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“Let Us Exercise in the Field of Scripture”

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“Let Us Exercise in the Field of Scripture” Journal of Eastern Christian Studies 69(1-4), 223-247. doi: 10.2143/JECS.69.1.3214958 © 2017 by Journal of Eastern Christian Studies. All rights reserved. “Let Us EXERCISE IN THE FIElD Of SCRIPTure” THE CORRESPONDENcE BEtWEEN JEROME AND AUGUStINE FOR INSIGHtS INtO CONtEMPORARY ISSUES IN ORtHODOX BIbLIcAL ScHOLARSHIP JOHN FOtOPOULOS * Jerome of Stridon (Hieronymus; Ἱερώνυμος) and Augustine of Hippo (Augustinus; Αὐγουστίνος) stand as two of the most renowned Fathers, theo- logians, and biblical exegetes in the history of Christianity. Both Jerome and Augustine have been officially canonized as saints within the Orthodox Church.1 Despite this, many people today do not know that these two Fathers (although never having met in person) engaged in an oftentimes contentious long-distance correspondence with one another over a period of twenty-five years during the late 4th and early 5th centuries AD. Augustine initiated the correspondence with deference and flattery toward Jerome (who was known at the time as the world’s leading biblical exegete), but then proceeded to communicate some very serious and biting criticisms of Jerome’s biblical scholarship. Jerome eventually responded to the issues that were conveyed by Augustine but also wisely cautioned him, “Let us exercise in the field of Scripture, if you please, without injuring each other” (In Scripturarum campo, si placet, sine nostro inuicem dolore ludamus).2 * Saint Mary’s College, Notre Dame. 1 For a judicious and illuminating look at Augustine’s place within the Orthodox theologi- cal tradition, see Aristotle Papanikolaou, George E. Demacopoulos, eds., Orthodox Read- ings of Augustine (New York, 2008). It is interesting to note that in the Orthodox Church the feast days of both St. Augustine and St. Jerome are celebrated annually on June 15th. 2 Jerome, Epistle 81 (PL 33:275). For the sake of accessibility, English translations of the correspondence of Augustine and Jerome generally rely on ‘The confessions and letters of St. Augustin: with a sketch of his life and work’, in Philip Schaff, ed., A Select Library of The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, First Series 1 (Grand Rapids/ MI, 1983), pp. 209-593, esp. 251-361 (further quoted as NPNF series vol:pp.). The num- bering of the correspondence between Augustine and Jerome is cited in the present article 224 JOHN FOtOPOULOS The sometimes contentious correspondence between these two Fathers raise a number of important issues that are especially relevant to Orthodox Christian scholars engaged in biblical scholarship (i.e. those who “exercise in the field of Scripture”). Insights into issues related to the text of Scripture/ textual criticism, biblical translation, exegesis, and hermeneutics can all be gained by studying the correspondence between Augustine and Jerome – insights that are especially relevant since it is widely expected within Ortho- dox Christianity today that the scholarly methods and findings of contem- porary Orthodox theologians and biblical scholars should have some foundation in the work of previous Church Fathers. In this way, the present article will investigate the correspondence of these two Fathers regarding issues of biblical scholarship while also drawing on other works of Jerome in order to further illuminate the issues at hand. It will be shown that many of their methods of biblical scholarship and the issues faced by them were shaped by these two Fathers’ respective cultural contexts in the late 4th and early 5th centuries AD. Consequently, their scholarly methods and many of the scholarly issues that they faced are analogous to methods and issues faced by biblical scholars today. To be sure, however, the context for biblical schol- arship today is quite different from that of Augustine and Jerome. Thus, this article will address certain ways that biblical scholarship has continued to develop since the time of Augustine and Jerome, in addition to the issues that contemporary biblical scholars are oftentimes faced with in their work. These points are meant to make clear that it is not sufficient for Orthodox Christian scholars today to simply parrot the exegesis of the Fathers – whether it be Jerome, Augustine, or anyone else – but rather to consult the Fathers while using the best available scholarly methods and tools so as to interpret the Scriptures effectively within the contemporary situation. as it appears in Augustine’s collected letters. This is the accepted practice in patristic scholarship. The Latin text of Augustine’s and Jerome’s correspondence is cited in the present article from Migne’s Patrologia Latina which is readily accessible to readers. Carole Fry, Lettres Croisées de Jérôme et Augustin: Traduites, présentées et annotées, Les Belles Lettres (Paris, 2010) has published a recent volume containing the Latin text of Jerome’s and Augustine’s correspondence, a French translation, and annotations. However, Fry’s Latin text is not a critical edition and is also not widely available. Finally, Jerome’s statement about exercising in the field of Scripture is translated slightly differently in NPNF1 1:349 from my own translation of the Latin which appears above. THE CORRESPONDENcE BEtWEEN JEROME AND AUGUStINE 225 SHORt OVERVIEW OF tHE CORRESPONDENcE In 394/395 AD the exchange of seventeen extant letters between Augustine of Hippo in N. Africa and Jerome in Bethlehem was initiated by Augustine in Latin,3 finally ending in about 419 AD.4 Although Augustine’s first letter to Jerome begins with customary epistolary salutations and etiquette of the period, he quickly moves on to criticize Jerome regarding several biblical issues that are expanded and then debated throughout later correspondence with one another. It is important to note that Augustine’s initial letters to Jerome were not delivered to him in timely fashion due to unforeseen cir- cumstances. Rather, Jerome became agitated when he learned from his friends in Jerusalem that Augustine had composed letters to Jerome that had been published in Rome criticizing Jerome’s biblical work instead of Jerome receiving Augustine’s letters and critiques directly. Augustine’s letters to Jerome were indeed circulating widely, even being found on an island in the Adriatic Sea in a collection of Augustine’s published works five years before Jerome would ever read the letters!5 Jerome was irritated when he learned all of this and consequently almost ten years passed until Augustine would finally receive a substantial reply to the issues of biblical interpretation that Augustine had raised in his first and subsequent letters to Jerome. The cor- respondence between these two Fathers on heated issues of biblical interper- tation lasted until about 405 AD with their exchange of letters then ceasing for about another ten years. Then a second period of correspondence began again between the two Fathers from about 415 to 419 AD largely addressing the Pelagian controversy rather than issues of biblical interpretation. BIbLIcAL TEXt AND TRANSLAtION One biblical issue that is raised by Augustine several times in his letters to Jerome is that of Jerome’s Old Testament text and its subsequent translation into Latin from the Hebrew. In the 4th century AD, is it generally the case 3 Augustine, Epistle 28 (PL 33:111-114; NPNF1 1:251-253), was the first letter sent by Augustine to Jerome that attempted to engage Jerome in correspondence. 4 Fry, Lettres, p. XLIV, argues that there are two periods of letter exchange between Augustine and Jerome from 394/395-405 AD, and then from 415-419 AD. 5 Jerome, Epistle 72 (PL 33:243-244; NPNF1 1:328). 226 JOHN FOtOPOULOS that the Old Testament (OT) used within the Greek-speaking Christian churches was the text commonly referred to as the Septuagint (LXX) – also referred to in biblical scholarship as the Old Greek text. Translations of the Greek LXX into Latin for Christian use – known as the Old Latin text – occurred in the second and third centuries AD. Long before Jerome’s and Augustine’s correspondence, Jerome himself had been engaged in efforts to improve the Old Latin translations of the LXX since some of those OT texts had been translated from faulty Greek manuscripts or simply contained errors in Latin translation. To be sure, it was widely believed by 4th-5th century AD Christians, including Augustine himself, that the LXX was divinely inspired – an idea supported by a popular story that conveyed that the text was the result of miracle whereby seventy/seventy-two Jewish translators independently made seventy/seventy-two identical Greek translations of the OT. Moreover, it was also believed by Christians of the time that the LXX had been used by Jesus’ apostles – a notion spread by Irenaeus6 and accepted by Augustine and many other Fathers – thus giving the LXX apostolic authority. Although Jerome had also shown fidelity to the text of the LXX in his earlier work, he later came to disregard it as the best available text of the OT to translate and interpret. Augustine, who held a very high regard for the text of the LXX, also realized that there were significant problems with the Latin translations of the LXX found in many church codices, confessing to Jerome at one point that “the variations found in the different codices of the Latin text are intol- erably numerous; and it is so justly open to suspicion as possibly different from what is to be found in the Greek, that one has no confidence in either quoting it or proving anything by its help”.7 By the late 4th century AD at least three different recensions of the LXX were in use within the Christian churches. Jerome sums up the provenance of these three recensions succinctly: Alexandria and Egypt in their Septuagint claim Hesychius as their authority; the region from Constantinople to Antioch approves the copies of Lucian the mar- tyr; the intermediate Palestinian provinces read the manuscripts which were 6 Irenaeus, Adversus haereses 3.21.3 (PL 7a:949-950).
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