Commentaries of Origen and Jerome, 219. ¹¹⁴ Trans. Heine, The Commentaries of Origen and Jerome, 219–20. ¹¹⁵ Eph. 1.13, 2.19–22, 3.13, 4.13–15, 5.4, 5.5, 5.7–14, 5.28b–9 (cf. Jerome, Apol. c. Ruf. 1.28); 6.1–3, 6.11; cf. Deniau, “Le commentaire de Jérôme sur Éphésiens,” 166. ¹¹⁶ Heine, The Commentaries of Origen and Jerome, 46. ¹¹⁷ In his own commentary on Zechariah Jerome followed Didymus’s commentary on Zechariah in the same way; see L. Doutreleau (ed.), Didyme l’aveugle sur Zacharie, vol. 1 (Paris, 1962), 130–1. See further A. Canellis, “L’In Zachariam de Jérôme et la tradition Alexandrine,” in A. Cain and J. Lössl (eds.), Jerome of Stridon: His Life, Writings, and Legacy (Aldershot, 2009), 153–62.

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’     

he has caused it so as to abound to the called and elect, especially to the aliens from the covenants of God and the strangers from his promises who, because of the trespass of Israel, have been drawn to salvation by the goodness of the Father. Furthermore, one might better understand the wealth of his grace which he caused to abound to the blessed by considering the remarks, “Do you not know that we shall judge angels?” (1 Cor. 6.3) and, “Into which things angels desire to look” (1 Pet. 1.12), along with the request made for all concerning the future, “Grant that as I and you are one, that they too may be one in us” (Jn. 17.21–2). And this whole wealth of the grace of God, which he caused to abound to the saints, being supplied from the beginning and increasing and being multiplied (cf. Col. 2.19), either holds the one who attains the things previously mentioned by struggling and exerting himself to his fullest power (cf. Phil. 3.13), or it holds the one who falls short in his capacity to do all the things imposed on him. If, then, someone were to fall short, it would be as if grace were in vain to such a person. But if he were to do the things in his power perfectly, the apostolic word would say, “His grace to me was not in vain” (1 Cor. 15.10).118

graces in Paul and in the other saints of whom it is said, “Do you not know that we will judge angels?” (1 Cor. 6.3) and, in another place, “On whom angels desired to look” (1 Pet. 1.12) and again, “Father, grant that as you and I are one, so may they also be one in us” (Jn. 17.21). He does not regard this wealth of graces in himself to be in vain who, however much human frailty prevails, presses forward, strives, and strains, and says with the Apostle, “His grace was not in vain in me” (1 Cor. 15.10). But in that person who is unmindful of the magnitude of the favor, the rich grace of God will degenerate, and the opulent bestowal be reduced to poverty.119

Jerome quotes the same six verses in the same order as Origen (Eph. 2.8, 9; Lk. 7.41–3; 1 Cor. 6.3; 1 Pet. 1.12; Jn. 17.21–2; 1 Cor. 15.10), yet he omits Rom. 8.18 and allusions to three other verses (1 Cor. 2.13; Col. 2.19; Phil. 3.13), otherwise producing an economical paraphrase of Origen’s comments. In the previous example, Jerome condenses Origen’s wording mostly by omitting the occasional biblical quotation and allusion. At other times he follows his lead but also adds his own personal touches. Consider, for example, his remarks on Eph. 4.26a (“Be angry and do not sin”) alongside Origen’s: Origen It is clear that this has been taken from the fourth Psalm (Ps. 4.5). The expression “be angry” has two meanings. One is anger which is not deliberate. Some call this propensity. Even the perfect will experience this when some chance occurrence stirs them to anger without any deliberation on their

Jerome There is no doubt that this has been taken from the fourth Psalm (Ps. 4.5) and that it seems to be contrary to that which is said elsewhere, “But now put away all anger, indignation, malice, blasphemy, and filthy speech from your mouth” (Col. 3.8). But in addition, understood in a singular manner,

¹¹⁸ Trans. Heine, The Commentaries of Origen and Jerome, 92–3. ¹¹⁹ Trans. Heine, The Commentaries of Origen and Jerome, 92–3.

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 ’ :   part. The other refers to that anger which occurs when the conscious assent admits in advance that one assumed to have been wronged has the right to seek vengeance. It is the latter, which is under our control, that the Apostle commands that we “put aside.” It is the former of the two meanings, therefore, which is indicated in the words, “Be angry and do not sin,” which is the same as saying, “Even if at some time you admit anger, nevertheless abandon it without taking action.”120

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“anger” is harmful so long as it is imagined as a bridle that has been released. The term “anger,” however, is taken in a twofold manner by the philosophers as well as by us. It applies either to whom, provoked by a wrong, natural incitement impels us or, once the fury is past and the rage has died down and our mind has regained the capability of discernment, it nonetheless desires revenge on the assumed offender. I think, therefore, that the present saying pertains to the first meaning of anger and that it has been granted to us as humans that we may be moved at the sight of something intolerable and a gentle breeze, as it were, may disturb our tranquility of mind. We are, nevertheless, by no means to be lifted up in the violent whirlpools of rage by the impulse. Our Firmianus has written a book on the anger of God in a learned and eloquent style. This work can, I think, sufficiently and abundantly supply the reader with an understanding of anger.121

Both begin by cross-referencing Ps. 4, but Jerome then immediately includes a pertinent reference to Col. 3.8, which is not quoted by Origen. He also refers his readers to Lactantius’s treatise De ira dei for further reading.¹²² Another example of Jerome following Origen in the main but making his own minor additions here and there occurs in his comments on Eph. 5.31, where he inserts a brief aside about translation accuracy and the Latin language: Origen We must observe, just as we have also done in other passages, that often those who write the New Testament do not quote the Old Testament word for word. This stands written as follows in Genesis, “For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother and shall be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh” (Gen. 2.24). Here, however, Paul has written “on this account” instead of “for this reason.” He has also failed to mention “his” after both “father”

Jerome We show here what we have often observed, namely that the apostles and evangelists do not use the same words in the copies of the Old Testament which are contained in our own volumes since this particular testimony is written as follows in Genesis, “For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother and shall cleave to his wife and the two shall be one flesh” (Gen. 2.24). But now the Apostle has put ἀντὶ τούτου (that is: “for this reason”) for the ἕνεκεν τούτου which

¹²⁰ Trans. Heine, The Commentaries of Origen and Jerome, 193–4. ¹²¹ Trans. Heine, The Commentaries of Origen and Jerome, 193–4. ¹²² Cf. below, pp. 219–21. For another fourth-century reader of this Lactantian treatise, see A. Cain, “Gregory of Elvira, Lactantius, and the Reception of the De ira Dei,” VChr 63 (2009): 1–6.

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’     

and “mother.” Moreover, he has omitted the words, “he shall be joined to his wife.”123

appears there. This latter cannot be expressed in different words in Latin. Then he has removed the pronouns with “his father and his mother” and has put only “father and mother,” and he has completely omitted, “And shall cleave to his wife.”124

Commentary on Philemon In his first Galatians and Ephesians prefaces Jerome names his Greek exegetical sources, singling out Origen as his principal model. In his Philemon preface he fails to name any source, but scholars nevertheless long have suspected that he based his commentary on Origen’s,¹²⁵ which also consisted of one book.¹²⁶ This commentary is completely lost except for two brief textual notes on Phlm. 10 and 12 preserved in the Mount Athos manuscript,¹²⁷ and also one substantial fragment on Phlm. 5 which is preserved in Latin through Rufinus’s translation of Pamphilus’s Apology for Origen. A synoptic comparison of this fragment with the relevant portion of Jerome’s commentary reveals that Jerome has indeed followed Origen quite closely: Origen Moreover, concerning each of the saints who are written about in Holy Scripture and whom Scripture attests to be just and chosen by God, those who desire to be saved ought to have a certain kind of faith; for faith in God cannot be perfected unless one has even that faith by which it is believed with respect to the saints that they are saints. Now what we are saying is this. He who believes in God and accepts that his teachings are true also believes that Adam was formed as the first man (Gen. 2.7; Wis. 10.1).

Jerome . . . whoever has believed in God is not able to receive faith in him in any other manner than if he believes also in his saints. For love and faith in God are not perfect when they are weakened by ill will and unbelief in his servants.

Now what I am saying is the following. Someone believes in the Creator God. He is not able to believe unless he first believes that the things that are written about his saints are true: that Adam was formed by God (Gen. 2.7; Wis. 10.1);

¹²³ Trans. Heine, The Commentaries of Origen and Jerome, 239. ¹²⁴ Trans. Heine, The Commentaries of Origen and Jerome, 239. ¹²⁵ The most detailed and convincing case to date has been made by R. Heine, “In Search of Origen’s Commentary on Philemon,” HThR 93 (2000): 117–33. See also Turner, “Greek Patristic Commentaries,” 496; A. von Harnack, “Origenistisches Gut von kirchengeschichtlicher Bedeutung in den Kommentaren des Hieronymus zum Philemon-, Galater-, Epheser-, und Titusbrief,” in Harnack, Der kirchengeschichtliche Ertrag der exegetischen Arbeiten des Origenes (Leipzig, 1919), 141–69 (141–6); P. Nautin, “La date des commentaires de Jérôme sur les épîtres pauliniennes,” RHE 74 (1979): 5–12 (11); Bammel, “Pauluskommentare,” 191. ¹²⁶ So Jerome, Ep. 33.4.5: In epistula ad Philemonem librum I. ¹²⁷ Von der Goltz, Eine textkritische Arbeit, 90.

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 ’ :   He believes that God fashioned Eve to be Adam’s wife by taking one of his ribs (Gen. 2.21–4). He also believes that Enosh truly “hopes to call upon the name of the Lord God” (Gen. 4.26); and that Enoch was translated, because he had pleased God for two hundred years after he became the father of Methusaleh (Gen. 5.22, 24). He believes that Noah received an oracle to build an ark and that he alone, together with only those who had entered with him into the ark, was saved from the flood (Gen. 6–8). Likewise, he believes that Abraham merited God’s approval and showed hospitality to three men, one of whom was the Lord, when he was under the oak of Mamre (Gen. 18.1–16). He also believes the things concerning Isaac, both the manner of his birth (Gen. 21.1–7), that he was offered by his father (Gen. 22.1– 14), and that he merited to hear oracles from God (Gen. 26.1–6, 24). Moreover, he believes that when Jacob’s name was changed he received from God the name Israel (Gen. 32.29). Concerning Moses he believes that he served God through signs and miracles (Ex. 7.3, 14.31). And he believes that Joshua son of Nun, having been heard by God, made the sun stand still over Gibeon and the moon over the valley of Aijalon (Jos. 10.12–13). And what should be said concerning the faithful judges and about those things that are related as having been carried out by them? (Jdg. 3.7). And in the books of the Kingdoms concerning Samuel, that he demanded rain from God at the harvest time and received it? (1 Sam. 12.17–18). And of David, whom the Lord took from the sheep to rule over Jacob, his son, and over Israel, his inheritance? (Ps. 78.70–1). And of Nathan, that he prophesied (2 Sam. 12.1–15), and Gad as well? (2 Sam. 24.11–14).

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that Eve was fashioned from his rib and side (Gen. 2.21–4);

that Enoch was translated (Gen. 5.24);

that Noah alone was saved from the shipwrecked world (Gen. 6–8);

that Abraham, when first commanded to depart from his land and kinsmen (Gen. 12.1), left to his descendants circumcision, which he had received as a sign of future offspring (Gen. 17); that Isaac should be offered as a victim, and in his place a ram was sacrificed (Gen. 22); and having been crowned with thorny briars, he sketched out the passion of the Lord;

that Moses and Aaron afflicted Egypt with ten plagues (Ex. 7–11); that at the prayers of Joshua son of Nun, the sun stood over Gibeon and the moon over the valley of Aijalon (Jos. 10.12–14). It would take too long to run through all the deeds of the Judges, the whole story of Samson, to trace the mystery of the true sun (for this is what his name means). I will come to the books of Kingdoms when at the time of the harvest, as Samuel prayed, rains fell from heaven and the rivers suddenly overflowed (1 Sam. 12.17–18); and David was anointed king (2 Sam. 5.3);

and Nathan and Gad prophesied (2 Sam. 7, 24.11-14);

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Moreover, what about Solomon, that the Lord appeared to him in a vision? (1 Kgs. 3.5). And of Elijah, that he was assumed into heaven in an ascension (2 Kgs. 2.1, 11) after performing all those signs and wonders that are recorded? (1 Kgs. 17). Moreover, what should be said of Elisha: that he raised not only the son of the Shunamite woman (2 Kgs. 4.32–5), but also the dead man who was thrown on his bones? (2 Kgs. 13.21); also, concerning Hezekiah, that in his time the shadow of the sun traveled backwards (2 Kgs. 20.8–11). Our faith, then, is first of all in our Lord Jesus Christ, but also, by way of consequence, in all the holy patriarchs and prophets and apostles of Christ, according to the rule that we have spoken about above.128

when Elijah was taken away in a fiery chariot (2 Kgs. 2.11);

and Elisha, having died, raised the dead by the Spirit that had been doubled (2 Kgs. 9.9, 13.21).

Unless someone believes all these things, and the other things that are written about the saints, he will not be able to believe in the God of the saints, nor be led to faith in the Old Testament, unless he approves whatsoever history narrates about the patriarchs and prophets and other distinguished men.

Pamphilus says that he included this lengthy passage in his Apology to prove that Origen trusted the historicity of the biblical narrative,¹²⁹ and Origen himself may well have specified here, in a part not preserved, that he compiled this catalogue of biblical exempla to prove Scripture’s historical veracity. Jerome’s overall handling of Origen here is consistent with what we observed for his commentaries on Galatians and Ephesians. That is to say, he retains the same theological thrust and skeletal structure of Origen’s comments, he repeats most of the same biblical references in the same order, but he economizes by omitting some minor elements (Enosh, Methusaleh, Jacob, Solomon, Hezekiah) and by paraphrasing a significant portion of his model, resulting in less discursive prose.¹³⁰

Commentary on Titus In his Titus preface, as in the Philemon one, Jerome says nothing about Greek exegetical sources, despite the fact that here, too, an Origenian commentary lurks ¹²⁸ Pamphilus, Apol. 125; Scheck, Apology for Origen, 96–8. ¹²⁹ Sufficienter ista ad probationem catholicae eius fidei et qualiter etiam de ipsa Scripturarum historia senserit dicta sint (Pamphilus, Apol. 126). ¹³⁰ Cf. Apol. c. Ruf. 1.22, where Jerome confirms that his habit as a Pauline commentator was to summarize Origen’s interpretive positions: Sin autem in eo scandalum pateris quare latissimam Origenis disputationem brevi sermone conprehenderim et lectori sensum eius aperuerim . . .

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in the shadows.¹³¹ He mentions Origen’s Titus commentary in the catalogue of his works.¹³² None of it is extant in Greek, but five fragments of varying length do nevertheless survive in Latin through Rufinus’s translation of Pamphilus’s Apology, and all five are excerpted from Origen’s comments on Tit. 3.10–11, a passage which reads: “After a first and second admonition, have nothing more to do with a man who causes divisions (αἱρετικὸν ἄνθρωπον), since you know that such a one is perverted and sinful, being self-condemned.” Before these five fragments were excised from their original context and spaced throughout the Apology, they had formed part of one continuous discussion about the divisions heresy causes within the church. The first fragment to appear in the Apology is reproduced below in its entirety next to its closest analogue in Jerome’s commentary: Origen The term “heresy,” as far as I have been able to discover, is also defined in the epistle to the Corinthians in this manner: “For it is necessary that there be heresies, in order that those who are approved might become known among you” (1 Cor. 11.19). And again the term “heresy” is also described among the works of the flesh in [Paul’s] epistle to the Galatians, where he says: “Now the works of the flesh are plain: fornication, uncleanness, immodesty, idolatry, sorcery, hostilities, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of anger, quarrels, discords, heresies, drunkenness, orgies, and similar things, which I proclaim to you, as I have proclaimed, that those who do such things will not possess the kingdom of God” (Gal. 5.19–21). From this passage we recognize that just as those who have been defiled by acts of fornication, uncleanness, immodesty, and the worship of idols will not possess the kingdom of God, the same applies to those who have turned aside into heresy. For one must not think that such an absolute pronouncement by such a great apostle could be untrustworthy in any way. For he is the apostle of all the churches of Christ, chosen “not by man nor through a man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father”

Jerome The term “heresy” also is recorded in the epistle to the Corinthians: “For it is necessary that there be heresies among you so that those who are approved may become known” (1 Cor. 11.19). And to the Galatians it is listed among the works of the flesh: “Now the works of the flesh are manifest, what they are: fornication, uncleanness, excess, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, contentions, strife, wrath, quarrels, dissensions, ‘heresies,’ envy, drunkenness, carousing, and other similar things, which I declare to you in advance, just as I said before, that those who do these things will not possess the kingdom of God” (Gal. 5.19–21). In these things, one must carefully observe that just as the other vices that are enumerated among the works of the flesh exclude us from the kingdom of God, so also “heresies” take away from us the kingdom of God. And it does not matter how; it matters only that someone is excluded from the kingdom.

¹³¹ F. Bucchi, “Il commento alla lettera a Tito di Girolamo,” Adamantius 8 (2002): 57–82. ¹³² In epistula ad Titum librum I (Ep. 33.4.5). It evidently was circulating in Palestine during the sixth century, as there is an allusion, in a question posed to Abba Barsanuphius, to Origen’s opinion about the pre-existence of souls expressed in his commentary on Titus (ἐν τῷ αὐτοῦ ἐξηγητικῷ τῆς πρὸς Τίτον ἐπιστολής); see F. Neyt and P. de Angelis-Noah (eds.), Barsanuphe et Jean de Gaza, Correspondance, vol. 2: Aux cénobites, t. II (Lettres 399–616) (Paris, 2001), 804–6.

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(Gal. 1.1). So for that reason, according to the authority of his pronouncement, we too must avoid the name of “heresy,” just as we avoid the other evils that he has enumerated; nor should we engage in the communion of prayer with such persons.133

There are obvious correspondences between these two passages. Both commentators open their exegesis of Tit. 3.10–11 in the same way, by taking their cue from Paul’s adjective αἱρετικός and homing in on the word “heresy” (αἵρεσις/haeresis). Then they both cross-reference the same two Pauline passages (1 Cor. 11.19 and Gal. 5.19–21) in the same order to emphasize the spiritual gravity of heresy. Otherwise, Jerome omits the quotation of Gal. 1.1 and paraphrases the second half of Origen’s comments. The second fragment, which followed the above-quoted one slightly later in Origen’s commentary,¹³⁴ is by far the lengthiest of the extant fragments and spans some five pages in the critical edition of Rufinus’s Latin Apology.¹³⁵ In it Origen produces a dense inventory of theological beliefs that qualify a person as a heretic,¹³⁶ and along the way he names several heresiarchs (Marcion, Valentinus, Basilides, Apelles) and heretical sects (Sethians,¹³⁷ Ebionites, Valentinians¹³⁸). The only approximate counterpart it has in Jerome’s commentary is the following cursory passage: It is superfluous to go through particulars and to list Marcion, Valentinus, Apelles, Ebion, Montanus, and Manichaeus [Mani] together with their teachings, since it is very easy to find out by which errors these individuals are led astray. If only Arius, Eunomius, and the author of a new heresy were not so well known; they perhaps would not have deceived so many! Superfluum est ire per singula et Marcionem, Valentinum, Apellen, Ebionem, Montanum et Manichaeum cum suis enumerare dogmatibus, cum perfacile sit unicuique cognoscere quibus singuli ducantur erroribus. Arius et Eunomius et novae auctor haereseos utinam tam noti non essent, minus forsitan plurimos decepissent!

¹³³ Pamphilus, Apol. 31; trans. Scheck, Apology for Origen, 54–5. ¹³⁴ Pamphilus (Apol. 32) remarks that “after this, [Origen] inserted a few things in between” (Scheck, Apology for Origen, 55). ¹³⁵ Amacker and Junod, Apologie, 80–90 (the Latin text is printed on the even-numbered pages). ¹³⁶ Fundamentally, Origen identified heretics according to their distinction between the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament; see A. Le Boulluec, La notion d’hérésie dans la littérature grecque IIe–IIIe siècles, vol. 2: Clément d’Alexandrie et Origène (Paris, 1985), 509–10. See further M. Simonetti, “Eresia ed eretici in Origene,” Augustinianum 25 (1985): 735–48. ¹³⁷ On the beliefs of this obscure sect, see M. A. Williams, “Sethianism,” in A. Marjanen and P. Luomanen (eds.), A Companion to Second-Century Christian “Heretics” (Leiden, 2008), 32–63. ¹³⁸ On Origen’s tendency to pair the Ebionites with the Valentinians, see Le Boulluec, La notion d’hérésie, 527–8.

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Leading off with the rhetorical device of praeteritio, Jerome anathematizes a litany of notorious figures without reproducing or even paraphrasing Origen’s lengthy heresiological excursus, which itself is in fact nearly twice as long as Jerome’s entire commentary on Tit. 3.10–11. Although he repeats the names of several heterodox figureheads mentioned by Origen, he omits the names of others and updates his own list with two fourth-century Christological heresiarchs (Arius and Eunomius). The heresiological excursus contained in the second fragment ends organically with Origen’s statement: “I think that we have defined and described to the best of our ability the nature and character of a heretic, the doctrines and false opinions that they maintain, and also the purity of the church’s doctrinal observance.”¹³⁹ Pamphilus then says, “And after a few things he adds this,” at which point he presents the third Origenian fragment on Titus: “Now some have asked whether those who are called Kataphrygians ought to be identified as a heresy or schism. They follow after false prophets and say: ‘Do not approach me, because I am clean (cf. Is. 65.5), for I do not take a wife nor is my throat an open grave (cf. Ps. 5.9), but I am a Nazarene of God and drink no wine as they do.’ ”¹⁴⁰ As we just noted, this fragment, in its original context, came after the heresiological excursus in the second fragment. It seems to have been part of a follow-up discussion about the distinction between “heresy” and “schism,” and Origen adduced the Montanists (“Kataphrygians”¹⁴¹) as a concrete example of how orthodox Christians might go about classifying a problematic sect. It is possible that this section of the commentary is reflected, albeit rather faintly, in Jerome’s closing of his exposition of Tit. 3.10–11: The fornicator, adulterer, murderer, and the rest of the [sinners] are driven out of the church by the bishops. Heretics, though, pass judgment on themselves by withdrawing from the church of their own accord; this withdrawal seems to be the condemnation by the individual conscience. In my view, the difference between heresy and schism is that heresy purveys perverse teaching, and schism consists of separation from the church on account of episcopal dissension, and it can to some extent be understood as such at the start. Yet, each schism concocts for itself some heresy to give the appearance that it justifiably withdraws from the church. Fornicator, adulter, homicida et cetera vitia per sacerdotes de ecclesia propelluntur; haeretici autem in se ipsos sententiam ferunt, suo arbitrio de ecclesia recedentes, quae recessio propriae conscientiae videtur esse damnatio. Inter haeresim et schisma hoc esse arbitror: quod haeresis perversum dogma habeat, schisma ¹³⁹ Pamphilus, Apol. 33; trans. Scheck, Apology for Origen, 60. ¹⁴⁰ Pamphilus, Apol. 35; trans. Scheck, Apology for Origen, 60. ¹⁴¹ On this appellation, see A. Zisteren, “Phrygier oder Kataphrygier?,” TQ 74 (1892): 475–82.

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propter episcopalem dissensionem ab ecclesia separetur, quod quidem in principio aliqua ex parte intellegi potest; ceterum nullum schisma non sibi aliquam confingit haeresim, ut recte ab ecclesia recessisse videatur.

In the final two fragments Origen offers guidance about whether the church should pronounce someone a heretic for speculating about theological topics—the nature of the soul, for example—which are not defined explicitly as articles of the faith. Although Pamphilus pairs these fragments much later in his Apology (he says that “a few things” separated the fourth and fifth excerpts), in Origen’s commentary they probably were situated somewhere between the first two fragments and thus inside the heresiological excursus. In any event, neither the fourth nor fifth fragment has an approximate counterpart in Jerome’s commentary. It is clear from this fact, as well as from the foregoing analysis, that Jerome took many liberties with Origen’s commentary, preserving certain elements from it but paraphrasing, compressing, or outright dispensing with much else while at the same time inserting his own original content.

A Variorum Approach As we saw earlier in this chapter, in his first Galatians and Ephesians prefaces Jerome lists Greek biblical commentaries (six on Galatians, three on Ephesians) he claims to have consulted in preparation for his own work. In each one he also outlines his methodology for making use of these sources: Galatians Even if I were to excerpt a few things from these works, the result would be something praiseworthy.142 So, to admit frankly, I read all of these books and committed to memory a great many insights, and then I summoned my secretary and dictated both my own and others’ ideas,143 all the while paying no attention to the method, the words, or the opinions belonging to each.

Ephesians From these we have excerpted—albeit, a few things—and we have added or removed some things at our discretion. Consequently, the diligent reader is aware from the start that this work is both others’ and our own.

¹⁴² In the preface to his commentary on Matthew (398) Jerome gives an inventory of the patristic commentaries on Matthew he had consulted and similarly says: E quibus etiam si parva carperem dignum aliquid memoriae scriberetur (Comm. Mt., prol. ll. 97–8). ¹⁴³ Here, and also in the above quotation from the Ephesians preface, the construction vel . . . vel does not mean “either . . . or.” It instead has the cumulative sense of et . . . et, “both . . . and” (cf. A. de Vogüé, Histoire littéraire du mouvement monastique dans l’antiquité, vol. 2 (Paris, 1993), 355). For this usage of it, see also Jerome, Ep. 52.1.1: Vel monachus coeperit esse vel clericus (with A. Cain, Jerome and the Monastic Clergy: A Commentary on Letter 52 to Nepotian, with an Introduction, Text, and Translation (Leiden, 2013), 62); Gregory of Tours, Glor. mart. 57: Vel ipsius vel sociorum eius (with A. Cain, “Miracles, Martyrs, and Arians: Gregory of Tours’ Sources for his Account of the Vandal Kingdom,” VChr 59 (2005): 412–37).

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E quibus licet pauca decerpsimus et nonnulla quae nobis videbantur adiecimus sive subtraximus, ut studiosus statim in principio lector agnoscat hoc opus vel alienum esse vel nostrum.

Jerome characterizes his work on Paul as a collaboration of sorts with his exegetical predecessors in Greek: he compiles their insights and throws his own into the mix. To judge from our source-critical analyses earlier in this chapter, this is an accurate characterization. This mishmash compositional method, needless to say, often blurs the lines between his and others’ thoughts and thus complicates any effort to pin down, in a systematic and large-scale way, Jerome’s original contributions to Pauline exegesis.¹⁴⁴ Moreover, embedded within Jerome’s descriptions of his compositional technique is a striking bid he makes for status as an exegetical authority on his own terms. For, in saying that he took from his Greek sources only “a few things” (pauca), he accentuates his personal contributions and makes them sound substantial (though of course he advisedly generalizes and does not give any concrete sense of what exactly these contributions are). And, in stating that he “added or removed some things at our own discretion,” he strengthens this impression while representing himself as a judicious handler of his source material. One of the features that distinguishes Jerome’s Pauline commentaries from almost all of the others in their late antique Latin contingent is that they are variorum commentaries which make a habit of presenting multiple interpretive possibilities for individual passages.¹⁴⁵ In adopting this approach Jerome may have been patterning himself in part after Origen.¹⁴⁶ However, when he later justified his approach to Rufinus during the Origenist controversy, he claimed (perhaps to distance himself from Origen) that he had been following the precedent of secular commentators on classical literature,¹⁴⁷ among them Aelius Donatus, the renowned grammarian and commentator on Terence and Virgil under whom he himself had studied in Rome as a young teenager.¹⁴⁸ The point of ¹⁴⁴ So L. Perrone, “Questioni paoline nell’epistolario di Gerolamo,” in C. Moreschini and G. Menestrina (eds.), Motivi letterari ed esegetici in Gerolamo: atti del convegno tenuto a Trento il 5–7 dicembre 1995 (Brescia, 1997), 81–103, esp. 96–9. ¹⁴⁵ S. A. Cooper, Marius Victorinus’ Commentary on Galatians: Introduction, Translation, and Notes (Oxford, 2005), 109, speaks of “Victorinus’ almost complete neglect” of the task of citing multiple opinions about a given Pauline passage. An important exception is Pelagius, who often gives two and sometimes three alternatives for a given verse. T. de Bruyn, Pelagius’s Commentary on St Paul’s Epistle to the Romans (Oxford, 1993), 35, notes that “this combination of riches and brevity was unprecedented in the west.” ¹⁴⁶ Bammel, “Pauluskommentare,” 197–8; Heine, The Commentaries of Origen and Jerome, 21–2. ¹⁴⁷ Jerome, Apol. c. Ruf. 1.16. ¹⁴⁸ On more than one occasion in his surviving writings (e.g., Comm. Eccl. 1.9) Jerome refers to Donatus affectionately as “my teacher” (praeceptor meus). On Donatus’s variorum approach, see

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this method is to present numerous interpretations at once,¹⁴⁹ and the reader then must choose the one that seems the most sound.¹⁵⁰ Jerome articulates its rationale: What is the function of commentaries? They analyze another’s words, they explain in clear language what has been expressed opaquely, they reproduce the opinions of many people, and they say: “Some explain this passage this way, others intrepret it that way.” They try to support their opinion and understanding with such and such evidence and reasoning, so that the judicious reader, after reading different explanations and learning the feasible and infeasible positions of many people, may judge what is truer and, like a good banker, may reject counterfeit coinage. Commentarii quid operis habent? Alterius dicta edisserunt, quae obscure scripta sunt plano sermone manifestant, multorum sententias replicant, et dicunt: hunc locum quidam sic edisserunt, alii sic interpretantur. Illi sensum suum et intellegentiam his testimoniis et hac nituntur ratione firmare, ut prudens lector, cum diversas explanationes legerit et multorum vel probanda vel improbanda didicerit, iudicet quid verius sit et, quasi bonus trapezita, adulterinae monetae pecuniam reprobet.¹⁵¹

In his Pauline commentaries Jerome mentions or addresses the lector almost twenty times, and on nearly half of these occasions he flatteringly, in the vein of a captatio benevolentiae, describes this imagined lector as studiosus,¹⁵² prudens,¹⁵³ or diligens.¹⁵⁴ He ostensibly gives his reader a great deal of autonomy and also credit for being able to make the right decision when confronted with conflicting interpretations. However, this sense of readerly empowerment is to some extent illusory, for Jerome typically points the reader in the direction of interpretations he personally favors. Two examples from his commentary on Ephesians afford us J. E. G. Zetzel, Critics, Compilers, and Commentators: An Introduction to Roman Philology, 200 –800  (Oxford, 2018), 134–5, and for his influence on Jerome’s variorum exegetical technique, see L. Holtz, Donat et la tradition de l’enseignement grammatical: étude sur l’Ars Donati et sa diffusion (IVe–IXe siècle) et édition critique (Paris, 1981), 40–6; cf. F. Lammert, De Hieronymo Donati discipulo (Leipzig, 1912); J. Tolkiehn, “Der Kirchenvater Hieronymus als Donaterklärer,” BPW 32 (1912): 766–77; G. Brugnoli, “Donato e Girolamo,” VetChr 2 (1956): 139–46. ¹⁴⁹ Cf. Jerome, Apol. c. Ruf. 1.22: Commentatoris officium est multorum sententias ponere; Ep. adv. Ruf. 11: Nos in commentariis et illis et aliis, et nostram et aliorum sententias explicavimus, aperte confitentes quae sint haeretica, quae catholica. Hic est enim commentariorum mos et explanantium regula, ut opiniones in expositione varias persequantur et quid vel sibi vel aliis videatur edisserant. ¹⁵⁰ In Comm. Hier., lib. 1, prol. 3 ll. 9–12, Jerome speaks of the leges commentariorum, according to which multae diversorum ponuntur opiniones vel tacitis vel expressis auctorum nominibus, ut lectoris arbitrium sit, quid potissimum eligere debeat, decernere. ¹⁵¹ Apol. c. Ruf. 1.16. ¹⁵² Comm. Eph., lib. 1, prol. l. 147. In this passage, quoted above, Jerome emphasizes the reader’s diligence by hyperbatically displacing studiosus by three words from lector ( . . . ut studiosus statim in principio lector agnoscat). ¹⁵³ Comm. Eph. 2.14b–18. ¹⁵⁴ Comm. Gal. 3.7; Comm. Eph. 1.8b–9a, 1.13, 1.15–18a, 2.7, 6.12.

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a unique look at this dynamic because in both cases he identifies, in his Apology against Rufinus, his own and others’ interpretations, which remain anonymized in the commentary itself. The first example involves Jerome’s exposition of Eph. 2.7 (“That he might show in the ages to come the abundant riches of his grace in kindness towards us in Christ Jesus”). In Apol. c. Ruf. 1.24 he reveals the authors of the following three opinions (the first is his own, the second Origen’s, and the third Apollinaris’s):¹⁵⁵ [JEROME] How great is the magnitude of his goodness and how manifold the grace by which the Lord makes us sit, free from the disturbances of this world, and rule with Christ. Or, from these words it is proved especially that in the ages to come he will show his glory towards us and will demonstrate his riches, not to one but to the totality of all rational creatures. But let us, who once were held by the law of the underworld and were thus destined for works of the flesh and punishments because of vices and sins, now rule in Christ and sit with him. Moreover, let us not sit in some lowly place but let us sit “above every principality, authority, power, and dominion and every name which is named not only in this age but also in that which is to come” (Eph. 1.21). For if Christ has been raised from the dead and sits at the right hand of God in the heavenly places above every principality, authority, and power, and we sit and rule with Christ, we must sit above these powers which he sits above. [ORIGEN] But he who is a diligent reader immediately raises the question: What, then, is man greater than the angels and all the powers in heaven? Although it is dangerous to respond, I say that the principalities, authorities, powers, dominions, and every name that is named not only in this age but also in that which is to come (especially since all things have been subjected to the feet of Christ) will refer not to the good part of these powers but to their opposite. Consequently, he means that these are the apostate angels, the prince of this world (Jn. 14.30) and Lucifer, who used to rise early (Is. 14.12), over whom the saints will sit with Christ in the end imparting a benefit also to those who now roam about at random, unchecked, making evil use of their freedom, and rush headlong to make sinners fall. But when these evils powers have those who sit over them, they will begin to be governed by the will of those sitting. [APOLLINARIS] But another says that the statement, “That he might show in the ages to come the abundant riches of his grace in kindness towards us in Christ Jesus,” will refer to the view that we have been saved, not by our merit but by his grace. It is indicative also of a kindness on behalf of sinners that is greater than dying for those who are just, “For someone might perhaps dare to die for a

¹⁵⁵ In prima quid nobis videretur, in secunda quid Origenes opponeret, in tertia quid Apollinaris simpliciter explanaret.

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good man” (Rom. 5.7). It will also refer to the fact that those things will be given to us which eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have they entered the heart of man (1 Cor. 2.9). He has now given all of these things partially in Christ Jesus, because apart from Christ no good can be mentioned.¹⁵⁶

Jerome explains to Rufinus why he originally anonymized Origen’s and Apollinaris’s interpretations: “I did not wish to disparage men whom I was partly following and whose opinions I was translating into Latin.”¹⁵⁷ Right after this he reveals the authors of the three opinions he reports in his comments on Eph. 3.1–4,¹⁵⁸ an exposition which runs as follows: [JEROME] Paul’s reference to being a prisoner of Jesus Christ for the Gentiles can also be understood of his martyrdom. When he had been thrown into prison at Rome he sent this epistle at the same time that he wrote to Philemon, the Colossians, and the Philippians, as we have shown in another place. [ORIGEN] Or, because many passages refer to this body as the prison of the soul in which it is held as in an enclosed cell, we might perhaps say that Paul is confined by the fetters of the body and could not return and be with Christ so that his preaching among the Gentiles might be finished completely. [APOLLINARIS] Some, however, introduce another meeting at this point. They say that Paul was predestined and sanctified to preach to the Gentiles from the womb of his mother, before his birth, and later accepted the bonds of flesh.¹⁵⁹

In both of the above-quoted passages, Jerome presents three different hermeneutical options. Notably, he places his own proposal first in each case. I propose that this is no accident and that he intentionally is observing the norms of dispositio, the second of five canons of Roman rhetoric which is concerned with the proper arrangement of arguments within a speech or writing. According to the conventional wisdom, the strongest and most convincing argument is to be presented first so that the audience can be won over by it right away. The advice of the anonymous author of the Rhetorica ad Herennium, for instance, is to put the strongest arguments at the beginning of a pleading.¹⁶⁰ Cicero, too, recommends

¹⁵⁶ Trans. Heine, The Commentaries of Origen and Jerome, 127–8. ¹⁵⁷ Non debui eos carpere quos imitabar ex parte et quorum in Latinam linguam sententias transferebam (Apol. c. Ruf. 1.24). ¹⁵⁸ Apol. c. Ruf. 1.25. ¹⁵⁹ Trans. Heine, The Commentaries of Origen and Jerome, 142–3. ¹⁶⁰ In confirmatione et confutatione argumentationum dispositiones huiusmodi convenit habere: firmissimas argumentationes in primis . . . causae partibus conlocare (Rhet. ad Her. 3.10.18). Cf. Aristotle, Rhet. 3.17.

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that the most compelling arguments be put first and last, with the weaker ones sandwiched between them.¹⁶¹ This of course had already been a time-honored strategy in Greek oratory. In analyzing Demosthenes’s On the Crown in his hypothesis to this speech, Libanius commends Demosthenes for artfully (τεχνικῶς) beginning with a positive appraisal of Ctesiphon’s policy and career ahead of his discussion of the law, for he had to start (and finish) with his strongest points.¹⁶² The anonymous author of the other hypothesis to this speech concurred. As he put it, borrowing a line from Homer, Demosthenes acted like a good general (στρατηγικῶς) in “setting his weak troops in the middle.”¹⁶³ Jerome, then, brings his sophistication as a classically trained rhetorician to bear on his biblical exegesis as he nudges readers in the interpretive direction he personally favors. In the process he affirms his own exegetical competence and creativity—all without openly belittling his Greek sources and thereby potentially undercutting his stated reliance on them in the first place. In sum, in two of his Pauline prefaces Jerome rhetorically represents his opus Paulinum as a collaborative venture between the Greek exegetical tradition and himself. In so conspicuously aligning himself with this tradition and emphasizing his own work’s seamless continuity with it, he was able to lay claim to just the kind of rarefied Hellenized intellectual authenticity that he alleged was fundamentally lacking in fellow Latin commentators on Paul.¹⁶⁴ In broader cultural terms he essentially was enacting the role of mediator between East and West in that he was providing his Latin readers with precious, though indirect, access to the august Greek tradition of Pauline interpretation. Inherent in this act of mediatorship is a flexing of exegetical authority on Jerome’s part. He was the one mediating access to the Greek tradition. He was the one autonomously determining what content to distill and then to pass on to his Latin-speaking audience. He was the one refracting this material by his own

¹⁶¹ Cumque animos prima aggressione occupaverit, infirmabit excludetque contraria, de firmissimis alia prima ponet alia postrema inculcabitque leviora (Orat. 15.50). Cf. Quintilian, Inst. orat. 5.12.14, who acknowledges that there was debate in his day about whether the strongest arguments should be presented either first or first and last, and he leaves their placement to the discretion of the orator; cf. D. Pujante, “The Role of dispositio in the Construction of Meaning: Quintilian’s Perspective,” in O. E. Tellegen-Couperus (ed.), Quintilian and the Law: The Art of Persuasion in Law and Politics (Leuven, 2003), 169–78 (171–2). ¹⁶² Ὁ δὲ ῥήτωρ καὶ ἀπὸ τῆς πολιτείας τὴν ἀρχὴν ἐποιήσατο καὶ πάλιν εἰς ταύτην τὸν λόγον κατέστρεψε τεχνικῶς ποιῶν· δεῖ γὰρ ἄρχεσθαί τ’ ἀπὸ τῶν ἰσχυροτέρων καὶ λήγειν εἰς ταῦτα; S. H. Butcher (ed.), Demosthenis orationes, vol. 1 (Oxford, 1903), 222. Cf. C. A. Gibson, “The Agenda of Libanius’ Hypotheses to Demosthenes,” GRBS 40 (1999): 171–202. ¹⁶³ Τοὺς μὲν γὰρ ἄλλους δύο νόμους, τόν τε τῶν ὑπευθύνων καὶ τὸν τοῦ κηρύγματος, εἰς τὸ μέσον τοῦ λόγοῦ ἀπέρριψε, στρατηγικῶς “κακοὺς δ’ εἰς μέσσον ἐλάσσας,” τῷ δ’ ἰσχυροτάτῳ εἰς τὰ ἄκρα προσκέχρηται, τὸ σαθρὸν τῶν ἄλλων ἐξ ἑκατέρου ῥωννύς; Butcher (ed.), Demosthenis orationes, 223. The Homeric line in question is Il. 4.299: . . . κακοὺς δ᾽ ἐς μέσσον ἔλασσεν. ¹⁶⁴ See above, pp. 67–9.

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editorial lens, but not without exercising along the way his own interpretive originality and independence from his interlocutors.¹⁶⁵ Indeed, he did not hesitate to criticize his Greek models (e.g., Origen, Apollinaris, Eusebius of Emesa, Didymus), albeit anonymously, while at the same time privileging his own interpretations over theirs through rhetorical sleight of hand. In all of this he implicitly positioned himself as the proverbial gatekeeper, the arbiter of all good exegetical taste.

¹⁶⁵ Cf. Comm. Os., lib. 1, prol. ll. 140–6, where he expresses his independence from his Greek exegetical models and characterizes himself as a “judge” of their work: Haec dico, ut noveris quos in prophetae huius campo habuerim praecursores; quos tamen ut simpliciter et non superbe—sicut quidam meorum amicorum semper insibilat—tuae prudentiae fatear, non in omnibus sum secutus; ut iudex potius operis eorum quam interpres exsisterem . . .

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7 Between East and West Latin Sources

Source-critical studies of Jerome’s Pauline commentaries have tended overwhelmingly to focus on tracking their indebtedness to the Greek exegetical tradition, and especially to Origen,¹ and the resulting impression, widespread among modern scholars, has been that his commentaries are little more than paraphrases of Origen’s.² In the meantime, virtually no effort has been made to ascertain the extent to which Latin texts both classical and Christian contribute to their literary make-up. The purpose of the present chapter therefore is to chart the influence of Latin literature on Jerome’s opus Paulinum. We first review his broad engagement with the Latin classics, the very corpus of literature he claims to have sworn off many years prior to undertaking his work on Paul.³ In the remaining bulk of the chapter I adduce nearly twenty borrowings, which thus far have eluded scholars’ detection, from the writings of three Latin authors whom Jerome himself regarded as “classics” in the Christian literary tradition: Tertullian, Cyprian, and Lactantius. These findings, I go on to conclude, not only give us a newfound appreciation of just how colorful the textual tapestry of his Pauline commentaries really is, but also provide occasional much-needed controls to help determine when Jerome is not following his Greek exegetical sources.

Classical Literature Jerome’s second Galatians preface is rather unusual in that it is an ethnographic excursus on the people of Galatia. He begins by noting that Varro preserved many informative details about them (an allusion to his lost Antiquitates rerum humanarum et divinarum), but he immediately pivots and announces that he will not report from Varro for two reasons: he does not want “to introduce uncircumcised ¹ See Chapter 6. ² Cf. M. Simonetti, Profilo storico dell’esegesi patristica (Rome, 1981), 92: “I primi commentari da lui scritti . . . sono poco più che parafrasi da Origene.” Similarly, H. von Campenhausen, Lateinische Kirchenväter (Stuttgart, 1960), 135, speaks of Jerome’s Pauline commentaries as more or less a catena of Greek patristic exegesis (“Arbeit, die im wesentlichen ältere griechische Ausleger exzerpiert”). ³ Cf. pp. 69, 195–6.

Jerome’s Commentaries on the Pauline Epistles and the Architecture of Exegetical Authority. Andrew Cain, Oxford University Press. © Andrew Cain 2021. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192847195.003.0008

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men into God’s temple,” and he stopped reading classical literature many years earlier.⁴ In the third Galatians preface he doubles down on this second claim, asserting more specifically that it has been more than fifteen years since Cicero, Virgil, or any other such writer has come into his hands.⁵ These two protests are for show, of course, and are meant to reinforce his carefully sculpted literary persona as a man of Christian letters.⁶ Even still, classical literary references percolate throughout his commentaries. We begin our survey with Republican authors. The earliest one chronologically is the comic playwright Terence. Jerome ranked him as one of the greatest of all poets from classical antiquity,⁷ and he extensively quotes from his dramatic corpus.⁸ Terence makes only one cameo appearance in the Pauline commentaries. When Jerome expounds Gal. 4.16 (“Have I now become your enemy by telling you the truth?”), he quotes the Terentian aphorism: Obsequium amicos, veritas odium parit (“Obsequiousness brings in friends, and truthfulness, hatred”).⁹ He introduces the quotation by deferentially acknowledging Terence’s time-honored status in Roman intellectual culture, calling him nobilis apud Romanos poeta. But even though Terence generally was accorded a certain moral authority by many early Christian writers,¹⁰ in this particular case Jerome stresses his inferiority to Paul as an observer of human mores. Whereas Paul personalized his rebuke for the Galatian Christians, Terence made a presumptuously generalizing pronouncement about human behavior.¹¹ Moreover, Terence was not the only Republican ⁴ Nobis propositum est incircumcisos homines non introducere in templum Dei et, ut simpliciter fatear, multi iam anni sunt quod haec legere desivimus (Comm. Gal., lib. 2, prol. ll. 11–14). ⁵ Nostis enim et ipsae quod plus quam quindecim anni sunt ex quo in manus meas numquam Tullius, numquam Maro, numquam gentilium litterarum quilibet auctor ascendit (Comm. Gal., lib. 3, prol. ll. 21–4). ⁶ See above, pp. 69–70. ⁷ Cf. Ep. 58.5.2: Poetae aemulentur Homerum, Vergilium, Menandrum, Terentium. ⁸ E. Luebeck, Hieronymus quos noverit scriptores et ex quibus hauserit (Leipzig, 1872), 110–14; R. Godel, “Réminiscences de poètes profanes dans les Lettres de St. Jérôme,” MH 21 (1964): 65–70; H. Jürgens, Pompa diaboli: Die lateinischen Kirchenväter und das antike Theater (Stuttgart, 1972), 123–9; N. Adkin, “Terence’s Eunuchus and Jerome,” RhM 137 (1994): 187–95; Adkin, “Hieronymus Eunuchinus,” GIF 58 (2006): 327–34; A. López Fonseca, “San Jerónimo, lector de los cómicos latinos: cristianos y paganos,” CFC(L) 15 (1998): 333–52; A. Cain, “Two Allusions to Terence, Eunuchus 579 in Jerome,” CQ n.s. 63 (2013): 407–12. ⁹ Andr. 68. Like many of Terence’s sententious formulations, this one achieved proverbial status in posterity; see A. Otto, Die Sprichwörter und sprichwörtlichen Redensarten der Römer (Leipzig, 1890), 368; J. J. O’Donnell, Augustine, Confessions, vol. 3: Commentary, Books 8–13 (Oxford, 1992), 194. This particular maxim and many others had such wide currency that they even lost all nominal association with their author. Thus Augustine characterized the apothegm in question as a “common proverb” (vulgare proverbium) (Ep. 82.31). Among the ancients it was quoted also by Cicero (Amic. 89), Quintilian (Inst. orat. 8.5.4), Sulpicius Severus (Dial. 1.9.3), and elsewhere by Jerome (Dial. adv. Pel. 1.27; Hom. exod. ll. 59–60). ¹⁰ A. Cain, “Terence in Late Antiquity,” in A. Augoustakis and A. Traill (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Terence (Oxford, 2013), 380–96. ¹¹ Sed vide quanto hic melius quam ille: apostolus enim his quos stultos dixerat, quos parvulos appellarat, hanc sententiam temperavit et specialem fecit dum proprie ad personas Galatasque direxit; ille vero et generalem et ita se apud omnes habere pronuntians vehementer erravit (Comm. Gal. 4.15–16).

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poet from whom Jerome draws. In his commentary on Ephesians he laments the poverty of Latin vocabulary to render certain Greek words in the New Testament, and he expresses his complaint in phraseology borrowed from Lucretius.¹² Cicero is the classical author referenced most often.¹³ Jerome quotes twice from his speeches,¹⁴ but otherwise he cites Cicero primarily as a mediator of Greek philosophy, and of Stoicism in particular.¹⁵ He also praises him as a philosophical author in his own right, referring readers to his now-fragmentary De gloria for discussion of the semantic range of the word gloria.¹⁶ Perhaps most notably, Jerome cites him as a precedent to justify his own coinage of neologisms in biblical interpretation and translation and urges his would-be critics to read Cicero’s philosophical works and to take to heart how he, too, had to resort to nonLatinate locutions when expressing Greek ideas.¹⁷ Sallust was for Jerome “the Roman historian par préférence.”¹⁸ His Bellum Catilinae, which Jerome knew well,¹⁹ is evoked three times in the opus Paulinum. To support his allegorical interpretation of Eph. 5.33b (“Let a wife fear her husband”), that the soul (husband) should be in submission to the body (wife), he quotes a gnomic line from Bell. Cat. 1.2: Animi quippe, ut ait Crispus, imperio, corporis servitio magis utimur (“We submit to the rule of the mind, as Crispus says, but more so to the servitude of the body”).²⁰ Earlier in the

¹² . . . propter paupertatem linguae et rerum novitatem . . . (Comm. Eph. 1.4); cf. Lucretius, Rer. nat. 1.139: . . . propter egestatem linguae et rerum novitatem . . . ¹³ On Jerome’s use of Cicero’s writings, see Luebeck, Hieronymus, 128–52; H. Hagendahl, The Latin Fathers and the Classics: A Study on the Apologists, Jerome, and Other Christian Writers (Göteborg, 1958), 284–92; B. Jeanjean, “Quand il ne reste plus que le droit de gémir: Jérôme lecteur de Cicéron et de Sénèque le Père,” in B. Gain, P. Jay, and G. Nauroy (eds.), Chartae caritati: études de patristique et d’antiquité tardive en hommage à Yves-Marie Duval (Paris, 2004), 385–99; N. Adkin, “Cicero’s Pro Milone and Jerome,” Euphrosyne 41 (2013): 367–74; J. C. Fernández Corte, “Jerónimo y sus otras maneras de ser ciceroniano,” Helmántica 65 (2014): 123–34. ¹⁴ I.e., Pro Ligario (11) and Pro Flacco (fr. 9) in Comm. Gal. 3.1a. ¹⁵ Cf. J. Powell, “Cicero’s Translations from Greek,” in J. Powell (ed.), Cicero the Philosopher: Twelve Papers (Oxford, 1995), 273–300; G. Striker, “Cicero and Greek Philosophy,” HSCP 97 (1995): 53–61; C. Bishop, Cicero, Greek Learning, and the Making of a Roman Classic (Oxford, 2019). ¹⁶ Quantas autem habeat definitiones et significantias gloria et philosophorum innumerabiles libri et Ciceronis duo volumina, quae de gloria scripsit, indicio sunt (Comm. Gal. 5.26). On the concept of gloria in Cicero’s philosophical works, see A. D. Leeman, Gloria: Cicero’s waardering van de roem en haar achtergrond in de hellenistische wijsbegeerte en de romeinse samenleving (Rotterdam, 1949). For the surviving fragments of De gloria, see K. Simbeck and O. Plasberg (eds.), M. Tulli Ciceronis scripta quae manserunt omnia, fasc. 47: Cato maior, Laelius, De gloria (repr. Berlin, 1997). ¹⁷ Si itaque hi qui disertos saeculi legere consuerunt coeperint nobis de novitate et vilitate sermonis illudere, mittamus eos ad Ciceronis libros qui de quaestionibus philosophiae praenotantur et videant quanta ibi necessitate compulsus sit tanta verborum portenta proferre quae numquam Latini hominis auris audivit: et hoc cum de Graeco, quae lingua vicina est, transferret in nostram (Comm. Gal. 1.11–12). ¹⁸ Hagendahl, Latin Fathers, 292. ¹⁹ Hagendahl, Latin Fathers, 292–4; N. Adkin, “The Prologue of Sallust’s Bellum Catilinae and Jerome,” Hermes 125 (1997): 240–1; Adkin, “Hieronymus Sallustianus,” GB 24 (2005): 93–110. ²⁰ A. Kurfess (ed.), De coniuratione Catilinae liber (Hildesheim, 1970), 2. This saying is quoted elsewhere by Jerome (Adv. Iov. 2.10) as well as by Lactantius (Div. inst. 2.12.2) and Augustine (Civ. dei 9.9), and it also is adapted to a Christian context by Paulinus of Nola: Servientes enim Christo corporis servitio, animi imperio magis utimur (Ep. 5.17).

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commentary on Ephesians he explains Paul’s claim to be “the least of all believers” (Eph. 3.8) and asserts that Paul was not being disingenuous, for the essence of lying is “to have one thing hidden in the heart and to convey another thing in speech” (aliud in pectore clausum habere, aliud in lingua promere). Embedded here is an allusion to Bell. Cat. 10.5: Ambitio multos mortales falsos fieri subegit, aliud clausum in pectore, aliud in lingua promptum (“Ambition forced many people to become duplicitous, to have one thing hidden in the heart and another thing conveyed in speech”).²¹ Finally, as we will see later in this chapter, in Comm. Gal. 3.1a Jerome reports ethnographic information from Sallust’s Historiae that he copied surreptitiously from Tertullian, though he gives the impression that he has retrieved it directly from Sallust, to whom he gives the magisterial epithet Latinus historicus, “the Latin historian.”²² Early Imperial authors also are represented in Jerome’s Pauline commentaries. Virgil was the most influential and widely quoted classical poet during Late Antiquity,²³ and in Jerome’s case, “no poet, no classical author, altogether came nearer to [his] heart than Virgil.”²⁴ Jerome quotes his poetry often in his biblical commentaries in general,²⁵ but not that much in the Pauline commentaries. In fact, only three direct references have been detected: in Comm. Eph. 4.5–6 he couples quotations of Georg. 4.221–2 and Aen. 6.724–7 to illustrate Zeno’s Stoic monotheism, and in Comm. Gal. 3.1a he quotes Ecl. 3.103 (Nescio quis teneros oculus mihi fascinat agnos) to drive home the point that spell-casters are a threat to humans and animals alike. Jerome’s favorite poet after Virgil (and Terence) was Horace,²⁶ whose poetry he references four times in the Pauline commentaries. Jerome’s statement

²¹ Kurfess, De coniuratione Catilinae, 10. In his Enchiridion de fide, spe, et caritate (6) Augustine, like Jerome, appropriates this Sallustian formulation to an ethical Christian context: Ille namque non aliud habet in animo aliud in verbo: huic vero, qualecumque per se ipsum sit quod ab eo dicitur, aliud tamen clausum in pectore aliud in lingua promptum est, quod malum est proprium mentientis. ²² See pp. 212–13. ²³ J. M. Ziolkowski and M. C. J. Putnam (eds.), The Virgilian Tradition: The First Fifteen Hundred Years (New Haven, 2008); E. Albu, “Disarming Aeneas: Fulgentius on Arms and the Man,” in A. Cain and N. Lenski (eds.), The Power of Religion in Late Antiquity (Aldershot, 2009), 21–30; S. McGill, “Arms and Amen: Virgil in Juvencus’ Evangeliorum libri IV,” in S. McGill and J. Pucci (eds.), Classics Renewed: Reception and Innovation in the Latin Poetry of Late Antiquity (Heidelberg, 2016), 47–75; C. Ware, “Speaking of Kings and Battle: Virgil as Prose Panegyrist in Late Antiquity,” PVS 29 (2017): 1–29. On Virgil’s poetry as a school text, see F. Foster, “Teaching Language through Virgil in Late Antiquity,” CQ n.s. 67 (2017): 270–83. ²⁴ Hagendahl, Latin Fathers, 276. Cf. A. Cameron, “Echoes of Vergil in St. Jerome’s Life of St. Hilarion,” CPh 43 (1968): 55–6; N. Adkin, “Vergil’s Georgics and Jerome, Epist. 125, 11, 3–4,” WJA 22 (1998): 187–98; Adkin, “Vergil, Eclogues 2 and 10 in Jerome,” Eirene 35 (1999): 102–13. ²⁵ M. T. Messina, L’autorità delle citazioni virgiliane nelle opere esegetiche di san Girolamo (Rome, 2003); cf. A. Canellis, “Le recours aux poètes latins dans le Commentaire sur l’Ecclésiaste de saint Jérôme,” Latomus 75 (2016): 156–79. ²⁶ Luebeck, Hieronymus, 160–7; Hagendahl, Latin Fathers, 281–3. Cf. N. Adkin, “Biblia pagana: Classical Echoes in the Vulgate,” Augustinianum 40 (2000): 77–87; Adkin, “The Classics and Jerome’s Prefaces to the Biblical Translations from the Hebrew,” Helmántica 60 (2009): 167–75; Adkin, “Horace, Carm. 2.17.5 and Quintilian, Inst. 6 Prooem. in Jerome,” Prometheus n.s. 7 (2018): 202–8.

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Interpretamur scripturas, saepe vertimus stilum, quae digna lectione sunt scribimus (“We interpret the Scriptures, we often use the eraser, and we write things worthy of being read”)²⁷ echoes Horace’s advice to the aspiring poet to edit his poetry: Saepe stilum vertas, iterum quae digna legi sint / scripturus (“Use your eraser often if you hope to write [poems] worth rereading”).²⁸ The other three Horatian reminiscences are clustered in the commentary on Ephesians. When illustrating how demons thoroughly infiltrate the bodies and souls of their possessed victims (Qualisque fuerit liquor qui novae testae infusus est, talem diu testa et odorem retinet et saporem, “Whatever liquid has been poured into a new earthen jar, the jar retains the odor and taste of it for a long time”),²⁹ he has borrowed the crockery analogy from Horace’s Ep. 1.2.69–70 (Quo semel est imbuta recens, servabit odorem / testa diu).³⁰ Later in the commentary he concisely encapsulates the growth process in words—Parvulus crescit et occulto aevo in perfectam adolescit aetatem (“A child grows up and, with the silent passage of time, matures into full age”)³¹—that recall Horace’s poetic tribute to the emperor Augustus’s young nephew and son-in-law M. Claudius Marcellus (crescit occulto velut arbor aevo / fama Marcelli).³² Finally, near the end of his Ephesians commentary he seamlessly works an apt Horatian quotation (Carm. 3.3.7–8) into his prose to fill out his description of the pious Christian’s fortitude: “Neither bereavement nor injuries weaken him, and, as Flaccus says in his lyric poem, ‘If the world should collapse and fall upon him, the ruins will strike him unafraid.’ ”³³ Quintilian’s Institutio oratoria was for Jerome a valuable handbook on rhetorical theory and practice, and it also furnished him with arresting historical anecdotes about Roman oratory,³⁴ as it does on one occasion in the Pauline commentaries. To illustrate the folly of carousing, Jerome cites a gnomic line, which he attributes to a non ignobilis orator, about a drunk man awakened from sleep as being in a suspended state between life and death: “He was able neither to sleep while awake nor to stay awake while drunk.”³⁵ The unnamed orator in question is Marcus Caelius Rufus, and this saying comes from a speech he

²⁷ Comm. Gal. 5.26. ²⁸ Sat. 1.10.72–3. Jerome was fond of this poetic adage and quoted or paraphrased it on several other occasions; see Hagendahl, Latin Fathers, 128, 184n1, 211, 228, 282. ²⁹ Comm. Eph. 1.13. ³⁰ Jerome echoes this same Horatian passage in Ep. 107.4.6: Lanarum conchylia quis in pristinum candorem revocet? Rudis testa diu et saporem retinet et odorem. ³¹ Comm. Eph. 4.16. ³² Carm. 1.12.45–6. ³³ Quem nec orbitas, nec damna debilitant, quem ut Flaccus in Lyrico Carmine ait: Si fractus illabatur orbis, impavidum ferient ruinae (Comm. Eph. 5.20). ³⁴ Luebeck, Hieronymus, 213–18; Hagendahl, Latin Fathers, 295–6; Adkin, “Jerome and the Latin Classics,” VChr 28 (1974): 216–27 (225–6); N. Adkin, “The Ninth Book of Quintilian’s Institutio oratoria and Jerome,” Arctos 32 (1998): 13–25; Adkin, “The Eleventh Book of Quintilian’s Institutio oratoria and Jerome,” Eos 89 (2002): 315–19. ³⁵ Pulchre quidam non ignobilis orator, cum ebrium de somno describeret excitatum, ait: “Nec dormire excitatus nec vigilare ebrius poterat;” qua sententia expressit quodammodo nec mortuum eum fuisse nec vivum (Comm. Gal. 5.19).

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delivered in 59  against Gaius Antonius Hybrida. Jerome’s source is not the speech itself but rather Quintilian.³⁶ On the subject of inebriation, Jerome’s satirical statement about alcoholic bishops, vomunt ut bibant, bibunt ut vomant,³⁷ may have been adapted from another early Imperial author, Seneca the Younger, who issued a similar description of gluttons’ vomitory habits (vomunt ut edant, edunt ut vomant).³⁸ Jerome does not confine his non-Christian Latin literary references to the classical period. In Comm. Gal. 6.10 he emphasizes that we should take every possible opportunity to do good during our brief time on earth. He tells a short anecdote about how the emperor Titus once recalled at dinnertime that he had done nothing good that day and bewailed to his company: “Friends, today I have squandered the day.”³⁹ Suetonius reports this episode,⁴⁰ but so does the fourthcentury epitomator Eutropius,⁴¹ and since Jerome’s wording is nearly identical to Eutropius’s, it is probable that he retrieved this anecdote from him.⁴²

Tertullian No Latin Christian author influenced Jerome more profoundly than Tertullian, and for the past several decades scholars have been busy documenting the extent of this influence.⁴³ His impact on the Pauline commentaries has received ³⁶ Inst. orat. 4.2.124. See H. T. Roswell, “A Quotation from Marcus Caelius Rufus in St. Jerome, In Galatas III 5, 509,” Eranos 57 (1959): 59–61. ³⁷ Comm. Tit. 1.6–7. ³⁸ Cons. ad Helv. 10.3. On Jerome’s reading of Seneca, see W. Trillitzsch, Seneca im litterarischen Urteil der Antike: Darstellung und Sammlung der Zeugnisse, 2 vols. (Amsterdam, 1971), 1.143–61, 2.369–74; Hagendahl, “Jerome and the Latin Classics,” 223–5; N. Adkin, “Jerome, Seneca, Juvenal,” RBPH 78 (2000): 119–28. ³⁹ Titus filius Vespasiani, qui in ultionem dominici sanguinis subversis Hierosolymis Romam victor ingressus est, tantae dicitur fuisse bonitatis ut, cum quadam nocte sero recordaretur in coena quod nihil boni die illa fecisset, dixerit: Amici, hodie diem perdidi. ⁴⁰ Atque etiam recordatus quondam super cenam, quod nihil cuiquam toto die praestitisset, memorabilem illam meritoque laudatam vocem edidit: Amici, diem perdidi (V. Tit. 8.1). ⁴¹ Facilitatis et liberalitatis tantae fuit, ut, cum nulli quicquam negaret et ab amicis reprehenderetur, responderit nullum tristem debere ab imperatore discedere, praeterea, cum quadam die in cena recordatus fuisset nihil se illo die cuiquam praestitisse, dixerit: Amici, hodie diem perdidi. ⁴² On Jerome’s reading of Eutropius, see R. Helm, “Hieronymus und Eutrop,” RhM 76 (1927): 138–70, 254–306. ⁴³ Y.-M. Duval, “Saint Jérôme devant le baptême des hérétiques: d’autres sources de l’Altercatio Luciferiani et Orthodoxi,” REAug 14 (1968): 145–80; Adkin, “Gerolamo tra Tertulliano e Origene,” in C. Moreschini and G. Menestrina (eds.), Motivi letterari ed esegetici in Gerolamo (Brescia, 1997), 107–35; Adkin, L’affaire Jovinien: d’une crise de la société romaine à une crise de la pensée chrétienne à la fin du IVe et au début du Ve siècle (Rome, 2003), 112–205 (passim); C. Micaelli, “L’influsso di Tertulliano su Girolamo: le opere sul matrimonio e le seconde nozze,” Augustinianum 19 (1979): 415–29; P. Petitmengin, “Saint Jérôme et Tertullien,” in Y.-M. Duval (ed.), Jérôme entre l’Occident et l’Orient: XVIe centenaire du départ de saint Jérôme de Rome et de son installation à Bethléem: actes du colloque de Chantilly, septembre 1986 (Paris, 1988), 43–59; N. Adkin, “Tertullian’s De idololatria and Jerome,” Augustinianum 33 (1993): 11–30; Adkin, “Tertullian in Jerome (Epist. 22, 37, 1 f.),” SO 68 (1993), 129–43; Adkin, “Tertullian’s De praescriptione haereticorum and Jerome’s Libellus de uirginitate

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comparatively less attention in this treasure hunt,⁴⁴ and the default impression has been that Tertullian left a negligible mark on them. However, as we will see below, Jerome in fact draws from an impressive number and variety of his writings. Jerome mentions Tertullian by name only three times in his entire opus Paulinum. Twice he does so in a favorable light, in the one case for exposing the deceptiveness of Apelles and Philumene,⁴⁵ and in the other for being one of the foundational figures of Latin Christian literature.⁴⁶ In the third instance Jerome disparages his De monogamia, calling it a liber haereticus for contradicting Paul’s teaching about the validity of second marriages.⁴⁷ The vast majority of his borrowings from Tertullian’s writings in his Pauline commentaries are allusive, unattributed, and uniformly approbative, and Jerome puts them to any number of uses. For instance, he draws on him for certain heresiological material. Let us begin by comparing his Comm. Gal. 1.4–5 with Tertullian’s Adversus Marcionem 1.5.1: Tertullian . . . Valentinus, who had the gall to conceive of two [deities] at once, Bythos and Sige, poured forth a swarm of divinity all the way up to thirty Aeons, just like the sow of Aeneas.

. . . Valentinus, qui simul ausus est duos concipere, Bython et Sigen, tum usque ad triginta Aeonum fetus, tamquam Aeneiae scrofae, examen divinitatis effudit.48

Jerome This is why Valentinus’s nonsense and fairy tales should be disdained. He contrived his thirty Aeons from the “ages” mentioned in the Scriptures and said that they are living things which, through their Quadrads, Ogdoads, Decads, and Dodecads, had given birth to ages as numerous as the offspring produced by Aeneas’s sow. Quapropter Valentini deliramenta et fabulae contemnendae sunt, qui triginta Aeonas suos ex eo quod in Scripturis saecula legantur adfinxit dicens eos esse animalia et per quadrigas et ogdoadas, decadas quoque et duodecadas tot edidisse numeros saeculorum quot Aeneia fetus scrofa generavit.

Both of these descriptions of Valentinus’s theory share several points of contact.⁴⁹ First of all, they name him and refer explicitly to his thirty Aeons. More telling is seruanda (Epist. 22),” Eirene 30 (1994): 103–7; Adkin, “Tertullian’s De idololatria and Jerome again,” Mnemosyne 49 (1996): 46–52; Adkin, “Tertullian, De anima 27, 6 and Jerome, Epist. 54, 10, 5,” Hermes 130 (2002): 126–30; Adkin, “Tertullian’s De spectaculis and Jerome,” Augustinianum 46 (2006): 89–94; Adkin, “Tertullian in Jerome’s Consolation to Heliodorus (Ep. 60),” in A. Cain and J. Lössl (eds.), Jerome of Stridon: His Life, Writings, and Legacy (Aldershot, 2009), 41–5. ⁴⁴ Cf. C. Micaelli, “Ricerche sulla fortuna di Tertulliano,” Orpheus n.s. 6 (1985): 118–35 (125–7). ⁴⁵ Comm. Gal. 1.8–9. ⁴⁶ Comm. Eph., lib. 1, prol. l. 26. ⁴⁷ Scripsit et Tertullianus de monogamia librum haereticum, quem apostolo contraire nemo qui apostolum legerit ignorabit (Comm. Tit. 1.6–7); cf. Ep. 85.5.1, where Jerome approvingly cites one passage in this work. C. Trevett, Montanism: Gender, Authority, and the New Prophecy (Cambridge, 1996), 113, calls De monogamia “hard-hitting” in its Montanist rigor. ⁴⁸ R. Braun (ed.), Tertullien: Contre Marcion, vol. 1 (Paris, 1990), 120. ⁴⁹ For scholarly reconstructions of Valentinian doctrine and practice, see B. Layton (ed.), The Rediscovery of Gnosticism, vol. 1: The School of Valentinus (Leiden, 1980); C. Markschies, Valentinus

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that Jerome employs the same phrase as Tertullian about the fertility of Aeneas’s sow. This notion goes back ultimately to Virgil’s Aeneid 8.42–8, where the river god Tiberinus reassures a troubled Aeneas that he will find a huge white sow under the riverbank’s oaks which will give birth to a litter of thirty piglets, symbolizing that after thirty years Ascanius will found the city of Alba Longa. When referring to this sow Virgil uses sus rather than the less dignified scrofa.⁵⁰ Tertullian knew his Virgil well,⁵¹ but he probably was influenced more immediately by Juvenal, Sat. 6.177, where scrofa denotes Aeneas’s white sow (atque eadem scrofa Niobe fecundior alba). The peculiar formulation Aeneia scrofa is not attested anywhere else in ancient Latin literature outside the two above-quoted passages. Its appearance first in Tertullian and later in Jerome in an identical antiGnostic context strongly suggests that Jerome took over Tertullianic phraseology in order, like his model, to caricature Valentinian theogonic myth with an apt classical allusion.⁵² Furthermore, even though Origen is believed to have been Jerome’s principal informant about the substance of Valentinian teaching,⁵³ the presence of the Aenean epithet raises the possibility that the details about the Aeons present in Jerome’s text but not in Tertullian’s may have been gleaned from other Tertullianic writings, such as the De praescriptione haereticorum (33.8⁵⁴) or the Adversus Valentinianos.⁵⁵

Gnosticus? Untersuchungen zur valentinianischen Gnosis mit einem Kommentar zu den Fragmenten Valentins (Tübingen, 1992); G. Quispel, “The Original Doctrine of Valentinus the Gnostic,” VChr 50 (1996): 327–52; E. Thomassen, The Spiritual Seed: The Church of the “Valentinians” (Leiden, 2006); I. Dunderberg, Beyond Gnosticism: Myth, Lifestyle, and Society in the School of Valentinus (New York, 2008). ⁵⁰ On the semantic difference between the two words, see E. Courtney, A Commentary on the Satires of Juvenal (Berkeley, 2013), 463. ⁵¹ R. Uglione, “Virgilio in Tertulliano: intertestualità e riscrittura,” BStudLat 29 (1999): 504–22; S. Freund, Vergil im frühen Christentum: Untersuchungen zu den Vergilzitaten bei Tertullian, Minucius Felix, Novatian, Cyprian und Arnobius (Paderborn, 2000), 29–96. See also R. Uglione, “Poeti latini in Tertulliano,” A&R 46 (2001): 9–34. ⁵² For Jerome’s critique of Valentinian teachings, see B. Jeanjean, Saint Jérôme et l’hérésie (Paris, 1999), 197–9. Jerome criticizes Valentinus’s cosmogony elsewhere in his Pauline commentaries at Comm. Eph. 3.14–15. ⁵³ So Jeanjean, Saint Jérôme et l’hérésie, 121–4. For Origen’s knowledge of Valentinian doctrine, see H. Strutwolf, Gnosis als System: Zur Rezeption der valentinianischen Gnosis bei Origenes (Göttingen, 1993). ⁵⁴ Sed et cum genealogias indeterminatas nominat, Valentinus agnoscitur, apud quem Aeon ille nescio qui novi et non unius nominis generat ex sua Charite Sensum et Veritatem; et hi aeque procreant ex se Sermonem et Vitam, dehinc et isti generant Hominem et Ecclesiam de qua prima ogdoade Aeonum exinde decem alii et duodecim reliqui Aeones miris nominibus oriuntur in meram fabulam triginta Aeonum (Refoulé and Labriolle, Prescription, 133–4). Cf. Tertullian, Carn. Chr. 24.2: Valentinianorum Aeonum genealogias (Mahé, De carne Christi, 306). ⁵⁵ Likewise, even though Jerome and other Latin patristic authors sometimes designated heresies as fabulae (taking their cue from Paul’s aniles fabulae (1 Tim. 4.7)), his application of it here may also recall the opening line of Tertullian’s Adversus Valentinianos: Valentiniani, frequentissimum plane collegium inter haereticos, quia plurimum ex apostatis veritatis et ad fabulas facile est (J.-C. Fredouille (ed.), Tertullien: Contre les Valentiniens, SC 280–1 (Paris, 1980–1), 78).

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In his exposition of Gal. 1.11–12, where Paul affirms that the Gospel does not have a human origin, Jerome again takes aim at heretics, but this time he recruits Tertullian’s De resurrectione mortuorum as his reinforcement: Tertullian Take away from the heretics the wisdom they share with pagans so that they may support their inquiries from Scripture alone, and they will not be able to stand their ground. For that which appeals to common sense is simplicity itself, joint participation in viewpoints, and sharing of opinions, and they are deemed more trustworthy because they delineate what is straightforward, open, and known to all. Divine reason, however, lies in the marrow, not on the surface, and it is much at odds with appearances. Aufer denique haereticis quae cum ethnicis sapiunt, ut de scripturis solis quaestiones suas sistant, et stare non poterunt. Communes enim sensus simplicitas ipsa commendat et compassio sententiarum et familiaritas opinionum, eoque fideliores existimantur, quia nuda et aperta et omnibus nota definiunt; ratio autem divina in medulla est, non in superficie, et plerumque aemula manifestis.56

Jerome Marcion, Basilides, and the rest of the plagues of heretics do not have the Gospel of God because they do not have the Holy Spirit, without whom the Gospel that is taught becomes human. Let us not suppose that the Gospel’s essence is in the words but in the meaning of the Scriptures, not on the surface but in the marrow, not in the leaves of words but in the root of reason.

Marcion et Basilides et caeterae haereticorum pestes non habent Dei evangelium, quia non habent Spiritum sanctum, sine quo humanum fit evangelium quod docetur. Nec putemus in verbis Scripturarum esse evangelium sed in sensu, non in superficie sed in medulla, non in sermonum foliis sed in radice rationis.

The underlined phrase occurs only in Tertullian and Jerome, and only in these two passages.⁵⁷ What is more, it is used by both writers in an anti-heretical context. In the early chapters of the De resurrectione mortuorum, as Tertullian mounts his case against those who deny the bodily resurrection,⁵⁸ he attempts to discredit their claim to being Christians by (among other tactics) associating their denial with pagan (philosophical) argumentation. Theological reasoning, he maintains in the above-quoted passage, must not be based on non-Christian “wisdom,” however logical it may seem.⁵⁹ Divine reason, after all, is “in the marrow, not on the surface,” and it is frequently in opposition to the appearance of things. Jerome preserves this antithesis between obvious but wrong human assumptions and the ⁵⁶ Res. mort. 3.6 (CCSL 2:925). ⁵⁷ Although this is the only instance in his surviving oeuvre in which Jerome reproduces this Tertullianic phrase verbatim, a similar variation on it appears in Comm. Eccl. 12.9: Parabolas composuerit aliud habentes in medulla, aliud in superficie pollicentes. ⁵⁸ The rhetorical structure of this work is discussed by P. Siniscalco, Ricerche sul De resurrectione di Tertulliano (Rome, 1966), 77–100, and R. Sider, “Structure and Design in the De resurrectione mortuorum of Tertullian,” VChr 23 (1969): 177–96; cf. T. D. Barnes, Tertullian: A Historical and Literary Study (Oxford, 1971), 208–10. ⁵⁹ The antithesis Tertullian draws between secular argumentation and Christian ways of thinking is a patristic literary commonplace. Cf. Tatian, Orat. ad Gr. 14.1; Lactantius, Div. inst. 3.1; Athanasius, V. Ant. 78.1–2; John Chrysostom, Hom. Rom. (PG 60:401); Hom. 1 Tim. (PG 62:591).

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covert nature of divine truth, but he applies it specifically to the realm of biblical exegesis. Because heretics lack the Holy Spirit’s guidance, they are unable to apprehend the deeper meaning of Scripture, and consequently the gospel they preach is devoid of divine inspiration. When expounding Paul’s anathematization of any man or angel who would preach a gospel to the Galatians other than the one he had preached to them (Gal. 1.8–9), Jerome identifies as prime offenders the second-century heresiarch Apelles and his prophetess Philumene, and he lauds Tertullian for denouncing them: In this passage the very learned man Tertullian rightly found ammunition against Apelles and his virgin Philumene, whom some wicked angel of a diabolical bent had possessed—this is the angel, he writes, whom the Apostle had proclaimed by the prophetic foresight of the Holy Spirit to be accursed, long before Apelles had been born. Eleganter in hoc loco vir doctissimus Tertullianus adversus Apellen et eius virginem Philumenen, quam angelus quidam diabolici spiritus et perversus impleverat, hunc esse scribit angelum cui, multo antequam Apelles nasceretur, Spiritus sancti vaticinio sit anathema per apostolum prophetatum.⁶⁰

Jerome credits Tertullian, whom he praises as a vir doctissimus, as his inspiration for citing Apelles and Philumene in connection with this verse. Giacomo Raspanti, editor of the critical edition of the Galatians commentary, suggests that Jerome is evoking De carne Christi 24.2,⁶¹ whereas other scholars prefer De carne Christi 6.1–2.⁶² Let us consider a third possibility, De praescriptione haereticorum 6.5–6: Even if an angel from heaven should preach any other gospel, he would be anathematized by us. The Holy Spirit already then had foreseen that there would be in a certain virgin named Philumene an angel of deceit, transforming itself into an angel of light, by whose miracles and illusions Apelles was deluded when he introduced a new heresy.

⁶⁰ Comm. Gal. 1.8–9. ⁶¹ Aeque, “etiamsi angelus de caelis aliter evangelizaverit vobis quam nos, anathema sit,” ad energema Apelleiacae virginis Philumenes dirigit; J.-P. Mahé (ed.), Tertullien: De carne Christi (La Chair du Christ), SC 216–17 (Paris, 1975), 232. See G. Raspanti (ed.), S. Hieronymi Presbyteri Opera. Pars I. Opera exegetica 6. Commentarii in Epistulam Pauli Apostoli ad Galatas, CCSL 77A (Turnhout, 2006), 21, 309. ⁶² Pervenimus igitur de calcaria, quod dici solet, in carbonariam, a Marcione ad Apellen, qui posteaquam a disciplina Marcionis in mulierem carne lapsus est, dehinc in virginem Philumenen spiritu eversus est, solidum Christi corpus sed sine nativitate suscepit ab ea praedicare. Et angelo quidem illi Philumenes eadem voce apostolus respondebit qua ipsum illum iam tunc praecinebat dicens: “Etiamsi angelus de caelis aliter evangelizaverit vobis quam nos evangelizavimus, anathema sit.” His vero quae insuper argumentantur, nos resistemus (Mahé, De carne Christi, 232–4). See A. Souter, The Earliest Latin Commentaries on the Epistles of St. Paul (Oxford, 1927), 131; Mahé, De carne Christi, 232, 343–4; Jeanjean, Saint Jérôme et l’hérésie, 204.

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Etiamsi angelus de caelis aliter evangelizaret, anathema diceretur a nobis. Providerat iam tunc Spiritus sanctus futurum in virgine quadam Philumene angelum seductionis transfigurantem se in angelum lucis, cuius signis et praestigiis Apelles inductus novam haeresin induxit.⁶³

In this and the two suggested parallel passages from De carne Christi, Tertullian cites Gal. 1.8 in connection with Apelles and Philumene, and since Jerome’s passing reference amounts to neither a direct quotation nor really even a paraphrase, it is impossible, on these grounds alone, to determine whether he relied on one passage to the exclusion of the other two, or on two passages to the exclusion of the remaining one, or was working from all three simultaneously. However, his description shares with De praescriptione haereticorum 6.5–6 an emphasis on how the Holy Spirit prophesied the future damnation of Apelles and Philumene (Spiritus sancti vaticinio sit . . . prophetatum—providerat iam tunc Spiritus sanctus). This unique point of contact tips the balance in favor of De praescriptione haereticorum 6.5–6 being the intertext at the forefront of Jerome’s mind. In the passages analyzed thus far Jerome borrows from Tertullian’s writings to supplement his refutations of various heretical figures. In other cases he adapts Tertullianic phraseology to illustrate miscellaneous ethical and theological points. For instance, when he explains Paul’s statement that Christ “gave himself for our sins in order to redeem us from the present evil age” (Gal. 1.4), he echoes the De resurrectione mortuorum: Tertullian The soul alone is liable to being judged as to how it has made use of the vessel of the flesh, but the vessel itself is not culpable because a cup is not condemned if anyone has mixed poison in it, nor a sword put to death by wild animals if anyone has committed robbery with it. So then, the flesh is innocent insofar as it will not be blamed for evil actions, and there is nothing preventing it from being saved on the score of its innocence.

Jerome We do not say that an age itself, which passes in days, nights, years, and months, is evil. Rather, we use the same terminology (ὁμωνύμως) to affirm that the things occurring during an age are evil . . . Forests are brought into ill repute when robberies abound in them, not because the ground or the trees commit sin but because they have gained a bad reputation as places where murders occur. We also despise the sword by which human blood is poured out as well as the cup in which poison is mixed, not because the sword and cup commit sin but because those who use these things for evil purposes deserve reproach. Likewise, an age, which is a period of time, is not good or evil in itself; it is called good or evil depending on the people who live in it.

⁶³ R. F. Refoulé and P. de Labriolle (eds.), Tertullien: Traité de la prescription contre les hérétiques, SC 46 (Paris, 1957), 95.

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Animae solius iudicium praesidere, qualiter usa sit vasculo carnis, vasculum vero ipsum non esse sententiae obnoxium, quia nec calicem damnari, si quis eum veneno temperarit, nec gladium ad bestias pronuntiari, si quis eo latrocinium fuerit operatus. Iam ergo innocens caro ex ea parte, qua non reputabuntur illi operae malae, et nihil prohibet innocentiae nomine salvam eam fieri.64

Nos autem dicimus non tam saeculum ipsum quod die et nocte, annis currit et mensibus appellari malum quam ὁμωνύμως ea quae in saeculo fiant . . . Infamantur et saltus, cum latrociniis pleni sunt, non quo terra peccet et silvae, sed quo infamiam homicidii loca quoque traxerint; detestamur et gladium quo humanus effusus est cruor et calicem in quo venenum temperatum est, non gladii calicisque peccato, sed quo odium mereantur illi qui his male usi sunt. Ita et saeculum, quod est spatium temporum, non per semetipsum aut bonum aut malum est, sed per eos qui in illo sunt aut bonum appellatur aut malum.

According to Tertullian, the soul is unclean by virtue of the Adamic curse and it contaminates the flesh and forces it to do its bidding. The flesh becomes an accessory to its partner’s crimes, and while it is guilty by association, culpability nevertheless rests mainly with the soul as the instigator.⁶⁵ As Tertullian articulates above, the flesh is only a passive instrument: it is the cup that administers the poisoned drink and the sword that commits a crime. Jerome invokes the same analogy when arguing that Paul’s phrase “the present evil age” should not be taken to imply that any unit of time is inherently evil. Neither the poisoned cup nor the sword deserves reproach; those who employ them to nefarious ends do however stand under judgment. Likewise, a period of time is a neutral entity judged good or evil according to the mores of the people who populate it. Furthermore, Jerome’s comment about forests being sites of brigandry and murder seems at first glance to be his own innovation,⁶⁶ inasmuch as it is missing from the intertext above. However, it likely was inspired by a passage in Tertullian’s De pudicitia (4.3).⁶⁷ Jerome may draw from De pudicitia elsewhere in his commentary on Galatians. When explaining Gal. 4.14, where Paul speaks of a mysterious physical ailment that burdened the Galatian Christians when he had

⁶⁴ Res. mort. 16.4–8 (CCSL 2:925). ⁶⁵ A.-J. Festugière, “La composition et l’esprit du De anima de Tertullien,” RSPh 33 (1949): 129–61 (160–1); M. Menghi, “La corporeità dell’anima e l’innocenza della carne,” in M. Menghi and M. Vegetti (eds.), Tertulliano, L’anima (De anima) (Venice, 1988), 15–34; E. Osborn, Tertullian: First Theologian of the West (Cambridge, 1997), 164–7. ⁶⁶ For the literary representation of banditry in Roman antiquity, see W. Riess, Apuleius und die Räuber: Ein Beitrag zur historischen Kriminalitätsforschung (Stuttgart, 2001). On forests and other rural areas as proverbial sites of violent crime, see V. Neri, I marginali nell’occidente tardoantico: poveri, “infames,” e criminali nella nascente società cristiana (Bari, 1998), 309–10. ⁶⁷ Nec enim interest nuptam alienam an viduam quis incurset, dum non suam feminam; sicut nec locis refert, in cubiculis an in turribus pudicitia trucidetur. omne homicidium extra silvam latrocinium est; C. Micaelli and C. Munier (eds.), Tertullien: La pudicité (De pudicitia), SC 394–5 (Paris, 1993), 160–2.

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been with them in person,⁶⁸ Jerome connects this affliction with the even more mysterious “thorn” in the flesh which God sent to Paul to keep him from becoming conceited (2 Cor. 12.7). He also reports the opinion held by some that this thorn was migraine headaches: Nam tradunt eum gravissimum capitis dolorem saepe perpessum (“They say that Paul often suffered from severe headaches”).⁶⁹ At De pudicitia 13.16 Tertullian mentions the same belief: Cohibebatur, per dolorem, ut aiunt, auriculae vel capitis (“He was held in check by pain, as they say, in his ear or head”).⁷⁰ Micaelli suspected that Tertullian is referring here to “une tradition orale qu’il suppose connue de tous.”⁷¹ After Tertullian, Jerome is the first Latin writer on record to refer to this tradition, and it accordingly is quite possible, given his indebtedness to Tertullian elsewhere in his Pauline commentaries, that he accessed this tradition through the intermediary of Tertullian.⁷² In Comm. Gal. 6.10 Jerome reports an anecdote, taken from the late antique epitomator Eutropius,⁷³ about how the emperor Titus once bemoaned at dinnertime: “Friends, today I have squandered the day.” Jerome goes on to say: Now if [Titus] said and did this by nature and outside the Law, the Gospel, and the teaching of the Savior and apostles, what ought we to do who are put to shame by Juno’s once-married devotees, Vesta’s virgins, and the celibates of other false gods? Quod si hoc ille sine lege, sine evangelio, sine Salvatoris et apostolorum doctrina naturaliter et dixit et fecit, quid nos oportet facere, in quorum condemnationem habet et Iuno univiras et Vesta virgines et alia idola continentes?

This passage compares favorably with the following two from Tertullian: De monogamia 17.4 There also are those—the virgins of Vesta, Achaian Juno, Scythian Diana, and Pythian Apollo—who may pass judgment on us on the basis of how absolute our chastity is. The priests of that Egyptian bull also will pass judgment on Christians’ weakness with regard to chastity.

De exhortatione castitatis 13.2 When Satan pretends to enact God’s mysteries, it is our stimulus, or rather our call to arms, in case we are slow to display chastity to God which some offer to the devil sometimes through perpetual virginity, at other times through perpetual widowhood. We know of Vesta’s virgins, of Juno’s in the

⁶⁸ There has been much speculation among modern scholars about the nature of this ailment. For an overview of the hypotheses, see E. Güttgemanns, Der leidende Apostel und sein Herr (Göttingen, 1966), 162–5, 173–7. ⁶⁹ Comm. Gal. 4.14. ⁷⁰ Micaelli and Munier, La pudicité, 212. ⁷¹ Micaelli and Munier, La pudicité, 393. ⁷² While Tertullian and Jerome seemed to favor this interpretation of the thorn, other patristic commentators (e.g., Eusebius of Emesa, John Chrysostom, Theodore of Mopsuestia, Augustine) believed it referred to opposition Paul had encountered from his enemies; cf. T. Y. Mullins, “Paul’s Thorn in the Flesh,” JBL 76 (1957): 299–303. For a conspectus of patristic opinions about Paul’s thorn, see J. B. Lightfoot, The Epistle of St. Paul to the Galatians (Grand Rapids, 1967), 186–91. ⁷³ Cf. p. 200.

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 ’      

Sunt et quae de tota continentia iudicent nos, virgines Vestae et Iunonis Achaicae et Dianae Scythicae et Apollinis Pythii. Etiam bovis illius Aegyptii antistites de continentia infirmitatem Christianorum iudicabunt.74

town of Achaia, of Apollo’s among the Delphians, and of Minerva’s and Diana’s in some places. We also know of men devoted to chastity. Cum autem Dei sacramenta Satanas affectat, provocatio est nostra, immo suffusio, si pigri simus ad continentiam Deo exhibendam, quam diabolo quidam praestant nunc virginitate, nunc viduitate perpetua. Novimus virgines Vestae et Iunonis apud Achaiae oppidum et Apollinis apud Delphos et Minervae et Dianae quibusdam locis. Novimus et continentiae viros.75

Both Tertullian and Jerome shame lukewarm Christians, whom they include collectively in the first-person plural, into living uprightly by citing the same exempla of pagan chastity.⁷⁶ Jerome’s alia idola is shorthand for Tertullian’s Diana-Apollo diptych (De monogamia) or Apollo-Minerva-Diana triptych (De exhortatione castitatis). Similarly, Jerome’s continentes seems to be an abridgement of either bovis illius Aegyptii antistites or, more plausibly, continentiae viros. In any event, it is evident that Jerome is indebted to either one and possibly both of the above-quoted passages. In his commentary on Titus, Jerome elaborates on Paul’s injunction that the bishop not be an alcoholic (Tit. 1.6–7), and he pinpoints inebriation as a stimulus to lust using phraseology that recalls the opening of Tertullian’s De ieiunio (1.2).⁷⁷ The two passages read: Tertullian Lust without gluttony certainly would be considered a rare phenomenon since these two are so united and bound together that, had there been any possibility of them being disjoined, the genitals would not be connected to the belly in the first place. Look at the body: [these members occupy] one and the same area. In short, the interconnectedness of the vices is proportionate to the arrangement of the members.

Jerome Wherever there is overabundance and drunkenness, there sexual lust has free reign. Look at the belly and the genitals: the arrangement of the members is proportionate to the nature of the vices.

⁷⁴ R. Uglione (ed.), Q. S. F. Tertulliano: Le uniche nozze (Turin, 1993), 114. ⁷⁵ H.-V. Friedrich (ed.), Tertullian: De exhortatione castitatis (Ermahnung zur Keuschheit) (Stuttgart, 1990), 94. ⁷⁶ For both authors’ use of pagan exempla, see S. Rebenich, “Der heilige Hieronymus und die Geschichte: Zur Funktion der Exempla in seinen Briefen,” RQA 87 (1992): 29–46; H.-W. Thönnes, Caelestia recogita, et terrena despicies: Altkirchliche Apologetik am Beispiel Tertullians im Vergleich mit modernen Entwürfen (Frankfurt am Main, 1994), 92–124; K. de Brabander, Le retour au paradis: une étude sur la relation entre la sanctification de l’homme et l’ascèse sexuelle chez Tertullien (Rome, 2004), 313–15. ⁷⁷ On Jerome’s appropriation of other material from De ieiunio, see N. Adkin, “Tertullian’s De ieiunio and Jerome’s Libellus de virginitate servanda (epist. 22),” WS 104 (1991): 149–60.

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   :   Monstrum scilicet haberetur libido sine gula, cum duo haec tam unita atque concreta sint, ut si disiungi omnino potuissent, ipsi prius ventri pudenda non adhaererent. Specta corpus, et una regio est. Denique pro dispositione membrorum ordo vitiorum.78

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Vbicumque saturitas atque ebrietas fuerit, ibi libido dominatur. Specta ventrem et genitalia: pro qualitate vitiorum ordo membrorum.

Both Tertullian and Jerome assert that the physical proximity of the belly and genitals mirrors the close correspondence between their attendant vice, sexual lust (libido). The sister-vice of lust in this Tertullianic passage is gluttony (gula). Jerome retains the gluttonous element (saturitas) and adds to it drunkenness (ebrietas) in order to accommodate the context of his discussion. He mimics Tertullian’s formula specta corpus but improves upon it with the more particularizing specta ventrem et genitalia. He likewise modifies pro dispositione membrorum ordo vitiorum, replacing dispositione with qualitate and reversing the internal arrangement of the genitives vitiorum and membrorum while preserving the same penultimate placement of ordo within the clause that it has in Tertullian. On another occasion, too, when commenting on Gal. 4.19 (“My dear children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you”), Jerome reverts to a conception analogy and dresses it with wording from Tertullian’s De anima: Tertullian Nature should be revered, not blushed at . . . Inasmuch as two different and separate elements, clay and breath, had formed one human in the beginning, both amalgamated substances combined their own seminal rudiments and from then on gave to the human race a mode of propagation, so that now two elements, although different from each other, flow forth together as a united pair, find their way together into their seed-plot, and together from their respective substances produce a human. Inherent in this human is his own seed, according to the process set for every procreative creature. Natura veneranda est, non erubescenda . . . Cum igitur in primordio duo diversa atque divisa, limus et flatus, unum hominem coegissent, confusae substantiae ambae iam in uno semina quoque sua miscuerunt atque exinde generi propagando formam tradiderunt, ut et nunc duo, licet diversa, etiam unita pariter effluant pariterque insinuata sulco et arvo pariter hominem ex utraque substantia effruticent, in quo rursus semen suum insit secundum genus, sicut omni condicioni genitali praestitum est.79

Jerome Nature should not be blushed at, but revered. Just as an unformed seed first is thrust into the woman’s womb so that it adheres to its furrow and soil as if by a certain glue . . .

Natura non erubescenda, sed veneranda est. Sicut enim in vulvam mulieris primum semen iacitur informe ut sulcis et fundo eius quasi quodam glutino adhaereat . . . 80

⁷⁸ CCSL 2:1257. ⁷⁹ An. 27.4, 8; J. H. Waszink (ed.), Quinti Septimi Florentis Tertulliani, De Anima: Edited with Introduction and Commentary (Amsterdam, 1947), 38. ⁸⁰ Comm. Gal. 4.19.

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 ’      

Leading up to this passage, Tertullian has been arguing that the soul and body are conceived at the same time. He prefaces the somewhat graphic description of the reproductive process with an admonition that it ought to be respected, not blushed at out of embarrassment (natura veneranda est, non erubescenda).⁸¹ An original coinage by Tertullian, this pithy locution occurs only one other time in all of extant Latin literature—in the Hieronymian passage quoted above. Jerome uses it as an apologetic foreword to his own, albeit briefer description of insemination to visualize for the reader how the seed of the Gospel takes root and is formed in the soul of the Christian. Presumably in further imitation of Tertullian, Jerome enhances his analogy with the agricultural metaphor sulcis et fundo, which corresponds to Tertullian’s sulco et arvo. Now, metaphors of the field were commonly used in ancient gynecological texts⁸² and other works of literature⁸³ to describe the female genitals as well as the process of insemination. As such, Jerome could conceivably have taken his terminology from any number of written sources, including technical medical writings.⁸⁴ Nevertheless, given that Tertullian is his model elsewhere in this same passage, it is very probable that he served as the model here as well. When elaborating on impurity (immunditia) and debauchery (luxuria), the second and third “deeds of the flesh” (Gal. 5.19–21), Jerome says that Paul intended both of these words to cover every conceivable lustful act, including sexual relations within marriage (if, that is, these are not performed with a sense of modesty). Jerome evidently has Tertullian’s Ad uxorem 2.3.4 in mind: Tertullian How is [a Christian woman] able to serve two masters, the Lord and her husband— and a pagan to boot? For in obeying the pagan she will exhibit to him beauty, adornment, worldly elegance, and baser blandishments. Even the very secrets of matrimony are tainted: the duties of the female sex are not discharged, as they are with the saints, with the dignity befitting the necessary act itself, as if under God’s watch, modestly and with self-control.

Jerome He has named as “impurity” and “debauchery” the rest of the unusual desires, including sexual relations within marriage, if these are not performed with a sense of modesty and respectability, as if under God’s watch, and then only for the purpose of procreation.

⁸¹ For a discussion of Tertullian’s views of conjugal intercourse, see de Brabander, Le retour au paradis, 310–13. ⁸² Cf. Soranus, Gyn. 1.12: Καθάπερ ἐπὶ τῶν ἔξωθεν σπερμάτων οὐ πᾶς καιρὸς ἐπιτήδειος πρὸς τὸ κατὰ τῆς γῆς αὐτὰ βληθέντα καρποὺς ἐνεγκεῖν, οὕτως οὐδὲ ἐπὶ τῶν ἀνθρώπων ἅπας καιρὸς ἐπιτήδειος πρὸς σύλληψιν ἐπὶ τῶν ἐν ταῖς μίξεσιν μεθιεμένων σπερμάτων; P. Burguière and D. Gourevtich (eds.), Soranos d’Éphèse: Maladies des femmes, vol. 1 (Paris, 1988), 33. ⁸³ Cf. Lucretius, Rer. nat. 4.1107, 1272; Virgil, Georg. 3.136. See further J. N. Adams, The Latin Sexual Vocabulary (Baltimore, 1982), 82–6. ⁸⁴ Jerome may have had at least some firsthand knowledge of ancient medical literature. See most recently Y.-M. Duval, “Diététique et médecine chez Jérôme,” in V. Boudon-Millot and B. Pouderon (eds.), Les Pères de l’Église face à la science médicale de leur temps (Paris, 2005), 121–39, with references to previous scholarly studies.

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   :   Quomodo potest duobus dominis servire, Domino et marito, adde gentili? Gentilem enim observando gentili exhibebit formam, exstructionem, munditias saeculares, blanditias turpiores, ipsa etiam matrimonii secreta maculosa, non, ut penes sanctos officia sexus cum honore ipsius necessitatis tamquam sub oculis Dei modeste et moderate transiguntur.85

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Caeteras extraordinarias voluptates, ipsarum quoque opera nuptiarum, si non verecunde et cum honestate quasi sub oculis Dei fiant ut tantum liberis serviatur, immunditiam et luxuriam nominavit.86

Jerome retains the Tertullianic sub oculis Dei and makes the negligible substitution of quasi for tamquam, but otherwise he has overhauled his source, exchanging transiguntur for fiant and the alliterative modeste et moderate for the slightly more robust verecunde et cum honestate. He also adds his own proviso that sexual relations are permissible only for procreation (ut tantum liberis serviatur). Thus far we have seen how Jerome mines various Tertullianic writings for arresting phraseology, analogies, and heresiological material to strengthen whatever point he happens to be making at the moment. In this final case study we find him retrieving ethnographic material as well. Here he works into his exposition of Gal. 3.1a (“You foolish Galatians”) some content from De anima: Tertullian It has been said that dullards and dimwits are born at Thebes, and the brightest and most eloquent at Athens, where in the district of Colythus children speak prematurely, before they are one month old. Indeed, Plato affirms in the Timaeus that when Minerva was in the process of founding that city [Athens], she cared only about the region’s nature which gave promise of such great mental dispositions. This also is why in Laws he himself instructs Megillus and Clinias to be careful in selecting a site for building a city . . . The subject of national peculiarities already has become well publicized. Comic poets deride the Phrygians for their cowardice, Sallust ridicules the Moors for their levity and the Dalmatians for their cruelty, and even the Apostle reproaches the Cretans for being liars.

Jerome “You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you?” This passage can be taken in one of two ways. The Galatians are called foolish either because they started out in the Spirit but finished in the flesh and thus reverted from greater to lesser things, or because each locale has its own peculiar behaviors. The Apostle approvingly cites the poet Epimenides, who called the Cretans “perpetual liars, evil brutes, and lazy gluttons.” The Latin historian ridicules the Moors for their levity and the Dalmatians for their cruelty. All the poets belittle the Phrygians for being cowards. The philosophers boast that the best minds are born in Athens. In a speech delivered in Caesar’s presence, Cicero pummelled the Greeks for being fickle, “[The habits] of either the fickle Greeks or the savage barbarians,” and in his speech on behalf of Flaccus he says, “Fickleness is innate and vanity learned.”

⁸⁵ C. Munier (ed.), Tertullien: À son épouse, SC 273 (Paris, 1989), 134. For Tertullian’s notions about conjugal intercourse, see de Brabander, Le retour au paradis, 310–13. ⁸⁶ Comm. Gal. 5.19.

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 ’      

Thebis hebetes et brutos nasci relatum est, Athenis sapiendi dicendique acutissimos, ubi penes Colyttum pueri mense citius eloquuntur praecoca lingua, siquidem et Plato in Timaeo Minervam affirmat, cum urbem illam moliretur, nihil aliud quam regionis naturam prospexisse talia ingenia pollicitam; unde et ipse in Legibus Megillo et Cliniae praecipit condendae civitati locum procurare . . . Vulgata iam res est gentilium proprietatum. Comici Phrygas timidos inludunt, Sallustius vanos Mauros et feroces Dalmatas pulsat, mendaces Cretas etiam apostolus inurit.87

All the Scriptures reproach Israel for having a hardened heart and a stiff neck. Likewise, I reckon, the Apostle ridiculed the Galatians for the behavioral pecularities endemic to their region. O insensati Galatae, quis vos fascinavit? Dupliciter hic locus intellegi potest vel ideo insensatos Galatas appellatos a maioribus ad minora venientes quia coeperint spiritu et carne consummentur vel ob id quod unaquaeque provincia suas habeat proprietates. Cretenses semper mendaces, malas bestias, ventres pigros vere ab Epimenide poeta dictos apostolus comprobat; vanos Mauros et feroces Dalmatas latinus pulsat historicus; timidos Phrygas omnes poetae lacerant; Athenis expeditiora nasci ingenia philosophi gloriantur. Graecos leves et apud Caesarem suggillat Tullius dicens, “aut levium Graecorum aut immanium barbarorum,” et pro Flacco, “ingenita,” inquit, “levitas et erudita vanitas.” Ipsum Israel gravi corde et dura cervice omnes Scripturae arguunt. In hunc ergo modum arbitror et apostolum Galatas regionis suae proprietate pulsasse.

When Paul rebuked the Galatian Christians for being senseless, he was referencing (according to Jerome) a stereotype about the people in their region. The litany of exempla adduced by Jerome is modeled on a similar list that Tertullian furnished to bolster his own contention that diverse regional customs account for why souls develop different attributes and behaviors despite sharing the same universal substance and nature. Tertullian gleaned the detail about the Dalmatians’ cruelty from Sallust’s now-fragmentary Historiae,⁸⁸ and the one about the Moors’ levity perhaps from either the Historiae or the Bellum Iugurthinum.⁸⁹ Whereas Jerome did on other occasions work directly from the Historiae,⁹⁰ it is evident in this ⁸⁷ An. 20.2–3; Waszink, De Anima, 28–9. ⁸⁸ Tertullian may have been thinking of fr. II 39 M in B. Maurenbrecher (ed.), C. Sallusti Crispi Historiarum reliquiae, fasc. 2: Fragmenta (Stuttgart, 1967): Genus armis ferox et servitii insolitum. Cf. R. Funari (ed.), C. Sallusti Crispi Historiarum fragmenta, vol. 1 (Amsterdam, 1996), 354, who suggests that Sallust is speaking of the people of Spain in this particular fragment; if so, Tertullian presumably had another Sallustian passage in mind which refers specifically to the Dalmatians. ⁸⁹ So R. Oniga, Sallustio e l’etnografia (Pisa, 1995), 117–31. Cf. fr. I 63 K in F. Kritz (ed.), C. Sallustii Crispi Catilina, Iugurtha, historiarum fragmenta (Leipzig, 1856): Maurique, vanum genus, ut alia Africae, contendebant antipodas ultra Aethiopiam cultu Persarum iustos et egregios agere. Both Maurenbacher and P. McGushin, Sallust, the Histories: Translated with Introduction and Commentary, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1992–4), reject the authenticity of this fragment and thus do not include it in their respective volumes. ⁹⁰ N. Adkin, “Cato, Romani generis disertissimus: Sallust, Hist. fr. I 4 M. in Jerome,” Eikasmos 9 (1998): 229–32; Adkin, “Sallust, Hist. frg. II, 64 and Jerome’s Commentary on Zechariah,” Latomus 58 (1999): 635–9; Adkin, “Two Further Echoes of Sallust’s Histories in Jerome (Vita Hilarionis 22, 3 and 30, 2)?,” VetChr 37 (2000): 209–15; Adkin, “Hieronymus Sallustianus,” GB 24 (2005): 93–110.

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case—from his replication of Tertullian’s summary of the historian’s verdict and, more tellingly, his retention of pulsat—that Tertullian is the intermediary through whom he has accessed Sallust. Similarly, he takes over Tertullian’s remark about Phrygian cowardice,⁹¹ but he substitutes the generalizing omnes poetae lacerant for the more genre-specific comici inludunt. Tertullian refers only to the first part of Paul’s quotation at Tit. 1.12 of the verse attributed to Epimenides (Κρῆτες ἀεὶ ψεῦσται, κακὰ θηρία, γαστέρες ἀργοί), but Jerome provides it in its entirety and identifies the author. Furthermore, Jerome’s Athenis expeditiora nasci ingenia philosophi gloriantur is a paraphrase of Athenis . . . procurare,⁹² with the addition of nasci from the previous sentence.⁹³ Other personalized modifications Jerome makes to his source are more substantial. For instance, he reshuffles the internal ordering of Tertullian’s catalogue, moving the Cretans from last to first place. While omitting any mention of the Thebans,⁹⁴ he has lengthened Tertullian’s registry with quotations from two of

⁹¹ Because neither Plautus nor Terence nor any fragmentary Latin comic poet offers any suitable parallels, Tertullian may be thinking primarily of Greek poets (cf. Euripides, Orest. 1351: Φρύγας κακούς). Phrygian effeminacy had been a theme in Greek drama as far back as the fifth century  as well as in Roman poetry (e.g., Virgil and Ovid). See R. Sherk, “Daos and Spinther in Menander’s Aspis,” AJPh 91 (1970): 341–3 (342); T. Long, Barbarians in Greek Comedy (Carbondale, 1986), 141; E. Hall, Inventing the Barbarian: Greek Self-Definition through Tragedy (Oxford, 1989), 73–4, 103, 113–14; K. de Vries, “The Nearly Other: The Attic Vision of Phrygians and Lydians,” in B. Cohen (ed.), Not the Classical Ideal: Athens and the Construction of the Other in Greek Art (Leiden, 2000), 338–63 (342–57). On ancient ethnography more generally, see K. Trüdinger, Studien zur Geschichte der griechischrömischen Ethnographie (Basel, 1918); K. E. Müller, Geschichte der antiken Ethnographie und ethnologischen Theoriebildung, 2 vols. (Wiesbaden, 1972–80). For Roman conceptions of the barbarian “other,” see Y. A. Dauge, Le barbare: recherches sur la conception romaine de la barbarie et de la civilisation (Brussels, 1981); R. F. Thomas, Lands and Peoples in Roman Poetry: The Ethnographical Tradition (Cambridge, 1982). Cf. Salvian’s stereotypes of barbarian vices: Gothorum gens perfida sed pudica est, Alanorum impudica sed minus perfida, Franci mendaces sed hospitales, Saxones crudelitate efferi sed castitate mirandi: omnes denique gentes habent sicut peculiaria mala ita etiam quaedam bona (Gub. Dei 7.15.64); G. Lagarrigue (ed.), Salvian de Marseille, Oeuvres, vol. 2: Du gouvernement de Dieu, SC 220 (Paris, 1975), 476. ⁹² Tertullian appears to be thinking of Plato, Tim. 24c–d: “All this order and arrangement the goddess first imparted to you when establishing your city, and she chose the spot of earth in which you were born, because she saw that the happy temperament of the seasons in that land would produce the wisest of men. Wherefore the goddess, who was a lover both of war and of wisdom, selected and first of all settled that spot which was the most likely to produce men like herself” (E. Hamilton and H. Cairns (eds.), The Collected Dialogues of Plato (Princeton, 1989), 1159). Ancient Athens apparently had a reputation for not only producing philosophical minds but also breeding gossip. In Chariton’s novel Chaereas and Callirhoe (1.11.6), for example, when a fellow pirate suggests that they dock at Athens, Theron rebukes him because its residents are renowned for rumormongering (οὐκ ἀκούετε τὴν πολυπραγμοσύνην τῶν Ἀθηναίων;); G. Molinié (ed.), Le roman Chairéas et Callirhoé (Paris, 1989), 66. ⁹³ Jerome’s philosophi gloriantur picks up on a well-worn theme of his about the arrogance of secular philosophers. See, e.g., Ep. 66.8.3: Plus debet Christi discipulus praestare quam mundi; philosophus gloriae animal et popularis aurae atque rumorum venale mancipium est. ⁹⁴ Tertullian’s Thebis hebetes et brutos nasci relatum est, Athenis sapiendi dicendique acutissimos, which Jerome ignores, seems to have been inspired by Cicero, Fat. 4.7: Athenis tenue caelum, ex quo etiam acutiores putantur Attici, crassum Thebis, itaque pingues Thebani et valentes; W. Ax (ed.), M. Tulli Ciceronis scripta quae manserunt omnia, fasc. 46 (Stuttgart, 1977), 133.

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Cicero’s speeches about the fickleness of the Greeks,⁹⁵ and a generic notice on the stiff-neckedness of the Israelites.⁹⁶

Cyprian Cyprian’s influence on Jerome was not nearly as broad or as deep as Tertullian’s, but it nevertheless was considerable in its own right,⁹⁷ though not as much in the Pauline commentaries. Jerome mentions him only twice in them. In the first Ephesians preface he calls him beatus martyr Cyprianus and designates him, alongside Tertullian, Lactantius, and Hilary, as one of the four pillars of the Latin patristic literary canon.⁹⁸ In his commentary on Galatians, when he arrives at invidia in Paul’s list of the “deeds of the flesh” (Gal. 5.19–21), he refers the reader to Cyprian’s De zelo et livore, calling it a “truly splendid book.”⁹⁹ Given this high praise as well as Jerome’s implementation of material from this treatise elsewhere,¹⁰⁰ it is not surprising that an echo of this writing should be registered slightly earlier in the same commentary.¹⁰¹ During the course of expounding Paul’s exhortation to love and serve one another (Gal. 5.13), Jerome inserts a sidebar about the deleterious effects of envy which bears comparison with De zelo et livore 7:

⁹⁵ Pro Lig. 11: Aut levium Graecorum aut immanium barbarorum, and Pro Flac., fr. 9: Ingenita levitas et erudita vanitas. This latter had already been quoted by Jerome in a letter from a decade earlier (Ep. 10.3.1: Doctissimi quique Graecorum, de quibus pro Flacco agens luculente Tullius ait: ingenita levitas et erudita vanitas, regum suorum vel principum laudes accepta mercede dicebant). The stereotype of Greek unreliability, which Cicero had invoked occasionally in his speeches, continued to have currency into the Imperial period; see M. Garrett, “Rome,” in N. G. Wilson (ed.), Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece (London, 2005), 632. ⁹⁶ Cf. Comm. Tit. 1.12–14, where Jerome cross-references this ethnic discussion in his Galatians commentary and again pairs the stiff-necked Israelites with the foolish Galatians and the mendacious Cretans: Quomodo autem vel Cretenses mendaces et stulti Galatae, vel dura cervice Israhel, vel unaquaeque provincia proprio vitio denotetur, in epistula Pauli ad Galatas disseruimus. ⁹⁷ See Y.-M. Duval, “Saint Cyprien et le roi de Ninive dans l’In Ionam de Jérôme: la conversion des lettrés à la fin du IVe siècle,” in J. Fontaine and C. Kannengiesser (eds.), Epektasis: mélanges patristiques offerts au Cardinal Jean Daniélou (Paris, 1972), 551–70; S. Deléani, “Présence de Cyprien dans les oeuvres de Jérôme sur la virginité,” in Duval (ed.), Jérôme entre l’Occident et l’Orient, 61–82; A.-M. Taisne, “Saint Cyprien et saint Jérôme, chantres du Paradis,” BAGB 1 (1992): 47–61; A. de Vogüé, “Hic aut quaeritur vita aut amittitur: une citation inaperçue de Cyprien chez Jérôme et chez Rufin,” Cassiodorus 1 (1995): 231–3; N. Adkin, “Cyprian’s De habitu virginum and Jerome’s De virginitate servanda (Epist. 22),” C&M 46 (1995): 237–54; Adkin, “Some Alleged Echoes of Cyprian in Jerome,” WS 110 (1997): 151–70; Adkin, “Hier. Epist. 53.1.2–3: Cyprian, Horace, Vergil,” Sileno 23 (1997): 87–97. ⁹⁸ Comm. Eph., lib. 1, prol. ll. 26–7. ⁹⁹ Scripsit et beatus Cyprianus librum de zelo et livore valde optimum, quem qui legerit non dubitabit adnumerare operibus carnis invidiam (Comm. Gal. 5.19–21). ¹⁰⁰ N. Adkin, “Some Features of Jerome’s Compositional Technique in the Libellus de virginitate servanda (Epist. 22),” Philologus 136 (1992): 234–55 (235–6). ¹⁰¹ Comm. Gal. 5.13b–14.

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   :   Cyprian What kind of a gnawing worm of the soul, what a drain on thoughts, how great a rust of the heart, it is to be jealous of another person for either his virtue or happiness—to hate in him either his own deserts or divine blessings, to turn others’ good fortunes into a source of personal malcontent, to be tormented by the prosperity of highly successful people . . . Qualis vero est animae tinea, quae cogitationum tabes, pectoris quanta rubigo zelare in altero vel virtutem eius vel felicitatem, id est odisse in eo vel merita propria vel beneficia divina, in malum proprium bona aliena convertere, illustrium prosperitate torqueri . . .102

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Jerome When I am tormented by another person’s happiness and make someone else’s good fortune a cause for my own malcontent, is not the following verse fulfilled in me, “If you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not destroyed by one another”?

Quando aliena torqueor felicitate et alterius bonum meum malum facio, nonne hoc quod sequitur in me expletur: Si invicem mordetis et comeditis, videte ne ab invicem consumamini.

Jerome’s aliena torqueor felicitate is roughly equivalent to Cyprian’s inlustrium prosperitate torqueri. Jerome retains the verb torquere and glosses prosperitas as felicitas, a word which in fact occurs elsewhere in the adjacent passage. In addition, Cyprian’s in malum bonum proprium bona aliena convertere is rephrased as the more compact alterius bonum meum malum facio.¹⁰³ Still commenting on this same two-verse unit (a few sentences further down from the above-quoted remarks), Jerome evokes Cyprian’s De ecclesiae catholicae unitate: Cyprian He cannot show himself a martyr who has not maintained brotherly love. The apostle Paul teaches and testifies to this, saying, “If I have faith to move mountains but do not have love, I am nothing, and if I give away all my possessions for food [for the poor], and if I surrender my body to be burned but do not have love, it profits me nothing” . . . Discord cannot reach the kingdom of heaven. He who has done harm to Christ’s love through faithless dissension will not be able to attain the reward of Christ, who said, “This is my commandment, that you love one another just as I have loved you” . . . They cannot abide in God who have not wanted to be of one mind in God’s church. Although they burn and be given up to fire

Jerome Look at how good a thing love is. If we suffer martyrdom in the hope that our mortal remains will be honored by people and if in pursuit of accolades from the masses we fearlessly spill our blood and give our money and possessions away until we are penniless, we deserve not so much a reward as a penalty. These acts are the tortures merited by perfidy rather than a crown of victory.

¹⁰² M. Poirier (ed.), Cyprien de Carthage: La jalousie et l’envie, SC 519 (Paris, 2008), 80. ¹⁰³ Jerome had this same Cyprianic passage in mind a few years later in Comm. Eccl. 4:4: Converti me rursus ad alia et vidi omnem fortitudinem et gloriam laborantium, et deprehendi bonum alterius esse, alterius malum, dum invidus aliena felicitate torquetur et patet insidiis gloriosus.

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or thrown to wild animals and lay down their lives, that will not be the crown of faith but the punishment for lack of faith. Exhibere se non potest martyrem qui fraternam non tenuit caritatem. Docet hoc et contestatur Paulus apostolus, dicens: Et si habuero fidem ita ut montes transferam, caritatem autem non habeam, nihil sum; et si in cibos distribuero omnia mea, et si tradidero corpus meum ut ardeam, caritatem autem non habeam, nihil proficio . . . Ad regnum caelorum non potest pervenire discordia; ad praemium Christi, qui dixit, hoc est mandatum meum ut diligatis invicem quemadmodum dilexi vos, pertinere non poterit qui dilectionem Christi perfida dissensione violavit . . . Cum Deo manere non possunt qui esse in ecclesia Dei unanimes noluerunt. Ardeant licet flammis, et ignibus traditi vel obiecti bestiis animas suas ponant, non erit illa fidei corona sed poena perfidiae.104

Vide quantum bonum sit caritatis. si ita martyrium fecerimus ut nostras velimus ab hominibus reliquias honorari, si opinionem vulgi sectantes intrepidi sanguinem fuderimus et substantiam nostram usque ad mendicitatem propriam dederimus, huic operi non tam praemium quam poena debetur et perfidiae magis tormenta sunt quam corona victoriae.

The same two biblical subtexts underlie these two passages, the commandment to love one another and Paul’s encomium of love (1 Cor. 13). But whereas Cyprian quotes Paul directly, Jerome gives an amplified paraphrase (si in cibos distribuero omnia mea, and si opinionem vulgi sectantes intrepidi sanguinem fuderimus for si tradidero corpus meum). Secondly, Jerome adopts some of the terminology employed exclusively by Cyprian to emphasize that someone deserves to be punished rather than rewarded if he or she becomes a martyr out of the wrong motivation. Cyprian speaks specifically of schismatics and shows how selfcontradictory the concept of the schismatic is,¹⁰⁵ but Jerome includes all prospective martyrs (hence his use of the all-inclusive first-person plurals fecerimus, velimus, fuderimus, and dederimus). At the beginning of his commentary on Galatians, Jerome discusses the four kinds of apostles. After identifying the third type, someone appointed through favoritism, he adds an anecdotal observation: “Today we see a great many appointed to the episcopate not because God has deemed them worthy but because they have garnered the favor of the common people” (nunc videmus plurimos non Dei iudicio, sed redempto favore vulgi in sacerdotium subrogari).¹⁰⁶

¹⁰⁴ Vnit. eccl. 14; P. Siniscalco, P. Mattei, and M. Poirier (eds.), Cyprien de Carthage: L’unité de l’Église (De ecclesiae catholicae unitate), SC 500 (Paris, 2006), 214–16. ¹⁰⁵ Cf. Mattei in L’unité de l’Église, 214n1: “Le martyre hors de l’Église n’a pas de sens; ce qui est expression de l’amour ne peut exister dans le schisme, par définition négation de l’amour.” ¹⁰⁶ Comm. Gal. 1.1.

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The phrase redempto favore vulgi appears to have been taken over from the Epistula ad Donatum (11), where Cyprian exposes the futility of pursuing political prestige as an end in itself and laments the hefty price the office-holder pays with his integrity and pocketbook to reinforce his status, such as exhausting his fortune to garner the goodwill of the populace (redemptus favor vulgi).¹⁰⁷ Not only is the expression in question unique to Cyprian and Jerome, a coincidence which alone initially suggests a possible genetic relationship between the two texts, but also there is a thematic correspondence. Jerome borrows the turn of phrase, along with its cynical sense, and transfers it to the ecclesiastical realm to make damning insinuations about the motives of clerics who owe their ordination not to the mandate of God but to their success in pandering to the masses.¹⁰⁸ There remains one final clandestine Cyprianic echo in Jerome’s commentaries that has flown under the radar of modern readers. Like the one just adduced, it comes from the Epistula ad Donatum (2), and its Hieronymian counterpart is in the opening lines of the third Galatians preface: Cyprian What kind or how great a thing can come from me into your mind? The scanty insignificance of my meager talent produces a limited harvest and enriches the soil with no fruitful deposits. Nevertheless, I will proceed with such ability as I have, for the subject on which I am about to speak assists me. In lawcourts, in the public assembly, and from the speaker’s platforms let a supple eloquence be tossed about by shaky ambition. When one speaks about the Lord, about God, the pure integrity of expression relies for the conviction of faith not on the power of eloquence but on substance. So then, accept from me words that are not clever but forceful, not decorated with a cultivated style aimed at enticing a popular audience, but simple in their unvarnished truthfulness aimed at proclaiming divine mercy.

Jerome I have forged this third volume on Galatians, Paula and Eustochium, being not unaware of my own limitations and recognizing that the little sputtering stream of my meager talent barely makes a sound. Nowadays in churches the simplicity and purity of the Apostle’s words are done away with and other qualities are in demand. We congregate as if we were in the Athenaeum or in lecture halls and we long for the thundering applause of bystanders and a speech that, like a dolled-up harlot strolling in the streets, is decorated in the deceit of rhetorical artifice and aims to win the favor of the masses rather than to instruct them.

¹⁰⁷ Cum auceps temporum palpator abscessit, cum privati latus nudum desertor adsecla foedavit, tunc laceratae domus plagae conscientiam feriunt, tunc rei familiaris exhaustae damna noscuntur, quibus redemptus favor vulgi et caducis atque inanibus votis popularis aura quaesita est. ¹⁰⁸ Abuse of opportunistic clerics was a mainstay of Jerome’s satiric stock-in-trade. See A. Cain, Jerome and the Monastic Clergy: A Commentary on Letter 52 to Nepotian, with an Introduction, Text, and Translation (Leiden, 2013).

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 ’      

Quale vel quantum est, quod in pectus tuum veniat ex nobis? Exilis ingenii angusta mediocritas tenues admodum fruges parit, nullis ad copiam fecundi caespitis culminibus ingravescit, adgrediar tamen facultate, qua valeo: nam et materia dicendi facit mecum. In iudiciis, in contione, pro rostris opulenta facundia volubili ambitione iactetur: cum de Domino, de Deo vox est, vocis pura sinceritas non eloquentiae viribus nititur ad fidei argumenta sed rebus. Denique accipe non diserta, sed fortia, nec ad audientiae popularis inlecebram culto sermone fucata, sed ad divinam indulgentiam praedicandam rudi veritate simplicia.109

Tertium ad Galatas, o Paula et Eustochium, volumen hoc cudimus non ignari imbecillitatis nostrae et exilis ingenii rivulum vix parvo strepentem murmure sentientes. Iam enim et in ecclesiis ista quaeruntur omissaque apostolicorum simplicitate et puritate verborum quasi ad Athenaeum et ad auditoria convenitur ut plausus circumstantium suscitentur, ut oratio rhetoricae artis fucata mendacio quasi quaedam meretricula procedat in publicum, non tam eruditura populos quam favorem populi quaesitura.

Lactantius knew this Cyprianic passage well.¹¹⁰ Jerome did, too, and in fact he quoted it several years later in a letter of 393 to Nepotian.¹¹¹ He also evidently had it in mind when he was dictating his Pauline commentaries. Like his model, he conventionally claims that he is inadequate as a prose stylist.¹¹² He also takes over the specifically Cyprianic phrase exile ingenium but substitutes his own rivulet metaphor for the agricultural one. Both writers use this self-deprecatory topos as an occasion for articulating the main lines of a Christian stylistic aesthetic they define in contradistinction to the one prevalent in the forensic (Cyprian) and scholastic and ecclesiastical (Jerome) spheres. When it comes to the Gospel, style should be trumped by substance,¹¹³ and rhetorical vacuity by straightforward meaning.¹¹⁴ For a meretricious style concerned with winning

¹⁰⁹ Molager, A Donat, 76–8. ¹¹⁰ J. Fontaine, Aspects et problèmes de la prose d’art latine au IIIe siècle, la genèse des styles latins chrétiens (Turin, 1968), 163n26. For Cyprian’s influence on Lactantius more generally, see R. M. Ogilvie, The Library of Lactantius (Oxford, 1978), 88–9; J. McGuckin, “Does Lactantius Denigrate Cyprian?,” JThS n.s. 39 (1988): 119–24. ¹¹¹ Audi igitur, ut beatus Cyprianus ait, non diserta, sed fortia (Ep. 52.4.3). A few years later, in his commentary on Jonah (396), Jerome would again evoke the Epistula ad Donatum. See Duval, “Saint Cyprien et le roi de Ninive,” 551–70. ¹¹² An overview of this convention is given by T. Janson, Latin Prose Prefaces: Studies in Literary Conventions (Göteborg, 1964), 124–33. For a brief discussion of Jerome’s self-deprecation as a prose stylist, see J. H. D. Scourfield, Consoling Heliodorus: A Commentary on Jerome, Letter 60 (Oxford, 1993), 77–9. ¹¹³ The precursor of this antagonism between rhetoric and truth, which Cyprian frames here as an opposition between substance and empty eloquence, is the age-old dispute in classical antiquity between rhetoric and philosophy, on which see E. Krentz, “Logos or sophia: The Pauline Use of the Ancient Dispute between Rhetoric and Philosophy,” in J. T. Fitzgerald, T. H. Olbricht, and L. M. White (eds.), Early Christianity and Classical Culture: Comparative Studies in Honor of Abraham J. Malherbe (Leiden, 2003), 277–90. ¹¹⁴ Cyprian’s point seems rather ironic in light of the argument of M. Szarmach, “Ad Donatum des Heiligen Cyprian als rhetorischer Protreptik,” Eos 77 (1989): 289–97, that what the Epistula ad Donatum lacks in substance it makes up for in rhetorical refinement.

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popular approval rather than with instructing only obfuscates the simplicity of the Lord’s words.

Lactantius Lactantius is mentioned several times in the Pauline commentaries, in all but one case in a laudatory way.¹¹⁵ Jerome inducts him into the hall of fame of Latin Christian literature, giving him a spot alongside Tertullian, Cyprian, and Hilary.¹¹⁶ He cites him as an authoritative historical source for the alleged ethnic connection between the Galatians and Gauls.¹¹⁷ He also praises the De ira Dei for its eloquent style and enthusiastically directs his readers to it for fuller discussion of the topic of anger.¹¹⁸ Jerome does nevertheless criticize Lactantius for failing to distinguish adequately between the persons of the Trinity in his now-lost collection of letters to his student Demetrianus.¹¹⁹ There are at least two places in his opus Paulinum where Jerome appropriates uniquely Lactantian turns of phrase without crediting his source. In Comm. Gal. 4.12b–14 he cites Paul and Peter as examples of how men of God in positions of church authority should not lord it over fellow believers. He then seizes the opportunity to level a criticism at the haughtiness of some bishops: “These statements exhort us too to be humble and they strike down the haughtiness of bishops, who are situated as if on some lofty watchtower (velut in aliqua sublimi specula constituti) and scarcely deign to look at mere mortals and speak to their

¹¹⁵ For some studies of Jerome’s reception of Lactantius, see M. Perrin, “Jérôme lecteur de Lactance,” in Duval (ed.), Jérôme entre l’Occident et l’Orient, 99–114; N. Adkin, “The Preamble to Book V of Lactantius’ Divinae institutiones and Jerome,” RSLR 39 (2003): 101–8; A. Cain, “Three Further Echoes of Lactantius in Jerome,” Philologus 154 (2010): 88–96. On Lactantius’s late antique fortuna, see J. Doignon, “Lactance contre Salluste dans le prologue du De Trinitate de saint Hilaire?,” REL 38 (1960): 116–21. ¹¹⁶ Comm. Eph., lib. 1, prol. ll. 27–8. ¹¹⁷ Comm. Gal., lib. 2, prol. ll. 14–26. According to Jerome (Vir. ill. 80.2), this work originally had consisted of four books of letters to Probus, who is identified as Petronius Probianus, consul of 322, by T. D. Barnes, “Some Missing Names,” Phoenix 27 (1973): 135–55 (149). ¹¹⁸ Firmianus noster librum de ira Dei docto pariter et eloquenti sermone conscripsit, quem qui legerit puto ei ad irae intellectum satis abundeque posse sufficere (Comm. Eph. 4.26a). For another fourthcentury Christian reader of this Lactantian treatise, see A. Cain, “Gregory of Elvira, Lactantius, and the Reception of the De ira Dei,” VChr 63 (2009): 1–6. ¹¹⁹ Hoc ideo quia multi per imperitiam Scripturarum (quod et Firmianus in octavo ad Demetrianum epistolarum libro facit) adserunt Spiritum sanctum saepe Patrem, saepe Filium nominari et, cum perspicue in Trinitate credamus, tertiam personam auferentes non substantiam eius volunt esse sed nomen (Comm. Gal. 4.6). Jerome later aired this same complaint in Ep. 84.7.1: Lactantius in libris suis et maxime in epistulis ad Demetrianum Spiritus sancti negat omnino substantiam et errore iudaico dicit eum ad Patrem referri vel ad Filium et sanctificationem utriusque personae sub eius nomine demonstrari.

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fellow servants.”¹²⁰ This lookout-tower imagery, and in fact the exact six-word sequence with which Jerome expresses it, had already been used by Lactantius in Divinae institutiones 2.2.18 to figure himself as an elevated messenger of divine truth: It delights me, being situated as if on some lofty watchtower from which all may be able to hear, to shout that saying of Persius: “O souls bent toward the earth and destitute of heavenly things!” Look instead to heaven: God your Creator has aroused you to behold it. Iuvat igitur velut in aliqua sublimi specula constitutum, unde universi exaudire possint, Persianum illud proclamare: O curvae in terras animae et caelestium inanes. Caelum potius intuemini, ad cuius spectaculum vos excitavit ille artifex vester Deus.¹²¹

The only other comparable occurrence of the phrase in question in ancient Latin literature, outside Lactantius and Jerome,¹²² is found in Cyprian’s Epistula ad Donatum 9: O si et possis in illa sublimi specula constitutus oculos tuos inserere secretis . . .¹²³ The Cyprianic version is virtually identical to its Lactantian and Hieronymian counterparts but it nevertheless differs from them in two notable respects. In Cyprian, velut is missing and specula is modified by illa, not aliqua. Two conclusions may therefore be drawn about the interrelationship of these three texts: Lactantius mimicked Cyprian and made minor adjustments, and Jerome in turn borrowed wholesale from Lactantius. Later in the same commentary, as he begins to delve into the conflict between the flesh and the spirit, Jerome makes the following pithy statement: “The flesh delights in what is present and fleeting, and the spirit in the eternal and in future things” (Caro praesentibus delectatur et brevibus, spiritus perpetuis et futuris).¹²⁴ This graceful line appears to be traceable back to Lactantius, who writes: “Future things are to be preferred to present ones, divine to earthly ones, and lasting to fleeting ones” ( futura praesentibus et divina terrenis et perpetua brevibus esse

¹²⁰ Quae quidem et nos ad humilitatem provocant et supercilium decutiunt episcoporum, qui velut in aliqua sublimi specula constituti vix dignantur videre mortales et adloqui conservos suos. ¹²¹ E. Heck and A. Wlosok (eds.), Lactantius: Divinarum Institutionum libri septem, fasc. 1: Libri I et II (Leipzig, 2005), 116. ¹²² Jerome employs it also in Comm. Soph. 1.1: Iste ergo propheta, qui erat in specula et in sublimibus constitutus . . . ¹²³ O si et possis in illa sublimi specula constitutus oculos tuos inserere secretis, recludere cubiculorum obductas fores et ad conscientiam luminum penetralia occulta reserare: aspicias ab inpudicis geri quod nec possit aspicere frons pudica, videas quod crimen sit et videre, videas quod vitiorum furore dementes gessisse se negant et gerere festinant. ¹²⁴ Comm. Gal. 5.17.

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anteponenda).¹²⁵ Jerome drops divina terrenis from the Lactantian triptych but retains the first and third antitheses,¹²⁶ which are governed by the zeugmatic delectatur. The verbal concatenation present in Lactantius and in a slightly syncopated form in Jerome is found only in these two writers and only here, and this fact significantly increases the probability that Jerome retrieved it from Lactantius and modified it to suit his tastes.

Conclusion Before we consider the broader implications of our source-critical investigation, it will be helpful to summarize its findings. Despite his disavowals of classical literature, Jerome references the Latin classics rather often and draws from no less than seven authors (Horace, Seneca the Younger, Quintilian, Terence, Cicero, Virgil, and Sallust). As for the three Christian authors, we are able to identify at least a dozen (unattributed) borrowings from as many as nine writings of Tertullian (De ieiunio, Ad uxorem, Adversus Marcionem, De praescriptione haereticorum, De resurrectione mortuorum, De pudicitia, De monogamia, De exhortatione castitatis, De anima), no less than four from three different Cyprianic treatises (De ecclesiae catholicae unitate, Epistula ad Donatum, De zelo et livore), and two from Lactantius’s Divinae institutiones. As we saw in the previous chapter, Jerome characterizes his Pauline commentaries as a potpourri of Greek exegetica and his own insights but does not specify the proportions of each. Nevertheless, as we also observed, there is good reason to take him at his word that his commentaries are substantially indebted to Greek sources, and most of all to Origen. Yet, just how substantially is hard to say for the simple reason that the vast majority of these sources are lost. The findings of the present chapter are instructive in this regard. For wherever phraseological or conceptual echoes of Latin literature (classical and Christian) turn up in Jerome’s prose, we can be assured that Latin intertexts are in play and that, by process of elimination, Greek ones are not. If all of these echoes can be said to share one common denominator, it is that none of them immediately contributes to the core exegetical content, or at least not in the way the Greek commentaries do. Their basic function is either utilitarian or aesthetic, or both simultaneously. Some, such as Tertullian’s sword-and-cup analogy and his excursus about national stereotypes, supplement a particular argument or interpretation Jerome advances. Others are aphoristic locutions

¹²⁵ Div. inst. 7.1.5. ¹²⁶ On Jerome’s fondness for antithesis, see J. Hritzu, The Style of the Letters of St. Jerome (Washington, D.C., 1939), 92–6.

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(e.g., natura non erubescenda, sed veneranda est) and catchy expressions (e.g., velut in aliqua sublimi specula constituti), and their primary aim is to enliven the surrounding prose. Moreover, the classical and Christian literary references are of neither sufficient number nor substance to turn the conventional wisdom on its head and second-guess the fundamentally Greek flavor of Jerome’s exegesis. Even still, his four Pauline commentaries emerge in the end as an even more colorful literary patchwork than they traditionally have been believed to be.

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Conclusion In the autumn of 386, as the sailing season was drawing to a close, Jerome shipped copies of his four Pauline commentaries to Rome. He had high hopes—their prefaces leave no doubt—that they would be welcomed with fanfare and that he himself would now be recognized as the Latin West’s pre-eminent authority on Paul.¹ Within a decade they would reach North Africa’s shores and find their way into the hands of Augustine, at the time still a priest who was working on his own commentary on Galatians. Troubled by Jerome’s interpretation of the Peter-Paul incident at Antioch (Gal. 2.11–14), he sent him a letter of veiled criticism in 394/5 which irritated the recipient.² A few years later, Jerome’s work on Paul would again come under fire, this time from his former friend Rufinus, who publicly accused him of heresy for having espoused (in his commentary on Ephesians) Origenian doctrines that were deemed problematic at the time.³ Augustine and Rufinus were not the only contemporary consumers of Jerome’s commentaries; “Budapest Anonymous” (between 396 and 405) and Pelagius (between 406 and 409) leaned on them for their own expositions of Paul.⁴ In the centuries following his death in c.419, the historical Jerome, who had been a polarizing figure throughout his long literary career, gradually morphed into an iconic, larger-than-life symbol of Christian piety and scholarship.⁵ ¹ See pp. 63–74. ² This letter, the first in a sometimes tense correspondence that spanned nearly a quarter-century, is preserved as Ep. 28 in Augustine’s epistolary corpus. For enlightening discussions of their correspondence, with an emphasis on their disagreement about the Galatians passage, see A. Fürst, Augustins Briefwechsel mit Hieronymus (Münster, 1999); E. Plumer, Augustine’s Commentary on Galatians: Introduction, Text, Translation, and Notes (Oxford, 2003), 47–53; J. Ebbeler, Disciplining Christians: Correction and Community in Augustine’s Letters (Oxford, 2012), chapter 3. For Augustine’s reading of Jerome’s commentary on Philemon, see P. Decock, “The Reception of the Letter to Philemon in the Early Church: Origen, Jerome, Chrysostom, and Augustine,” in D. F. Tolmie (ed.), Philemon in Perspective: Interpreting a Pauline Letter (Berlin, 2010), 273–87 (282–5). ³ K. Romaniuk, “Une controverse entre Jérôme et Rufin d’Aquilée à propos de l’épître de saint Paul aux Éphésiens,” Aegyptus 43 (1963): 84–106; E. A. Clark, “The Place of Jerome’s Commentary on Ephesians in the Origenist Controversy: The Apokatastasis and Ascetic Ideals,” VC 41 (1987): 154–71; N. Pace, “Il Commento all’Epistola agli Efesini di Gerolamo nella controversia origeniana,” in L. F. Pizzolato and M. Rizzi (eds.), Origene maestro di vita spirituale (Mailand, 2001), 249–62. ⁴ A. Souter, Pelagius’s Expositions of Thirteen Epistles of St Paul, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1922), 1.183–5; H. J. Frede, Ein neuer Paulustext und Kommentar, 2 vols. (Freiburg, 1973–4), 1.215–17, 252. ⁵ On the development of this cult of “Saint” Jerome, see E. Rice, Saint Jerome in the Renaissance (Baltimore, 1985), and on the idealization of him in medieval and Renaissance art, see R. Jungblut, Hieronymus: Darstellung und Verehrung eines Kirchenvaters (Tübingen, 1967); H. Friedmann, A Bestiary for Saint Jerome: Animal Symbolism in European Religious Art (Washington, D.C., 1980), 48–100; B. Ridderbos, Saint and Symbol: Images of Saint Jerome in Early Italian Art (Groningen, 1984),

Jerome’s Commentaries on the Pauline Epistles and the Architecture of Exegetical Authority. Andrew Cain, Oxford University Press. © Andrew Cain 2021. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192847195.003.0009

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Consequently, his authority as an interpreter of Paul became solidified, indeed revered. He was quoted approvingly by numerous Pauline commentators— everyone from Claudius of Turin, Sedulius Scottus, Haimo of Auxerre, and Rabanus Maurus in the ninth century, to Robert Grossteste and Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century.⁶ The influence of Jerome’s commentaries was not confined to strictly exegetical literature, either. To take just two among scores of examples from the twelfth century alone, a purple passage from his discussion of the fruits of the Spirit (Gal. 5.22–3) was quoted by Aelred of Rievaulx in his Mirror of Charity,⁷ and another passage from this same commentary was quoted by Peter Abelard in his Christian Theology.⁸ During the sixteenth century, however, Jerome’s Pauline commentaries began to hit choppy waters. There were unflagging admirers, to be sure, and perhaps none was more visible then, and certainly none more familiar to us today, than the Dutch humanist Desiderius Erasmus.⁹ He is famous of course for editing Jerome’s letters,¹⁰ but he also was a student and annotator of Paul and found much to applaud in Jerome’s work.¹¹ At the polar end of the spectrum were the Protestant Reformers.¹² John Calvin, for one, tended to dismiss his Pauline exegesis as papist babble,¹³ and Martin Luther had a notoriously volatile relationship with Jerome as a biblical interpreter.¹⁴ 63–88; D. Russo, Saint Jérôme en Italie: étude d’iconographie et de spiritualité (XIIIe–XVe siècle) (Paris, 1987), 201–51; P. Conrads, Hieronymus, scriptor et interpres: Zur Ikonographie des Eusebius Hieronymus im frühen und hohen Mittelalter (Würzburg, 1990). ⁶ This is to say nothing of anonymous early medieval commentators. On this trend more generally, see T. O’Loughlin, “Individual Anonymity and Collective Identity: The Enigma of Early Medieval Latin Theologians,” RecTh 64 (1997): 291–314. ⁷ See A. Cain, “Aelred of Rievaulx and Jerome’s Commentary on Galatians,” CSQ 45 (2010): 3–6. ⁸ Peter Abelard, Theol. chr. 2.109 (CCCM 12: 181), quoting Jerome, Comm. Gal. 6.10; cf. W. Otten, From Paradise to Paradigm: A Study of Twelfth-Century Humanism (Leiden, 2004), 174. On Abelard’s admiration for Jerome, see C. Mews, “Un lecteur de Jérome au XIIe siècle: Pierre Abélard,” in Y.-M. Duval (ed.), Jérôme entre l’Occident et l’Orient: XVIe centenaire du départ de saint Jérôme de Rome et de son installation à Bethléem: actes du colloque de Chantilly, septembre 1986 (Paris, 1988), 429–44. ⁹ Cf. P. Bietenholz, “Erasmus von Rotterdam und der Kult des Heiligen Hieronymus,” in S. Füssel and J. Knape (eds.), Poesis und Pictura: Studien zum Verhältnis von Text und Bild in Handschriften und alten Drucken: Festschrift Dieter Wuttke (Baden-Baden, 1989), 191–221. ¹⁰ H. Pabel, Herculean Labours: Erasmus and the Editing of St. Jerome’s Letters in the Renaissance (Leiden, 2008). ¹¹ J. J. Bateman (trans.), Collected Works of Erasmus: Paraphrases on the Epistles to Timothy, Titus, and Philemon, the Epistles of Peter and Jude, the Epistle of James, the Epistles of John, the Epistle to the Hebrews (Toronto, 1993), xv; R. A. Faber (trans.), Collected Works of Erasmus: Annotations on Galatians and Ephesians (Toronto, 2017), xii. On Erasmus’s evolving theology based on his study of Paul, see G. G. Kroeker, Erasmus in the Footsteps of Paul (Toronto, 2011). ¹² On the Reformers’ views of Paul, see also R. W. Holder (ed.), A Companion to Paul in the Reformation (Leiden, 2009). ¹³ W. J. Bouwsma, John Calvin: A Sixteenth-Century Portrait (Oxford, 1988), 266n60; cf. D. C. Steinmetz, “Calvin and the Patristic Exegesis of Paul,” in D. C. Steinmetz (ed.), The Bible in the Sixteenth Century (Durham, 1990), 100–18; A. N. S. Lane, John Calvin: Student of the Church Fathers (Edinburgh, 1999). ¹⁴ For Luther’s low opinion of Jerome’s Galatians commentary in particular, see K. Hagen, Luther’s Approach to Scripture as Seen in His “Commentaries” on Galatians, 1519–1538 (Tübingen, 1993). Cf. J. Lössl, “Martin Luther’s Jerome: New Evidence for a Changing Attitude,” in A. Cain and J. Lössl (eds.), Jerome of Stridon: His Life, Writings, and Legacy (Aldershot, 2009), 237–51.

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Jerome would have been disappointed, if not aggravated, by this Rezeptionsgeschichte—not as much by my brief run-through as by the fact that his opus Paulinum has not been admired uniformly in posterity. It is, after all, a work of which he was exceedingly proud, memorializing it in the personal bibliography he appended to his monumental literary history De viris illustribus, which he composed a few years after the commentaries themselves.¹⁵ More to the point, in one of its prefaces he heralded his Pauline oeuvre as “a work not attempted before me by writers in our language,” and in the very next breath he tried to justify this claim by dismissing his predecessor Marius Victorinus as a virtual Christian impostor and exegetical lightweight.¹⁶ The polemicizing rhetoric aside, Jerome’s assertion does raise an important question: was his project in fact unprecedented, and if so, then how? Here again the reception has been mixed. For instance, Caroline Bammel cites Jerome’s as the very first “scientific” (“wissenschaftlich”) Pauline commentaries in Latin.¹⁷ Yet, as Stephen Cooper judiciously reminds us: “A strong case can be made for giving Victorinus the title instead if we recognize that there were different and competing ideas of what exactly counted as wissenschaftlich during the period.”¹⁸ Thus, the verdict hangs ultimately on how the terms of the debate are framed. Where, then, does this leave us? What are we to say of the overall achievement of Jerome’s commentaries in their contemporary context? All six of Paul’s late antique commentators in Latin—Marius Victorinus, “Ambrosiaster,” Jerome, Augustine, “Budapest Anonymous,” and Pelagius—can be said to share the same overarching objectives: affirming the canonicity of the epistles; establishing and/or defending a particular text or translation of them; claiming ultimate understanding of Paul’s message and setting forth the correct interpretation of it against “heretical” sects; instructing readers in biblically based morals; and promoting a specific style of scholarship and spiritual authority.¹⁹ As we have seen throughout this book, Jerome’s four Pauline commentaries certainly were animated by all of the concerns listed above. Even still, his exhibit certain features that make them stand out from the pack. For one thing, he broadens the scope of his prefaces beyond the purely expository to include individualized apology and polemic aimed at paving a smoother path for his commentaries’ reception in Rome and beyond. His anti-heretical interventions far outpace (for better or worse) those of his peer Pauline interpreters in both

¹⁵ Vir. ill. 135.3. ¹⁶ See pp. 63–6. ¹⁷ “Die Pauluskommentare des Hieronymus: die ersten wissenschaftlichen lateinischen Bibelkommentare?,” in Cristianesimo Latino e cultura Greca sino al sec. IV: XXI Incontro di studiosi dell’antichità cristiana, Rome 7–9 maggio 1992 (Rome, 1993), 187–207 (206). ¹⁸ Marius Victorinus’ Commentary on Galatians: Introduction, Translation, and Notes (Oxford, 2005), 109n99. ¹⁹ In this paragraph I paraphrase Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe’s percipient observations. See her “Prologue Topics and Translation Problems in Latin Commentaries on Paul,” in J. Lössl and J. Watt (eds.), Interpreting the Bible and Aristotle in Late Antiquity: The Alexandrian Commentary Tradition between Rome and Baghdad (Farnham, 2011), 33–47 (47).

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frequency and the variety of Christian groups censured. And he towers with bookish erudition, freighting his prose with back references to the “classics” of secular and early Christian literature. More fundamentally for his exegetical program, Jerome is in a league of his own in systematically applying a finegrained ad fontes approach to biblical textual criticism and interpretation, which was far ahead of its time in the Latin West at least,²⁰ not to mention refreshingly prescient of the modern academic study of the Bible in its philology-centeredness. Considered alongside the Pauline corpora of the other five commentators in his Latin cohort, Jerome’s own corpus is striking also for its research-intensiveness, expository detail, and sheer size;²¹ on average, each of his commentaries is about two-thirds longer than anyone else’s. This glaring differential has something to do of course with the author’s characteristic interpretive thoroughness. In a more causative sense, it rests on his prolific incorporation of Greek exegesis, the pure extensiveness of which makes him unique among the Latin-language interpreters of Paul in the fourth and early fifth centuries.²² The very fact that he preserved this antiquarian material at all—albeit for the most part in an unattributed and paraphrased form—puts us greatly in his debt, and it ranks as one of his singular achievements for the simple reason that a substantial amount of the Greek source texts in question is otherwise lost. Yet, to characterize his commentaries as essentially an unoriginal composite of them, as some have done,²³ is misleading and depreciates the actual sophistication of his variorum compositional technique. Jerome was a compiler of sorts, to be sure, yet he excerpted and refracted his source material in such a way as to draw authority from his association with Greek Christian authorities while at the same time asserting, ever so subtly, his intellectual independence from them as well as his own superior critical judgment.²⁴ Jerome, then, strategically positioned himself as a mediator between East and West. What Cicero,²⁵ Calcidius,²⁶ and others before him had done by making

²⁰ See G. Raspanti, “L’esegesi della lettera ai Galati nel IV secolo d.C.: Dal commentario dottrinale di Mario Vittorino ed Ambrosiaster a quello filologico di Girolamo,” Ho Theològos 25 (2007): 109–28. ²¹ J. B. Lightfoot, The Epistle of St. Paul to the Galatians (London, 1874), 232, calls Jerome’s commentary on Galatians “the most valuable of all the patristic commentaries on the Epistle to the Galatians,” which is notable for its “extensive learning, acute criticism, and lively and vigorous exposition.” ²² Unlike Marius Victorinus, Ambrosiaster, and Augustine before them, both “Budapest Anonymous” and Pelagius drew to some extent on Origen; see Frede, Ein neuer Paulustext, 1.205–6; T. de Bruyn, Pelagius’s Commentary on St Paul’s Epistle to the Romans (Oxford, 1993), 4. However, Jerome stands alone in the sheer extent of his engagement with Origen’s Pauline exegesis. ²³ E.g., H. von Campenhausen, Lateinische Kirchenväter (Stuttgart, 1960), 135; M. Simonetti, Profilo storico dell’esegesi patristica (Rome, 1981), 92. ²⁴ See pp. 188–94. ²⁵ See C. Bishop, Cicero, Greek Learning, and the Making of a Roman Classic (Oxford, 2019); J. P. F. Wynne, Cicero on the Philosophy of Religion: On the Nature of the Gods and On Divination (Cambridge, 2019), 1–49. ²⁶ See G. Reydams-Schils, Calcidius on Plato’s Timaeus: Greek Philosophy, Latin Reception, and Christian Contexts (Cambridge, 2020).

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Greek philosophical texts and concepts more readily accessible to their fellow Latin-speakers,²⁷ Jerome did by putting his own condensed rendition of Greek exegetical material into the hands of Christians who either were not fluent enough in Greek to make meaningful use of it themselves, or even if they were, would have had difficulty obtaining copies of these texts which did not circulate widely in the West,²⁸ and in any event would have lacked the requisite scholarly training, acumen, and discipline to pinpoint the most reliable authors and interpretations. Jerome’s back-to-the-sources methodology ostensibly gave these same Christians exclusive and (depending on their individual resources) otherwise unavailable access to the biblical text in its original languages, all the while exposing for them the deficiencies of the received Latin translation(s) of Paul’s writings. Through his commentaries he already had done all of this work for them and set out to equip them in a single weighty reference work with every tool they might need, right at their fingertips, for the advanced study of Paul. Moreover, in adapting the form and substance of the Greek exegetical tradition to an entirely new cultural and linguistic context, Jerome effectively recalibrated and retooled Latin biblical exegesis and created what was for all practical purposes a new species of the Pauline commentary in Latin.

²⁷ Cf. A. Capone, “Rebus enim novis nova fingenda sunt nomina: esegesi, rinnovamento e dialogo nel cristianesimo dei primi secoli,” Paideia 75 (2020): 653–74. ²⁸ On the availability of Greek patristic texts in the late Latin West, especially with regard to Jerome’s social network, see A. Cain, “Defending Hedibia and Detecting Eusebius: Jerome’s Correspondence with Two Gallic Women (Epp. 120–121),” Medieval Prosopography 23 (2003): 15–34. See also P. Courcelle, Les lettres grecques en Occident de Macrobe à Cassiodore (Paris, 1948).

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Weiss, H.-F., Frühes Christentum und Gnosis: Eine rezeptionsgeschichtliche Studie (Tübingen, 2008). Wermelinger, O., “Le canon des latins au temps de Jérôme et d’Augustin,” in J.-D. Kaestli and O. Wermelinger (eds.), Le canon de l’Ancien Testament (Geneva, 1984), 153–96. White, B., “How to Read a Book: Irenaeus and the Pastoral Epistles Reconsidered,” VChr 65 (2011): 125–49. White, B., Remembering Paul: Ancient and Modern Contests over the Image of the Apostle (Oxford, 2014). White, J., “The Structural Analysis of Philemon: A Point of Departure in the Formal Analysis of the Pauline Letter,” SBL Seminar Papers 1 (1971): 1–4. Whitley, T. J., “Poison in the Panarion: Beasts, Heretics, and Sexual Deviants,” VChr 70 (2016): 237–58. Wickert, U., “Die Persönlichkeit des Paulus in den Paulus kommentaren Theodors von Mopsuestia,” ZNTW 53 (1962): 51–66. Wickert, U., Studien zu den Pauluskommentaren Theodors von Mopsuestia: Als Beitrag zum Verständnis der antiochenischen Theologie (Berlin, 1962). Wiesen, D. S., St. Jerome as a Satirist (Ithaca, NY, 1964). Wikenhauser, A., “Der heilige Hieronymus und die Kurzschrift,” TQ 29 (1910): 50–87. Wilcox, M., “Upon the Tree: Deut. 21:22–23 in the New Testament,” JBL 96 (1977): 85–99. Wilder, T. L., “Pseudonymity, the New Testament, and the Pastoral Epistles,” in A. Köstenberger and T. L. Wilder (eds.), Entrusted with the Gospel: Paul’s Theology in the Pastoral Epistles (Nashville, 2010), 28–51. Wiles, M. F., The Divine Apostle: The Interpretation of St. Paul’s Epistles in the Early Church (Cambridge, 1967). Wiley, G., “A Study of ‘Mystery’ in the New Testament,” GTJ 6 (1985): 349–60. Wilhite, D. E., “Was Marcion a Docetist? The Body of Evidence vs. Tertullian’s Argument,” VChr 70 (2016): 1–36. Wilken, R. L., John Chrysostom and the Jews: Rhetoric and Reality in the Late Fourth Century (Eugene, 2004). Wilkinson, J., Jerusalem Pilgrims before the Crusades (Warminster, 2002). Wilkinson, K., Women and Modesty in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, 2015). Williams, D., “Monarchianism and Photinus of Sirmium as the Persistent Heretical Face of the Fourth Century,” HThR 99 (2006): 187–206. Williams, M. A., “Sethianism,” in A. Marjanen and P. Luomanen (eds.), A Companion to Second-Century Christian “Heretics” (Leiden, 2008), 32–63. Williams, R. D., “Origen: Between Orthodoxy and Heresy,” in W. A. Bienert and U. Kühneweg (eds.), Origeniana Septima: Origenes in den Auseinandersetzungen des 4. Jahrhunderts (Leuven, 1999), 3–14. Williams, R., Arius: Heresy and Tradition (rev. ed., Grand Rapids, 2001). Willmington, H. L., Willmington’s Guide to the Bible (Wheaton, 1982). Wilson, R., Colossians and Philemon (London, 2005). Wilson, S. G., “Gentile Judaizers,” NTS 38 (1992): 605–16. Wilson, S. G., Related Strangers: Jews and Christians 70 ..–170 .. (Minneapolis, 1995). Wimbush, V., “Sophrosyne: Greco-Roman Origins of a Type of Ascetic Behavior,” in J. E. Goehring (ed.), Gnosticism and the Early Christian World (Sonoma, 1990), 89–102. Winn, R., Eusebius of Emesa: Church and Theology in the Mid-Fourth Century (Washington, D.C., 2011). Winter, S., “Paul’s Letter to Philemon,” NTS 33 (1987): 1–15.

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Wipszycka, E., Moines et communautés monastiques en Égypte (IVe–VIIIe siècles) (Warsaw, 2009). Witherington, B., Grace in Galatia: A Commentary on Paul’s Letter to the Galatians (Grand Rapids, 1998). Witherington, B., The Letters to Philemon, the Colossians, and the Ephesians: A SocioRhetorical Commentary on the Captivity Epistles (Grand Rapids, 2007). Wright, J., “Origen in the Scholar’s Den: A Rationale for the Hexapla,” in C. Kannengiesser and W. L. Petersen (eds.), Origen of Alexandria: His World and His Legacy (South Bend, 1988), 48–62. Wucherpfennig, A., Heracleon Philologus: Gnostische Johannesexegese im zweiten Jahrhundert (Tübingen, 2002). Wynne, J. P. F., Cicero on the Philosophy of Religion: On the Nature of the Gods and On Divination (Cambridge, 2019). Yoshiko Reed, A., “The Trickery of the Fallen Angels and the Demonic Mimesis of the Divine: Aetiology, Demonology, and Polemics in the Writings of Justin Martyr,” JECS 12 (2004): 141–71. Young, F., Biblical Exegesis and the Formation of Christian Culture (Cambridge, 1997). Zaganos, D., “Cyrille d’Alexandrie aux prises avec un exégète allégoriste au début de son In Oseam: Didyme l’Aveugle ou Piérius d’Alexandrie?,” VChr 64 (2010): 480–91. Zetzel, J. E. G., Critics, Compilers, and Commentators: An Introduction to Roman Philology, 200 –800  (Oxford, 2018). Ziolkowski, J. M., and M. C. J. Putnam (eds.), The Virgilian Tradition: The First Fifteen Hundred Years (New Haven, 2008). Zisteren, A., “Phrygier oder Kataphrygier?,” TQ 74 (1892): 475–82. Zorzi, M. B., “The Use of the Terms ἁγνεία, παρθενία, σωφροσύνη, and ἐγκράτεια in the Symposium of Methodius of Olympus,” VChr 63 (2009): 138–68. Zuntz, G., The Test of the Epistles (London, 1953).

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Index of Hebrew Words ‫ דניאל‬49n12 ‫ כל‬93–4 ‫ סגלה‬92

‫ אלהים קללת‬96, 96n100 ‫שכר‬ ׁ 124n129

Index of Greek Words ἄδικος 79 αἵρεσις 186 αἱρετικός 186 αἰσχροκερδής 125 ἄνομος 79, 80 ἀρραβῶν 80 ἀρτός 142 βόρβορος 142 γένοιτο 89n63 ἐγκρατής 123 ἐκκλησία 20 ἐνέχυρον 80 ἐπιούσιος 92n89 ἐργοδιώκτης 61, 62n82, 104 ζυμοῖ 83 καυθήσομαι 77 καυχήσομαι 77 κέρδος 21 κληρικός 120n105 κλῆρος 120n105 λογισμούς 120n108 λόγος 75n4 μοναστήριον 10n16 μυστήριον 40n181 ναύκληρος 143 οἱ ἁπλούστεροι 16n58

οἱ πνευματικοί 155n142 οἱ ὑλικοί 155n142 οἱ ψυχικοί 155n142 οἴκος 20 ὄφις 142 παραινετικός 117 πάσσαλος 142 περιούσιος 92 πεπιστωμένως 89n63 περιποίησις 80 πηλίκοις 167 πράξεις 120n108 ῥύγχος 142 σίκερα 124n129 στρατηγικῶς 193 σωφροσύνη 121 σώφρων 78, 121 Τασκοδρουγῖται 142 τεχνικῶς 193 τυρός 142 υἱοθεσία 80 ὑπὸ θεοῦ 95 ὑποτάσσεσθε 78n18 ὑποτασσέσθωσαν 78n18 φιλόξενος 127 φρεναπάται 79 φύραμα 84

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Index of Latin Words abstinens 123 adiuvare 110–11 admirabilis 90 adoptio 80–1 adulescens 111n56 adulescentulus 111 aedificare 91 amare 114 amen 89 adquisitio 80 apostolus 26 ardeam 77 argumentum 33 arrabon 80–1 ars Scripturarum 75n5 auctoritas vinculorum 27 beata vita 110 beneficus 90 bibliothecae 54–5 blasphemans 35 brevitas 24n105 caelebs 110 captatio benevolentiae 62 carnis opus 111 castitas 122 castus 113, 114, 123 clericus 120n105 clerus 120n105 cliens 16, 54 cogis 86 cogitationes 120n108 colloquium 67 comites 75 commentarii 166, 172 commentarioli 172 compellere 57 consolari 110–11 conspersio 83, 84 consurgens 91 contaminatio 51 continens 90 continentia 90n70 corpusculum 11, 132 corrumpit 82, 83n40 cursus honorum 129

damnatio memoriae 74n153 deceptores 79 declamatio 69 decorus 90n72 dederimus 216 deliramenta 140 diabolus 89n65 dilectio 114 diligens 190 discipula 56n60, 59, 103, 104 dispositio 192 divitiae 126n139 doctus 55 doctorum senatus 54, 61 dogma 153 ebrietas 209 eloquentia 69 epistula 54, 104 fabulae 140 favor 217 fecerimus 216 felicitas 215 fermentat 83 fides 118–19 flagitare 54 fons 87, 89 frugifer 90 fuderimus 216 gloria 197 glorier 77 gradus 130n160 gula 209 haeresis 137n11, 153, 186 haereticus 67, 137n11, 139, 163 heresiarches 137n11 idioma apostolicum 27 ignis 133n181 immunditia 210 in dilecto 82 incomptus sermo 55n52 inepta 140

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    ingenium 60 inquam 168 inquit 168, 169 invident 56 invidia 214 invidis 56 ipsae 69n126 iubere 86n50 Iudaizantes 33 labor 60 lector 190 lex ecclesiae 140 libertas 90 libido 123, 133, 209 longitudo operis 90 loquor 168 lucubratio 49 lucubratiuncula 49 luxuria 133, 210 Manichaeus 174n87 massa 83, 84 meditatio Scripturarum 107 ministerium 118–19 mire donatus 90 monasterium 10n16 mons operis amplioris 90 multa turba 103 munuscula 54 mysteria 40, 40n184, 41n189 mystica 40n184 navicularius 143n63 necessitas 114 novum 86 numquam 69n126 nutricius caritate 105n18 officia 125, 128n150 oleum 133n180 opera 120n108 opera liberorum perpetrare 114 opusculum 56, 161 ordo 130 os panis 90 pater 89, 105n18 peculiaris 92 perturbationes animi 123 pestes 141 Pharisaeorum senatus 54n48 Philisthaei 100

Philisthini 99 Philistiim 98–9 pignus 80–1 populus egregius 92 portenta 142 possessio 80 presbyter 118n95 prosperitas 215 prudens 78, 121, 190 pudicitia 122 pudicus 78, 113, 121 pudor 114 qualiacunque 112 recusatio 16, 17, 57 respondens 90 ridicula 140 rivuli 88 sacerdos 118n95 sacerdotalis 122 sacerdotium 118n95 sacramentum 40 sacratiora 40n184 sancta 56, 114 sanctitas 114 salarium 125 saturitas 209 schisma 137n11 scientia Scripturarum 107 sciolus 55n52 scrofa 202 servus Dei 91 sicera 124n129 silens 40, 90 simpliciores 16 simplicitas 62, 79 specula 219–20 stilum figere 55n53 studia 60 studiosus 190 sublimis mandato 90 succrescens 90 summum bonum 110 sus 202 templum 118–19 torquere 215 tria verba iungere 55n54 vel 188n143 velimus 216 verecundia 114

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270

   

veritas 101 veteres 54–5 videns 90 videns meus 68 videns propheta 68n115

vir clarissimus 71 vir desideriorum 48–9 vir sapiens 106 virginitas 111 viscera 27

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Index of Biblical Citations Old Testament and Apocrypha Genesis 2.7 (182) 2.21–4 (183) 2.24 (181) 4.26 (183) 5.22 (183) 5.24 (183) 6.8 (183) 12.1 (183) 18.1–16 (183) 21.1–7 (183) 22.1–14 (183) 22.13 (171) 26.1–6 (183) 26.24 (183) 32.29 (183) 50.20 (30n126) Exodus 7.3 (183) 14.31 (183) 15.20–1 (58n68) 19.5 (92n87) 19.15 (122n116) 23.15 (97) 23.22 (92n87) Leviticus 10.9 (124) Numbers 6.1–6 (124) Deuteronomy 7.6 (92n87) 14.2 (92n87) 21.23 (95, 96, 97n103) 26.18 (92n87) 27.26 (93, 94) Joshua 10.12–13 (183) Judges 3.7 (183) 1 Samuel 12.17–18 (183) 21.1–6 (122) 21.4 (122n116) 2 Samuel 7 (183) 12.1–15 (183) 24.11–14 (183) 1 Kings 3.5 (184) 17 (184) 2 Kings 2.1 (184) 2.11 (184) 4.32–5 (184) 9.9 (184) 13.21 (184) 20.8–11 (184)

Job 40.16b (113, 114) Psalms 1.2b (108) 4 (181) 4.5 (180) 5.9 (187) 72 (104) 78.70–1 (183) 135.4 (92) 140.3 (90) Isaiah 5.27 (116) 6.5 (97) 14.12 (191) 53.12 (79) 65.5 (187) Daniel 9.23 (49) Wisdom 10.1 (182) New Testament Matthew 6.34 (125) 7.18 (157, 158a) 10.9–10 (125) 10.22 (116) 13.1–23 (116n83) 13.8 (116) 25.35 (127) Mark 4.1–20 (116n83) 14.36 (89n64) Luke 2.16 (59) 6.43 (157) 7.41–3 (179, 180) 8.4–15 (116n83) 22.37 (79) John 1.1 (75n4) 6.32–3 (83) 14.30 (191) 17.1–2 (180) Acts 5.41 (26) Romans 3.13–18 (65n104) 5.7 (192) 8.15 (89n64) 8.18 (179, 180) 15.1 (110) 1 Corinthians 1.30 (179) 2.9 (2n14, 192) 2.13 (179, 180) 4.15 (38n170) 5.6 (83, 84) 5.7 (84)

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272

   

New Testament (cont.) 5.7–8 (83, 84) 6.3 (180) 6.18 (2n14) 7.3 (113) 7.5 (115, 122) 7.6 (115) 7.25 (109) 9.13 (125, 126) 9.21 (79) 11.19 (185, 186) 13 (216) 13.3 (77) 15.10 (180) 15.25–6 (2n14) 2 Corinthians 11.30 (27) 12.7 (207) Galatians 1.1 (152, 173, 174, 186) 1.8 (205) 1.8–9 (204) 1.11–12 (153, 175, 203) 1.13–14 (166) 1.19 (112) 2.11–14 (35–6, 223) 2.15 (156) 3.1a (82, 211) 3.10 (93) 3.13–14 (95) 3.16 (65) 4.6 (89n64) 4.14 (206) 4.16 (196) 5.4 (78, 205) 5.7 (77) 5.9 (82, 84) 5.12 (23) 5.13 (77n15, 173) 5.19–21 (77, 133, 185, 186) 5.22–3 (224) 6.1 (109) 6.9 (116) 6.11 (167n44, 168n50) 6.14 (27) 6.16 (173n83) Ephesians 1.9 (40n181) 1.13 (38n173, 179n115) 1.14 (80, 81) 1.21 (191) 2.3 (157) 2.7 (191) 2.8 (179, 180) 2.9 (179, 180) 2.19 (157) 2.19–22 (179n115) 2.22–3a (78)

3.1 (26) 3.1–4 (154, 192) 3.3 (40n181) 3.3–4 (40) 3.4 (40n181) 3.8 (198) 3.8–9 (146) 3.9 (40n181) 3.13 (179n115) 3.14 (78) 3.14–15 (77n15) 4.5 (119n97, 150, 152) 4.10 (152) 4.13 (115) 4.13–15 (179n115) 4.17–19 (41) 4.17–6.20 (38) 4.19 (209) 4.26 (109) 4.26a (180) 4.29 (82) 5.4 (179n115) 5.5 (179n115) 5.7–14 (179n115) 5.8a (157) 5.9 (145, 178) 5.19–21 (210) 5.22 (78n18) 5.22–7 (114) 5.27 (114) 5.28a (115) 5.28b–9 (179n115) 5.31 (42, 181) 5.32 (40n181, 42) 5.33b (197) 6.1–3 (179n115) 6.11 (179n115) 6.12 (41) 6.20 (26) Philippians 1.7 (26) 1.14 (26) 3.5 (92) 3.13 (180) Colossians 1.24 (27) 2.19 (180) 3.8 (180, 181) 4.3 (26) 1 Thessalonians 4.15–17 (2n14) 1 Timothy 1.7 (146n78) 1.10 (146n78) 3.8 (125n130) 4.7 (202n55) 6.8 (125, 126) 6.20 (146n78) 2 Timothy 2.4 (125n130)

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    2.10 (168n50) 4.13 (23) Titus 1.5–9 (118) 1.6 (111) 1.6–7 (208) 1.7 (123, 125) 1.8 (78, 121, 123, 127) 1.8–9 (127, 128) 1.9 (127) 1.10–11 (79) 1.11 (125n130) 1.12 (213) 2.4–5 (113) 2.14 (92) 3.4–7 (150) 3.9 (146n78) 3.10–11 (185, 186, 187)

Philemon 1 (23) 1–3 (26) 5 (182) 6 (28) 7 (27) 8–9 (27) 8–13 (29) 9 (23) 14 (29) 15–16 (29) 22 (23, 28) 1 Peter 1.12 (180) 5.1–2b (119) 5.2 (125n130) 3 John 5–7 (127) 9–11 (127) Relevation 1.1 (127)

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Index of Ancient Sources Adamantius De rect. fid. 1.23 (144n70) 2.6 (144n70) Ambrose Ep. 1.6.2 (120n106) Fid. (99) 2.13.120 (142n50) Off. 1.25 (25n108) 1.28 (125n131) 1.39 (126–7n145) 1.86 (126–7n145) 1.184 (125n131) 1.185 (126n138) 1.246 (125n131) 2.67 (125n131, 126n138) 2.86–90 (120n106) 2.103 (126–7n145) 2.107 (126–7n145) 2.109 (126–7n145) 2.126–7 (126–7n145) 2.133 (125n131) 2.134 (119n103) 3.9 (125n131) Spir. sanc. 1.6.78 (81n27) Tob. (99) vid. (99) virg. (99) Ambrosiaster Comm. Rom. 5.14 (86n48) Comm. Gal. 1.1 (174n87) Comm. Eph. 1.14 (81n27) 4.14 (141n47) Comm. Php. 1.1 (174n87) Comm. 2 Tim. 2.4 (126n138) Quaest. 46.1 (126n138) 76.1 (174n87) Anonymous 1 Clem. 11.1–2 (126n143) Hist. mon. Aeg. 8.16 (120n109) 8.55–6 (126n144) 8.60 (120n109) Rhet. ad Her. 3.10.18 (192n160) V. Olymp. 1 (126n141) V. Pach. SBo 10 (132n175) Apophthegmata patrum Antony 22 (132n177) Nisterus 2 (126n143)

Paphnutius 2 (132n175) Peter the Pionite 1 (132n175) Poemen (132n177) Xious (132n177) Apuleius Met. 1.21 (81n32) Aristotle Rhet. 3.17 (192n160) Athanasius V. Ant. 5.3 (114n66) 78.1–2 (203n59) Augustine C. Cresc. 4.64.79 (141n47) C. litt. Pet. 1.26.28 (141n47) Conf. 7.19.25 (152n120) 8.2.3 (71n141, 72n143) Doctr. chr. 4.27 (120n106) Enarr. in Ps. 30 2.2.3 (120n109) Enchir. 6 (198n21) Epp. 7.4 (142n50) 82.31 (196n9) 82.83 (154n139) 85.2 (126n137) 96.2 (126n137) 112.6–7 (69n123) Gest. Pel. 6.18 (141n47) Haer. 46.1 (174n87) 86 (142n54) Mor. eccl. cath. 1.1 (128n150) Serm. Dom. mon. 2.24.79 (158n156) Aulus Gellius Noct. Att. 17.10.2–3 (11n24) 17.2.21 (81n32) Basil of Ancyra Virg. (PG 30:684) (114n66) Basil of Caesarea Epp. 2.2 (110n53) 42.4 (120n109) Reg. past. 47 (126n140) 48 (126n140) 70 (126n140) Bede V. Cuth. 6 (132n175) Bordeaux Pilgrim Itin. Burd. (CSEL 39:20) (8n11)

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    Caesarius of Arles Serm. 75.2 (120n109) Callinicus V. Hyp. 1.6 (132n174) 26.1 (132n174) Cassiodorus Inst. 1.15.7 (52n36) Cato Agr. 4.59.3 (56n56) Chariton Call. 1.11.6 (213n92) Cicero Ep. ad fam. 7.6.2 (128n151) Fat. 4.7 (213n94) Fin. 2.45 (106n23) Nat. deo. 1.5.10 (58n69) Off. 3.62 (128n151) Orat. 1.32 (106n23) Pro Flacc., fr. 9 (197n14) Pro Lig. 11 (197n14, 214n95) Pro Marc. 11 (48n9) Clement of Alexandria Q. div. salv. 42.2 (120n105) Strom. 3.13.92 (115n79) Cyprian Ep. ad Don. 11 (217) Bon. pat. 3 (120n109) Epp. 1.1.2 (126n138) 7.2 (126–7n145) 74.2.4 (141n47) Vnit. eccl. 4 (119n98) 14 (216n104) Epiphanius of Salamis Pan. 25.2–5 (142n56) 30.17 (153n130) 42.1 (143n62, 148n93) 42.2 (143n64) 42.4 (143n62) 48.14 (142n52) 49.2.6 (142n54) Eucherius Form. spir. intell. 6 (114n66) Euripides Orest. 1351 (213n91) Eusebius of Caesarea Dem. ev. 1.1.2 (8n10) Hist. eccl. 5.13.2 (139n28) 6.16.4 (12n35) George of Sykeon V. Theod. Syk. 73 (132n175) Gregory of Nazianzus Orat. 2.8 (125n131) 2.47 (128n150)

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2.69 (120n109) 2.71 (120n106) 18.8 (126n139) 21.9 (119n103, 125n131, 128n150) 43.60 (126n139) Gregory of Nyssa V. Macr. 11 (126n139) 29 (126n139) Virg. 23.1 (120n109) Gregory the Great Reg. past. 1.8 (125n131) 2.6 (119n103) Gregory of Tours Glor. mart. 57 (188n143) Hippolytus Haer. 7.17 (143n62) Horace Carm. 1.12.45–6 (199n32) 3.3.7–8 (199) Ep. 1.2.69–70 (199) Sat. 1.10.72–3 (199n28) Irenaeus Adv. haer. 1.7.5 (155n143) 1.26.2 (153n132) 1.27.3 (141n45) 1.28 (115n78) 3.15.2 (160n161) Isidore of Seville Eccl. off. 2.2.1 (125n131) Jerome Adv. Helv. 1 (74n153, 112n62) 2 (25n108, 70n130) 20 (110n53) Adv. Iov. 1.1 (112n63) 1.3 (117n85, 135n191) 1.5 (135n191) 1.13 (110n53, 112n61) 1.20 (122n116) 1.34 (121n111, 123n126) 2.4 (114n66) 2.10 (197n20) 2.18 (158n157) Alt. Luc. et orth. 11 (70n135) 23 (141n47) Apol. c. Ruf. 1.13 (68n117) 1.16 (70n130, 177n106, 189n147, 190n151) 1.22 (184n130, 190n149) 1.24 (154n136, 172n70, 177n107, 191, 192n157) 1.25 (177n107, 192n158) 1.28 (179n115) 2.34 (96n99)

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276

   

Jerome (cont.) C. Vig. 3 (70n132) 6 (142n50) Chron. 354 AD (71n141) Comm. Eccl., prol. ll. 1–6 (105n17) 2 (56n60) 1.9 (189n148) 4.13 (168) 8.15 (108n36) 12.9 (203n57) Comm. Es., lib. 1, prol. ll. 11–13 (108n38) 13–14 (62n85) 92–3 (68n117, 165n24) lib. 2, prol. ll. 18–20 (50n24) lib. 7, prol. l. 4 (25n108) lib. 8, prol. ll. 2–9 (41n187) lib. 9, prol. ll. 4 (56n62) 6–7 (57n63) 1–12 (50n24) lib. 10, prol. ll. 14–22 (50n20) 16–18 (54n44) lib. 11, prol. ll. 1–4 (48n5) lib. 12, prol. l. 9 (51n32) lib. 13, prol. ll. 1–13 (49n19) 13–14 (56n61) 16–18 (62n85) lib. 14, prol. ll. 17–21 (63n89) lib. 15, prol. ll. 1–6 (94n96) lib. 16, prol. ll. 29–32 (65n104) 3.3 (40n184) 5.11–12 (123n124, 124n128) 5.22 (123n126) 24.7–13 (124n128) 28.5–8 (124n128) 55.4–5 (40n184) 60.13–14 (170n57) Comm. Hier., lib. 1, prol. ll. 9–12 (190n150) lib. 3, prol. l. 4 (48n6) Comm. Hiez., lib. 1, prol. ll. 30–1 (50n22) lib. 5, prol. ll. 10–15 (70n130) lib. 6, prol. ll. 1–13 (50n24) lib. 7, prol. ll. 1–2 (48n5) lib. 11, prol. ll. 4–5 (50n22) lib. 12, prol. ll. 14–16 (49n18) lib. 13, prol. ll. 13–20 (50n24) lib. 14, prol. ll. 5–7 (48) 21–6 (50n22) 12.40 (70n132) 13.44 (124n128) 40.5–13 (40n184) 43.23–7 (112n61) Comm. Am., lib. 1, prol. ll. 21–2 (146n75) lib. 2, prol. ll. 1 (70n132) 34–8 (25n108)

lib. 3, prol. ll. 55–6 (62n84) 2.9–11 (124n128) 4.1–3 (124n128) 8.4–6 (119n101) Comm. Os., lib. 1, prol. ll. 1–3 (63n88) 132–3 (107n31) 140–6 (194n165) lib. 2, prol. ll. 175–6 (31n136, 64n92) 176 (55n52) 176–8 (57n63) 179–89 (57n65) 185–7 (48n6) 354–5 (140n40) lib. 3, prol. ll. 128–9 (56n58, 64n92) 136–7 (57n65) 148–52 (49n18) 1.2–3 (170n60) Comm. Abd., prol. l. 7 (49n14) 62–5 (49n18) 63 (62n85) 20–1 (55n49) Comm. Mic., lib. 1, prol. l. 1 (48n6) lib. 2, prol. ll. 215–16 (56n62) 223–34 (52n33) 237–8 (52n33) 238–9 (48n6) Comm. Soph., prol. l. 1 (48n6) 1.1 (220n122) 3.14–18 (70n132) Comm. Ion., prol. ll. 1–8 (50n21) 20–4 (50n24) Comm. Agg. 1.11 (120n106) Comm. Zach., lib. 1, prol. ll. 20 (54n45) 40–3 (50n20) 48–9 (63n88) Comm. Mal., prol. ll. 1–2 (48n6) Comm. Mt., prol. ll. 42–4 (153n132) 97–8 (188n142) 104–10 (50n22) 115–19 (55n52) 1.20 (112n61) 1.24 (112n61) 12.47 (112n61) 13.56 (112n61) Comm. Gal., lib. 1, prol. ll. 1–21 (58n66) 23–5 (31n135) 23–31 (64n91) 31–43 (66n105) 34–50 (163n9) 40–1 (154n139) 51–73 (34n151) 96–100 (166n32) 101–2 (26n112) lib. 2, prol. ll. 11–14 (196n4)

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 3/9/2021, SPi

    13–14 (69n125) 14–26 (219n117) 111–12 (138) 111–17 (142n49) 112 (138) 114 (138) lib. 3, prol. ll. 2–4 (69n127) 19–42 (69n127) 21–4 (69n126, 196n5) 43–5 (69n128) 50–2 (69n129) 53–4 (70n133) 78–80 (70n134) 82–7 (63n89) 1.1 (89n63, 89n66, 121n111, 134n185, 148n89, 151n110, 153n126, 153n133, 156n148, 216n106) 1.4–5 (89n63, 91n82, 134n185, 138, 138n14–15, 140n33, 201) 1.6–7 (138n14, 140n36) 1.8–9 (138n14, 140n29, 204n60) 1.10 (33n146) 1.11–12 (140n30, 141n46, 153n127, 197n17) 1.13–14 (167n42) 1.15–16 (154n140, 159n159) 1.18 (176n96) 1.19 (53n40, 112n60) 2.3 (157n151) 2.4 (104n12) 2.11–13 (33n146, 36n156, 53n40, 70n132, 89n66) 2.14b (33n146) 2.15 (140n34, 154n140, 156n149) 2.19a (33n146) 2.19–22 (157n152) 3.1a (82n38, 138n18, 146n79, 154n140, 197n14, 198) 3.2 (33n146) 3.6 (138n21, 148n89) 3.7 (190n154) 3.8–9 (138n14) 3.10 (91n82) 3.11–12 (91n82) 3.13 (138n14) 3.13a (138n19, 148n89) 3.13b–14 (91n82, 96n98, 176) 3.15–18 (65n104) 3.19–20 (111n58) 3.27–8 (140n39) 4.4–5 (80n25, 111n58, 148n89, 151n111) 4.6 (89n64, 89n66, 149n104, 219n119) 4.8–9 (138n14) 4.10–11 (33n146)

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4.12b–14 (219) 4.14 (207n69) 4.15–16 (196n11) 4.17–18 (33n146, 109n40, 109n41) 4.19 (138, 138n24, 209n80) 4.24b–6 (111n58, 134n185, 138n21, 148n89) 5.3 (138, 138n25) 5.4 (78n21) 5.7 (78n17) 5.8a (157) 5.9 (83n39, 138n14, 140n42, 152n117) 5.12 (138n14, 138n18) 5.13b–14 (33n146, 109n42, 214n101) 5.16 (33n146) 5.17 (220n124) 5.18 (111n58) 5.19 (199n35, 211n86) 5.19–21 (77n16, 123n126, 124–5n129, 133n182) 5.22–3 (158n158) 5.24 (77n14) 5.26 (77n13, 77n14, 109n40–3, 199n27) 5.31 (138n14, 138n18) 6.1 (109n47, 140n33, 149n104, 154n140, 158n154) 6.1–3 (138n14, 138n18) 6.3 (168n52) 6.8 (115n79, 138, 138n14, 140n32, 151n112) 6.10 (200, 207, 224n8) 6.11 (167n45, 168n46) 6.12 (33n146) 6.18 (91n82) Comm. Eph., lib. 1, prol. ll. 1–11 (106n21) 26 (201n46) 26–7 (214n98) 27–8 (219n116) 33–43 (56n55) 38 (55n52) 44–9 (68n117) 46–9 (165n23) 49–60 (99n111) 71–5 (39n177) 115–20 (43n196) 142–6 (68n120) 142–8 (177n105) 144–6 (154n139) 147 (190n152) lib. 2, prol. ll. 1–5 (54n42) 5–11 (60n73) 12–18 (61n81)

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278

   

Jerome (cont.) 14–15 (41n189) lib. 3, prol. ll. 1–6 (39n178) 11–12 (40n179) 16–27 (98n106) 65–71 (40n180) 1.4 (138, 138n15, 197n12) 1.5b (77n14, 89n65) 1.6 (82n35) 1.8–9 (190n154, 201n45) 1.10b (81n31) 1.13 (65n104, 190n154, 199n29) 1.14 (80n26) 1.15–18a (111n58, 190n154) 2.1–5a (77n14, 140n40) 2.3 (154n140) 2.6 (81n31) 2.7 (190n154) 2.10 (98n109) 2.14b–18 (190n153) 2.19–22 (138n19, 154n140, 155n146) 3.1–4 (27n115, 41n185) 3.5–7 (138n14, 138n18) 3.8–9 (27n118, 138n14, 147n82) 3.10–11 (138) 3.14–15 (78n19, 89n65) 3.16–19 (108n36, 108n37) 4.2b (110n48) 4.3–4 (140n37) 4.5–6 (138, 138n23, 151n107) 4.10 (152n125) 4.16 (199n31) 4.17–19 (154n140, 155n146, 160n161) 4.20a–1 (108n38) 4.21b (111n58) 4.26a (219n118) 4.27 (89n65) 4.29 (82n36) 4.31 (108n36) 5.1 (40n182) 5.3–4 (91n82) 5.7 (65n104) 5.8 (140n33, 154n140, 157n153) 5.9 (145n73) 5.14b (65n104) 5.18 (134n183) 5.20 (199n33) 5.21 (119n102) 5.22–3a (78n18, 114n73, 140n37) 5.24 (40n183, 114n73, 115n74) 5.25–7 (115n77, 116n80, 116n81) 5.28a (115n75, 115n76) 5.31 (146n80) 5.32 (42n194, 68n119)

6.1–3 (146n81) 6.12 (41n187, 190n154) Comm. Tit., prol. ll. 2 (138n14, 138n18) 1–20 (45n204) 1–22 (147n87) 10–12 (147n88) 18 (138, 138n20) 21 (138n20) 1.1 (92n84, 149n104) 1.5b (118n93, 119n101, 119n102, 121n112) 1.6 (111n55, 138, 138n22) 1.6–7 (118n93, 119n102, 119n104, 120n106, 120n108, 123n124–6, 124n127, 125n132, 200n37, 201n47) 1.8–9 (78n22, 107n24, 108n36, 121n113, 122n116, 122n117, 122–3n119, 123n121–2, 127n147–8, 128n152) 1.10–11 (79n24, 120n110, 140n35) 1.12–14 (214n96) 2.1 (108n34) 2.3–5 (113n64) 2.6–7 (120n106) 2.9–10 (106n20) 2.11–14 (91n82, 92n86, 141n44, 152n116) 2.12–14 (65n104, 153n134) 2.15b (120n105) 3.3–7 (150n105) 3.9 (91n82, 97n104, 108n35, 140n31, 172n75) 3.10–11 (77n14, 134n185, 152n115, 153n134) Comm. Phlm., prol. ll. 27–9 (91n81) 57 (138n14) 61–2 (138n20) 63–4 (147n88) 67–9 (63n88) 77–8 (25n110) 1–3 (27n114, 71n140, 149n104) 4–6 (29n122) 7 (27n116) 8–9 (27n118) 14 (28n119, 29n123) 20 (89n65, 91n82) 22 (28n120) 23–4 (28n121) 25 (91n78) Dial. adv. Pel., prol. (112n63, 138n12) 1.15 (70n135) 1.27 (196n9) Didym. de spir. sanc., prol. (68n115) Ep. adv. Ruf. 34 (55n53) Epp. 5.2.4 (55n51) 10.3.1 (214n95) 10.3.3 (54n45)

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 3/9/2021, SPi

    14.11.1–2 (70n135) 20 (87) 20.2.1 (88n59) 21.37.2 (108n36) 22.2 (131n170) 22.2.1 (110n53) 22.2.3 (128n155) 22.8.1–2 (132n172) 22.15 (131n170) 22.15.2 (117n86) 22.16.1 (131n168) 22.17.2 (107n25) 22.19 (131n170) 22.22.1 (112n61) 22.37.2 (107n26) 22.38.1 (110n53) 23.1.2 (56n60, 120n106) 23.3.1 (104n9) 25 (87) 25.1.1 (62n82, 104n10) 26 (87) 26.1.1 (62n82) 26.2.1 (161n7) 27*.2 (161n6) 27.1.1 (85n45) 27.1.2 (85n46) 27.1.3 (88n57) 28 (87) 28.1.1 (61n82) 28.5.1 (87n56, 88n57, 88n58, 161n7) 28.7.1 (161n7) 29 (87) 29.1.1 (62n82) 29.1.1–2 (104n10) 29.1.2 (59n70) 29.7.2 (98n108) 30 (87) 30.1.1–2 (104n8) 30.2.2 (104n13) 32.1.3 (104n14) 33.4.5 (172n79, 182n126, 185n132) 34 (87) 34.1.1 (55n51) 34.1.2–3 (161n7) 34.3.1 (62n82) 34.3.2 (88n60, 161n7) 34.4.1 (87n56) 36 (87) 36.1.4 (161n7) 37.3.1–2 (161n7) 37.3.2 (67n112) 39.1.3 (161n7) 39.2.2 (105n18) 42.3.1 (159n160)

43.3.1 (161n7) 45.2.2 (103n6) 45.7.1 (56n60, 56n61) 46.11.1–2 (61n80) 48.3.1 (55n52) 48.3.3 (55n50) 49.2.4 (135n191) 49.18.2 (110n53) 49.18.3 (131n170) 50.5.2 (55n53) 52.1.1 (117n90, 188n143) 52.3.1 (111n54) 52.3.2 (126–7n145) 52.4.3 (130n160, 218n111) 52.5.2 (126n139) 52.5.3 (118, 126n138, 127n146) 52.5.4 (118n92) 52.5.4–8 (118) 52.5.5 (118) 52.5.6 (118) 52.5.7 (118) 52.6.3 (118) 52.7.1 (107n28, 127n149) 52.7.2 (120n106) 52.7.3 (118n96) 52.7.4 (119n101) 52.8.1–2 (118) 52.9.1 (117) 52.9.1–2 (125n131) 52.9.2 (118) 52.11.2–3 (124n129) 52.11.3–4 (117) 52.11.4 (123n126, 132n177) 52.12.1–2 (117) 52.13.1 (123n121) 52.15.1 (118) 52.16.1 (118, 122n117) 52.17.1 (130n163) 53.2.2 (104n12) 53.3.6 (75n4) 53.4.1 (75n4) 53.6.1 (75n3) 53.7.1 (75n5) 53.8.5 (75n4) 53.8.9 (75n4) 53.8.18 (75n4) 53.8.19 (75n4) 53.10.2 (75n2) 53.11.3 (126n139) 54.13.5 (107n31) 58.5.2 (196n7) 60.10.5 (127n146) 60.10.9 (55n51) 66.2.1 (117n85)

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280

   

Jerome (cont.) 66.8.3 (213n93) 69.2.2 (126n139) 69.3.4 (118n94) 69.6.1 (70n132) 69.8.4 (120n106) 69.9.1 (123n126) 69.9.2 (125n131) 69.9.4 (121n111) 70.3 (55n51) 70.4.3 (70n135) 77.7.1 (133n180) 79.2.4 (120n109) 80.1.1 (161n6) 81.1.2 (70n132) 84.7.1 (219n119) 84.8.1 (107n29) 85.5.1 (201n47) 105.5.2 (55n49) 107.4.6 (199n30) 107.12.1 (105n19) 107.12.1–2 (107n27) 108.1.1 (56n60) 108.17.3 (60n74) 108.21.2–3 (132n175) 108.26.1 (107n31) 108.26.3 (98n107) 108.32.1 (55n53) 112.6 (36n156, 36n159, 169n54) 112.11 (36n156) 112.16 (36n156) 112.19.2 (55n50) 117.1.2–3 (131n165) 119.2.2 (164n17) 121.10.7 (41n188) 123.1.1 (99n114) 123.17.3 (131n165) 125.7.1 (120n109) 125.12.1–2 (98n107) 127.7.1 (59n70) 127.9.3 (129n159) 128.8.3 (117n85) 130.19.3–4 (130–1n164, 131n165) 133.4.2 (139n28) 133.9.1 (155n141) 133.9.1–5 (135n191) 133.13.3 (120n109) 146.1–2 (118n94) Hom. exod., ll. 59–60 (196n9) Hom. Ps. 41 ll. 1–2 (65n104) Lib. int. Heb. nom. [CCSL 72], prol. ll. 17–18 (31n136, 64n92) pp. 70 (90n74)

72 (90n74) 73 (90n67) 74 (90n67) 75 (90n68) 77 (90n72–6, 91n77) 78 (90n75) 79 (91n77) 80 (90n69–71, 90n73–4, 90n76) Orig. hom. XIV in Hiez., prol. (68n115) Prol. in Dan. ll. 51–4 (48n5) Prol. in Iud. l. 6 (49n15) Prol. in lib. Reg. (57n63) Prol. in Pent. ll. 1–3 (48n11) Quaest. Heb. Gen., prol. ll. 1–7 (50n27) 22.13 (171n63) Tract. Ps. 1, ll. 84–90 (108n33) 77, ll. 200–1 (70n135) 89, l. 32 (156n148) V. Hilar. 4.3 (107n30) V. Mal. 1.3 (50n24) Vir. ill. 10.1 (55n49) 54.8 (172n75) 80.2 (219n117) 81.1 (55n51) 90.1 (164n17) 91.1 (170n61) 100.4 (170n58) 101.1 (70n131, 71n138, 72n144) 103.1 (128n155) 104.1 (165n30) 104.2 (176n97) 107.1 (153n128) 109.1 (164n20) 109.2 (68n117, 165n26) 129.1 (169n54) 134.2 (131n165) 135.3 (31n138, 225n15) John Cassian Coll. 4.20 (125n131) 5.4 (114n66) 10.1 (25n108) Inst. coen. 9.13 (123n121) John Chrysostom Hom. 1 Gen. (PG 54:585) (127n146) Hom. Eph., argum. (39n174) 11.5 (119n103) Hom. 1 Tim. 11.1 (124n128) 11.3 (119n99) Hom. 2 Tim. 4.3 (168n50) Hom. Phlm., argum. (21n88, 21n89, 21n90) In fac. ei rest. (PG 51:383) (36n159) Sacerd. 3.15 (128n150) 3.16 (126–7n145)

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 3/9/2021, SPi

    4.1–2 (125n131) 5.3 (120n106) 5.4 (119n103) 6.4 (126n138) Subintr. 6 (126n138) John Moschus Prat. spir. 17 (132n175) 35 (132n175) 184 (132n175) Julian Pomerius V. cont. 1.8.1 (123n121) 1.13.1 (119n103) 1.13.2 (126n138) 1.15 (120n106) 1.17 (120n109) 1.18 (128n150) 1.21.1 (126n138) 1.21.3 (119n103) 1.25.1 (126–7n145) 2.23.2 (124n129) 3.6.1 (123n126) Justin Martyr Dial. 78 (8n6) Juvenal Sat. 6.177 (202) Juvencus Evang. lib. IV, praef. 25–7 (25n108) Lactantius Div. inst. 2.2.18 (220) 2.12.2 (197n20) 3.1 (203n59) 7.1.5 (221n125) Leo the Great Serm. 1.1 (128n150) Lucretius Rer. nat. 1.139 (197n12) 4.1107 (210n83) 4.1272 (210n83) Marius Victorinus Comm. Eph., lib. 1, prol. ll. 1–8 (39n175) 1.14 (81n27) Mark the Deacon V. Porph. 10 (132n174) Martial Epig. 6.54.2 (55n54) Olympiodorus Comm. Iob (PG 93:360) (114n66) Origen C. Cels. 1.51 (8n6) 2.27 (147n84)

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5.61 (155n147) Comm. Mt. 10.11 (155n147, 157n150) Comm. Ioan. 5.7 (147n84) 5.8.1 (137n8) 20.8.54 (155n147) 20.17.135 (155n147) 28.21.179 (155n147) 28.21.183 (155n147) Comm. Rom. 1.3.3 (160n161) 2.4.7 (160n161) 4.12.1 (160n161) 8.8.7 (160n161) 8.10 (158n155) 10.43.2 (147n84) 33.3–6 (158n155) Comm. Eph. fr. 9, l. 220 (155n147) 5.24 (114n73) De exod. vig. Pasch., ll. 120–30 (122n119) Frag. 8 in Eph. 1.13 (38n173) Frag. 18 in 1 Cor. (38n171) Frag. 21 in 1 Cor. 4.15 (38n170) Frag. Hier. 48.27 (120n107) Hom. Hier. 5.7 (120n107) Hom. Hiez. 7.10 (38n170) Hom. Ies. 11.4 (38n172) Hom. Ps. 36 3.11 (148n96) Hom. vis. Is. 6 6.1 (119n103) Princ. 1.8.2–3 (157n150) 2.9.5 (148n96, 160n161) 3.1.6 (160n161) 3.2.4 (38n170) Palladius Hist. Laus., prol. 10–12 (132n174) 4.1–2 (164n20) 36.1 (9n14) 47.13–14 (120n109) Pamphilus Apol. 31 (186n133) 32 (186n134) 33 (187n139) 35 (187n140) 108 (173n85) 109 (174n86) 111 (175n94) 126 (184n129) Paulinus of Milan V. Ambr. 41.1 (125n131) Paulinus of Nola Carm. 16.287–9 (127n146) 23.20–1 (25n108) Ep. 5.17 (197n20)

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   

Pelagius Exp. Eph., prol. (38n167) Exp. Tit., prol. (46n207) Peter Abelard Theol. chr. 2.109 (224n8) Plato Tim. 24c-d (213n92) Plautus Most. 646 (81n32) Poen. 1359 (81n32) Rud. 44 (81n32) Pliny Epp. 2.3.9 (104n12) 3.5.19 (107n24) 9.27.2 (131n164) Polycarp Ep. ad Php. 6.1 (125n130) 11.1 (125n130) 11.2 (120n106) Possidius V. Aug., praef. 2 (25n108) 22.2, 6 (127n146) Praedestinatus Haer. 1.28 (142n54) Ps.-Athanasius Virg. 33 (114n66) Ps.-Tertullian Adv. haer. 23–4 (136n1) Quintilian Inst. orat. 2.2.8 (104n12) 2.3.9 (104n12) 4.2.124 (200n36) 8.5.4 (196n9) Rufinus Apol. c. Hier. 2.5 (131n167) 2.12 (165n25) 2.15 (68n118) 2.25 (164n21) 2.35–8 (100n119) 2.39 (135n191) 2.43 (131n167, 135n191) Sallust Bell. Cat. 1.2 (197) 10.5 (198) Bell. Iug. 2.3 (48n8) Hist., fr. II 39 (212n88) Salvian Ad eccl. 3.18.80 (120n109) Gub. Dei 7.15.64 (213n91)

Seneca Cons. ad Helv. 10.3 (200n38) Epp. 6.5 (104n12) 33.9 (104n12) 40.9 (55n54) Sidonius Carm. 16.5–6 (25n108) Siricius Ep. 1.13.17 (129n157) Socrates Hist. eccl. 4.23 (110n53) Soranus Gyn. 1.12 (210n82) Suetonius V. Tit. 8.1 (200n40) V. Virg. 22 (11n24) Sulpicius Severus Dial. 1.9.3 (196n9) Tacitus Ann. 4.59.3 (56n56) Tatian Orat. ad Gr. 14.1 (203n59) Terence Andr. 16 (51) 17–19 (51) 18–19 (51) 20–1 (51, 52) 22–3 (51) 68 (196n9) Eun. 18 (51) Heaut. 603 (81n32) Tertullian Ad ux. 2.3.4 (210) Adv. Marc. 1.5 (201) 1.9 (144n71) 1.19 (144n68) 1.20 (35n153) 3.5 (136n1) 4.9 (143n63) 5.1 (143n63) 5.3 (35n153) 5.17 (38n165, 143n62) 5.21 (24n105, 43n198, 147n85) An. 20.2–3 (212n87) 21 (158n155) 27.4, 8 (209n79) Carn. chr. 6.1–2 (139n28) 16.1 (164n14) 17.1 (164n13) 24.2 (139n28, 202n54, 204) Exh. cast. 13.2 (207–8)

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    Ieiun. 1 (123n126, 208) Praescr. haer. 6.5–6 (204–5) 10.8 (153n129) 23–4 (35n153) 30 (143n63) 30.5–6 (139n28) 33.3–5 (153n129) 33.8 (202) 33.11 (153n129) Pud. 4.3 (206) 13.16 (207) Res. mort. 3.6 (203n56) 16.4–8 (206n64) Theodore of Mopsuestia Comm. Rom. 9.24 (160n161) 11.7 (160n161) Comm. Gal. 1.15 (160n161)

Comm. Eph., prol. (41n186) Comm. Tit., prol. (44n202, 46n207) Comm. Phlm., prol. (22n92–4) Theodoret Comm. Eph., prol. (38n167) Comm. Phlm., prol. (25n109) Hist. rel. 1.1 (25n108) 17.7 (126n143, 127n146) 17.8 (120n109) Virgil Aen. 6.724–7 (198) 8.42–8 (202) Ecl. 3.103 (198) Georg. 3.136 (210n83) 4.221–2 (198)

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General Index Aaron 119, 183 Abraham 95, 126, 149n102, 156, 171, 183 Abraham of Carrhae 127n146 Academy 70 Adam 131n171, 182–3, 206 Adamantius 144n70 adoption 80–1 Aelred of Rievaulx 224 Aeneas 201–2 Aeneid 48, 202 Aeon 201–2 Ahimelech 122 Aijalon 183 Alaric 48 Albina 18, 57, 58, 103n7 alcohol 115, 117, 123–4, 127n146, 131–5, 187, 200, 208 Alexander 66, 67, 69, 162–4 Alexandria 62n82, 68, 140, 152, 164, 165, 170n60, 176 almsgiving 109, 111n54 Altinum 117 Amandus 2n14 Ambrose 15n52, 99–100, 103n7, 110, 119n103, 121 Ambrosiaster 1, 36, 74, 83n40, 85, 118n95, 121, 131, 148n93, 152, 169, 174n87, 225, 226n22 analogy 39, 114, 140, 156, 158, 185, 199, 206, 209–10, 211, 221 Ancyra 152 angels 42, 113, 114, 153, 180, 191, 204–5 anger 123, 180–1, 185, 219 anthropology 138, 155 Antioch 35–6, 69n123, 87, 141n48, 154, 165, 169, 170n61, 176, 223 Apelles 139, 186, 201, 204–5 Aphrahat 32 Apollinaris of Laodicea 12, 36n156, 67–9, 139, 154, 165–6, 168, 172, 175–7, 191–2, 194 Apollo 207–8 Apollo of Bawit 126 apology 12n35, 16–17, 21, 36, 50–2, 57, 176, 210, 225 apostasy 36 apostles 23, 25–8, 34, 36, 39, 44, 63, 93, 96n99, 98, 136, 152, 156, 172, 174, 181, 184, 207, 216

Apostolikon 30, 43, 147 Apphia 90 Aquila 13, 89n63, 89n65, 91, 92, 95 Aramaic 89 Archippus 90 Aristarchus 90 Ariston of Pella 176 Aristotle 64, 70, 71 Arianism 71, 138, 148n90, 149, 152, 154, 165 Arius 139, 140, 141, 150–3, 186–7 Artotyrites 138, 141–2 Arusianus Messius 52n36 Asella 56n61, 103 Asia Minor 144 Assyrians 99 Athanasius 164 Athenaeum 217–18 Athens 211–13 Augustine 1, 15n52, 36, 39n176, 69n123, 72n143, 74n155, 83n40, 110, 119n99, 126n137, 127n146, 134n186, 135, 137n10, 146n76, 152, 154n139, 165n22, 169n54, 174n87, 196n9, 197n20, 198n21, 223, 225, 226n22 Augustus 199 avarice 98–9, 118, 126n139, 125–6, 131–2 Bammel, Caroline 167, 225 banditry 206n66 baptism 119, 138, 150, 153 Basil of Caesarea 126n140 Basilides 44–5, 139–41, 148, 186, 203 Basilidians 136 Bethlehem 2, 8–10, 12, 15, 18, 37, 53–4, 56, 59n71, 60–1, 73–4, 75, 104, 117 biblical canon 4, 14, 19–25, 39, 43–5, 76, 147 bishops 50n20, 73, 99, 117–30, 135, 142, 144, 152, 154, 164–6, 187, 200, 208, 216, 219 Blesilla 56n60, 105 Borborites 138, 141–2 Bordeaux Pilgrim 8 bribery 121 Bucchi, Federica 22, 44 Budapest Anonymous 1–2, 223 Caecilius 51 Caesarea Maritima 12

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  Calcidius 226 Calvin, John 224 Carthage 20n81 Cassiodorus 64n36 Cato 56n56 celibacy 109–11, 114, 122–4, 207 Cephas 36n156, 89n66, 176 Chalcis 87 charity 27, 110–11, 224 cheese 142 Christology 6, 67, 138, 140, 149–54, 166, 174, 175, 187 Chromatius of Aquileia 50n20, 83n40 Church of the Nativity 8, 10, 60 Cicero 48, 51–2, 58, 64, 69, 106, 192–3, 196, 197, 211, 213n94, 214, 221, 226 circumcision 34–5, 78n21, 138, 156, 183, 195–6 clarissimate 71n141 classical literature 6, 48, 49, 69, 70, 171, 189, 195–200, 221, 226 Claudius of Turin 224 Clement of Alexandria 115n79, 120n105, 155, 176 Clement of Rome 37n165 comedy 50–1, 52n35, 196, 211–13 Corinth 38, 115 cosmogonic myth 138, 202n52 Constantine 8 Constantinople 21, 149, 161, 165, 169n53 Constantius 70n131, 71 Cooper, Stephen 65, 225 Council of Constantinople 165 Creator 29n124, 144–7, 178, 182, 220 Cretans 15n51, 211–13, 214n96 cross 34, 95–6 crucifixion 28, 34–5, 96–7 Ctesiphon 193 Cyprian 6, 36, 86, 120n105, 195, 214–21 Cyprus 7 Cyril of Alexandria 146n76, 170n60 Cyrinus 22 Dalmatians 211–12 Damasus, Pope 37, 57n65, 72, 73, 76, 86, 88–9, 100, 122, 128, 149, 161 Daniel 48–9, 173n80 David 15n52, 88, 122, 183 deacons 119n99, 120n105, 129 declamations 69–70 Demetrianus 219 Demiurge 144 demons 42–3, 131, 139–40, 199 Demosthenes 69, 193 Desiderius 48–9

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devil 89n65, 115, 130n64, 140, 204, 207–8 dictation 10–13, 15n50, 16n61, 17n62, 18n71, 41n187, 49, 57n65, 61, 63, 159n160, 162–3, 165, 188–9, 218 Didymus of Alexandria 12, 18, 54n48, 66, 68, 104, 155, 162, 164–5, 169, 170n60, 172n74, 177–8, 179n117 diminutives 49n15, 54, 56, 111n56, 172 Diodore of Tarsus 170n61 dogs 55, 57 Donatus 189 Dorcas 89n66 drunkenness 123–4, 132–4, 185, 199, 200, 208–9 Ebion 139, 153, 175, 186 Ebionites 138, 153, 175, 186 Edessa 171 education 15–16, 52, 65n100, 70, 75n6, 164, 171, 198n23 Egeria 8 Egypt 9–10, 20n81, 58, 98–9, 115n79, 126, 142, 176n99, 183, 207–8 Egyptians 98–9 Elijah 184 Elisha 184 eloquence 17n62, 27, 42, 51, 57n65, 62–4, 68n119, 69–70, 97–9, 120, 170, 181, 211–12, 217–19 Encratites 44–5, 115, 116n82, 138, 151 Ennius 51, 128n151 Enoch 183 Enosh 183 Epaphras 90 Ephesus 37n164, 38, 40 Ephrathah 9 Ephrem the Syrian 32 Epimenides 211, 213 Epiphanius of Jerusalem 9n14 Epiphanius of Salamis 141n45, 142n52, 142n53, 143, 148n93, 151n113, 153 Erasmus 81n29, 224 eschatology 38 Ethiopia 10n18, 212n89 ethnography 195, 198, 211–14, 219 etymology 40, 49n12, 75n4, 90, 91n79, 142n53 Euangelion 147 Eucharist 122, 142 Eunomius 139, 141, 150–1, 152n115, 153, 186, 187 Euripides 53 Eusebius of Caesarea 8, 12n35, 50, 149, 173, 176n100 Eusebius of Cremona 18n71 Eusebius of Emesa 66, 162, 166–71, 194, 207n72

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Eustochium 5, 7–8, 13, 15–16, 18n72, 22, 25, 41n187, 53–9, 61, 62, 63n89, 69, 70n130, 94n96, 103n7, 104n14, 105–7, 130–2, 217–18 Eutropius 200, 207 Evagrius of Pontus 126n143 Eve 131n171, 183 evil 29, 82, 115, 116, 131, 134, 144n70, 144n72, 155, 156, 158, 160, 186, 191, 205–6 exile 169n53 Fabiola 133n180 faith 9, 28, 30, 33n150, 34–5, 44, 57, 62, 95, 97–9, 102, 112, 119n103, 125, 128n150, 129, 130n160, 135, 136, 140, 150, 174, 182, 184, 188, 215–18 fasting 83, 105n16, 109, 117 Felicitas 56n60, 103n7 fish 127n146 fixed natures (doctrine of) 6, 138, 154–60 forgeries 167 Fortunatus 137n10 Free will 29, 158 friendship 165 Fürst, Alfons 36n159 Gad 183 Gaius Antonius Hybrida 200 Gaul 130n162, 219 Gentiles 32–6, 95, 156, 179, 192 geometry 164 Germanus 9 Germany 30 Geruchia 99n114 Gibeon 183 gluttony 118, 200, 208–9, 211–12 Gnosticism 6, 29n124, 115, 136, 142, 159, 202 goats 171 good 28–30, 44, 55, 92n85, 102, 113, 116, 144–7, 150, 155–60, 178–9, 191–2, 200, 205–6 grace 32, 34, 37, 82, 119, 145–6, 150, 168n50, 179–80 Graeca veritas 76–87, 100 Greeks 31, 63, 162, 211–12, 214 Gregory of Nazianzus 42, 68n119, 119n103, 120n106 Gregory of Tours 148n90 Grotto of the Nativity 8, 9

Helena 8n8 Heliodorus 50n20, 117 Helvidius 74n153, 108, 111, 112, 130, 131n170 Heraclea 66, 162, 164 Heracleon 137 Herod 9 Hezekiah 184 Hexapla 12–13, 97 Hilarion of Gaza 25n108, 107 Hilary of Poitiers 88, 152, 170 Himerius of Tarragona 129 Hippo 20n81 Hippolytus 153n131 Holy Spirit 18, 23–5, 54n48, 62, 81, 140, 150, 165n22, 203–5 Homer 193, 196n7 Horace 75n5, 198, 199, 211–12, 221 hospitality 23, 28–9, 126–7, 159n160, 183 Idumaeans 98–9 Ignatius of Antioch 37n165 India 10n18 Irenaeus 155, 173 Isaac 183 Israel 89n65, 157, 179–80, 183, 212 Israelites 58, 214 Italy 54, 73, 76, 84, 117 Jacob 183, 184 James 34, 111–12 Jerusalem 7–8, 60 Jewish Christianity 32, 33n148, 96n102, 112, 176 Jews 12n35, 32, 93–7, 100, 144, 156, 171n67 John Cassian 9 John Chrysostom 7n2, 21, 32, 36n159, 38, 97n105, 119n98, 124n128, 127n146, 168–71, 203, 207n72 Joshua 183 Joseph (OT) 29–30 Joseph (NT) 8–9, 11 Jovinian 2n14, 19n75, 112n63, 135, 158n157 Judaism 33n147, 35 Judaizers 32–3, 36 Julian Pomerius 119n103, 124n129 Julius Cassianus 115, 139, 151 Juno 207–8 justification by faith 30, 33n150, 78, 150 Kamesar, Adam 101

hagiography 3 Haimo of Auxerre 224 heaven 9, 81, 83, 90, 152, 183–4, 191, 204–5, 215–16, 220 Hebraica veritas 4, 87–101

Lactantius 6, 110, 181, 195, 197n20, 214, 218–21 Laeta 10n18, 105n19, 107 Lea 56n60 lectors 118

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  legacy-hunting 118 Libanius 193 Lightfoot, J.B. 30, 226n21 Lot 126 Lucretius 197 Luscius Lanuvinus 50–2 lust 98n107, 114, 116, 123, 133, 140, 208–10 Luther, Martin 30, 224 Lyceum 70 Macedonius 139, 150–1 Magi 9 Mani 134, 139, 151, 174n87, 175, 186 Manichaeism 6, 73, 103, 134–42, 155–6, 158 manuscripts 2, 12n34, 12n35, 14n46, 31, 55, 77, 78n18, 79, 82, 84–6, 93–5, 97, 98n109, 176n99, 176n102, 178, 182 Marcella 2n14, 5, 15, 16, 18, 37, 53–63, 73, 85, 88, 98n108, 103–4, 159n160, 161 Marcellina 103n7 Marcellus of Ancyra 152 Marcion 24, 30, 35, 37n165, 43–5, 136, 139–49, 151, 174, 175n90, 178–9, 186, 203 Marcionites 30, 136, 144n70, 148n93 Marcus Caelius Rufus 199–200 Marcus Claudius Marcellus 199 Marius Victorinus 1, 4, 5, 33, 36, 39, 63–74, 86, 162, 169, 189n145, 225, 226n22 marriage 42, 56, 109–15, 131, 138, 170n60, 201, 210 martyrdom 117, 192, 215–16 Mary 8, 9, 111–13, 152 Masoretic text 94–6 Mediterranean Sea 18, 57 Melania the Elder 8, 13n40 Menander 196n7 Messiah 97n103, 177 Methusaleh 183 Middle Ages 165, 223n5, 224 Minor Prophets 14n45, 19n75, 24, 31n136, 56n58, 64n92, 146n76 Miriam 58 monastery 9n14, 10, 59–60 monasticism 8–10, 15n52, 17, 30, 60, 61, 73, 74, 87, 98n107, 103, 107, 110, 117, 118, 126, 128–33, 149 Montanists 138, 142, 187, 201n47 Montanus 139, 186 Moors 212 moral exhortation 5, 38, 102, 117, 120, 214 Morin, Jean 94n94 Mosaic law 15, 24, 30–7, 78–80, 105, 108, 124, 138, 144, 207 Moses 183

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Mount Athos 173, 182 Muse 25, 62 Nathan 183 Nazirites 124, 187 neologisms 120n105, 197 Neoplatonism 1, 35 Nepotian 19n75, 107, 117–18, 122n117, 124, 126–7, 130n160, 218 New Testament books Matthew 2n13, 18n71, 55n52, 84n43, 164, 165, 188n142 Mark 90–1 Luke 60, 90–1, 147, 165n30, 176 John 62n82, 137, 164, 165 Acts 107n27, 165, 173 Romans 1, 2n9, 4, 14, 18n68, 24, 33, 64n93, 85, 99, 147n84, 165, 172 1 Corinthians 24, 38, 165 2 Corinthians 1, 18n68, 64n93, 165, 172 Galatians 1, 2, 4–5, 7, 10, 12, 14, 15, 17, 18n68, 19, 24, 26, 30–7, 40, 47, 57, 59, 63, 64n93, 66, 68–72, 77n12, 78, 82, 84, 86, 93, 97, 99, 116, 117, 121, 133–4, 141, 146n76, 148, 153, 154, 158, 162–77, 182, 184, 185, 188, 195, 196, 204, 206, 211–12, 214, 214n96, 216, 217, 219, 223, 224n14, 226n21 Ephesians 1, 2, 3n15, 4–5, 7, 12, 14–17, 18n68, 19, 26, 27n118, 37–43, 47, 53, 55, 59, 61, 64n93, 68, 84, 86, 98–9, 106, 107n24, 114, 115, 133, 154, 157, 162, 165, 172, 177–9, 182, 184, 188, 190, 197–9, 214, 223 Philippians 1, 18n68, 19, 26–7, 64n93, 99, 172, 192 Colossians 18n68, 19, 26–7, 99, 172, 192 1 Thessalonians 18n68, 99, 172 2 Thessalonians 18n68, 99, 172 1 Timothy 43–5, 147, 172 2 Timothy 24, 43–5, 147, 168, 172 Titus 2, 4, 5, 7, 12, 13, 15, 17–19, 26, 40, 43–7, 68, 84, 86, 103, 105, 118, 119, 121, 128, 147, 153, 172, 184–8, 208 Philemon 2, 4, 5, 7, 12–17, 18n68, 19–31, 33, 45, 47, 57–8, 62, 68, 71, 84, 86, 90–1, 109, 172, 182–4, 192, 223n2 Hebrews 1, 2, 14n46, 18n68, 44–5, 99, 147, 153n131, 165n27, 172 Newman, Hillel 33n147 Nicene Creed 149 Nicene theology 6, 71, 149, 150 Nitria 164n21 Noah 183 Novatian 139 Novatianists 138, 159n160

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Oceanus 154n138 Old Testament books Genesis 50, 64n92, 142, 165, 170, 181–2 Leviticus 15, 106 Deuteronomy 95 1 & 2 Kings 107n27 1 & 2 Chronicles 107n27 Ezra 107n27 Esther 107n27 Job 114, 165 Psalms 65n104, 103–4, 107, 164, 165 Proverbs 50n20, 107, 165 Ecclesiastes 50n20, 105, 107n27, 165, 168, 178n109 Song of Songs 50n20, 107, 161 Isaiah 41n187, 49, 92n84, 97–8, 107n27, 149, 161, 165 Jeremiah 161 Ezekiel 23, 48, 161 Daniel 173n80 Hosea 17n62, 57n65, 68n117, 165, 170n60, 194n165 Obadiah 2n12, 24, 49 Jonah 50n21, 218n111 Micah 19n75, 51 Nahum 19n75, 24 Habakkuk 19n75 Zephaniah 19n75, 24 Haggai 19n75 Zechariah 68n117, 165, 179n117 Malachi 165, 166n32 Olympias 126 Onesimus 25n109, 26–30, 90 Ophites 138, 141–2 oratory 62n84, 70, 193, 199 Origen 6, 12, 13n42, 16n58, 17, 20n86, 22n97, 25n109, 29n124, 36n159, 38, 40n179, 45, 50–1, 62n82, 65–9, 72, 75n6, 77, 78n18, 82, 91n79, 97, 101, 107, 108n35, 114, 119n103, 120, 122n119, 137, 138n12, 140n38, 145, 146n76, 147n84, 148–9, 154, 155, 157n150, 159, 161–94, 195, 202, 221, 223, 226n22 orthodoxy 2, 30, 67, 103, 127, 135, 136–60, 187 Ovid 213n91 paganism 36, 58, 70, 110, 131, 140n41, 141n45, 203, 208, 210 Palestine 8, 9n12, 32, 59, 100n118, 185n132 Palladius 9 Pammachius 17n62, 19n75, 54n44, 57n65, 154n138 Pamphilus of Caesarea 173–5, 182, 184–8 panegyric 57, 69 parable 116–17, 179

Passalorynchites 138, 141–2 Pastoral Epistles 19n78, 43, 45, 147 patronage 5, 7, 13, 15–18, 37, 47, 48, 50, 54–7, 59, 61, 62n82, 63, 73, 75n2, 103, 128, 135, 161 Paul of Cataquas 126n137 Paula 5, 7, 9–10, 13–18, 22, 25, 53–9, 60n74, 61–2, 69, 73, 103, 104n13, 104n14, 105–7, 130, 217–18 Paula the Younger 107 Pauline renaissance 7 Paulinus of Nola 75, 197n20 Pelagius 2, 15n52, 22, 38n167, 189n145, 223, 225, 226n22 Pentateuch 48, 94, 166 Persia 10n18 Persius 220 Peter 34–6, 69n123, 169n54, 176, 219, 223 Peter Abelard 224 Petronius Probianus 219n117 Philistines 98–9 philosopher 1, 35, 58, 71, 181, 211, 213n93 Philumene 139, 201, 204–5 Phoenicia 166 Photinus 139, 152–3, 174–5 Phrygians 211, 213 Pierius 170n60 pilgrims 8, 9n12, 10 plagiarism 50–2 Plato 70, 211–12, 213n92 Plautus 51, 213n92 pneumatology 38 polemic 29n124, 32n142, 33, 35, 36n156, 50, 52, 68, 71, 98, 119, 131n166, 136n2, 138, 141, 142, 143n59, 148n90, 151, 174, 175n90, 225 Polemon 69 Pontus 143, 144 Porphyry of Tyre 34–6, 64, 176 Portus 7, 103 Posidonius 9 poverty 109–10, 126–7, 168, 180, 197, 215–16 prayer 9, 24–5, 28, 53–4, 61–3, 92n89, 109, 122, 142, 183, 186 preaching 7n2, 10n17, 18, 21, 28, 34–5, 36n159, 57, 66, 97n105, 118, 120n106, 122n119, 127, 144, 149, 156, 161, 162, 166, 168, 174–5, 192, 204 pre-existence of souls 152, 185n132 prefaces 4–5, 10, 14–16, 18–19, 21–6, 28–9, 31, 33–4, 37, 39–40, 41n186, 47–74, 76, 86, 91, 97, 98, 105–6, 107n24, 147, 154, 162, 165n23, 169, 172, 177, 179, 182, 184, 188, 193, 195–6, 214, 217–18, 223, 225 pride 26, 63, 67, 119n103, 131–2, 155n52, 160n161, 213n93, 219

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  priests 1, 46n207, 73, 74, 107, 117–30, 130n160, 148n93, 169n54, 170n60, 207–8, 223 Priscillian of Avila 135 prison 19, 21, 23, 26–8, 192 Probus 219n117 prophets 2n12, 14n45, 17n62, 19n75, 23, 24, 31n136, 41n187, 49, 56n58, 57n65, 58, 63n88, 63n89, 64n92, 68n115, 70n130, 92n84, 98–9, 107n27, 146, 166n32, 184, 187, 194n165 proselytism 32 Protestant Reformation 224 Pythagoras 58 Pythagoreans 58 Quintilian 69, 196n9, 199–200, 221 Rabanus Maurus 224 rabbis 96n100, 100n118 Raspanti, Giacomo 37, 77n12, 173, 204 Red Sea 57–8 Renaissance 11, 49, 223n5 resurrection 60, 203 rhetoric 1, 6, 11, 12n28, 16–17, 19n76, 41, 47, 52n36, 62, 63, 65n100, 68–72, 97n105, 103, 117n88, 123n121, 130, 133, 136n4, 137, 140, 143, 159, 162, 170, 187, 192–4, 199, 203n58, 217–18, 225 rhetorical figures alliteration 211 anaphora 69n126, 119, 123n121, 132 antithesis 203–4, 221 asyndeton 60, 123n121 hyperbaton 190n152 paronomasia 49, 83 praeteritio 143, 187 pun 49 ring composition 91 tricolon 118 Robert Grossteste 224 Roman Republic 52, 81, 196 Roman empire 32n145, 52, 71n139, 81, 134n187, 135, 144n69, 198, 200, 214n95 Rome 1, 2, 5, 7, 15, 18, 20n81, 26n113, 33n147, 37, 43, 48, 53–63, 67n112, 69n124, 70n132, 71, 72–4, 85, 87, 100, 101, 103, 104, 105, 108, 112, 117, 128, 129, 130, 134n186, 135, 139n28, 143n63, 144, 148n93, 149, 161, 189, 192, 223, 225 Rufinus 8, 13n40, 51n32, 68, 131n167, 135n191, 154, 161n6, 164, 165n25, 173, 175, 177, 182, 185, 186, 189, 191, 192, 223 Rusticus 98n107

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Sabellius 139, 150–1 Sallust 48, 52, 197–8, 211–13, 221 salvation 25n109, 32, 81, 111n54, 150, 155, 160, 179–80 Samaritan Pentateuch 94 Samuel 183 satire 51, 73, 123n124, 128, 131, 200, 217n108 scholia 66, 162, 173 scribes 13, 76, 93–7 Sedulius Scottus 224 Seneca 55n54, 110, 200, 221 Septuagint 13, 37, 76, 87–101, 176n98 Sermon on the Mount 57 Sethians 186 sexual intercourse 78–9, 111, 113–16 Shepherd’s Field 9 sin 29, 40, 107n24, 108, 109, 156–7, 180–1, 205 Sinope 143 Siricius, Pope 122, 128–30 slavery 21, 25n109, 27, 29–30, 91, 119n102 snakes 141, 142, 152 Solomon 25n108, 184 Sophronius 131n165 soul 40, 115, 123n121, 155–60, 185n132, 188, 192, 197, 199, 205–6, 210, 212, 215, 220 Souter, Alexander 163, 169 spiritual warfare 42–3 stenographers 162–3, 188 Stoicism 106, 123, 188, 197 Suetonius 200 Sulpicius Severus 196n9 swine 55, 57 Symmachus 13, 89n63, 89n65, 91, 92, 95 Syria 98n107, 142, 148, 149, 165, 171 Syriac 20, 171 Tabitha 89n66 Tascodrougites 138, 141, 142 Tatian 44–5, 139, 140n40 Terence 50–3, 189, 196, 213n91, 221 Tertullian 6, 24n105, 86, 136, 139n28, 143, 144, 151n111, 153, 164, 195, 198, 200–14, 219, 221 Textus Receptus 82n37 Thebans 213 Theodore of Heraclea 66, 162, 164 Theodore of Mopsuestia 21–2, 41n186, 44n202, 102, 146n76, 207n72 Theodoret of Cyrrhus 25n109 127n146 Theodosius 134 Theodotion 13, 89n63, 91, 92, 95 Thomas Aquinas 224 Thrace 164 Timothy 23, 44, 90, 146n78

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Trajan 71, 144n69 transliteration 13, 81, 89 Trinity 25n108, 149–51, 219 truth 196 Turkey 143 Turner, Cuthbert 163 Tychicus 40 typology 49, 58, 122 Tyrians 98–9 Tyrrhenian Sea 7 Valens 170n58 Valentinus 43n199, 45, 139, 146–8, 186, 201–2 Varro 195–6 vegetables 127n146 Vessey, Mark 62n82, 107, 161 Vesta 207–8 Vetus Latina 73, 76–87 vice 90, 120, 132, 140, 141, 185, 191, 208–9, 213n91 vigils 109

Virgil 11, 51–2, 69, 189, 196, 198, 202, 213n91, 221 virginity 9, 25n108, 56n61, 70n132, 98–9, 103, 107–13, 116–17, 122n117, 122n118, 130, 133–5, 143, 204–5, 207–8 virtue 21, 82n36, 102–3, 108, 111n54, 114, 120–3, 126, 127, 141, 215 Volcacius Sedigitus 52n35 Vulgate Bible 50n20, 78n18, 82n37, 84, 101 wealth 27, 62n82, 75n2, 118, 125 widowhood 55, 70n132, 98, 99, 109, 111, 116–17, 207 wisdom 24–6, 29, 63, 92, 106, 108, 112, 123, 128n151, 133–4, 203, 213n92 Wiles, Maurice 143, 168 Yahweh 92, 144 yeast 82–3 yogurt 142 Zeno 198