Jerome's View of Double Inspiration

A student asked me a question about the LXX addition to Gen. 46:20, which has led to a day’s worth of research on the number of Israelites who descended into Egypt according to the various textual witnesses.

Just a quick survey: the MT of Gen. 46:27 says that 70 individuals went, as also Exod. 1:5 and Deut. 10:22. The LXX has the number 75 in the first two passages, though it maintains the 70 in the Deut. passage. The number 75 is also found in 2 fragments of Exod. 1:5 found at Qumran: 4QGen-Exod^a (fr. 17 line 2) and 4QExod^b (fr. 1 line 5), for which see DJD 12. The extra 5 people in the LXX are presented in an expansion of Gen. 46:20, which reads in The New English Translation of the Septuagint,

And to Ioseph in the land of Egypt were born sons, Manasse and Ephraim, whom Asenneth daughter of Petephres, priest of Heliopolis bore to him. [Here the MT ends.] And to Manasse were born sons, whom the Syrian concubine bore to him: Machir, and Machir became the father of Galaad. And the sons of Manasse’s brother Ephraim: Southalaam and Taam. And the sons of Southalaam: Edem.

Naturally, Jerome prefers the MT reading 70, and he argues that the extra 5 people included in the LXX addition to Gen. 46:20 are obviously secondary additions because Joseph’s sons Ephraim and Manasseh would not have been old enough at the time to have children, much less grandchildren. “Therefore it is clear that all of Jacob’s descendents who entered Egypt totaled 70, though 66 of these came later and found 3 already in Egypt, namely Joseph and his two sons; the 70^th person is Jacob himself.”

A problem arises in that Stephen cites the number 75 in his speech in Acts 7:14. To this Jerome responds: “the answer is easy. Saint Luke, who is the author of that history, in publishing a book of the Acts of the Apostles for the gentiles, ought not to have written anything contrary to the Bible (scriptura) commonly accepted by the gentiles.”

This last comment is interesting for a number of reasons, not least of which is that Jerome here imagines that Luke did not give a literal presentation of Stephen’s words. Jerome probably envisioned Stephen speaking to the Jewish leadership in Hebrew or Aramaic (“Syriac”), and so of course Luke would have had to translate this into Greek. However, Luke’s editorial activity included even conforming Stephen’s speech to the expectations of a Gentile audience. Jerome seems to be saying that Stephen would have cited the number 70 in his actual speech, because it is the correct number in the Hebrew tradition. Luke changed this number to 75 in order to match the expectations of his readers. Both Stephen and Luke were inspired, in Jerome’s mind. This implies that the same Holy Spirit can inspire two inharmonious accounts of one incident. This is very reminiscent of Augustine’s discussion of Jonah’s prophecy within his defense of the LXX (City of God, book 18, chapter 44).

I’m not sure what to think of Jerome’s comment here. He seems close to conceding the position he elsewhere attacks so vigorously, and thereby he slackens somewhat on his commitment to the original (veritas). I’m sure that he didn’t think about the implications of his statement here as I have done, but I wonder whether he would have been better off, and more consistent, by allowing Stephen himself to cite the number 75. Yet, that option comes with its own problems.

Jerome’s discussion is found in his Hebrew Questions in Genesis at 46:26. I have used the Migne edition (PL 23.2, cols. 1051−1053).

Chaldean Truth

This post is designed merely to help people locate Jerome’s phrase “Chaldean truth”. I spent about twenty minutes Googling it in every variation I could think of (e.g. “Chaldee verity” etc.), all in vain. Finally, I noticed that I had already cited it in a paper I wrote several months ago.

As readers of Jerome will know, he speaks constantly of the Hebrew truth (Hebraica veritas) as his rallying cry to return to the original language of the OT. He does the same for the NT, speaking of the “Greek truth” in his preface to the Gospels (cf. Stuttgart Vulgate, ed. Weber, p. 1515, line 4), but Greek is not so often associated with Jerome because he did so little work on the NT compared with the OT. Scholars have, in fact, failed to find traces of his revision activity in the NT outside of the Gospels; the rest of the NT was revised, but by an anonymous editor, whom some modern scholars identify as Rufinus the Syrian (not Rufinus of Aquileia).

Since part of the Bible is written in Aramaic rather than Hebrew, Jerome naturally does not apply the phrase Hebraica veritas to this portion. Here is his Commentary on Daniel 5:11; the lemma is underlined.

Est vir in regno tuo qui spiritum deorum sanctorum habet in se. Praeter Symmachum, qui chaldaicam veritatem secutus est, ceteri ‘spiritum Dei’ interpretati sunt.

Jerome says that Symmachus alone among Greek translators follows the “Chaldean truth” by using the plural “gods” rather than the singular “God.”

At any rate, my interest in this comment is in the phrase chaldaica veritas. I hope that if anyone wants to find Jerome’s statement about it, this post will make it easier to locate.

The Jews, the Canon, and the Hebrew Alphabet

There are several items I could clarify from my previous post. Maybe I’ll turn such clarifications into a series, though if you’ve read enough of this blog, you know that I’m very bad about finishing series. (I do plan to return to Zechariah, though I doubt I’ll get back to Calvin).

For now, I’ll just note that, as I previously wrote, Origen does not say that he derived the connection between the Hebrew alphabet and the Jewish canon from the Jews. Or, at least, he does not say so in the fragment of his commentary on the first psalm as preserved in Eusebius (HE 6.25). This is correctly perceived by Martin Hengel (Septuagint as Christian Scripture (2002), 62 n. 12).

However, in Fragment 3 of his Homilies on Lamentations, Origen does report that this tradition derives from the Jews. (See here for the 1901 GCS edition by Erich Klostermann, Origenes Werke 3, p. 236. And you better download it while you can. Next time you might not be able to find it.) Only the first paragraph is relevant. This is my translation.

Therefore the Hebrews say the books of the Old Testament are equal in number to the letters, so that they are an introduction to all divine knowledge, just as the letters are [an introduction] to all wisdom for those who learn. Therefore, they are quadrupled, perhaps because the elements of bodies are four.

The last sentence is a little confusing. My guess is that it refers to the four acrostic poems that make up the first four chapters of the Book of Lamentations (the last chapter, though containing 22 verses, is not an acrostic). Since these four acrostics each proceed through the entire Hebrew alphabet, Origen says that Lamentations has quadrupled the alphabet. He thinks the reason for quadrupling the alphabet (i.e. letters = “elements”) is to maintain an analogy with the four physical elements (earth, water, air, fire).

In any case, my point here is that this fragment definitely affirms that the connection between the 22 letters of the alphabet and the 22 books of the OT is current in the Judaism of Origen’s day. This should be considered when one tries to determine the chronological development of the Jewish canon. As Peter Katz showed long ago, and as, e.g., Gilles Dorival has emphasized of late (see references below), the 22-book canon has much better and earlier attestation than the 24-book canon. However, the 24-book canon appears already in 4 Ezra 14:45 and the Gospel of Thomas 52, so they must have co-existed in Judaism for several centuries. Much investigation has been done in this area, but more could be done.

References:

Peter Katz, “The Old Testament Canon in Palestine and Alexandria,” ZNW 47 (1956): 191–217; repr. in S.Z. Leiman (ed.), The Canon and Masorah of the Hebrew Bible (New York: Ktav, 1974), 72–98.

Gilles Dorival, “L’apport des Pères de l’Église à la question de la clôture du canon de l’Ancien Testament,” in J.-M. Auwers and H.J. De Jonge (eds.), The Biblical Canons, Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium 163 (Louvain: University Press, 2003), 81–110.

The 22 Books of the OT

Almost all the early Christian canonical lists of OT books limited the number to 22, which more or less equals the modern Protestant reckoning of 39 books. For how 22 = 39, see this good handout prepared by Tyler Williams and follow these steps: (1) start with the Protestant canon of 39 books; (2) note that it contains the same books as the Jewish canon of 24 books, just arranged differently; (3) using the Jewish canon of 24 books, count Lamentations with Jeremiah and Ruth with Judges; (4) notice that you now have 22 books.

The number 22 is first attested in Josephus (CA 1.37–41), although R.H. Charles argued for its presence already in Jubilees about 2 ½ centuries earlier (see his The Book of Jubilees, 1902; also see the criticism by James VanderKam, From Revelation to Canon, 2000, pp. 18–19). I should note that Josephus does not tell us which books he includes, leaving scholars to debate whether his 22 books equals what Christians later called the 22 books.

The Hebrew alphabet has 22 letters, and the Fathers often saw a connection between the 22 letters that serve as an introduction to learning and the 22 books that serve as an introduction to piety. The connection between the OT and the Hebrew alphabet is first attested in Origen’s commentary on the first Psalm (preserved by Eusebius, HE 6.25).

It is possible that Origen learned of this connection from a Jewish source, though he does not say so. The Jewish sources other than Josephus unanimously (as far as I know) count their books as 24, and this number is attested almost as early as Josephus’s 22, being found already in 4 Ezra 14:45 and the Gospel of Thomas 52. The number 24 is also assumed in the famous passage from the Babylonian Talmud, Baba Bathra 14b. Again, the 24 books are the same as the 22 books, just counted differently.

While the early Fathers usually limited the OT to 22 books, and thus the books of the Jewish canon, two caveats should be kept in mind. (1) The Greek form of the book sometimes differed radically from the Hebrew/Jewish form. This is apparent especially in, e.g., the Book of Jeremiah, which almost always in Christian reckoning included Lamentations, Baruch, and the Letter of Jeremiah, the latter two being completely absent from the Jewish Bible, the first being present but not counted with Jeremiah. Of course, the Book of Jeremiah itself is quite different in its Hebrew and Greek forms. Other obvious examples would be Daniel and Esther, less obvious examples abound.

(2) Even Fathers that seem to limit their OT canon to the Jewish Bible sometimes limit it even more, excluding the book of Esther. Those that omit Esther include Melito, Athanasius, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Amphilochus. Athanasius includes Esther as one of the “other books” to be read but not used for doctrine. Amphilochus appends a note to his list saying that some people include Esther.

Those Fathers who mention a connection between the number of OT books and the letters of the Hebrew alphabet include:

1. Origen, as cited above. (Though I agree with Dominique Barthélemy that the canon list Origen gives does not represent his own OT canon, but merely that of the “Hebrews”; see Études d’histoire du texte de l’Ancien Testament, 1978, p. 114.)
2. Athanasius of Alexandria in his 39th Festal Letter.
3. Epiphanius of Salamis in three separate lists: Panarion 8.6.1-4; De mens. et pond. 4; 22-23. In each of these lists, Epiphanius mentions also the number 27, which is simply a different way of counting the 22 books, in accordance with the five doubled letters of the Hebrew alphabet which bring the number of Hebrew letters to 27. Jerome also mentions the number 27 and the five doubled letters/books (Prologus Galeatus).
4. Gregory of Nazianzus, Carmen 1.12.
5. Hilary of Poitiers, Tractatus super Psalmos 15. (See here)
6. Jerome, Prologus Galeatus.

Those that obviously count 22 OT books, but do not mention the alphabet include:

1. Cyril of Jerusalem (Catechetical Lecture 4.35), who stresses the number 22 for the OT books, but does not mention the alphabet.
2. The Council of Laodicea, canon 60. Two notes: (1) Though the total number of books is not given, each book is assigned a number, with the last book, Daniel, being given number 22. (2) It is not certain that this list originated with the council, or whether it was added later.
3. Rufinus of Aquileia, Commentary on the Apostle's Creed, 37. Notes: it is clear that Rufinus is aiming for the number 22 because he counts Ruth with Judges, and reports that the Hebrews count the four books of Kings (i.e. our Samuel and Kings) as two, etc. The only reason to do this is to preserve the number 22. I am aware of Meinrad Stenzel’s objection to this view (“Der Bibelkanon des Rufin von Aquileja,” Biblica 23 (1942): 43–61 (45)), but I find his argument unpersuasive.

Some canon lists contain only the books accepted by the Jews (with allowance for variations between the Greek and Hebrew forms of those books), but do not seem to count them as 22. These include:

1. Melito of Sardis (preserved in Eusebius, HE 4.26). I assume with Albert Sundberg that Melito does not include the Wisdom of Solomon (see The Old Testament of the Early Church (Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1964), 133–134 n. 10). Some scholars have attempted to count Melito’s books as 22 (e.g. Sundberg, 133–134), but others more simply count 25 (e.g. R.T. Beckwith, The Old Testament Canon of the New Testament Church, 1985, 184–185).
2. Hierosolymitanus 54 (= the Bryennios list), a list of OT canonical books found in the same manuscript which yielded the Didache. The manuscript was discovered in Jerusalem (hence Hierosolymitanus) by Philotheos Bryennios. The list counts 27 books, which is reminiscent of Epiphanius (see above). This canon list was studied by J.-P. Audet, “A Hebrew-Aramaic List of Books of the Old Testament in Greek Transcription,” JThS 1 (1950): 135–154; reprinted in S.Z. Leiman (ed.), Canon and Masorah of the Hebrew Bible, 1974, 52–71.
3. Amphilochus of Iconium, Iambi ad Seleucum 251–319. Amphilocus may count 22 books, but he does not say, nor does he assign numbers to the individual books.
4. The Apostolic Canons, canon 85. I follow the text of P.-P. Joannou, Discipline générale antique, 3 vols., Fonti codificazione canonica orientale 9 (Grottaferrata (Rome): Tipografia Italo-Orientale “S. Nilo,” 1961–64), 1.2.51–52. The text of F.X. Funk includes after Eshter, “Judith and three books of Maccabees,” which is an interpolation from the Latin (Didascalia Constitutiones Apostolorum, 2 vols. (Paderborn: Schoeningh, 1905), 1.590–592).

Some late 4^th-century Latin lists incorporate the “Apocrypha” (as they are called by Protestants; “deuterocanonicals” among Roman Catholics; “ecclesiastical books” according to Rufinus, in the work cited above, section 38). Thus, they include more books than any of those mentioned already. These longer lists include:

1. The Mommsen Catalogue (= the Cheltenham List, from North Africa ca. 359).
2. Council of Hippo in 393, the canons of which were not preserved, but the scriptural canon was reaffirmed at Carthage in 397.
3. Council of Carthage in 397, canon 26.
4. Augustine’s list in On Christian Doctrine 2.13.
5. The list of Pope Innocent I given in his letter to Exsuperius, section 7. This list actually comes from the early 5^th century (ca. 405), and is the first pronouncement of Rome on the issue.

Each of these five sources (except, perhaps, the Mommsen Catalogue) provides a list including the same six books rejected by the Jews: Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, Tobit, Judith, and 1 and 2 Maccabees. While the Mommsen Catalogue does list the latter four books, it is uncertain whether its title “Salomonis” includes Wisdom and Sirach, though the given stichometry makes this probable. See T. Zahn, Geschichte des neutestamentlichen Kanons, 2 vols. (1888–92; repr. New York: Georg Olms, 1975), 2.151. These 6 “deuterocanonical“ books are the same as those listed by Jerome (Preaf. in lib. Sal.) and Rufinus (see citation above) as books to be read, but not for the confirmation of doctrine. Athanasius included a similar list of “books to be read” outside the canon, but his list omits reference to the Maccabees, and includes Esther.

Now I have something on this blog to show for the month of June.

Quote of the Day

From Werner Jaeger, Early Christianity and Greek Paideia (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1961), p. 33, speaking of the difference between the Greek and Latin forms of early Christianity.

The Greeks always welcome the support of reason, whereas the Roman mind stresses throughout (1) the factor of personality in the acceptance of the Christian faith and (2) the suprapersonal factor of authority.

That is a good way of putting it, and fits very well with the concept of the early Christian canon on which I am working.

The Title of the “Minor Prophets”

I have been harping on the need to check the original sources in order to confirm the accuracy of statements in modern books. Reading Hilary’s Tractatus super Psalmos § 15 for my previous post had the unexpected side benefit of demolishing another scholarly myth, one that I was not expecting.

I have previously reported on this blog that the first ancient author to use the phrase “Minor Prophets” was Augustine, in his City of God 18.29. Before Augustine, so I thought, authors used the title “The Twelve” to refer to these prophets, which title is standard in Judaism and derives at least from the early second century BC work Sirach (49:10).

The attribution of the title “Minor Prophets” to Augustine is rather common (see a, b, c). The following scholarly articles that perpetuate this attribution are merely a sampling.

Peter Mommer, “Minor Prophets,” in E. Fahlbusch, et al., The Encyclopedia of Christianity, 4 vols. (Eerdmans and Brill, 2003), 3.544.

John William Rogerson, “Dodekapropheton,” in TRE 9 (De Gruyter, 1982), 18.

Marvin Sweeney is admirably cautious in saying: “The term ‘Minor Prophets,’ Prophetae minores in Latin, first appears in Latin Christian Patristic sources, such as the work of Augustine (City of G–d 18:29)” (The Twelve Prophets, 2 vols. [Liturgical Press, 2000], 1.xvi).

It turns out that Augustine is not the first author on record to use the title “Minor Prophets”. As seen in my preceding post, Hilary already used the term in the introduction to his “tracts” on the psalms. Manlio Simonetti dates this work to the last decade of Hilary’s life, which ended in 367 (see Simonetti’s discussion of Hilary in A. di Berardino, Patrology, vol. 4 (1978; ET 1986), 33–61).

Hilary’s use of the term thus preceded that of Augustine by several decades. The eighteenth book of Augustine’s City of God was probably written ca. 426. His words at chapter 29 that the twelve prophets “are called minor” implies that this is a somewhat common designation.

Hilary on the OT Canon

I do apologize for continuing my rant, but I am writing a dissertation on a topic that would be aided by a trustworthy book on the OT canon. Unfortunately, Lee McDonald’s recent release, The Biblical Canon (Hendrickson, 2007), is not it. For previous complaints against the material contained therein, see here, with links to other posts.

In the midst of his survey of patristic sources for the Old Testament canon, McDonald comes to Hilary of Poitiers. McDonald writes:

Hilary of Poitiers appears to follow Origen’s example, but adds two extra books to his canon, namely, Tobit and Judith, in order to make a twenty-four-book biblical canon, which he wrongly believed followed the number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet! (Biblical Canon, 204)

The second edition of McDonald’s book, which then went under the title The Formation of the Christian Biblical Canon (Hendrickson, 1995), contains the exact same sentence, except that the last clause reads, “which he believed followed the Hebrew alphabet” (113).

For the third edition, McDonald strengthened his assertion by adding the adverb “wrongly” and the exclamation point, aside from inserting the clarifying phrase “the number of letters in”.

But McDonald is WRONG! Allow me to translate Hilary.[1] The passage comes from his Tractatus super Psalmos, § 15. You can read the Latin in the CSEL edition by A. Zingerle (Vienna, 1891).

And this is the reason that the law of the Old Testament is reckoned in 22 books, so that they correspond with the number of the letters. They are reckoned according to the traditions of the elders, so that there are five books of Moses, Joshua son of Nun is the sixth, Judges and Ruth are the seventh, the first and second books of Reigns [i.e., 1 and 2 Samuel] are eighth, the third and fourth books [of Reigns, i.e., 1 and 2 Kings] are ninth, two books of Leftovers [Paralipomenon, the Greek name for Chronicles] are the tenth, the chronicles[2] of Ezra is eleventh, the book of Psalms is twelfth, of Solomon the Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs are the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth, and the twelve Minor Prophets are the sixteenth, then Isaiah, Jeremiah with Lamentations and the epistle [i.e., the deuterocanonical Letter of Jeremiah], but also Daniel and Ezekiel and Job and Esther complete the number of 22 books. But it appears good to some, with Tobit and Judith added, to count 24 books according to the number of Greek letters.

Hilary contradicts every major assertion that McDonald makes about him, except that he probably follows Origen. Hilary knows that the Hebrews have only 22 letters, and he gives his OT canon list in accordance with this number. He says that some people add Judith and Tobit, not that he himself agrees with this. Hilary says that by adding these two extra books, these people obtain a number that corresponds to the Greek alphabet.

I don’t know how to explain McDonald’s error. He obviously has not spent much time looking at Hilary. I am most disturbed that McDonald actually strengthened his erroneous assertions in his third edition without checking his facts in the intervening twelve years.

Aside from this, McDonald provides no citation of the original text, or of secondary literature, for that matter. The student is left with no help to check the source for accuracy, which is especially problematic when the analysis provided is so inaccurate.

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[1] My translation is admittedly inconsistent in rendering ad litteram versus ad sensum.

[2] I translate sermones dierum (lit., “words of the days”) as “Chronicles” because the Latin phrase reminds me of the Hebrew title of Chronicles. Note Jerome in his Prologus Galeatus: Dabreiamin, id est Verba dierum, quod significantius χρονικον totius divinae historiae possumus appellare, qui liber apud nos Paralipomenon primus et secundus scribitur, “Dabreiamin, that is ‘words of the days’, which we can more clearly call a chronicle of all divine history, which book is titled among us first and second Paralipomenon.” Whether Hilary was thinking something along these lines for his title of the book of Ezra, I don’t know. I am not familiar with this title for Ezra elsewhere. The question deserves more research.