Jerome's Commentaries On The Pauline Epistles and The Architecture of Exegetical Authority 1st Edition Andrew Cain
Jerome's Commentaries On The Pauline Epistles and The Architecture of Exegetical Authority 1st Edition Andrew Cain
Jerome's Commentaries On The Pauline Epistles and The Architecture of Exegetical Authority 1st Edition Andrew Cain
https://ebookmeta.com/product/bodies-on-the-verge-queering-
pauline-epistles-semeia-studies-1st-edition-joseph-a-marchal/
https://ebookmeta.com/product/evil-and-the-philosophy-of-
retribution-modern-commentaries-on-the-bhagavad-gita-sanjay-
palshikar/
https://ebookmeta.com/product/on-the-significance-of-religion-
for-human-rights-1st-edition-pauline-kollontai/
https://ebookmeta.com/product/the-art-of-noticing-deeply-
commentaries-on-teaching-learning-and-mindfulness-1st-edition-
jan-buley/
Commentaries and Cases on the Law of Business
Organization 6th Edition William T. Allen
https://ebookmeta.com/product/commentaries-and-cases-on-the-law-
of-business-organization-6th-edition-william-t-allen/
https://ebookmeta.com/product/on-good-authority-tradition-
compilation-and-the-construction-of-authority-in-literature-from-
antiquity-to-the-renaissance-lectio-pieter-de-leemans-editor/
https://ebookmeta.com/product/nationalism-and-the-genealogical-
imagination-oral-history-and-textual-authority-in-tribal-jordan-
andrew-shryock/
https://ebookmeta.com/product/race-racism-and-the-biblical-
narratives-on-use-and-abuse-of-sacred-scripture-cain-hope-felder/
https://ebookmeta.com/product/an-acquired-taste-the-everheart-
brothers-of-texas-1-1st-edition-kelly-cain-cain-kelly/
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 31/8/2021, SPi
Jerome’s Commentaries
on the Pauline Epistles
and the Architecture of
Exegetical Authority
ANDREW CAIN
1
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 31/8/2021, SPi
3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of
Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries
© Andrew Cain 2021
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
First Edition published in 2021
Impression: 1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics
rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above
You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
Library of Congress Control Number: 2021938234
ISBN 978–0–19–284719–5
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192847195.001.0001
Printed and bound in the UK by
TJ Books Limited
Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and
for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials
contained in any third party website referenced in this work.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 31/8/2021, SPi
Acknowledgments
Little could I have imagined at the time that the seeds of this book were being
planted back in 2008, which now seems like half a lifetime ago. Before the ink was
dry on my first monograph, on Jerome’s letters, I took an unplanned detour into
the (for me, at the time) largely uncharted waters of the early Christian biblical
commentary, and one of my first ports of call happened to be Jerome’s robust
commentary on Galatians. While finishing an annotated translation and a spate of
studies on it, I explored other wings of the Hieronymian œuvre in commentaries
on the famous Letter 52 to Nepotian and the Epitaphium on Paula, before
wandering into the enchanted forest of early Greek hagiography. During the
past few years I returned in fits and starts to nagging questions about Jerome’s
opus Paulinum that still lingered from a decade or so ago, until the present
monograph incrementally took its final shape. Even though it has had to grow
up alongside four intervening book projects on Greek and Latin hagiography,
I hope that it is the better for it.
I am fortunate to have been able to share some of the core ideas of this book
with numerous audiences whose probing questions helped me to refine my
thinking and to tie up loose ends. I express my deepest gratitude to the colleagues
who invited me to present this ongoing research at their institutions and confer-
ences in Cardiff, Jerusalem, Ljubljana, Lund, Oxford, Paris, Rome, Split, and
Vienna. In particular, I thank the organizing committees of both the Origeniana
Duodecima: Origen’s Legacy in the Holy Land conference in Jerusalem (June,
2017) and the Hieronymus Noster conference in Ljubljana, Slovenia (October,
2019) for inviting me to deliver the final plenary lectures at their splendid events.
All of my hosts were most gracious to this wide-eyed American visitor to their
beautiful cities.
This book as well as my earlier work on Jerome have benefitted richly from
exchanges with many generous friends and colleagues whom it is a treat to
acknowledge here: Gillian Clark, the late Yves-Marie Duval, Susanna Elm, John
T. Fitzgerald, Alfons Fürst, Michael Graves, Hugh Houghton, Peter Hunt, David
Hunter, Anders-Christian Jacobsen, Adam Kamesar, Matthew Kraus, Noel
Lenski, Josef Lössl, Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe, Ralph Mathisen, Hillel Newman,
Francesco Pieri, Stefan Rebenich, Ingo Schaaf, David Scourfield, Danuta
Shanzer, Hagith Sivan, Jessica van’t Westeinde, and Mark Vessey. Finally,
I extend my sincere thanks to the anonymous reader at OUP for delivering a
timely, comprehensive, and insightful review of the book manuscript.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 31/8/2021, SPi
vi
A. J. C.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 31/8/2021, SPi
Contents
List of Abbreviations ix
Introduction 1
1. A Choice of Epistles 7
The Commentaries: Circumstances of Composition 7
Philemon: Canonicity, Apostolicity, and Utility 19
Galatians: Law and Gospel and Hebrew Philology 30
Ephesians: Divine Mysteries Galore 37
Titus: Canonicity and Clerical Morals 43
2. The Prefaces: Patronage, Polemic, and Apology 47
The Art of the Preface 48
Destination: Rome 53
Adgrediar opus intemptatum: Jerome contra Marius Victorinus 63
Negotiating Crisis 72
3. Ad fontes: Greek and Hebrew Philology 75
Graeca veritas and the Vetus Latina 76
Hebraica veritas and the Septuagint 87
4. The Ascetic Apostle 102
Meditatio Scripturarum and the Ascetic Life 103
Championing Chastity 108
Toward a Monastic Clergy 117
Hieronymus haereticus 130
5. Orthodoxy and Heresy 136
Heretics as the Pernicious “Other” 137
Marcion and the Unity of Scripture 143
Christology 149
The Doctrine of Fixed Natures 154
6. In Origen’s Footsteps: Greek Sources 161
Commentary on Galatians 162
Commentary on Ephesians 177
Commentary on Philemon 182
Commentary on Titus 184
A Variorum Approach 188
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 31/8/2021, SPi
viii
Bibliography 229
Index of Hebrew Words 267
Index of Greek Words 267
Index of Latin Words 268
Index of Biblical Citations 271
Index of Ancient Sources 274
General Index 284
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 31/8/2021, SPi
List of Abbreviations
x
xi
Introduction
Until the middle of the fourth century, the exegesis of Paul’s epistles had been
dominated by commentators writing in Greek.¹ Then, between the early 360s and
c.409, six different Latin authors commented on selected epistles or the entire
series. The first on record to do so was Marius Victorinus, the Neoplatonic
philosopher and decorated professor of rhetoric at Rome who converted to
Christianity sometime in the 350s. At the beginning of the following decade,
and near the end of his life, he composed commentaries on Galatians,
Ephesians, Philippians, Romans, and 1 & 2 Corinthians, but only the first three
of these survive.²
During the late 370s and early 380s, another Rome-based interpreter, an
anonymous priest known today by the moniker “Ambrosiaster,”³ commented
on the complete Pauline corpus as it was constituted in the late fourth century
(excluding Hebrews).⁴ In the mid-390s, Augustine wrote a commentary on
Galatians and an unfinished one on Romans.⁵ Between 396 and 405, an interpreter
sometimes called “Budapest Anonymous” because his commentaries are partially
Jerome’s Commentaries on the Pauline Epistles and the Architecture of Exegetical Authority. Andrew Cain,
Oxford University Press. © Andrew Cain 2021. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192847195.003.0001
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 19/8/2021, SPi
⁶ For the suggestion that he was an anti-Pelagian bishop named Constantius, see T. de Bruyn,
“Constantius the Tractator: Author of an Anonymous Commentary on the Pauline Epistles?,” JThS n.s.
43 (1992): 38–54; cf. Y.-M. Duval, “Pélage en son temps: données chronologiques nouvelles pour une
présentation nouvelle,” StudPatr 38 (2001): 95–118 (101).
⁷ H. J. Frede (ed.), Ein neuer Paulustext und Kommentar, 2 vols. (Freiburg, 1973–4); cf. W. Dunphy,
“Glosses on Glosses: On the Budapest Anonymous and Pseudo-Rufinus: A Study on Anonymous
Writings in Pelagian Circles,” AugStud 44 (2013): 227–47; 45 (2014): 49–68; 46 (2015): 43–70.
⁸ Frede, Ein neuer Paulustext, 1.242, notes that his is the oldest known commentary on Hebrews in
the Latin West.
⁹ A. Souter (ed.), Pelagius’s Expositions of Thirteen Epistles of St Paul, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1922).
Only the Romans commentary has been translated into English: T. de Bruyn, Pelagius’s Commentary
on St Paul’s Epistle to the Romans (Oxford, 1993).
¹⁰ F. Pieri (ed.), “L’esegesi di Girolamo nel Commentario a Efesini: aspetti storico-esegetici e storico-
dottrinali: testo critico e annotazioni” (Ph.D. diss.: Università di Bologna, 1996); F. Bucchi (ed.),
Commentarii in epistulas Pauli apostoli ad Titum et ad Philemonem, CCSL 77C (Turnhout, 2003);
G. Raspanti (ed.), S. Hieronymi Presbyteri Opera. Pars I. Opera exegetica 6. Commentarii in Epistulam
Pauli Apostoli ad Galatas, CCSL 77A (Turnhout, 2006). For English translations, see R. Heine, The
Commentaries of Origen and Jerome on St Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians (Oxford, 2001); T. Scheck, St.
Jerome’s Commentaries on Galatians, Titus, and Philemon (South Bend, 2010); A. Cain, St. Jerome,
Commentary on Galatians, FOTC 121 (Washington, D.C., 2010).
¹¹ For a summary assessment, see C. P. Bammel, “Die Pauluskommentare des Hieronymus: Die
ersten wissenschaftlichen lateinischen Bibelkommentare?,” in Cristianesimo Latino e cultura Greca sino
al sec. IV, XXI Incontro di studiosi dell’antichità cristiana, Rome 7–9 maggio 1992 (Rome, 1993),
187–207.
¹² I leave out of the equation a lost allegorical commentary on Obadiah which he wrote in the 370s:
in 396, in the prologue to his second commentary on this Minor Prophet, he decried that earlier
commentary as a misguided experiment of his youth (Comm. Abd., prol. ll. 1–13).
¹³ And, aside from an abbreviated commentary on Matthew (398), they represent his only
commentary-length engagement with a New Testament writing.
¹⁴ E.g., Ep. 55 to Amandus (1 Cor. 6.18, 15.25–6) and Ep. 59 to Marcella (1 Cor. 2.9; 1 Thess.
4.15–17); cf. L. Perrone, “Questioni paoline nell’epistolario di Gerolamo,” in C. Moreschini and
G. Menestrina (eds.), Motivi letterari ed esegetici in Gerolamo: atti del convegno tenuto a Trento il
5–7 dicembre 1995 (Brescia, 1997), 81–103. Jerome deals extensively with Paul also in other works, such
as in his Adversus Iovinianum; see Y.-M. Duval, L’affaire Jovinien: d’une crise de la société romaine à
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 19/8/2021, SPi
3
une crise de la pensée chrétienne à la fin du IVe et au début du Ve siècle (Rome, 2003); D. G. Hunter,
Marriage, Celibacy, and Heresy in Ancient Christianity: The Jovinianist Controversy (Oxford, 2007).
¹⁵ See most recently T. E. Hunt, Jerome of Stridon and the Ethics of Literary Production in Late
Antiquity (Leiden, 2020), who treats important selected topics in the commentaries on Ephesians and
Galatians.
¹⁶ For studies of various aspects of the Hieronymian corpus, see the contributions in: Y.-M. Duval
(ed.), Jérôme entre l’Occident et l’Orient: XVIe centenaire du départ de saint Jérôme de Rome et de son
installation à Bethléem (Paris, 1988); A. Cain and J. Lössl (eds.), Jerome of Stridon: His Life, Writings,
and Legacy (Aldershot, 2009); A. Cain and S. Rebenich (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Jerome (Oxford,
forthcoming).
¹⁷ E.g., J. H. D. Scourfield, Consoling Heliodorus: A Commentary on Jerome, Letter 60 (Oxford,
1993); B. Conring, Hieronymus als Briefschreiber: Ein Beitrag zur spätantiken Epistolographie
(Tübingen, 2001); N. Adkin, Jerome on Virginity: A Commentary on the Libellus de virginitate servanda
(Letter 22) (Chippenham, 2003); A. Cain, The Letters of Jerome: Asceticism, Biblical Exegesis, and the
Construction of Christian Authority in Late Antiquity (Oxford, 2009); Cain, Jerome and the Monastic
Clergy: A Commentary on Letter 52 to Nepotian, with an Introduction, Text, and Translation (Leiden,
2013).
¹⁸ E.g., S. Weingarten, The Saint’s Saints: Hagiography and Geography in Jerome (Leiden, 2005);
A. Cain, Jerome’s Epitaph on Paula: A Commentary on the Epitaphium Sanctae Paulae, with an
Introduction, Text, and Translation (Oxford, 2013); C. Gray, Jerome, Vita Malchi: Introduction, Text,
Translation, and Commentary (Oxford, 2015).
¹⁹ E.g., J. Braverman, Jerome’s Commentary on Daniel: A Study of Comparative Jewish and Christian
Interpretations of the Hebrew Bible (Washington, D.C., 1978); P. Jay, L’exégèse de saint Jérôme d’après
son Commentaire sur Isaïe (Paris, 1985); A. Kamesar, Jerome, Greek Scholarship, and the Hebrew Bible:
A Study of the Quaestiones Hebraicae in Genesim (Oxford, 1993); M. Graves, Jerome’s Hebrew
Philology: A Study Based on his Commentary on Jeremiah (Leiden, 2007); S. Weigert, Hebraica veritas:
Übersetzungsprinzipien und Quellen der Deuteronomiumübersetzung des Hieronymus (Stuttgart, 2016);
M. Kraus, Jewish, Christian, and Classical Exegetical Traditions in Jerome’s Translation of the Book of
Exodus: Translation Technique and the Vulgate (Leiden, 2017).
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 19/8/2021, SPi
another way, and to use an architectural metaphor: what are the pillars of his
exegetical authority?
These questions can obviously be posed—though not necessarily always
answered satisfactorily, given the limitations of our evidence—about any of
Jerome’s fellow late antique Latin commentators on Paul. Yet, these questions
have a certain piquancy when it comes to him. With characteristic flair he hailed
his work on Paul as something unprecedented in the Latin West, and he thus tried
to position himself as a uniquely experienced interpreter while dismissing rivals as
lightweights who do not even deserve a hearing. This combative approach is
ironic, of course, because at the time he was himself a fledgling biblical commen-
tator who also happened to be staring down a number of personal and profes-
sional crises which complicated any bid for spiritual and intellectual authority he
could have hoped to make. Read and appreciated in this historical context, then,
Jerome’s opus Paulinum has a compelling story to tell.
Chapter 1 begins our study by taking up fundamental preliminaries. After
elaborating on the circumstances under which Jerome composed his commen-
taries, I propose reasons why the seemingly miscellaneous quartet of Galatians,
Ephesians, Titus, and Philemon might have whetted his interpretive appetite. In
the early church, Philemon was held in generally low regard (and even excluded
by some from the canon) for its brevity and apparent lack of both theological
rumination and practical moral teaching. Bucking this trend, Jerome used both his
commentary and its preface to mount an argument for Philemon’s apostolic
authorship, rightful place in the canon, theological richness, and instructional
value for the general Christian reader. Galatians appealed to him for its own set of
reasons. He regarded it as being, along with Romans, Paul’s most forceful state-
ment about the relationship between the Law and the Gospel. Paul frequently
invokes Old Testament texts and themes in it, and Jerome found ample opportu-
nity for organically showcasing his beloved Hebraica veritas methodology.
Additionally, because Galatians was one of the few epistles on which Marius
Victorinus, his sworn rival in Pauline interpretation, had commented, Jerome
almost surely was motivated by an impulse of exegetical one-upmanship.
Victorinus also had commented on Ephesians, and this undoubtedly factored
into Jerome’s decision to comment on this epistle as well. Its main attraction for
him, though, was the perception, widely held among early Christian commenta-
tors, that it is the most theologically sophisticated of Paul’s writings, a point he
duly reiterates throughout his commentary and its prefaces. As for Titus, its
canon-worthiness was agreed upon by the mainstream early church but rejected
by a minority of Christians. In his lengthy preface Jerome refutes these skeptics’
objections, thus demonstrating (as in the case of Philemon) that one of his
priorities was to defend Pauline writings whose legitimacy had been challenged.
Titus was irresistible to him also because it prescribes a moral code of conduct for
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 19/8/2021, SPi
5
churchmen, and the ascetic theorist in him seized on its paraenesis as a biblical
basis for his notion of a monastic clergy.
In Chapter 2 we turn to the four commentaries’ prefaces, which number eight
in all (one for each of the three books of the Galatians and Ephesians commen-
taries, and one each for the Titus and Philemon commentaries). Early Christian
biblical exegetes conventionally introduced their commentaries with prefaces
which overview basic expository information about the biblical books in question.
In half of his eight prefaces Jerome abides strictly by this traditional script, but in
the other half he deviates from it and includes personal content which has nothing
to do with the epistle under comment. He was well aware that contemporary
readers would encounter the prefaces to his works right before delving into the
works themselves, and so he crafted them as media to help shape how these works,
and how he as their author, would be received. This holds true for his Pauline
prefaces, and especially the four non-expository ones, which are the focus of this
chapter. I argue that Jerome deployed these primarily to cultivate literary patrons
in Rome, to defend his opus Paulinum against anticipated criticism, and to
displace Marius Victorinus and represent himself as the Latin West’s first legiti-
mate commentator on Paul.
In the years leading up to his work on Paul, Jerome had become hardened in the
conviction that biblical scholarship is a highly specialized craft requiring certain
technical skills. He reckoned a mastery of the biblical languages, Hebrew and
Greek, to be the most fundamental of these because it (hypothetically) enables the
scholar to come face to face with the ipsissima verba of Scripture. During his stay
in Rome between 382 and 385, he had experimented with this back-to-the-sources
approach in a number of shorter exegetical set pieces, but it was not until he
embarked on his opus Paulinum that he was able finally to apply it systematically
in the context of commentaries on whole biblical books. In Chapter 3 we explore,
through detailed case studies, how he develops his ad fontes methodology in the
four Pauline commentaries and cumulatively builds the case that Hebrew and
Greek philology are absolutely vital to serious study of the Bible, all the while
attempting to demonstrate by example that he is the model biblical scholar.
Jerome is unique among his Latin contingent in that he dedicated his Pauline
commentaries to named individuals, Paula and her daughter Eustochium, who
doubled as his literary patrons and spiritual mentees. He accordingly viewed his
commentaries not only as a formal scholarly enterprise but also as a teaching tool
for their ostensible addressees (and other readers down the line) and additionally
as a vehicle for propagating his idiosyncratic ascetic ideals. Chapter 4 begins by
situating the commentaries as a textualized extension of his face-to-face instruc-
tion of his circle of spiritual advisees, which included Paula and Eustochium as
well as Marcella (an honorary dedicatee of the commentaries) and others he had
left behind in Rome. From there we look closely at the often subtle ways in which
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 19/8/2021, SPi
1
A Choice of Epistles
During the approximately fifty-year span between the early 360s and c.409, there
appeared in Latin no less than fifty-two commentaries on Paul’s epistles by six
different authors.¹ This unprecedented burst of exegetical activity has been
dubbed a Pauline “renaissance” in the western church.² Whatever macro-level
factors may have converged to pave the way for this phenomenon,³ in this chapter
we focus solely on the impetuses behind Jerome’s work on Paul and address
several vital questions related to his authorial intent. Why did Jerome, who by
inclination and research output was overwhelmingly a Hebrew Bible scholar,
comment on Paul at all? Why did he do so at this particular juncture in his
literary career, given that there are no real traces of a prior interest in Paul’s
writings? Why, moreover, did he compose commentaries on the seemingly mis-
cellaneous quartet of Galatians, Ephesians, Titus, and Philemon?
On a windy day in August of 385, Jerome and a few male associates boarded a ship
at Rome’s harbor Portus on the Tyrrhenian Sea. They embarked on a circuitous
journey by sea and land, including a stop on Cyprus, where they likely were joined
by Jerome’s Roman patron Paula, her daughter Eustochium, and their retinue, all
of whom had left Rome several weeks after Jerome. Once reunited, both parties
continued their travels until reaching Jerusalem in late 385. They lodged for a
Jerome’s Commentaries on the Pauline Epistles and the Architecture of Exegetical Authority. Andrew Cain,
Oxford University Press. © Andrew Cain 2021. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192847195.003.0002
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 19/8/2021, SPi
while with Melania the Elder and Jerome’s old friend Rufinus at their monastic
complex on the Mount of Olives before beginning a comprehensive tour, lasting
probably throughout the spring of 386, of many major and minor sites of biblical
significance in Palestine.⁴
One of the stops during their months-long pilgrimage was at Bethlehem, a
farming village about six miles to the south of Jerusalem.⁵ During this period its
main claim to fame for Christians was as the reputed birthplace of Christ.
Although the Gospel writers make no mention of a cave in their birth narratives,
Christian tradition dating back to the middle of the second century held that when
Joseph and Mary could not secure lodging in Bethlehem proper they found a
grotto outside the village limits to stay, and it was here that Mary gave birth to
Jesus.⁶ In 327 the emperor Constantine, as part of his campaign to promote
pilgrimage to the Holy Places,⁷ formally recognized this cave, now the Grotto of
the Nativity, as a locus sanctus by having an octagonal sanctuary erected over it.⁸
The Church of the Nativity, built at the same time, was adjoined to the sanctuary
on its east side and to a portico on its west side.
Bethlehem was situated near a Roman road that intersected with Jerusalem, and
so Christian pilgrims heading to and from Jerusalem on this route would pass
right by it.⁹ There is evidence that already by the early 300s it had become a draw
for pilgrims. In the first decade of the fourth century, for instance, Eusebius noted
that Christians from all over the world went there.¹⁰ Constantine’s efforts only
heightened its profile as a tourist destination; for instance, the Bordeaux Pilgrim
(early 330s) and Egeria (between 381 and 384) included it in their itineraries.¹¹
Some of the pilgrims who passed through Bethlehem were monks looking for
somewhere to settle.¹² At least two monastic communities had put down roots
⁴ For a detailed study of her itinerary, see A. Cain, Jerome’s Epitaph on Paula: A Commentary on the
Epitaphium Sanctae Paulae, with an Introduction, Text, and Translation (Oxford, 2013).
⁵ K. Baedeker, Jerusalem and Its Surroundings (Jerusalem, 1973), 134, estimates that in antiquity it
would have taken around one hour and twenty minutes to travel on foot between Jerusalem and
Bethlehem.
⁶ Cf. Justin Martyr, Dial. 78; Origen, C. Cels. 1.51.
⁷ E. D. Hunt, Holy Land Pilgrimage in the Later Roman Empire, 312–460 (Oxford, 1982), 6–49.
⁸ Constantine’s mother Helena seems to have been the primary mover behind this construction
project. See N. Lenski, “Empresses in the Holy Land: The Making of a Christian Utopia in Late
Antiquity,” in L. Ellis and F. Kidner (eds.), Travel, Communication and Geography in Late Antiquity
(Aldershot, 2004), 113–24.
⁹ P. Maraval, Lieux saints et pèlerinages d’Orient: histoire et géographie des origines à la conquête
arabe (Paris, 1985), 271–2. On the routes traveled by pilgrims, see J. Wilkinson, Jerusalem Pilgrims
before the Crusades (Warminster, 2002), 30–51. These pilgrims availed themselves of the more than one
thousand miles of engineered Roman roads that connected principal towns and cities in Palestine; see
I. Roll, “Roads and Transportation in the Holy Land in the Early Christian and Byzantine Times,” in
Akten des XII. Internationalen Kongress für christliche Archäologie, vol. 2 (Münster, 1995), 1166–70.
¹⁰ Dem. ev. 1.1.2.
¹¹ Itin. Burd. (CCSL 175:20): Vbi natus est Dominus Iesus Christus; ibi basilica facta est iussu
Constantini. See P. Devos, “Égérie à Bethléem,” AB 86 (1968): 87–108.
¹² B. Bagatti, Église de la gentilité en Palestine (Ier–XIe siècle) (Jerusalem, 1968), 64. On pilgrim
monks, see B. Bitton-Ashkelony, Encountering the Sacred: The Debate on Christian Pilgrimage in Late
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 19/8/2021, SPi
9
there by the late fourth century, prior to Jerome’s arrival. John Cassian and his
friend Germanus lodged with one of them on their way to Egypt in the middle
380s.¹³ Around this time Palladius stayed for a year with the Theban monk
Posidonius near Shepherd’s Field.¹⁴
Like other monastic founders before them, Jerome and Paula chose Bethlehem
as the place to make their permanent home. To believe his account, which he put
into writing months after her death in January of 404, Paula had felt an irresistible
mystical draw to this village during her first visit there, and her ecstatic experience
in the Nativity Grotto prompted her to decide, right then and there, to live out
the rest of her days in Bethlehem:
I heard her swear that she could see, with the eyes of faith, the infant wrapped in
swaddling clothes crying in his crib; the Magi worshipping [him as] God; the star
shining down from on high; the virgin mother; the attentive foster-father; the
shepherds coming by night both to see the Word which had come to pass . . . the
slaughtered infants; Herod in his rage; and Joseph and Mary fleeing to Egypt.
Shedding tears mixed with joy, she said: “Hail, Bethlehem, house of bread, where
the Bread that comes down from heaven was born. Hail, Ephrathah, an abun-
dantly rich and fruit-bearing area whose crop is God . . . I, a wretched sinner, have
been considered worthy both to kiss the crib in which the baby Lord cried and to
pray in the cave in which the virgin in labor gave birth to the infant God. This is
my place of respite because it is the native land of my Lord. I will dwell here
because the Savior chose it.”
Me audiente iurabat cernere se fidei oculis infantem pannis involutum vagientem
in praesepe, deum magos adorantes, stellam fulgentem desuper, matrem virginem,
nutricium sedulum, pastores nocte venientes ut viderent verbum quod factum
erat . . . parvulos interfectos, Herodem saevientem, Ioseph et Mariam fugientes in
Aegyptum. Mixtisque gaudio lacrimis loquebatur: “Salve, Bethlem, domus panis,
in qua natus est ille panis qui de caelo descendit. Salve, Ephrata, regio uberrima
Antiquity (Berkeley, 2005), 140–83. For the tendency of monks in Palestine to settle around pilgrimage
centers, see C. Saulnier, “La vie monastique en Terre Sainte auprès des lieux de pèlerinage (IVe s.),” in
Miscellanea Historiae Ecclesiasticae VI, Section I: Les transformations dans la société chrétienne au IVe
siècle (Brussels, 1983), 223–48. On monasticism in late antique Palestine more generally, see
G. D. Gordini, “Il monachesimo romano in Palestina nel IV secolo,” StudAns 46 (1961): 85–107;
Y. Hirschfeld, The Judean Desert Monasteries in the Byzantine Period (New Haven, 1992); J. Binns,
Ascetics and Ambassadors of Christ: The Monasteries of Palestine, 314–631 (Oxford, 1994); J. Patrich,
Sabas, Leader of Palestinian Monasticism: A Comparative Study in Eastern Monasticism, Fourth to
Seventh Centuries (Washington, D.C., 1995).
¹³ O. Chadwick, John Cassian (Cambridge, 1968), 10–12; C. Stewart, Cassian the Monk (New York,
1998), 6–12.
¹⁴ Palladius, Hist. Laus. 36.1. Posidonius’s monastery is perhaps the μοναστήριον τὸ λεγόμενον
Ποίμνιον mentioned by Epiphanius of Jerusalem as being in the vicinity of Bethlehem (PG 120:264).
Cf. Cain, Jerome’s Epitaph on Paula, 259.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 19/8/2021, SPi
atque καρποφόρος, cuius fertilitas Deus est . . . Ego misera atque peccatrix digna
sum iudicata deosculari praesepe in quo dominus parvulus vagiit, orare in
spelunca in qua virgo puerpera Deum fudit infantem. Haec requies mea quia
Domini mei patria est. Hic habitabo quoniam Salvator elegit eam.”¹⁵
Paula and Jerome settled in Bethlehem probably in the late spring of 386. Their
first three years there were occupied with several substantial building projects
financed by Paula’s senatorial fortune. First came a monastery for Jerome and
his monks, followed by her nearby convent,¹⁶ both of which were built close to the
Church of the Nativity so that their communities could become integrated into
its regular liturgical life.¹⁷ They also constructed a hostelry for Christian pilgrims
which by the early fifth century would be teeming with visitors from all over
the world.¹⁸
By the time Jerome began working on his Pauline commentaries in the early
summer of 386,¹⁹ he had been living in Bethlehem for only a few months, but we
do not know if he was staying in his own monastery (depending on how much of it
was even constructed by that point) or in one of the pre-existing monasteries in
the area. Whatever the case, he claims that he was “situated in the solitude of a
monastery and see opposite me” the Church of the Nativity,²⁰ a claim which,
whether rigidly true or not, is calculated to give his writerly activity a certain holy
mystique.²¹
In whatever monastery he was staying at the time, his own or somebody else’s,
Jerome composed his Pauline commentaries, as he did all of his subsequent
literary works in Bethlehem, with the aid of a secretarial staff who took down
his dictation, made copies of his finished work for distribution, and assisted with
day-to-day archival and other activities.²² In the preface to Book 3 of his Galatians
11
I do not write with my own hand due the weakness of my eyes and of my entire
poor body. I cannot make up for the slowness of my speech through hard work
and diligence. They say that Virgil, too, fashioned his books by licking them into
shape as bears do with their cubs.²⁴ To be sure, after summoning my secretary
either I dictate right away whatever comes into my mouth or, if I want to mull
over things a little so as to put out something better, my secretary silently rebukes
me, clenches his fist, wrinkles his brow, and indicates by all of his body language
that he is here for no reason.
Propter oculorum et totius corpusculi infirmitatem manu mea ipse non scribo;
nec labore et diligentia compensare queo eloquii tarditatem, quod de Virgilio
quoque tradunt quia libros suos in modum ursorum fetum lambendo figuraverit.
Verum accito notario aut statim dicto quodcumque in buccam venerit aut, si
paululum voluero cogitare melius aliquid prolaturus, tunc me tacitus ille repre-
hendit, manum contrahit, frontem rugat et se frustra adesse toto gestu corporis
contestatur.²⁵
Jerome complains here, as he does often in his writings,²⁶ about poor eyesight and
the general frailty of his corpusculum (“poor body”), a word which among ascetic
writers from this period often pejoratively connotes the material part of humans.²⁷
Without denying that there was at least some reality behind his rhetoric, we
should keep in mind that he strategically voiced such complaints in order to
heroicize himself as an embattled scholar who had worn out his eyes and body
Stenographie für die spätlateinische christliche Literatur,” JbAC 14 (1971): 29–33; B. Conring,
Hieronymus als Briefschreiber: Ein Beitrag zur spätantiken Epistolographie (Tübingen, 2001), 106–18.
²³ R. Jungblut, Hieronymus: Darstellung und Verehrung eines Kirchenvaters (Tübingen, 1967);
H. Friedmann, A Bestiary for Saint Jerome: Animal Symbolism in European Religious Art
(Washington, D.C., 1980), 48–100; B. Ridderbos, Saint and Symbol: Images of Saint Jerome in Early
Italian Art (Groningen, 1984), 63–88; D. Russo, Saint Jérôme en Italie: étude d’iconographie et de
spiritualité (XIIIe–XVe siècle) (Paris, 1987), 201–51; P. Conrads, Hieronymus, scriptor et interpres: Zur
Ikonographie des Eusebius Hieronymus im frühen und hohen Mittelalter (Würzburg, 1990). For
Jerome’s posthumous reception more generally, see E. Rice, Saint Jerome in the Renaissance
(Baltimore, 1985).
²⁴ Suetonius, V. Virg. 22; Aulus Gellius, Noct. Att. 17.10.2–3; cf. N. Horsfall, A Companion to the
Study of Virgil (Leiden, 1995), 15–16. Jerome recycled the same anecdote some two decades later (early
407): Vnde et de Vergilio traditum est, quod libros suos quasi ursorum fetus lingua composuerit et
lambendo fecerit esse meliores (Comm. Zach., lib. 3, prol. ll. 12–14).
²⁵ Comm. Gal., lib. 3, prol. ll. 28–36.
²⁶ B. Lançon, “Maladie et médecine dans la correspondance de Jérôme,” in Y.-M. Duval (ed.), Jérôme
entre l’Occident et l’Orient: XVIe centenaire du départ de saint Jérôme de Rome et de son installation à
Bethléem (Paris, 1988), 355–66.
²⁷ Thesaurus Linguae Latinae IV, 1025.81–2; cf. Cain, Jerome’s Epitaph on Paula, 120.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 19/8/2021, SPi
²⁸ Thus Jerome employs what R. Krawiec, Shenoute and the Women of the White Monastery
(Oxford, 2002), 69–71, calls the rhetoric of the “suffering servant,” idealizing himself as the model of
Christian perseverance through adversity.
²⁹ Cf. Epp. 33.6.1, 57.2.2, 84.12.1, 99.1.2, 108.32.1, 117.12.1, 118.1.1–2, 127.14.1, 128.5.4; C. Vig. 17.
³⁰ A. Cain, The Letters of Jerome: Asceticism, Biblical Exegesis, and the Construction of Christian
Authority in Late Antiquity (Oxford, 2009), 175. Cf. Jerome, Comm. Es., lib. 5, prol. ll. 47–9: Dictamus
haec, non scribimus: currente notariorum manu currit oratio.
³¹ M. Hale Williams, The Monk and the Book: Jerome and the Making of Christian Scholarship
(Chicago, 2006), 147–66.
³² See Chapter 6. ³³ See Chapter 6.
³⁴ After moving to Bethlehem, Jerome made semi-regular trips to Caesarea to consult the library’s
many important manuscripts. See F. Cavallera, Saint Jérôme: sa vie et son oeuvre, 2 vols. (Louvain,
1922), 2.88–9; J. N. D. Kelly, Jerome: His Life, Writings, and Controversies (New York, 1975), 135; P. Jay,
L’exégèse de saint Jérôme d’après son Commentaire sur Isaïe (Paris, 1985), 411–17; Jay, “Jérôme et la
pratique de l’exégèse,” in J. Fontaine and C. Pietri (eds.), La Bible de tous les temps, vol. 2: Le monde
latin antique et la Bible (Paris, 1985), 523–41 (529–34). On the library’s history, see A. J. Carriker, The
Library of Eusebius of Caesarea (Leiden, 2003), 11, 14–15.
³⁵ Origen nowhere calls it the “Hexapla” (τὰ Ἑξαπλᾶ) in his extant writings, but Eusebius refers to it
as such (Hist. eccl. 6.16.4). Scholars debate about Origen’s possible motivation(s) for producing the
Hexapla. J. Wright, “Origen in the Scholar’s Den: A Rationale for the Hexapla,” in C. Kannengiesser
and W. L. Petersen (eds.), Origen of Alexandria: His World and His Legacy (South Bend, 1988), 48–62,
suggests that he had a text-critical aim in mind, to pave the way for a corrected text of the Old
Testament. M. Martin, “Origen’s Theory of Language and the First Two Columns of the Hexapla,”
HThR 97 (2004): 99–106, argues that Origen was keen to provide Christians with a tool for synoptically
comparing readings of Old Testament manuscripts so that they would be well informed for any textual
disputes with Jews. T. M. Law, “Origen’s Parallel Bible: Textual Criticism, Apologetics, or Exegesis?,”
JThS n.s. 59 (2008): 1–21, charts a different path, suggesting that he was prompted more by exegetical
than by text-critical or apologetic concerns.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 19/8/2021, SPi
13
with the Hebrew, the Greek transliteration of the Hebrew,³⁶ and then four
translations of the Hebrew into Greek (Aquila, Symmachus, a recension of the
Septuagint, and Theodotion). In his commentary on Titus Jerome describes the
Hexapla’s contents in some detail,³⁷ and numerous times in his Pauline commen-
taries he also juxtaposes readings from the Hebrew Bible and its four Greek
translations.³⁸ These data can be taken to suggest, at least circumstantially, that
he had firsthand access to the Hexapla at the time. At some point he did own a
personal copy of the Hexapla, but whether he had it in 386 is unknown. In any
event, the sheer cost of materials and scribal labor involved in copying such a
massive work—one modern estimate has it filling thirty-eight codices, each con-
taining 400 leaves (800 pages)³⁹—would have made owning a private copy of the
Hexapla an extraordinarily costly proposition in the late fourth century. Needless
to say, only the very privileged few could afford such a luxury, and Jerome fits into
that rarefied camp by virtue of Paula’s patronage.⁴⁰
Jerome dictated all four of his Pauline commentaries in quick succession
between the (early?) summer and early autumn of 386.⁴¹ Clues internal to them
enable us to reconstruct their order of composition. The one on Philemon came
first,⁴² as we learn from its opening lines:
³⁶ This column may have been intended to serve as a guide to vocalizing the text in Hebrew
characters in the first column. See J. A. Emerton, “A Further Consideration of the Purpose of the
Second Column of the Hexapla,” JThS n.s. 22 (1971): 15–28.
³⁷ Comm. Tit. 3.9.
³⁸ E.g., Comm. Gal. 1.4–5, 3.10, 3.11–12, 3.13b–14, 6.18; Comm. Eph. 5.3–4; Comm. Tit. 2.11–14, 3.9;
cf. Comm. Phlm. 20.
³⁹ A. Grafton and M. Hale Williams, Christianity and the Transformation of the Book: Origen,
Eusebius, and the Library of Caesarea (Cambridge, MA, 2006), 323.
⁴⁰ For a rough estimate of Paula’s net worth, see Cain, Jerome’s Epitaph on Paula, 108–10. Like
Jerome, Rufinus owned a private copy of the Hexapla which he procured “at great expense” (magnis
sumptibus) (Jerome, Apol. c. Ruf. 2.34), and almost certainly thanks to Melania the Elder’s patronage,
on which see A. Cain, Rufinus of Aquileia, Inquiry about the Monks in Egypt, FOTC 139 (Washington,
D.C., 2019), 6–7.
⁴¹ Nautin, “La date des commentaires.”
⁴² Like Jerome, Origen, his chief exegetical model for the Pauline commentaries, evidently started
his own Pauline exegesis with a commentary on Philemon; see C. Bammel, “Origen’s Pauline Prefaces
and the Chronology of his Pauline Commentaries,” in G. Dorival and A. le Boulluec (eds.), Origeniana
sexta: Origène et la Bible. Actes du Colloquium Origenianum Sextum, Chantilly, 30 août–3 septembre
1993 (Leuven, 1995), 495–513 (511).
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 19/8/2021, SPi
facerem recusarem, saltem parvam et quae vobis ut numero versuum, ita sensu
quoque et ordine videbatur extrema, ut dissererem coegistis.⁴³
Jerome’s remarks about Philemon being “last in order” (ordine extrema) and
about his interpreting the Pauline epistles “in inverted and flip-flopped order”
(praepostero ordine atque perverso⁴⁴) by commenting on Philemon first⁴⁵ reflect
the canonical ordering of the New Testament writings that was widespread by the
late fourth century. There was a clear tendency by that point to arrange Paul’s
letters in descending order of length of the Greek text, with Romans first and
Philemon last.⁴⁶ Paula’s awareness of Philemon’s last-place position in the tradi-
tional canonical sequence apparently colored her perception of it and prompted
her to think less highly of it than of the other epistles.
Jerome commented next on Galatians. He says in the preface to Book 1 of its
commentary: “It has been only a few days since I commented on Paul’s epistle to
Philemon and moved on to Galatians, leaving behind many things in between.”⁴⁷
So, he wasted no time in taking up Galatians, but his somewhat cryptic statement
about “leaving behind many things in between” perhaps suggests that he had other
plans which he postponed to work on Galatians. In any case, this compendious
commentary, which he divided into three books, must have occupied him for
several weeks at the very minimum.
After finishing with Galatians he moved on to Ephesians,⁴⁸ producing a com-
parably lengthy commentary also spread across three books. The interval between
15
these two commentaries, like the one between the Philemon and Galatians ones,
was “a few days,” as he indicates in the first Ephesians preface.⁴⁹ Judging by its
sheer size, we can assume that the Ephesians commentary, like the Galatians one,
took several weeks to complete. At last Jerome came to Titus, and he gives us not
one but two testimonia about its relative date of composition. In Comm. Tit.
1.10–11 he makes the passing comment that he composed his commentary on
Galatians “a few months ago,”⁵⁰ and several pages later he cross-references this
same commentary.⁵¹
Moreover, who was the commentaries’ intended audience? The most immedi-
ate one obviously was Paula and Eustochium, the joint dedicatees of all four.
Jerome in fact is the only one in the late antique Latin cadre of Pauline commen-
tators to dedicate his commentaries to named individuals, a (compulsory) gesture
he made in recognition of their literary patronage of him.⁵² It is not just in the
prefaces but also in the commentaries themselves that he directly addresses Paula
and Eustochium. One example is the above-quoted passage from the opening of his
Philemon commentary and another is found in his Titus commentary, when he
discusses the Mosaic laws on theft and does a personalized call-out to both women:
“I recall that I recently explained these things to you (vobis) on Leviticus.”⁵³
It is clear from his various Pauline prefaces that Jerome envisaged also an
audience extending well beyond rural Bethlehem to Rome, his recent former base
of operations. He indirectly designates Marcella, one of his main literary patrons
there,⁵⁴ as an honorary dedicatee of his Galatians and Ephesians commentaries,
because he counted on her to facilitate the dissemination and favorable reception
of them within the orbit of her social network,⁵⁵ which would have consisted of
educated elites. By the same token, Jerome seems to have expected that his
commentaries would reach a more general, non-elite audience as well.⁵⁶ This, at
here is to Comm. Phlm. 1–3: Scribit igitur ad Philemonem, Romae vinctus in carcere, quo tempore mihi
videntur ad Philippenses, Colossenses et Ephesios epistulae esse dictatae.
⁴⁹ Iam ad Galatas orantibus vobis ante paucos dies quid nobis videretur expressimus, nunc ad
Ephesios transeundum est (Comm. Eph., lib. 1, prol. ll. 69–71).
⁵⁰ Ante paucos menses tria volumina in epistulae ad Galatas explanatione dictavimus.
⁵¹ Quomodo autem vel Cretenses mendaces et stulti Galatae, vel dura cervice Israhel, vel unaquaeque
provincia proprio vitio denotetur, in epistula Pauli ad Galatas disseruimus (Comm. Tit. 1.12–14).
⁵² All of Jerome’s biblical commentaries have dedicatees. Not all contemporary Christian authors,
however, followed this custom. For example, only two of Ambrose’s works have dedicatees (De fide and
De apologia prophetae David). Augustine, too, rarely dedicated his writings to others, and he did not
name any dedicatees for his Galatians commentary, though he seems to have composed it for his
parishioners and fellow monks; see E. Plumer, Augustine’s Commentary on Galatians: Introduction,
Text, Translation, and Notes (Oxford, 2003), 71–88. Even though Pelagius does not name any
dedicatees for his Pauline commentaries, he, like Jerome, wrote for a primarily upper-class readership;
see T. de Bruyn, Pelagius’s Commentary on St Paul’s Epistle to the Romans (Oxford, 1993), 11–12.
⁵³ De quibus nuper vobis in Levitico exposuisse me memini (Comm. Tit. 2.9–10).
⁵⁴ Cain, The Letters of Jerome, 68–98. ⁵⁵ See Chapter 2.
⁵⁶ Cf. S. A. Cooper, Metaphysics and Morals in Marius Victorinus’ Commentary on the Letter to the
Ephesians (New York, 1995), 2, for the suggestion that Marius Victorinus intended his Pauline
commentaries for use “outside the studies of reasonably well-educated churchmen.”
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 19/8/2021, SPi
any rate, is the thrust of a remark he makes that qualifies an interpretation he has
just given, a follow-up explanation he says he offers “for the sake of the simpler
ones” (propter simpliciores);⁵⁷ simpliciores is his standard term for Christians with
little or no formal education.⁵⁸ Moreover, in his second Ephesians preface, when
he speaks in passing about the scope of his readership, he mentions Marcella
(illam), Paula and Eustochium (vos), and “any who will happen to read” (si qui
forte lecturi sunt) his commentaries.⁵⁹
Why did Jerome undertake a major interpretive project on Paul at this moment
in his career? He seems to close the case by answering this question in his own
words. In his first Ephesians preface he addresses Paula and Eustochium as
follows: “You yourselves know that you have compelled me, who was unwilling
and reluctant, to undertake this work of interpretation.”⁶⁰ He likewise opens his
Philemon commentary with the claim that these same women “repeatedly
entreated” and even “forced” him to comment on Paul despite the fact that he
“resolutely refused to do so.”⁶¹ Taken purely at face value, both of these remarks
are straightforward enough: Paula and Eustochium were solely responsible for the
idea that he comment on Paul, and he obliged only because they left him with no
other choice. Such statements, however, need to be situated within their ancient
rhetorical context. Read in this light, they conspicuously resemble the very kind of
contrived protests about compulsory commissions that are commonplace in
Greek and Latin prefaces.
In the dedicatory prefaces to his various works Jerome frequently makes staged
complaints about how his commissioning patrons have forced him to produce the
writings in question. Such recusationes are performative rhetoric. They partly are a
function of the traditional patron-client relationship dynamic and enable Jerome
to pay homage to patrons whose financial support made his literary enterprises
possible in the first place, and they also remind these patrons of their implied
obligation to facilitate the dissemination of the writings they have sponsored. For
the benefit of outside readers, this topos also gave Jerome, a provincial parvenu, a
certain respectability by representing him as a cliens whose services were sought
out eagerly by distinguished Christians. On an apologetic level, it was designed to
⁵⁷ Qui vero de superioribus disputat et concentum mundi omniumque creaturarum ordinem atque
concordiam subtilis disputator edisserit, iste spiritale canticum canit. Vel certe, ut propter simpliciores
manifestius quod volumus eloquamur, psalmus ad corpus, canticum refertur ad mentem (Comm. Eph.
5.19).
⁵⁸ Cain, “Jerome,” 289. Origen similarly designated uneducated Christians as οἱ ἁπλούστεροι; see
G. af Hällström, Fides simpliciorum according to Origen of Alexandria (Helsinki, 1984).
⁵⁹ Quapropter et illam et vos et si qui forte lecturi sunt, in commune precor ut sciatis . . . (Comm. Eph.,
lib. 2, prol. ll. 12–13).
⁶⁰ Scitis enim ipsae quod ad hoc me explanationum opus invitum et retractantem compuleritis
(Comm. Eph., lib. 1, prol. ll. 42–3).
⁶¹ Praepostero ordine atque perverso in epistulas Pauli dictari a me vobis placuit. Nam cum id crebro,
o Paula et Eustochium, peteretis ut facerem, et ego obnixe ne facerem recusarem . . . ut dissererem coegistis
(Comm. Phlm. 1–3).
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 19/8/2021, SPi
17
insulate his work from criticism by pinning the (allegedly) sole responsibility for it
on their commissioners.⁶² In Jerome’s hands such recusationes had another
important desired rhetorical effect, and that was to downplay any possible
appearance of blind literary ambition, something considered anathema for an
ascetic monk.⁶³
None of this is of course to deny that a set of commentaries on the Pauline
epistles was somewhere on Paula’s wish list at the time, or perhaps even at the very
top. It is simply to point out that Jerome himself very likely exercised more
autonomy around the genesis of this project than is suggested by a surface reading
of his stylized rhetoric. In fact, it is conceivable—quite so, to my mind—that the
idea for a multi-volume exposition of Paul’s epistles actually originated with him
and that a receptive Paula heartily encouraged it and agreed to underwrite the
considerable costs involved in obtaining ample writing materials and equipping
him with the proper research apparatus by having copies made of numerous
Greek patristic commentaries on Paul, especially Origen’s voluminous ones.⁶⁴ It is
precisely this Origenian connection that promisingly suggests the initiative com-
ing more from Jerome’s side than from Paula’s. For, in the years leading up to 386,
one of his avowed missions was to make Origen’s exegesis available to western
readers, both through direct Latin translation and through creative adaptation of
Origenian material in his own original exegetical writings.⁶⁵ Viewed from this
angle, his four Pauline commentaries, which by his own admission are very
heavily derivative of Origen’s,⁶⁶ take shape as the most substantial installment to
date of his program of Latinizing Origen.
Given Jerome’s reliance on Origen as an exegetical guide for his own work on
Paul, not to mention his documented ambition to represent himself as the
Origenes Latinus,⁶⁷ an intriguing question arises. Origen wrote commentaries on
Galatians, Ephesians, Titus, and Philemon, but he also commented—in a mix of
⁶² See, for example, the following charge Jerome gives to Pammachius, the commissioner of his
commentary on Hosea: Tu autem, Pammachi, qui nos facere praecepisti hoc, necesse est ut fautor sis
imperii tui, et Amafinios ac Rabirios nostri temporis, qui de Graecis bonis, Latina faciunt non bona; et
homines eloquentissimos, ipsi elingues transferunt, evangelico calces pede; viperamque et scorpium iuxta
fabulas poetarum, aduras cauterio, solea conteras; et scylleos canes ac mortifera carmina sirenarum
surda aure pertranseas; ut pariter audire et nosse valeamus quid vaticinetur Osee propheta, in cuius
explanationem secundum dictabimus librum. Cumque tuo laeter adminiculo, et in prima urbe terrarum,
primum et nobilitate et religione habere me gaudeam defensorem . . . (Comm. Os., lib. 2, prol. ll. 179–89);
cf. Comm. Os., lib. 3, prol. ll. 136–7: Cumque apertum fautorem pro iure amicitiae esse te gaudeam . . .
⁶³ Cf. A. Cain, The Greek Historia Monachorum in Aegypto: Monastic Hagiography in the Late
Fourth Century (Oxford, 2016), 54–7.
⁶⁴ In some cases Jerome’s dedicatees simply invited him to undertake a given project and then gave
him encouragement and financial assistance to complete it. See Y.-M. Duval (ed.), Jérôme,
Commentaire sur Jonas: introduction, texte critique, traduction, et commentaire (Paris, 1985), 39. For
an example of how he entertained requests from literary patrons, but only if such requests did not
interfere with his existing plans, see Comm. Es., lib. 5, prol. ll. 15–47.
⁶⁵ See Chapter 6. ⁶⁶ See below, p. 172.
⁶⁷ M. Vessey, “Jerome’s Origen: The Making of a Christian Literary Persona,” StudPatr 28 (1993):
135–45.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 19/8/2021, SPi
19
fruition.⁷⁴ The fact that he did not ride the wave of momentum and continue his
work on Paul in the shorter term suggests that he regarded his four commentaries
as constituting a sufficient contribution in their own right to Pauline studies.⁷⁵
Taking this inference as my starting point, in the remainder of this chapter
I propose reasons why Jerome chose to focus on Galatians, Ephesians, Titus, and
Philemon. My aim is not to propose every single conceivable reason but instead to
track what in my view are the most discernible signposts he has left behind in the
text. Generally speaking, these signposts come in two basic forms: direct and
indirect statements of authorial intention in the commentaries’ prefaces, and
prominent topical emphases peculiar to the individual commentaries.
Philemon, one of the so-called “prison epistles” along with Colossians, Ephesians,
and Philippians, is the shortest of the extant letters traditionally attributed to Paul,
containing as it does a mere 335 Greek words.⁷⁶ Few biblical scholars today
dispute its Pauline authorship.⁷⁷ Nevertheless, there has been extensive debate
about how to view it within the broader Pauline corpus. Some see it as an outlier, a
private letter to an individual about strictly personal matters as opposed to a
public letter to a specific church dealing with issues of importance to the com-
munity in question.⁷⁸ Others argue that it is addressed to Philemon and other
⁷⁴ P. Nautin, “L’activité littéraire de Jérôme de 387 à 392,” RThPh 115 (1983): 247–59 (257–8); cf.
L. Doutreleau (ed.), Didyme l’Aveugle: Traité du Saint-Esprit: introduction, texte critique, traduction,
notes et index, SC 386 (Paris, 1992); A. Cesareo, “Il Liber de Spiritu sancto di San Girolamo: una
versione latina dell’opera perduta di Didimo Cieco,” Schol(i)a 11 (2009): 31–49.
⁷⁵ That he never resumed his work on Paul even in the longer term also is striking, for after all this
would not have been the only larger-scale project he would resume after a longer than expected
interval. In Comm. Ion., prol. ll. 1–9 he speaks of interruptions in his exegesis of the Minor Prophets:
Triennium circiter fluxit, postquam quinque prophetas interpretatus sum: Michaeam, Nahum, Abacuc,
Sophoniam, Aggaeum; et alio opere detentus, non potui implere quod coeperam: scripsi enim librum
de illustribus viris, et adversum Iovinianum duo volumina; apologeticum quoque, et de optimo genere
interpretandi ad Pammachium, et ad Nepotianum, vel de Nepotiano duos libros, et alia quae enumerare
longum est. Igitur tanto post tempore, quasi quodam postliminio a Iona interpretandi sumens
principium . . .
⁷⁶ Despite its brevity, numerous scholars have detected in it a deliberate rhetorical undercurrent; see
J. White, “The Structural Analysis of Philemon: A Point of Departure in the Formal Analysis of the
Pauline Letter,” SBL Seminar Papers 1 (1971): 1–4; F. F. Church, “Rhetorical Structure and Design in
Paul’s Letter to Philemon,” HThR 71 (1978): 17–33; J. Heil, “The Chiastic Structure and Meaning of
Paul’s Letter to Philemon,” Biblica 82 (2001): 178–206; P. Lampe, “ ‘You Will Do Even More than I Say’:
On the Rhetorical Function of Stylistic Form in the Letter to Philemon,” in D. F. Tolmie (ed.), Philemon
in Perspective: Interpreting a Pauline Letter (Berlin, 2010), 79–112; C. Frilingos, “ ‘For My Child,
Onesimus’: Paul and Domestic Power in Philemon,” JBL 119 (2000): 91–104.
⁷⁷ J. D. G. Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle (Grand Rapids, 1998), 299–300; S. McKnight, The
Letter to Philemon (Grand Rapids, 2017), 37.
⁷⁸ E.g., G. Bornkamm, Paulus (Stuttgart, 1969), 100; E. Schweizer, Der Brief an die Kolosser
(Einsiedeln, 1976), 27–8; R. Wilson, Colossians and Philemon (London, 2005), 317: “Philemon is
unique in the main corpus of the Pauline letters (excluding the Pastorals) in that it is addressed not
to a community but to an individual.”
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 19/8/2021, SPi
⁷⁹ E.g., M. Barth and H. Blanke, The Letter to Philemon: A New Translation with Notes and
Commentary (Grand Rapids, 2000), 112–15; J. A. Harrill, Slaves in the New Testament: Literary,
Social, and Moral Dimensions (Minneapolis, 2006), 14; K. Shaner, Enslaved Leadership in Early
Christianity (Oxford, 2018), 56–7. J. D. G. Dunn, The Epistle to the Colossians and to Philemon:
A Commentary on the Greek Text (Grand Rapids, 1996), 299, strikes a sensible balance: “The letter
to Philemon is unique within the New Testament. It is the only genuinely personal, that is, person-to-
person, letter, even though the wider community is also in view explicitly in vv. 2, 22, and 25 and in the
background throughout.”
⁸⁰ Metzger, The Canon of the New Testament, 219.
⁸¹ E.g., in Egypt in 367, in Rome in 382, and in Carthage and Hippo in 395 and 397 (Barth and
Blanke, The Letter to Philemon, 105).
⁸² So J. B. Lightfoot, Saint Paul’s Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon (London, 1879), 316–17:
“This letter taught them nothing about questions of theological interest, nothing about matters of
ecclesiastical discipline.”
⁸³ For attempts to buck this trend, see M. Soards, “Some Neglected Theological Dimensions of Paul’s
Letter to Philemon,” PRS 17 (1990): 209–19; T. Still, “Philemon among the Letters of Paul: Theological
and Canonical Considerations,” RestQ 47 (2005): 133–42.
⁸⁴ H. B. Swete (ed.), Theodori Episcopi Mopsuesteni in Epistolas B. Pauli commentarii: The Latin
Version with the Greek Fragments, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1880–2), 2.261; F. F. Bruce, The Epistle to the
Colossians, to Philemon, and to the Ephesians (Grand Rapids, 1984), 191–3; N. A. Dahl, “The
Particularity of the Pauline Epistles as a Problem in the Ancient Church,” in D. Hellholm (ed.),
N. A. Dahl, Studies in Ephesians (Tübingen, 2000), 168–9.
⁸⁵ Colossians and Philemon, 317. On Philemon’s early canonical history, see W. Schenk, “Der Brief
des Paulus an Philemon in der neueren Forschung (1945–1987),” ANRW II.25.4 (1987): 3439–95.
⁸⁶ It is perhaps notable in this context that apart from a lost third-century commentary on it by
Origen (see R. Heine, “In Search of Origen’s Commentary on Philemon,” HThR 93 (2000): 117–33),
there is no evidence of substantial patristic discussion of Philemon until the late fourth century; see
M. Mitchell, “John Chrysostom on Philemon: A Second Look,” HThR 88 (1995): 135–48 (145).
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 19/8/2021, SPi
21
of its contemporary apologists.⁸⁷ John Chrysostom was one of the more spirited
among these defenders. In the introduction to his homilies on Philemon, which he
preached in Constantinople probably in the last decade of the fourth century, he
says that those who deny that this epistle offers any practical benefit (κέρδος) to
readers are deserving of countless censures (μυρίων ἐγκλημάτων ἄξιοι).⁸⁸ He
argues that the very minutiae that give these skeptics pause are what profit us,
for the epistle offers precious behind-the-scenes access to Paul’s daily life, allowing
us to observe his private virtue in action:
For if only seeing places where they sat or were imprisoned, inanimate places, we
often transport our minds there and imagine their virtue and are aroused and
become more zealous, this would much more be the case if we heard about their
words and other deeds . . . For whenever someone lives a spiritual life, the man-
nerisms, gait, words, and actions of such a person, and absolutely everything
about him, profit the hearers.
Εἰ γὰρ τόπους ὁρῶντες μόνον, ἔνθα ἐκάθισαν ἢ ἐδέθησαν, τόπους ἀψύχους,
πολλάκις ἐκεῖ παραπέμπομεν τὴν διάνοιαν, καὶ φανταζόμεθα αὐτῶν τὴν ἀρετὴν,
καὶ διανιστάμεθα καὶ προθυμότεροι γινόμεθα· εἰ τὰ ῥήματα καὶ τὰς ἑτέρας αὐτῶν
πράξεις ἠκούσαμεν, πολλῷ μᾶλλον . . . Ὅταν γάρ τις πνευματικῶς ζῇ, καὶ σχήματα
καὶ βαδίσματα, καὶ ῥήματα καὶ πράγματα τοῦ τοιούτου, καὶ πάντα ἁπλῶς τοὺς
ἀκούοντας ὠφελεῖ, καὶ οὐδὲν ἐμποδίζει οὐδὲ κώλυμα γίνεται.⁸⁹
Chrysostom goes on to pinpoint what in his view are Philemon’s three critical
takeaway lessons. First, Paul demonstrates by his own example that Christians
must be diligent and conscientious in everything they do. Second, masters should
not despair over misbehaving slaves but remain hopeful that they will be
reformed. Third, we are instructed not to remove a slave from his master without
the latter’s consent.⁹⁰
Theodore of Mopsuestia makes his own case for Philemon in the preface to his
commentary on it.⁹¹ In fact, we learn from this preface that the dedicatee, a certain
⁸⁷ For a selective overview, see P. Decock, “The Reception of the Letter to Philemon in the Early
Church: Origen, Jerome, Chrysostom, and Augustine,” in Tolmie (ed.), Philemon in Perspective,
273–87.
⁸⁸ Hom. Phlm., argum. (PG 62:702). ⁸⁹ Hom. Phlm., argum. (PG 62:702–3).
⁹⁰ Εἰ γὰρ Παῦλος ὑπὲρ δραπέτου, ὑπὲρ λῃστοῦ καὶ κλέπτου τοσαύτην ποιεῖται πρόνοιαν, καὶ οὐ
παραιτεῖται μετὰ τοσούτων αὐτὸν ἐγκωμίων παραπέμψαι, οὐδὲ αἰσχύνεται, πολλῷ μᾶλλον οὐδὲ ἡμᾶς
προσήκει ῥᾳθύμους εἶναι περὶ τὰ τοιαῦτα. Δεύτερον, ὅτι τὸ δουλικὸν γένος οὐ δεῖ ἀπογινώσκειν, κἂν εἰ
ἐσχάτην ἐλάσῃ κακίαν. Εἰ γὰρ ὁ κλέπτης, ὁ δραπέτης οὕτως ἐγένετο ἐνάρετος, ὡς θέλειν τὸν Παῦλον κοιν
ωνὸν αὐτὸν καταστῆσαι, καὶ γράφων ἔλεγεν· Ἵνα ὑπὲρ σοῦ διακονῇ μοι· πολλῷ μᾶλλον ἐλευθέρους
ἀπογινώσκειν οὐ χρή. Τρίτον, ὅτι τοὺς δούλους ἀποσπᾷν τῶν δεσποτῶν οὐ προσήκει (Hom. Phlm.,
argum. [PG 62:703–4]). For an analysis of Chrysostom’s treatment of slavery in his Philemon homilies,
see C. de Wet, “Honour Discourse in John Chrysostom’s Exegesis of the Letter to Philemon,” in Tolmie
(ed.), Philemon in Perspective, 317–31.
⁹¹ For an exemplary study of Theodore’s commentary on Philemon, see J. T. Fitzgerald, “Theodore
of Mopsuestia on Paul’s Letter to Philemon,” in Tolmie (ed.), Philemon in Perspective, 333–63. On
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 19/8/2021, SPi
Cyrinus, had been skeptical about Philemon’s value: “What profit could be
acquired from [this epistle] needs to be explained more clearly because I do not
think that it is able to be recognized by all. You yourself especially have asked that
I discuss this problem.”⁹² Theodore, taking Cyrinus’s mandate seriously, devotes
the rest of his rather lengthy preface to building the case for Philemon’s relevance.
He boils down his argument to one main thesis. Philemon teaches officers of the
church how they ought to act towards fellow Christians, and in this respect its
message is pertinent to readers in his own time.⁹³ Pelagius veers in this same
direction when he says that the epistle’s essential goal is to teach us to exercise
humility in our dealings with fellow Christians.⁹⁴
If Philemon’s utility was not self-evident to Cyrinus, it was not immediately
obvious to the dedicatees of Jerome’s commentary on Philemon either. In the
opening lines of it he addresses Paula and Eustochium: “You compelled me to
comment on the short [epistle] and the one that you regarded as ranking last in
terms of its number of verses, meaning, and canonical order.”⁹⁵ Despite its brevity,
the preface to Jerome’s commentary on it is inordinately long. In Bucchi’s recent
critical edition it occupies four pages, whereas the commentary spans a little under
twenty-six pages.⁹⁶ This disproportionality is in itself striking and represents an
anomaly within Jerome’s opus Paulinum. Even more telling as a signpost of
Jerome’s authorial intent is the actual thrust of the preface: a defense of the
canonicity and utility of Philemon against critics who deny either one or both of
these things.⁹⁷
Theodore’s Pauline exegesis more generally, see U. Wickert, Studien zu den Pauluskommentaren
Theodors von Mopsuestia: Als Beitrag zum Verständnis der antiochenischen Theologie (Berlin, 1962)
and “Die Persönlichkeit des Paulus in den Paulus kommentaren Theodors von Mopsuestia,” ZNTW 53
(1962): 51–66.
⁹² Quid vero ex ea lucri possit adquiri convenit manifestius explicari, quia nec omnibus id existimo
posse esse cognitum; quod maxime etiam ipse a nobis disseri postulasti; R. A. Greer (ed. and trans.),
Theodore of Mopsuestia: The Commentaries on the Minor Epistles of Paul (Atlanta, 2010), 772.
⁹³ Quae est ergo utilitas etiam huius epistulae? Vt omnes qui in ecclesiastica habentur functione,
maxime illi qui praeesse ecclesiis videntur, ut sciant quemadmodum oporteat agere cum illis qui nobis
fide iuncti sunt, quando vel maxime de negotiis illis agitur quae ad illos proprie pertinere videntur.
Quorum utilitatem tunc maxime quis poterit perspicere, si respexerit illa quae nostris temporibus a
multis geruntur (Greer, Theodore of Mopsuestia, 776).
⁹⁴ Nihil magis est in hac epistula attendendum nisi quanta humilitate discipulum deprecetur, dans
nobis exemplum quid apud coaequales facere debeamus (Comm. Phlm., prol.).
⁹⁵ Parvam et quae vobis ut numero versuum, ita sensu quoque et ordine videbatur extrema, ut
dissererem coegistis (Comm. Phlm. 1–3).
⁹⁶ F. Bucchi (ed.), Commentarii in epistulas Pauli apostoli ad Titum et ad Philemonem, CCSL 77C
(Turnhout, 2003), 77–80 (preface), 81–106 (commentary).
⁹⁷ Jerome’s preface likely is based on the preface to Origen’s lost commentary on Philemon. See
C. H. Turner, “Greek Patristic Commentaries on the Pauline Epistles,” in J. Hastings (ed.), A Dictionary
of the Bible, Supplement (Edinburgh, 1898), 484–531 (496); A. von Harnack, “Origenistisches Gut von
kirchengeschichtlicher Bedeutung in den Kommentaren des Hieronymus zum Philemon-, Galater-,
Epheser- und Titusbrief,” in A. von Harnack, Der kirchengeschichtliche Ertrag der exegetischen Arbeiten
des Origenes (Leipzig, 1919), 141–6; A. Souter, The Earliest Latin Commentaries on the Epistles of St.
Paul (Oxford, 1927), 115; Nautin, “La date des commentaires,” 11; Bammel, “Origen’s Pauline
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 19/8/2021, SPi
23
Prefaces,” 49. For a source-critical analysis of Jerome’s preface, see Heine, “In Search of Origen’s
Commentary,” 120–6.
⁹⁸ As Heine, “In Search of Origen’s Commentary,” 125, duly reminds us, not all of these opponents
in question need have fallen under the heading of “heretics,” nor need they all have belonged to one
homogeneous group or sect that rejected Philemon.
⁹⁹ His et ceteris istiusmodi volunt aut epistulam non esse Pauli, quae ad Philemonem scribitur . . .
(Comm. Phlm., prol. ll. 27–8).
¹⁰⁰ He admits later in the preface that his summary of their argument is not exhaustive: Non est
huius temporis ad omnia respondere, quia nec omnia quae proponere illi solent intulimus (Comm.
Phlm., prol. ll. 53–5).
¹⁰¹ Qui nolunt inter epistulas Pauli eam recipere quae ad Philemonem scribitur, aiunt non semper
apostolum, nec omnia Christo in se loquente dixisse; quia, neque humana imbecillitas unum tenorem
Sancti Spiritus ferre potuisset, neque huius corpusculi necessitates sub praesentia semper Domini
complerentur, velut disponere prandium, cibum capere, esurire, satiari, ingesta digerere, exhausta
complere. Taceo de ceteris quae exquisite et coacte replicant, ut adfirment fuisse aliquod tempus in quo
Paulus dicere non auderet: Vivo iam non ego, vivit autem in me Christus; et illud: An experimentum
quaeritis eius qui in me loquitur Christus? Quale, inquiunt, experimentum Christi est audire: Penulam
quam reliqui Troade apud Carpum, veniens te cum adfer; et illud ad Galatas: Vtinam et excidantur qui
vos conturbant; et in hac ipsa epistula: Simul autem et praepara mihi hospitium? (Comm. Phlm., prol. ll.
1–16).
¹⁰² Hoc autem non solum apostolis, sed prophetis quoque similiter accidisse, unde saepius scriptum
feratur: Factum est verbum Domini ad Hiezechiel, sive ad quemlibet alium prophetarum; quia, post
expletum vaticinium rursum in semet revertens, homo communis fieret . . . (Comm. Phlm., prol. ll.
16–20).
¹⁰³ Qui germanae auctoritatis eam esse defendunt, dicunt numquam in toto orbe a cunctis ecclesiis
fuisse susceptam, nisi Pauli apostoli crederetur (Comm. Phlm., prol. ll. 31–3).
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 19/8/2021, SPi
and reject the other epistles from which they cite examples of his humana
imbecillitas (Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Timothy, Galatians). Conversely, if they
accept these other epistles, then they should accept Philemon as well. Jerome goes
on to adduce the fact that Marcion, who otherwise plays his main heretical foil in
the Pauline commentaries,¹⁰⁴ included Philemon in his own abridged version of
the New Testament.¹⁰⁵ This situational praise of Marcion has a farcical ring to it
and is meant to shame Philemon’s naysayers: even the worst arch-heretic of them
all had enough sense to acknowledge its canonicity!
Jerome next turns to the skeptics’ claim that Philemon is excessively short and
deals with too trifling a topic to offer any real instructional value for the general
Christian reader:
When they accuse the epistle of having no depth, it seems to me that they expose
their own ignorance, failing to understand the power and wisdom that lie hidden
in the individual passages. With the aid of your prayers, and with the Holy Spirit
himself guiding us, we will attempt to explain these things in the contexts in
which they were written. But if brevity is held in contempt, then let there be
contempt for Obadiah, Nahum, Zephaniah, and the other twelve [Minor]
Prophets, in whom such amazing and sublime things are recorded that you do
not know whether you should wonder at the brevity of their words or the
loftiness of their ideas. If those who repudiate the epistle to Philemon understood
this, they would never look down on its brevity, which has been enwrapped in the
Gospel’s splendor instead of the Law’s tedious burdens.
Mihi videtur, dum epistulam simplicitatis arguunt, suam imperitiam prodere, non
intellegentes quid in singulis sermonibus virtutis et sapientiae lateat. Quae, oran-
tibus vobis et ipso nobis Sancto Spiritu suggerente, quo scripta sunt suis locis
explanare conabimur. Si autem brevitas habetur contemptui, contemnatur
Abdias, Naum, Sophonias et alii duodecim prophetarum in quibus tam mira et
tam grandia sunt quae feruntur, ut nescias utrum brevitatem sermonum in illis
admirari debeas, an magnitudinem sensuum. Quod si intellegerent hi qui epistu-
lam ad Philemonem repudiant, numquam brevitatem despicerent quae pro laci-
niosis legis oneribus evangelico decore conscripta est.¹⁰⁶
¹⁰⁴ See Chapter 5; cf. Cain, Commentary on Galatians, 47–9. On Jerome’s heresiology more gener-
ally, see B. Jeanjean, Saint Jérôme et l’hérésie (Paris, 1999).
¹⁰⁵ Jerome may have in mind Tertullian’s quip that its brevitas is the only thing that saved Philemon
from Marcion’s “falsifying hands” (falsariae manus); cf. Tertullian, Adv. Marc. 5.21: Soli huic epistulae
brevitas sua profuit, ut falsarias manus Marcionis evaderet.
¹⁰⁶ Comm. Phlm., prol. ll. 65–76.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 19/8/2021, SPi
25
because, as is the case with these others, so much “power and wisdom” are baked
into their texts. Second, Jerome himself is competent to uncover and decode its
hidden mysteries because he has the aid of not only the prayers of Paula and
Eustochium but also the very Spirit who inspired Paul to write this epistle.¹⁰⁷ He
essentially is making an indirect invocation of the Holy Spirit as his divine
Muse,¹⁰⁸ and in so doing he floats the suggestion that his commentaries draw
from the well of divine inspiration. Thus, he masterfully combines his defense of
Philemon’s canonicity with a subtle yet powerful, and indeed virtually irrefutable,
affirmation of his own exegetical authority.
Throughout his commentary Jerome develops his claim that Philemon is an
inspired document primarily by emphasizing Paul’s apostolic status.¹⁰⁹ He already
had set the tone at the tail end of the preface with the following transition into the
commentary proper: “But now the Apostle’s own words ought to be presented.
They begin as follows.”¹¹⁰ It is significant that he refers to Paul by the epithet “the
Apostle,” which was extremely common among early Christian writers and was
but one manifestation of the exalted status that Paul enjoyed in later centuries as
the first and greatest of all Christian theologians and as the most recognizable
apostolic face of the Gospel.¹¹¹ Out of his eight Pauline prefaces (one each for
Philemon and Titus, and three each for Galatians and Ephesians), Jerome
concludes only one other one, the first Galatians preface, by calling Paul “the
Apostle.”¹¹² What is more, between the Philemon preface and its commentary
(but not including lemmatized passages or biblical quotations), Jerome refers to
Paul as apostolus (or uses the adjective apostolicus in reference to him) another
thirty-two times, a hearty number of occurrences given the relative brevity of the
text. By comparison, he dubs him “the Apostle” 127 times in the Galatians
commentary, 91 in the Ephesians one, and 68 in the Titus one, for a grand total
of 318 times in all four commentaries.
Jerome drops explicit periodic reminders in his commentary that Paul wrote
Philemon in his capacity as an apostle. Early on, in his comments on vv. 1–3, he
seems to be responding to critics’ objection, which he mentions in the preface, that
Paul twice calls himself “a prisoner of Christ Jesus.” He acknowledges that Paul
technically does not characterize himself like this anywhere else, though in
principle he does because he mentions in three other epistles that he is “in
chains.”¹¹³ Jerome then opines that “a prisoner of Christ Jesus” is not even really
a demeaning title but actually a more exalted one than “apostle” because the
apostles boasted about being persecuted for Christ’s name:
Now as for “prisoner of Jesus Christ” which comes next, Paul employed this
epithet in no [other] epistle, though in his corpus of epistles—Ephesians,
Philippians, and Colossians—he testifies that he is in chains for confessing
[Christ] (cf. Eph. 3.1, 6.20; Phil. 1.7, 14; Col. 4.3). It seems to me a matter of
greater pride that he calls himself a “prisoner of Jesus Christ” than an “apostle.”
The apostles of course boasted that they had been worthy of suffering mistreat-
ment for the name of Jesus Christ (cf. Ac. 5.41), but the authority that comes with
chains was necessary. Being about to make a request on Onesimus’ behalf, he was
obliged to make his request as the sort of person who was capable of procuring
what he was asking for. Undoubtedly, he is fortunate who boasts not in wisdom,
(Berlin, 1937); E. Dassmann, Der Stachel im Fleisch: Paulus in der frühchristlichen Literatur bis Irenäus
(Münster, 1979); A. Lindemann, Paulus im ältesten Christentum: Das Bild des Apostels und die
Rezeption der paulinischen Theologie in der frühchristlichen Literatur bis Marcion (Tübingen, 1979);
M. F. Bird and J. R. Dodson (eds.), Paul and the Second Century (London, 2013).
¹¹² Sed iam tempus est ut ipsius apostoli verba ponentes singula quaeque pandamus (Comm. Gal., lib.
1, prol. ll. 101–2).
¹¹³ Historically speaking, Paul’s two comments in Philemon about being “in chains” (vv. 10, 13) are
a reference to his house arrest in Rome while he was in military custody. B. Witherington, The Letters to
Philemon, the Colossians, and the Ephesians: A Socio–Rhetorical Commentary on the Captivity Epistles
(Grand Rapids, 2007), 68–9, notes: “Paul’s confinement was one of the lightest possible, for he seems to
continue to have ongoing dealings with a variety of people, even non-high status people like
Onesimus.” On this and Paul’s other imprisonment experiences, see B. Rapske, The Book of Acts in
Its First-Century Setting, vol. 3: Paul in Roman Custody (Grand Rapids, 1994); R. Cassidy, Paul in
Chains: Roman Imprisonment and the Letters of St. Paul (Crestwood, 2001); M. Skinner, Locating Paul:
Places of Custody as Narrative Settings in Acts 21–28 (Leiden, 2003).
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 19/8/2021, SPi
27
not in riches, not in eloquence and secular power, but in the sufferings of Christ
(cf. 2 Cor. 11.30; Gal. 6.14; Col. 1.24).
Quod autem sequitur: Vinctus Iesu Christi, in nulla epistula hoc cognomine usus
est, licet in corpore epistularum, ad Ephesios videlicet et Philippenses et
Colossenses, esse se in vinculis pro confessione testetur. Maioris autem mihi videtur
supercilii vinctum Iesu Christi se dicere quam apostolum. Gloriabantur quippe
apostoli, quod digni fuerant pro nomine Iesu Christi contumeliam pati, sed
necessaria auctoritas vinculorum. Rogaturus pro Onesimo, talis rogare debuit,
qui posset impetrare quod posceret. Felix nimirum qui non in sapientia, non in
divitiis, non in eloquentia et potentia saeculari, sed in Christi passionibus
gloriatur.¹¹⁴
So, then, Paul’s admission that he was incarcerated at the time of writing to
Philemon is a badge of honor,¹¹⁵ and he invokes what Jerome calls “the authority
that comes with chains” (auctoritas vinculorum) to certify his apostolic authority
so that he can make his request of Philemon seem more compelling.
Later in the commentary (on v. 7), Jerome explains what Paul means when he
commends Philemon for refreshing the “hearts” (viscera) of his fellow Christians,
and he identifies this as a moment when he displays a trait characteristic of an
apostle (idioma apostolicum) in speaking of caritas for others as being associated
with viscera.¹¹⁶ Commenting on vv. 8–9, Jerome says that Paul could easily have
invoked his apostolic authority to command Philemon to receive back his mis-
behaving slave Onesimus without punishing him,¹¹⁷ but he instead appealed to
him on the basis of Christian charity. Yet, even this very act of asking implies
authority on the part of the one doing the asking. Furthermore, in this same
context Paul calls himself an “old man” and “prisoner of Christ Jesus,” and neither
of these self-ascribed epithets is deferentially meek but rather is subtly infused
with weighty apostolic auctoritas.¹¹⁸ Later on, Jerome emphasizes that Paul, in his
position as an apostle, was able to override Philemon’s will in another respect, by
keeping Onesimus by his side for as long as he was in prison instead of returning
him to his master in the meantime.¹¹⁹
We will recall from the overview of Jerome’s preface that v. 22, where Paul asks
Philemon to prepare a place for him to stay after he is released from prison, is the
passage that the epistle’s naysayers adduced to argue that Paul would not have
made such a mundane request if he had been writing under divine inspiration. In
his comments on this verse Jerome responds to these critics by underscoring the
providential underpinnings and big-picture import of Paul’s request:
¹¹⁹ Potuit itaque et apostolus Paulus absque Philemonis voluntate Onesimum sibi in ministerium
retinere (Comm. Phlm. 14).
¹²⁰ Comm. Phlm. 22. ¹²¹ Comm. Phlm. 23–4.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 19/8/2021, SPi
29
message: “By how great strides and by how great advances the apostolic declara-
tion strives towards higher things!”¹²²
In his remarks on other passages Jerome substantiates the assertion he makes in
the preface that Philemon is chock-full of “power and wisdom” and is a treasure
trove of theological mysteries. In vv. 8–13 Paul tells Philemon that he would like to
keep Onesimus as his personal minister while he is incarcerated, yet he respect-
fully acknowledges that Onesimus is Philemon’s slave and would need his per-
mission to keep Onesimus longer, even though he could invoke his apostolic
authority to override Philemon’s wishes. In v. 14 Paul gives his rationale:
“I preferred to do nothing without your consent, in order that your good deed
might be voluntary and not something forced.” In explaining this verse Jerome
maps it onto one of the thorniest theological conundra of them all: if God is good
and created humans in his own image and likeness, then why are they capable of
sinning? He opens his exposition by magnifying the subject matter, noting that the
present passage is able to solve a problem probed all the time by the masses.¹²³ As
a purposeful display of his exegetical prowess, he proceeds to answer the compli-
cated question in short order, pointing out that God has free will and likewise gave
humans freedom of choice, from which arises the opportunity for sin.¹²⁴
Returning then to the immediate context of Paul’s remark, Jerome applies the
findings of this brief excursus to Philemon’s situation with Onesimus and thereby
corroborates his claim that this epistle does in fact conceal consequential theo-
logical matters beneath the surface of its text.
Jerome likewise uses his commentary on vv. 15–16 (“Perhaps this is the reason
he was separated from you for a while, so that you might have him back forever,
no longer as a slave but more than a slave, a beloved brother, especially to me but
how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord”) as a springboard for
discussing a broader theological issue which loomed large in the discourse about
Paul’s writings in the fourth-century Latin West: the problem of evil.¹²⁵ He begins
by noting that an evil sometimes becomes the occasion for good, such as when
God turns the plans of the wicked to his greater good. As a biblical instantiation of
this principle he cites Joseph’s jealous brothers selling him into slavery and Joseph
¹²² Quantis gradibus quantisque profectibus apostolicus in altiora sermo se tendit! (Comm.
Phlm. 4–6).
¹²³ Hoc quod a plerisque quaeritur et saepissime retractatur . . . de praesenti loco solvi potest
(Comm. Phlm. 14).
¹²⁴ Jerome almost certainly patterned this explanation after the one Origen gave in his lost
commentary on Philemon in which he polemicized against Gnostics who blamed the Creator for his
creatures’ evils; see Heine, “In Search of Origen’s Commentary,” 128–31; Bucchi (ed.), Commentarii,
lxvii–lxix. On Origen’s emphasis on the role of human free will in theodical matters, see E. Osborn,
“The Apologist Origen and the Fourth Century: From Theodicy to Christology,” in W. A. Bienert and
U. Kühneweg (eds.), Origeniana Septima: Origenes in den Auseinandersetzungen des 4. Jahrhunderts
(Leuven, 1999), 51–9.
¹²⁵ See Geerlings, “Hiob und Paulus.” See also the various essays in D. G. Hunter and N. V. Harrison
(eds.), Suffering and Evil in Early Christian Thought (Grand Rapids, 2016).
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 19/8/2021, SPi
later telling them, “Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it
for good.”¹²⁶ Jerome then reverts the discussion to Onesimus, who he says had
been a degenerate slave beforehand but gradually experienced a conversion in his
thinking and became a minister of the Gospel after fleeing from his master.
Galatians, one of the few epistles whose Pauline authorship is not seriously
challenged today,¹²⁷ has been at the center of more than one major debate about
Christian belief and practice throughout history.¹²⁸ In the second century it
factored prominently into the clash between the Marcionites and orthodox
Christians.¹²⁹ Marcion himself regarded it—once, that is, it had been purged of
supposed Jewish interpolations—as the quintessential digest of Pauline theology,
and so he placed it as the very first epistle in his Apostolikon.¹³⁰ Almost a
millennium and a half later, a thirty-something Augustinian monk in Germany
found in this short epistle the greatest of all comforts for the beleaguered con-
science, justification by faith alone, and, empowered by his discovery of its
liberating message, he appropriated Galatians as a call to arms in the opening
act of the Protestant Reformation.¹³¹ Later in life, Martin Luther even claimed that
it was as dear to him as his own wife.¹³²
Early Christian biblical commentators, too, thought that Galatians is integral to
the Pauline corpus, as evidenced by the fact that, as Lightfoot observed, “the
patristic commentaries on Galatians, extant either whole or in part, are perhaps
31
more numerous than on any other of St. Paul’s epistles.”¹³³ This observation
certainly applies to the Latin exegetical tradition: Galatians is the only epistle
commented on by all six late antique Latin interpreters of Paul.¹³⁴ What is more,
in Jerome’s case there are several reasons for believing that he made his Galatians
commentary, which he divided into three books, the mainstay of his exegetical
docket on Paul, in fact positioning it first in the sequence of commentaries on the
four epistles so that readers would encounter it, and its prefaces, before the other
three commentaries and their respective prefaces.
First of all, Jerome uses the preface to Book 1 to introduce his opus Paulinum to
the Latin-speaking world, heralding it as “a work not attempted before me by
writers in our language and executed by only a very choice few of the Greeks
themselves in a manner warranted by the grandeur of the subject matter.”¹³⁵ This
bold pronouncement about the novelty of his undertaking is the kind of remark
one normally finds in the prologue to an ancient literary work—or, as the case
may be, in the prologue to the first in a collection of interconnected works like his
Pauline commentaries.¹³⁶ Secondly, in the final chapter of his literary history De
viris illustribus, where he lists the titles of his principal writings down to the year
393,¹³⁷ he places the Galatians commentary first in order of the four Pauline
commentaries,¹³⁸ even though it was the second one he composed (after the one
on Philemon)—an evident sign of his personal prioritization of it among the four.
Finally, in manuscripts that contain all four commentaries, the one on Galatians
almost always precedes the other three, a transmission pattern that presumably
reflects the internal structure that Jerome imposed on his archetype.¹³⁹
But why did Jerome comment on Galatians in the first place? Tantalizing
possibilities abound, some less plausible than others. Let us begin by considering
one promising yet ultimately problematic option. Paul sternly warns Gentile
converts in Galatia not to muddy the waters of salvation by grace by slipping
into legalism through observance of the Mosaic law, which the Judaizers had been
pressuring them to keep.¹⁴⁰ Did Jerome find this message timely enough to merit a
commentary reiterating it for a contemporary audience? This question is well
worth asking because the phenomenon of Christians attending Jewish worship
services and observing Jewish customs was a live issue in pockets of the late
fourth-century East.¹⁴¹ The works of Aphrahat, Ephrem, and especially John
Chrysostom,¹⁴² to take just three examples, contain strong admonitions that
Christians keep themselves separate from Jews, and these copious appeals indicate
an apparently “acute problem” on the ground that needed to be addressed.¹⁴³
By contrast, clear and incontrovertible evidence for Jewish Christianity and/or
Jewish proselytism in late fourth-century Palestine, which Jerome recently had
made his home, is for all intents and purposes non-existent,¹⁴⁴ even though
literary and archeological data make a compelling case for Jews and Christians
living side by side in certain communities.¹⁴⁵ Furthermore, whenever Jerome
¹⁴⁰ M. Murray, Playing a Jewish Game: Gentile Christian Judaizing in the First and Second Centuries
(Waterloo, 2004), 29–41. For a thorough reconstruction (from Paul’s counterarguments and other
evidence) of the nature of the Judaizers’ demands and the reasons for their apparent success among the
Galatian Christians, see J. M. G. Barclay, Obeying the Truth: A Study of Paul’s Ethics in Galatians
(Edinburgh, 1988), 36–74.
¹⁴¹ For attestations of this phenomenon in the first and second centuries , see L. Gaston, “Judaism
of the Uncircumcised in Ignatius and Related Writers,” in S. G. Wilson (ed.), Anti-Judaism in Early
Christianity, vol. 2: Separation and Polemic (Waterloo, 1986), 33–44; M. Edwards, “Ignatius, Judaism
and Judaizing,” Eranos 93 (1995): 69–77; S. G. Wilson, “Gentile Judaizers,” NTS 38 (1992): 605–16.
¹⁴² See C. Shepardson, “Paschal Politics: Deploying the Temple’s Destruction against Fourth-
Century Judaizers,” VChr 62 (2008): 233–60, for a synoptic comparison of all three of these writers.
On Chrysostom’s polemic in particular, see R. L. Wilken, John Chrysostom and the Jews: Rhetoric and
Reality in the Late Fourth Century (Eugene, 2004); D. S. Kalleres, “Imagining Martyrdom during
Theodosian Peace: John Chrysostom and the Problem of Judaizers,” in J. Engberg, E. Holmsgaard,
U. Eriksen, and A. Klostergaard (eds.), Contextualising Early Christian Martyrdom (Frankfurt am
Main, 2011), 257–75; A. Finkelstein, “Taming the Jewish Genie: John Chrysostom and the Jews of
Antioch in the Shadow of Emperor Julian,” in M. Satlow (ed.), Strength to Strength: Essays in Honor of
Shaye J. D. Cohen (Providence, 2018), 555–76. Cf. P. W. Harkins (trans.), St. John Chrysostom,
Discourses against Judaizing Christians (Washington, D.C., 1979).
¹⁴³ P. Luomanen, Recovering Jewish-Christian Sects and Gospels (Leiden, 2012), 30.
¹⁴⁴ J. E. Taylor, Christians and the Holy Places: The Myth of Jewish-Christian Origins (Oxford, 1993),
18–47. On Jewish Christianity more generally, see S. C. Mimouni, Le Judéochristianisme ancien (Paris,
1998).
¹⁴⁵ See, e.g., B. Y. Arubas and R. Talgam, “Jews, Christians and ‘Minim’: Who Really Built and Used
the Synagogue at Capernaum: A Stirring Appraisal,” in G. C. Bottini, L. D. Chrupcala, and J. Patrich
(eds.), Knowledge and Wisdom: Archaeological and Historical Essays in Honour of Leah Di Segni
(Milan, 2014), 237–74; R. Hakola, “Galilean Jews and Christians in Context: Spaces Shared and
Contested in the Eastern Galilee in Late Antiquity,” in J. Day, M. Kahlos, and U. Tervahauta (eds.),
Spaces in Late Antiquity: Cultural, Theological and Archaeological Perspectives (London, 2016), 141–65.
For literary and sub-literary sources for Jewish proselytism throughout the empire during the third
through fifth centuries, see L. H. Feldman, Jew and Gentile in the Ancient World: Attitudes and
Interactions from Alexander to Justinian (Princeton, 1993), 383–415; cf. L. V. Rutgers, The Jews in
Late Ancient Rome: Evidence of Cultural Interaction in the Roman Diaspora (Leiden, 1995).
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
“There, you see Fanny doesn’t believe it;” said Allie West
triumphantly.
“As if any one in her senses could!” Dora added.
After they went away Fan sat glancing out of the window
thoughtfully.
“I allowed them to think what was not quite true,” she said slowly,
“but I did not want the fact to leak out. Some very smart young
woman might write to Kate and alarm her. It had better go on
quietly.”
We missed Daisy ever so much. You would hardly think it among
so many.
Then came a letter from Mr. Duncan, stating that he intended to
follow it in time to keep the festival of baby’s christening. There were
some business matters on which he wished to consult papa, and he
was longing for a sight of the household, from least to greatest. Louis
was much better. Mrs. Whitcomb was well and had utterly refused
her first vacation. What did Fanny expect to do in such a case of
insubordination? He was sorry he had proved so attractive, but it
was more his misfortune than his fault, so she must not visit him too
heavily with her displeasure.
We all had a good laugh over it. I arranged the guest-chamber in
the morning, flowers and all, and in the afternoon went cantering
round the parish, as Fan often expressed it. She had been smitten
with such a passion for sewing, and the Churchills took up so much
of her time that I had to visit for both. I was beginning to feel quite
grave and staid with my eighteen and a half years. The fact of Fan’s
having a real lover affected me in a rather curious fashion. It seemed
as if the romance was to begin with her and go down. It shut me out
as it were; but never having counted myself in, I did not feel much
disappointed. I was to be the house-daughter. Already I could see
that papa had begun to depend more upon me. He brought his
gloves to be mended, and used to ask me now and then to find
various little matters for him. True, mamma was much occupied with
Edith. I liked the growing nearer though, the tender confidence and
trust.
I could see how it would be. One by one the birdlings would fly out
of the home nest. I was an every-day useful body and would be
needed to help the others, make some ready to go and comfort
those who staid. I didn’t suppose the sweet grace and patience that
glorified Miss Oldway’s face would ever come in mine. It was such a
round, funny little face, and would get so sun-burned in summer. No
one could ever call me fair and dainty.
I laughed over it softly to myself, I was in such a merry mood. In
ten years I should be twenty-eight, getting on the “list” a wee bit,
visiting round the same as usual, carrying broths and jellies, listening
to sorrows and complaints, and by that time, perhaps, a little better, a
little nearer the Great ensample so that I could say my say without
faltering.
My basket was emptied at length. I leaned over the fence awhile
and talked with Mrs. Day, who “could not see why,” about something.
Aunt Letty Perkins came along, puffing and wheezing. She had been
confined to the house a good deal since Christmas, with the asthma,
and if it was not irreverent I should say—“Israel had had peace.”
“All well, I suppose?”
“Yes, thank you.”
“I never see such folks. You don’t have a bit of sickness or trouble
like other people!”
“No,” said Mrs. Day, as if she felt personally aggrieved. “I never
saw the match to that baby, and my poor lamb in the church-yard!”
I wanted to reply that it was the care and watchfulness, the love
and tenderness that never tired. We did not suffer real heart-felt
trouble, but there were hard pinches and perplexities, many things
given up that we longed to have, hours of patient industry, self-denial
and all that. Do discontented people ever realize what steady
courage and grace it takes to make many lives look fair and sweet?
“Well, it’s out of its trouble,” pursued Aunt Letty. “You never can tell
what children are coming to. Goin’ to take boarders agen this
summer?”
That last to me. I started and colored at the impertinence. I wanted
to resent it, but I knew that would not help for an example.
“Mr. Duncan is at home and can take care of his brothers;” I
replied quietly.
“Well, they want much addition to the neighborhood. That young
one was a master-hand at mischief. I should have wanted a good
deal of money to pay me.”
“Good-night;” I said rather abruptly, “I must be going.”
“Why don’t you come in? I haven’t seen your ma in an age.
Nobody drops in when I am sick, though if I do say it myself, I’ve
always been neighborly. No one can say I ever went on the other
side like the publican.”
“Indeed they could not,” I thought to myself with a smile.
All this made me later than I expected to be. As I came up the road
I saw Fanny and Mr. Duncan walking slowly to meet me.
Something dreadful flashed into my mind at that moment and
made my face scarlet. I remembered that in my talk with Louis I had
spoken of the probability of Stephen’s marrying Fanny. What if he
had repeated that bit of idle gossip? Stuart would have done so from
pure love of teasing.
“Why, Rose, how you have hurried! You are as red as your reddest
namesake. Do stop and cool off a moment, child!”
That from Fanny did not make me any paler. I felt the contrast very
keenly. She tall and elegant, with her graceful self-possession, and I
such a little budget! I don’t know why I should have cared just at that
moment, but I felt mortified enough to cry.
Mr. Duncan put out his hand. I just touched the tips of his fingers.
“I am glad to see you.” Then he looked me all over with those
strange eyes of his that could be so dark and piercing.
“Isn’t it late?” I asked. “I am sure supper must be ready. Please
excuse me,” and I hurried on.
They turned as well. I rushed up-stairs, bathed my face and gave
my hair a brush. Then I went to the glass a moment to pull it out. No,
I was not a beauty. If Mr. Duncan had not come to-day! He could
spend Sunday without starting as early as Friday afternoon!
When I went down they were all gathered around the table. He
glanced up sharply again, and I was foolish enough to blush.
Not an unnecessary word did I utter. I had a constricted feeling
about my throat and tongue and could not tell what was the matter
with me, I believe I felt cross. I was glad to go to the study afterward
and give papa the messages that had been sent for him.
Nelly called me to see about a skirt she was letting down. Tim and
Lily put themselves to bed now, and I had only to go in and pick up
their clothes. Fanny and Mr. Duncan were singing in the parlor, but I
did not go down until I heard mamma’s voice. They were talking
about Mrs. Whitcomb.
He had found her so admirable. Lady-like and refined, yet not
weak; clear-eyed and resolute, yet without any hardness.
“She is always in bloom, I believe. The winter, and the desert, and
the bare, bristling hill-tops may be a short distance off, but just
around her it is spring.”