Voices and influences
Jerome
The scholar who went to the Hebrew itself and gave the West a Bible it read for a thousand years.
Summary
This site quotes Jerome 2,794 times across 57 books, and lists 0 works.
- Lived died 420.
- Quoted here most in Matthew: 558 of 2,794.
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Jerome
- Lived
- died 420
- Tradition
- Patristic
5 of 2,794 quotations
Own words
Quoted in full, because Jerome died in 420 and these works are out of copyright. Each citation below names its edition and its year. A citation naming a modernised text means that edition makes its own editorial changes, and that edition's terms are not in this site's record.
(Chapter 49, verse 3) Reuben, my firstborn, you are my strength and the first of my sons, tough in bearing and tough in insolence and injury, like water that does not boil.
The rest of the quotation
You went up on your father's bed, then you defiled it when you went up. In Hebrew it is written: Reuben, my firstborn, you are my strength, and the first in power among my sons. Greater in carrying, and greater in strength. You are poured out like water, do not exceed. For you have ascended the bed of your father and defiled the couch in his ascent.
Genesis 49:3 Reuben, you are my firstborn, my might, and the beginning of my strength, excelling in honor, excelling in power. BSB
But we your people and the sheep of your pasture. When he says "sheep," he signifies innocence. Sheep have nothing but a shepherd. We will give you thanks forever. We will confess: either we do penance, or, what is better, we glorify.
The rest of the quotation
From generation to generation; among the first people, and among the second people. Although according to the historical sense it is said otherwise in Ezekiel, nevertheless according to the spiritual understanding we say this, since these two peoples — that is, the two rods — are joined together in Ezekiel, and become one kingdom.
Psalms 79:13 Then we Your people, the sheep of Your pasture, will thank You forever; from generation to generation we will declare Your praise. BSB
I have become like the pelican of the wilderness. There are said to be two kinds of these birds.
The rest of the quotation
One lives in the waters, and its food is fish; and one lives in the wilderness, and its food is venomous creatures, that is, serpents and crocodiles and lizards. Now these birds are called in Latin 'onocrotali.' To that one therefore have I become like, which lives in the wilderness, which eats venomous creatures: that is, my food was to me as it were poison. I have become like the night-raven in its dwelling-place.
Psalms 102:6 I am like a desert owl, like an owl among the ruins. BSB
"Be exalted above the heavens, O God." God is not exalted except above the heavens, he is not exalted above the earth. When we are earthly, we do not exalt God; but if from earthly we have been made heavenly, then we exalt God.
The rest of the quotation
And our Lord, when he was on earth, did not exalt us. Someone may say: You speak rashly, since he himself says in the Gospel: "When I have been lifted up, I will draw all things to myself."
Psalms 108:5–6 Be exalted, O God, above the heavens; may Your glory cover all the earth. Respond and save us with Your right hand, that Your beloved may be delivered. BSB
Praise the Lord, O Jerusalem; praise your God, O Zion. Just now we heard the holy presbyter preaching that, because of its transgression of the law, the Jewish people has been forsaken; and how is it that now it is said, Praise the Lord, O…
The rest of the quotation
Jerusalem; praise your God, O Zion? Praise the Lord, O Jerusalem. Jerusalem, "vision of peace." Praise your God, O Zion. Zion is interpreted "watchtower." You see, then, what he says: Praise the Lord, O Jerusalem. Wherever there is a vision of peace, wherever there is contemplation of God, there let there be praise of God.
Psalms 147:12 Exalt the LORD, O Jerusalem; praise your God, O Zion! BSB
Influence, on the record
This site quotes Jerome 2,794 times across 57 books.
This site’s own count of what it does with the voice
The life, in order
The life told as one accountfrom this site's record
Eusebius Hieronymus was born about 347 at Stridon, a town on the border of Dalmatia and Pannonia that no longer exists. His parents were Christians with money. They sent him to Rome, where he studied grammar and rhetoric under the great teacher Donatus, collected pagan authors, and was baptized in his late teens. He traveled east, and about 375 went into the desert of Chalcis, southeast of Antioch, to live as a hermit. He lasted a few years. He hated the heat, quarreled with the monks over the Trinity, and — by his own account — hired a converted Jew to teach him Hebrew, largely to keep his mind off Rome. That decision changed the history of the Bible in the West. Ordained at Antioch, he went on to Constantinople, where he heard Gregory of Nazianzus, and then in 382 to Rome, where Pope Damasus made him a secretary and set him to revising the Latin Gospels against the Greek. In Rome he also became teacher to a circle of wealthy Christian women — Marcella, Paula, and Paula's daughter Eustochium — who studied Scripture and Hebrew with him. His scorn for the worldly Roman clergy was returned with interest, and after Damasus died in 384 he left the city for good. In 386 he settled at Bethlehem, where Paula founded monasteries for men and women and paid for his books. He stayed thirty-four years, working in a cave beside the traditional site of the Nativity. There he did the thing he is known for. Instead of correcting the old Latin against the Greek Septuagint, he translated the Old Testament out of the Hebrew — going to Jewish teachers for help, arguing that the Hebraica veritas, the Hebrew truth, was the standard. Augustine wrote to warn him that congregations would riot over changed familiar words, and in North Africa one did. Jerome kept going. He also wrote commentaries on most of the prophets, on Matthew and several letters of Paul, a catalogue of Christian writers, letters that were copied and read as literature, and translations of Origen and Eusebius. He was a savage controversialist. He broke publicly with his oldest friend Rufinus over Origen, attacked Jovinian, Vigilantius, and Pelagius in print, and lost few opportunities to wound. In 410 refugees from the sack of Rome arrived at his door and he wrote that the light of the world had gone out. Paula died in 404, Eustochium in 419. Jerome died at Bethlehem in 420. His translation, gathered later with other Latin books into what came to be called the Vulgate, was the Bible of Western Europe until the Reformation and remained the Roman Catholic standard far beyond it. Sources: Jerome, Letters and De viris illustribus; Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church; the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers series, second series volume 6; the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia.
2,794 quotations across 57 books
Where this voice is quoted
In the resurrection, people will neither marry nor be given in marriage. Instead, they will be like the angels in heaven.
“(Verse 30) For in the resurrection neither do they marry, nor are they given in marriage; but they are as the angels of God in heaven. The Latin custom does not correspond to the Greek idiom.”
But concerning the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what God said to you: ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of…
“(Vers. 31 seqq.) But concerning the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was spoken by God, saying to you: I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob: God is not the God of the dead…”
And when the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they themselves gathered together. One of them, an expert in the law, tested Him with a question:
“The Pharisees having been themselves already confuted (in the matter of the denarius), and now seeing their adversaries also overthrown, should have taken warning to attempt no further deceit against Him; but hate and jealousy are the parents of impudence.”
Jesus said to them, “How then does David in the Spirit call Him ‘Lord’?
“This passage is out of the 109th Psalm. Christ is therefore called David's Lord, not in respect of His descent from him, but in respect of His eternal generation from the Father, wherein He was before His fleshly Father.”
‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at My right hand until I put Your enemies under Your feet.”’
“This question is still available for us against the Jews; for these who believe that Christ is yet to come, assert that He is a mere man, though a holy one, of the race of David.”
No one was able to answer a word, and from that day on no one dared to question Him any further.
“(Verse 46) And no one was able to answer him a word, nor did anyone dare from that day on to ask him any more questions.”
“The scribes and Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. So practice and observe everything they tell you.
“(Chapter 23, Verses 1 and following.) Then Jesus spoke to the crowds and to his disciples, saying: The scribes and Pharisees have seated themselves on the chair of Moses. Therefore, whatever they tell you, observe and do it, but do not do their works.”
All their deeds are done for men to see. They broaden their phylacteries and lengthen their tassels.
“For the Lord, when He had given the commandments of the Law through Moses, added at the end, And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be ever before thine eyes; (Deut. 6:8.)”
But you are not to be called ‘Rabbi,’ for you have one Teacher, and you are all brothers.
“(cont. Helvid. 15.) All men may be called brethren in affection, which is of two kinds, general and particular. Particular, by which all Christians are brethren; general, by which all men being born of one Father are bound together by like tie of kindred.”
And do not call anyone on earth your father, for you have one Father, who is in heaven.
“It is a difficulty that the Apostle against this command calls himself the teacher of the Gentiles; and that in monasteries in their common conversation, they call one another, Father. It is to be cleared thus.”
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the kingdom of heaven in men’s faces.
“(Ver. 13, 14.) But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people's faces. For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!”
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You traverse land and sea to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a…
“(Verse 15.) Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you travel over sea and land to make one proselyte; and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves.”
Woe to you, blind guides! You say, ‘If anyone swears by the temple, it means nothing; but if anyone swears by the gold of the temple, he is bound by…
“(Verse 16 onwards) Woe to you, blind guides, who say, 'Whoever swears by the temple is nothing, but whoever swears by the gold of the temple is bound by his oath.' Fools and blind!”
And you say, ‘If anyone swears by the altar, it means nothing; but if anyone swears by the gift on it, he is bound by his oath.’ You blind men!
“Again, if one swore by the altar, none held him guilty of perjury; but if he swore by the gift or the victims or the other things which are offered to God upon the altar, this they exacted most rigorously.”
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You pay tithes of mint, dill, and cumin. But you have disregarded the weightier matters of the law: justice, mercy, and faithfulness.
“The Lord had commanded, that for the maintenance of the Priests and Levites, whose portion was the Lord, tithes of every thing should be offered in the temple.”
You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.
“(Verse 24) Blind leaders, straining out a gnat but swallowing a camel. I believe the camel refers to the understanding of the present situation, the magnitude of the teachings, judgment, mercy, and faith.”
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You build tombs for the prophets and decorate the monuments of the righteous.
“(Verse 29 onwards) Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the monuments of the righteous, and you say, 'If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partners with…”
Fill up, then, the measure of the sin of your fathers.
“And you, fulfill the measure of your fathers. Having proven with the previous words that they were the children of murderers and those who killed the prophets, he now concludes what he wanted and puts forth the final part of the syllogism.”
You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape the sentence of hell?
“(v. 33) Serpents, ((Al. additur et)) offspring of vipers, how can you escape the judgment of Gehenna? This very thing John the Baptist also said (Luke III).”
And so upon you will come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Berechiah, whom you murdered…
“Concerning the Abel here spoken of, there is no doubt that it is he whom his brother Cain murdered.”
O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those sent to her, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under…
“(Verse 37.) Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you: how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were unwilling!”
Look, your house is left to you desolate.
“Verse 38. Behold, your house shall be left desolate. This very thing Jeremiah had already said in the person of Jeremiah: I have forsaken my house, I have cast off my inheritance: my inheritance is become to me as a lion in the forest.”
For I tell you that you will not see Me again until you say, ‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.’”
“(Verse 39) For I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, 'Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.' He is speaking to Jerusalem and to the people of Judaea.”
For many will come in My name, claiming, ‘I am the Christ,’ and will deceive many.
“(Verse 5.) For many will come in my name, saying: I am the Christ, and they will deceive many.”
You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. These things must happen, but the end is still to come.
“(Verse 6.) For you will hear of battles and rumors of battles: see that you are not troubled. For these things must happen; but the end is not yet.”
