WRITING AUTHORITY IN LATE MEDIEVAL ... - Cornell University

noght be fable,” arguing that if everything in the Bible is to be a play of meaning, biblical truth
risks being a play of mere representations or, as he calls them, fables. This position seems
strangely arbitrary for someone who, just two chapters before, has theorized God’s providence as
a type of allusive story. Jerome, siding away from his previous commentary, says that some
types of writing do not need to be glossed because they are not allusive, and yet he provides no
distinguishing characteristics for his choice to gloss one of Nebuchadnezzar’s dreams as a
prophecy and another one as a real event. Even more, his commentary seems to contradict itself
as it appeals to fables, which he distinguishes from biblical truth, for defense of this miracle that
a king may live so long on just hay and grass and without being missed by his peers. Turning to
classical tradition, Jerome argues that if unexplainable transformations occur so much in fables, a
king’s mere change into madness and survival in the wilderness—even if it sounds outside the
realm of logical plausibility—should not be grounds to interpret Nebuchadnezzar’s dream nor his
narrative as an allegory.
Despite this sudden defense of literal reading, there is a consistency to Jerome’s
hermeneutics across each of Nebuchadnezzar’s dreams. In both, Jerome claims meaning is not
subject to personal interpretation of “sermo” ‘speech’ because the direct representation of truth
is a type of impossibility. In Nebuchadnezzar’s first vision, Jerome argues that representation
occurs outside the flow of spoken “sermo” ‘speech’ and so is unable to present meaning directly
except through the deferral of a-personal writing. In his second vision, Jerome claims that speech
can represent something directly when it represents a paradox or miracle—for example that a
king may be absent for seven years and then return to the throne. For Jerome, speech represents
meaning directly only when it represents miracles because speech, in its immediacy and force, is
itself miraculous.
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