A Source Book for Ancient Church History - Mirrors

532 A Source Book for Ancient Church Historyat?(b) Jerome, Preface to the Vulgate Translation of the NewTestament. (MSL, 29:557.)Jerome's free critical attitude in his work in his earlier life.This preface is addressed to Bishop Damasus of Rome and isdated 383.[486]You urge me to make a new work out of an old and, as it were, tosit in judgment on the copies of the Scriptures already scatteredthroughout the whole world; and, inasmuch as they differ amongthemselves, I am to decide which of them agree with the Greekoriginal. A pious labor, but a perilous presumption; to judgeothers, myself to be judged of all; to change the language of theaged, and to carry back the world already grown gray, back to thebeginnings of its infancy! Is there a man, learned or unlearned,who will not, when he takes the volume into his hands andperceives that what he reads differs from the flavor which oncehe tasted, break out immediately into violent language and callme a forger and a profane person for having the audacity to addanything to the ancient books or to change or correct anything?I am consoled in two ways in bearing this odium: in the firstplace, that you, the supreme bishop, command it to be done; andsecondly, even on the testimony of those reviling us, what variescannot be true. For if we put faith in the Latin texts, let them tellus which; for there are almost as many texts as copies. But if thetruth is to be sought from many, why should we not go back tothe original Greek and correct the mistakes introduced by inaccuratetranslators, and the blundering alterations of confident andignorant men, and further, all that has been added or altered bysleepy copyists? I am not discussing the Old Testament, whichwas turned into Greek by the Seventy Elders, and has reached