chapter three
... AnIllustriousTranslator................................
The last quotation from the year decidedly proves that Jerome did
not manage to get a clear picture of the number of “Jewish-Christian”
gospels and their relations to each other. According to this quotation, the
Gospel of the Hebrews = a gospel written in the Syriac language (but with
Hebrew letters) = the gospel which the Nazarenes used = the Gospel of
the Apostles = the Gospel of Matthew.
Although Jerome claimed several times that he had translated the
gospel used by the Nazarenes, modern scholars usually think that he
cannot have had a full copy of the gospel available and that he did
not translate it. The main argument is that had Jerome really possessed
the gospel, its differences to the Gospel of Matthew could not have
escaped his attention, and he certainly would have cited it more often
than he does.^48 Even Jerome’sCommentary on Matthewcontains only six
references.
The reason why Jerome started to speak about having translated the
Gospel according to the Hebrews must be connected to the fact that
inOn Illustrious Men, his own list of publications includes the entire
New and Old Testaments, although he never completed the translation
of the New Testament and the translation of the Old Testament was to
be completed only about a decade later. It seems that the fact that he
had started the work and was looking forward to completing it gave
him reason to include these accomplishments in his list of publications.
Jerome must have known the value of his work among the Latin-speaking
Christians and he also probably wanted to show off to the Romans who
had not realized his true value in the context of the papal election and the
following incidents which caused him to leave Rome. Jerome wanted to
be remembered as a man who had translated the entire Bible from Greek
and Hebrew. Something similar must have happened with the “Gospel
accordingtotheHebrews.”Jeromehadaplantodothetranslationand
by the time he was writingOn Illustrious Men,healsothoughtthatitwas
possible.
Before Jerome started to translate Bible from the original Hebrew, he
prepared translations, or revisions of the Old Latin versions, of some
books of the Old Testament (Psalms, Job, Chronicles, Proverbs, Eccle-
siastes, Song of Songs). The translations were based on Origen’sHexapla,
(^48) Vielhauer & Strecker (^2) ( (^1) ), .