Jerome, Greek Scholarship, and the Hebrew Bible

Jerome (c.345-420) was one of the greatest biblical scholars of antiquity. He produced the first Latin translation of the Bible which was made not from Greek but directly from the Hebrew. This translation came to be called the Vulgate, the standard Bible of Latin Christendom. In this book, the author considers the origins of this project through an analysis of the Quaestiones Hebraicae in Genesim, a commentary on the book of Genesis published at about the same time as the translation. He looks at Greek scholarship at the time of Jerome, and discusses to what extent Jerome's work represented a new departure.