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OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 31/8/2021, SPi
OXFORD EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

General Editors
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THE OXFORD EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES series includes scholarly volumes on

the thought and history of the early Christian centuries. Covering a wide range of
Greek, Latin, and Oriental sources, the books are of interest to theologians, ancient
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Titles in the series include:
The Roman Martyrs
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Michael Lapidge (2017)
Philo of Alexandria and the Construction of Jewishness in Early Christian Writings
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St Theodore the Studite’s Defence of the Icons
Theology and Philosophy in Ninth-Century Byzantium
Torstein Theodor Tollefsen (2018)
Gregory of Nyssa’s Doctrinal Works
A Literary Study
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The Donatist Church in an Apocalyptic Age
Jesse A. Hoover (2018)
The Minor Prophets as Christian Scripture in the Commentaries
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Hauna T. Ondrey (2018)
Preaching Christology in the Roman Near East
A Study of Jacob of Serugh
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God and Christ in Irenaeus
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Nemesius of Emesa on Human Nature
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The Acts of Early Church Councils Acts
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Thomas Graumann (2021)
Fallen Angels in the Theology of St Augustine
Gregory D. Wiebe (2021)
Jerome’s Commentaries
on the Pauline Epistles
and the Architecture of
Exegetical Authority
ANDREW CAIN
1
3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
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First Edition published in 2021
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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.
vi 
At the University of Colorado–Boulder, my home institution since 2003,

I thank my colleagues in the Department of Classics for their supportiveness
and good humor over the years. A College of Arts & Sciences College Scholar
Award funded my sabbatical during the 2017–18 academic year. Even though
I spent the lion’s share of this sabbatical drafting most of a commentary on
Athanasius’s Life of Antony, I took advantage of needed lulls in this project to
fine-tune the present book’s arguments and to usher it into its penultimate stage.
The staff at Oxford University Press have been, as always, the model of
efficiency in guiding this book to publication. I am grateful to Karen Raith and
Tom Perridge, commissioning editors at OUP with whom I have had the good
fortune of working on (now) four books, as well as to Bhavani Govindasamy, Katie
Bishop, Kim Richardson, and the other members of the production team for their
impeccable work. Warm thanks are due to Gillian Clark and Andrew Louth,
editors of the Oxford Early Christian Studies series, for accepting this book for
publication.
Above all, I thank my family, and especially Kailani, for making it all
worthwhile.
A. J. C.
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
viii 
7. Between East and West: Latin Sources 195

Classical Literature 195
Tertullian 200
Cyprian 214
Lactantius 219
Conclusion 221
Conclusion 223
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
List of Abbreviations
A&R Atene e Roma

AAntHung Acta Antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae
AB Analecta Bollandiana
AJPh American Journal of Philology
AJTh American Journal of Theology
ALMA Annales Latini Montium Arvernorum
AnnSE Annali di Storia dell’Esegesi
ANRW Aufstieg und Niedergang der r€ omischen Welt
ARG Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte
AugStud Augustinian Studies
BAGB Bulletin de l’Association Guillaume Budé
BASP Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists
BPW Berliner Philologische Wochenschrift
BStudLat Bollettino di Studi Latini
C&M Classica et Mediaevalia
CCSL Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina
CFC(L) Cuadernos de Filología Clásica, Estudios Latinos
ChHist Church History
CJ Classical Journal
CPh Classical Philology
CQ Classical Quarterly
CSEL Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum
CSQ Cistercian Studies Quarterly
CTh Codex Theodosianus
EHR English Historical Review
EThR Études Théologiques et Religieuses
FOTC Fathers of the Church
GCS Die Griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller
GRBS Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies
GTJ Grace Theological Journal
HBAI Hebrew Bible and Ancient Israel
HSCP Harvard Studies in Classical Philology
HThR Harvard Theological Review
JAOS Journal of the American Oriental Society
JbAC Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum
JBL Journal of Biblical Literature
JECS Journal of Early Christian Studies
JEH Journal of Ecclesiastical History
JGRChJ Journal of Greco-Roman Christianity and Judaism
x   
JHS Journal of Hellenic Studies

JLA Journal of Late Antiquity
JMEMS Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies
JML Journal of Medieval Latin
JQR Jewish Quarterly Review
JR Journal of Religion
JRH Journal of Religious History
JRS Journal of Roman Studies
JSNT Journal for the Study of the New Testament
JThS Journal of Theological Studies
MEFRA Mélanges d’Archéologie et d’Histoire de l’École Française de Rome, Antiquité
MH Museum Helveticum
MP Medieval Prosopography
NTS New Testament Studies
OCP Orientalia Christiana Periodica
OLD Oxford Latin Dictionary
OS Östkirchliche Studien
P&P Past & Present
PG Patrologia Graeca
PL Patrologia Latina
PRS Perspectives in Religious Studies
PVS Proceedings of the Virgil Society
RAC Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum
RBén Revue Bénédictine
RCCM Rivista di Cultura Classica e Medioevale
REA Revue des Études Anciennes
REAug Revue des Études Augustiniennes
RecAug Recherches Augustiniennes
RecTh Recherches de Théologie Ancienne et Médiévale
REL Revue des Études Latines
RestQ Restoration Quarterly
RHE Revue d’Histoire Ecclésiastique
RhM Rheinisches Museum für Philologie
RHR Revue de l’Histoire des Religions
RIL Rendiconti/Istituto Lombardo
RMAL Revue du Moyen Âge Latin
RQA Römische Quartalschrift für Christliche Altertumskunde und für
Kirchengeschichte
RSI Rivista Storica Italiana
RSPh Revue des Sciences Philosophiques et Théologiques
RSR Recherches de Science Religieuse
RStR Ricerche di Storia Religiosa
RThPh Revue de Théologie et de Philosophie
SC Sources Chrétiennes
SCent Second Century
   xi
SJTh Scottish Journal of Theology

SCO Studi Classici e Orientali
SO Symbolae Osloenses
SSR Studi Storico-Religiosi
StudAns Studia Anselmiana
StudPatr Studia Patristica
StudTard Studi Tardoantichi
TAPA Transactions of the American Philological Association
ThStKr Theologische Studien und Kritiken
TQ Theologische Quartalschrift
V&P Vivre et Penser
VChr Vigiliae Christianae
VetChr Vetera Christianorum
VoxP Vox Patrum
WJA Würzburger Jahrbücher für die Altertumswissenschaft
WS Wiener Studien
YCS Yale Classical Studies
ZAC Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum
ZKG Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte
ZNTW Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft und die Kunde der Älteren
Kirche
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
¹ C. H. Turner, “Greek Patristic Commentaries on the Pauline Epistles,” in J. Hastings (ed.), A

Dictionary of the Bible, Supplement (Edinburgh, 1898), 484–531; cf. P. Boucaud, “The Corpus
Paulinum: Greek and Latin Exegesis of the Epistles in the First Millennium,” RHR 230 (2013):
299–332. On the early Christian reception of Paul more generally, see M. F. Wiles, The Divine
Apostle: The Interpretation of St. Paul’s Epistles in the Early Church (Cambridge, 1967); F. Cocchini,
Il Paolo di Origene: contributo alla storia della recezione delle epistole paoline nel III secolo (Rome,
1992). On the evolution of the “commentary” genre in early Christianity, see J. Lössl, “Commentaries,”
in P. M. Blowers and P. W. Martens (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Biblical
Interpretation (Oxford, 2019), 171–86.
² F. Gori (ed.), Marii Victorini opera pars II: opera exegetica, CSEL 83/2 (Vienna, 1986). Cf.
G. Raspanti, Mario Vittorino esegeta di S. Paolo (Palermo, 1996); S. A. Cooper, Metaphysics and
Morals in Marius Victorinus’ Commentary on the Letter to the Ephesians (New York, 1995); Cooper,
Marius Victorinus’ Commentary on Galatians: Introduction, Translation, and Notes (Oxford, 2005).
³ For the debate about his identity, see S. Lunn-Rockliffe, Ambrosiaster’s Political Theology (Oxford,
2007), 33–44.
⁴ H. Vogels (ed.), Ambrosiastri qui dicitur commentarius in epistulas Paulinas, CSEL 81 (Vienna,
1966–9); cf. A. Souter, A Study of Ambrosiaster (Cambridge, 1905). Ambrosiaster’s commentaries
currently are being translated into English by Theodore de Bruyn, Stephen Cooper, and David
G. Hunter, and the first to appear is Ambrosiaster’s Commentary on the Pauline Epistles: Romans
(Atlanta, 2017).
⁵ J. Divjak (ed.), Expositio quarumdam propositionum ex epistula ad Romanos, Epistulae ad Galatas
expositio, Epistulae ad Romanos inchoata expositio, CSEL 84 (Vienna, 1971). Cf. P. Fredriksen Landes,
Augustine on Romans: Propositions from the Epistle to the Romans; Unfinished Commentary on the Epistle
to the Romans (Chico, 1982); M. G. Mara, Agostino interprete di Paolo (Milan, 1993); E. Plumer,
Augustine’s Commentary on Galatians: Introduction, Text, Translation, and Notes (Oxford, 2003).
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
2 ’     
preserved in a manuscript of the Hungarian National Museum in Budapest,⁶

commented on the whole series;⁷ he also was the only one in his Latin cohort to
comment on Hebrews.⁸ Last came Pelagius, who between 406 and 409 wrote his
own set of commentaries on all of the epistles except Hebrews.⁹
Around the middle of this timeline, during the summer and early autumn of
386, Jerome composed his own set of commentaries on Philemon, Galatians,
Ephesians, and Titus.¹⁰ These four commentaries occupy a time-honored place
in the history of the Latin-language exegesis of Paul’s writings.¹¹ They are signif-
icant also within the broader context of Jerome’s scholarly production for at least
three reasons. First of all, they were his inaugural literary works in Bethlehem,
where he relocated from Rome in 386 and would live until his death in c.419.
Second, they constitute his first foray into the systematic exegesis of whole biblical
books,¹² which in the coming decades was to become one of his preoccupations,
and so they give us precious insight into his intellectual development at a critical
stage of his early scholarly career. Third, they represent his only experiment with
the sustained exposition of Paul’s epistles;¹³ otherwise he produced only sporadic,
ad hoc treatments of individual Pauline passages in other literary venues.¹⁴
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
 3
Jerome’s four Pauline commentaries have received a modicum of scholarly

scrutiny over the years,¹⁵ but they have not garnered anywhere near the amount of
focused attention that has been showered on other sectors of his oeuvre,¹⁶ such as
his correspondence,¹⁷ hagiographic works,¹⁸ and translations, commentaries, and
other scholarship on the Hebrew Bible.¹⁹ The present monograph, which is the
first book-length treatment of his Pauline commentaries in any language, aims to
begin filling this glaring lacuna in Hieronymian studies. My hope also is that it
contributes more generally to the ever-growing bibliography on the late antique
reception of Paul and his epistles.
In this book I adopt a thematic approach to Jerome’s opus Paulinum, homing in
on what I consider to be its most salient aspects—from the inner workings of his
philological method and appropriation of Greek exegetical material, to his recruit-
ment of Paul as an anachronistic surrogate for his own theological and ascetic
special interests. Additionally, one of the overarching concerns of this study is to
explore and to answer, from multiple vantage points, a question that was abso-
lutely fundamental to Jerome in his late fourth-century context: what are the
mechanisms by which he legitimized himself as a Pauline commentator, not only
on his own terms but also vis-à-vis contemporary western commentators? Put
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).
4 ’     
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
 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
6 ’     
he interprets Paul through an asceticizing lens to center his own ideological

priorities, from his emphasis on sexual purity to his notion of a monastic clergy.
Yet, Jerome’s views on the Christian life were criticized in many quarters for being
too extreme, and even verging on a Manichaean worldview, and in the remainder
of the chapter we track how he used his work on Paul as a platform for vindicating
himself against these insinuations of heresy.
Throughout his literary career, which spanned some four decades, Jerome
consistently projected to readers the image of a mighty champion of theological
orthodoxy. Rhetorically speaking, he curated this idealized image in part by
defining himself in stark opposition to “heretics,” whom he relentlessly cast as
the damnable “other.” He adopts this same literary persona to the hilt in the four
Pauline commentaries. In Chapter 5 we first review his anti-heretical strategies in
them before moving on to case studies in his three main heresiological preoccupa-
tions as an interpreter of Paul: Marcionite theology, anti-Nicene Christologies,
and the Gnostic doctrine of fixed natures.
In the final two chapters we turn our attention to another crucial aspect of the
commentaries’ makeup: the literary sources and intertexts that underlie them and
inform their content. Chapter 6 intensively evaluates Jerome’s use of Greek
exegetical sources—and especially Origen’s Pauline commentaries, which he
claimed to take as the principal model for his own work—to ascertain the actual
extent of his indebtedness to them. After examining each of his four commen-
taries in turn, we explore the nuances and broader implications of how Jerome
engages, and represents his engagement, with the Greek exegetical tradition.
Chapter 7 continues in the same vein but interrogates his Latin sources, an
important but often neglected component of his commentaries’ literary pedigree.
We begin by taking stock of how he handles classical literary references and find
that he draws from an eclectic spread of texts. In the remaining bulk of the chapter
I adduce and discuss his numerous unattributed borrowings—virtually all of
which have gone undetected by modern scholars—from the writings of
Tertullian, Cyprian, and Lactantius. As a result of these source-critical investiga-
tions, Jerome’s four Pauline commentaries emerge as an even more colorful
literary patchwork than they traditionally have been given credit for being.
The three critical editions of Jerome’s four Pauline commentaries that form the
basis of this book are listed in note 10 of this Introduction. All biblical quotations
given in English generally follow the New Revised Standard Version. Unless
otherwise noted, all translations of Jerome’s works and of other literary sources
in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew are mine.
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?
The Commentaries: Circumstances of Composition
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
¹ See above, pp. 1–2.

² B. Lohse, “Beobachtungen zum Paulus-Kommentar des Marius Victorinus und zur
Wiederdeckung des Paulus in der lateinischen Theologie des vierten Jahrhunderts,” in A. M. Ritter
(ed.), Kerygma und Logos (Göttingen, 1979), 351–66 (351–3); K. Froehlich, “Which Paul? Observations
on the Image of the Apostle in the History of Biblical Exegesis,” in B. Nassif (ed.), New Perspectives on
Historical Theology (Grand Rapids, 1996), 279–99 (285); J. Lössl, “Augustine, ‘Pelagianism,’ Julian of
Aeclanum, and Modern Scholarship,” ZAC 10 (2007): 129–50 (129–33); P. Boucaud, “The Corpus
Paulinum: Greek and Latin Exegesis of the Epistles in the First Millennium,” RHR 230 (2013): 299–332.
During this period Paul’s writings were being extensively commented on and preached on also in the
Greek church, and one need only think of John Chrysostom’s massive body of work; see M. Mitchell,
The Heavenly Trumpet: John Chrysostom and the Art of Pauline Interpretation (Louisville, 2002).
³ Some contributing factors have been proposed by M. G. Mara, “Ricerche storico-esegetiche sulla
presenza del corpus paolino nella storia del cristianesimo dal II al V secolo,” in M. G. Mara, Paolo di
Tarso e il suo epistolario (Aquila, 1983), 6–64. Cf. W. Geerlings, “Hiob und Paulus: Theodize und
Paulinismus in der lateinischen Theologie am Ausgang des vierten Jahrhunderts,” JbAC 24 (1981):
309–27.
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
8  ’      
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
    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.
10  ’      
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
¹⁵ Jerome, Ep. 108.10.2–3, 7 (Cain, Jerome’s Epitaph on Paula, 55, 57).

¹⁶ Jerome, Ep. 108.20.1. Their monastic complex conformed to the contemporary eastern pattern of
what might be termed the “double monastery” (duplex monasterium/διπλοῦν μοναστήριον), a male and
a female monastic community that had separate sleeping and living quarters and yet were located
within close proximity to each other and were interdependent financially. See D. F. Stramara, “Double
Monasticism in the Greek East, Fourth through Eighth Centuries,” JECS 6 (1998): 269–312;
E. Wipszycka, Moines et communautés monastiques en Égypte (IVe–VIIIe siècles) (Warsaw, 2009),
568–88; cf. M. Serrato Garrido, Ascetismo femenino en Roma (Cádiz, 1993), 109–20.
¹⁷ Jerome often delivered homilies there. See A. Cain, “Jerome,” in A. Dupont, S. Boodts,
G. Partoens, and J. Leemans (eds.), Latin Preaching in the Patristic Era: Sermons, Preachers, and
Audiences in the Latin West (Leiden, 2018), 274–93.
¹⁸ E.g., in a letter of 403 to Paula’s daughter-in-law Laeta, Jerome boasted that he daily welcomed
crowds of monks from India, Persia, and Ethiopia (Ep. 107.2.3).
¹⁹ P. Nautin, “La date des commentaires de Jérôme sur les Épîtres,” RHE 74 (1979): 5–12, surmises
that he did not begin work on them until May or June.
²⁰ . . . qui in monasterii solitudine constitutus et illud praesepe contra videns in quo vagientem
parvulum festini adoravere pastores, id facere non possum quod mulier nobilis inter strepentem familiam
et procurationem domus explet operis subsecivis (Comm. Eph., lib. 2, prol. ll. 6–11).
²¹ See below, pp. 59–61.
²² A. Wikenhauser, “Der heilige Hieronymus und die Kurzschrift,” TQ 29 (1910): 50–87; P. E. Arns,
La technique du livre d’après saint Jérôme (Paris, 1953), 37–50; H. Hagendahl, “Die Bedeutung der
    11
commentary he gives us the kind of over-the-shoulder glimpse into his scholarly

workshop that later inspired a rich tradition of Renaissance iconography:²³
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.
12  ’      
prematurely through excessive study and asceticism.²⁸ The arresting anecdote he

tells about his feisty amanuensis likewise communicates one of his favorite literary
conceits, the supposed ability to dictate lengthy and information-packed works on
the spur of the moment and without forethought.²⁹ The secretary’s reaction,
which is captured in vivid detail, underscores this point, for he becomes fidgety
and impatient precisely because he is accustomed to Jerome’s spontaneous, rapid-
fire dictation.³⁰
In addition to a secretarial staff, Jerome had at his disposal an extensive library
of secular, Jewish, and Christian writings he had acquired through the years.³¹
Earlier in 386, prior to undertaking his opus Paulinum, he presumably had
obtained personal copies of Origen’s voluminous commentaries on the Pauline
epistles (at the very least, the ones on Galatians, Ephesians, Titus, and Philemon),
on which he heavily depended for his own interpretive work.³² He may well have
had in hand other Greek commentaries on Paul as well, such as those by Didymus
and Apollinaris.³³ All of these texts would have been available to him for copy
(and consultation) at the famed ecclesiastical library at Caesarea Maritima, which
was about fifty miles from Bethlehem.³⁴
Another of Origen’s major scholarly productions was the Hexapla,³⁵ which
presented the Old Testament text in six parallel columns starting on the far left
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.
    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:
You wanted me to dictate [commentaries] on Paul’s epistles in inverted and flip-

flopped order. For when you repeatedly asked me to do this, Paula and
Eustochium, and I resolutely refused to do so, you compelled me to comment
at least on the short epistle and the one that you regarded as last in its number of
verses as well as in its meaning and order.
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
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).
14  ’      
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
⁴³ Comm. Phlm. 1–3.

⁴⁴ Jerome reproduces the same arresting phrase in Prol. in Sal. de Graec. emend.: Necnon etiam illa,
quae inperiti translatores male in linguam nostram de Graeco sermone verterant, oblitterans et anti-
quans curiosissima veritate correxi, et, ubi praepostero ordine atque perverso sententiarum fuerat lumen
ereptum, suis locis restituens feci intellegi quod latebat (R. Weber (ed.), Biblia Sacra iuxta Vulgatam
Versionem (Stuttgart, 1983), 6).
⁴⁵ Similarly, in Comm. Am., lib. 3, prol. ll. 35–9 Jerome explains that he has commented on the
Minor Prophets out of their canonical order: Praepostero ordine atque confuso duodecim prophetarum
opus et coepimus, et Christo adiuvante, complemus. Non enim a primo usque ad novissimum, iuxta
ordinem quo leguntur, sed ut potuimus, et ut rogati sumus, ita eos disseruimus.
⁴⁶ B. M. Metzger, The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin, Development, and Significance
(Oxford, 1987), 312–14; L. M. McDonald, The Formation of the Biblical Canon, vol. 2: The New
Testament: Its Authority and Canonicity (London, 2017), 226; E. L. Gallagher and J. D. Meade, The
Biblical Canon Lists from Early Christianity: Texts and Analysis (Oxford, 2017). In some manuscripts,
however, Hebrews appears last, after Philemon, because its status as an authentic Pauline letter was
seen by some in the early church as being ambiguous. On the earliest canonical collections of Paul’s
epistles, see further D. Trobisch, Paul’s Letter Collection: Tracing the Origins (Minneapolis, 1994), 1–27;
J. Schröter, “Sammlungen der Paulusbriefe und die Entstehung des neutestamentlichen Kanons,” in
J. Schröter, S. Butticaz, and A. Dettwiler (eds.), Receptions of Paul in Early Christianity: The Person of
Paul and His Writings through the Eyes of His Early Interpreters (Berlin, 2018), 799–822.
⁴⁷ Pauci admodum dies sunt quod epistulam Pauli ad Philemonem interpretatus ad Galatas trans-
cenderam multis retrorsum in medio praetermissis (Comm. Gal., lib. 1, prol. ll. 1–3).
⁴⁸ Additional evidence that the Philemon commentary came before the Ephesians one is Jerome’s
cross-referencing of it in Comm. Eph. 3.1–4: Vinctum autem Iesu Christi Paulum esse pro gentibus,
potest et de martyrio intellegi quod, Romae in vincla coniectus, hanc epistulam miserit eo tempore quo ad
Philemonem et ad Colossenses et ad Philippenses in alio loco scriptas esse monstravimus. The allusion
    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.”
16  ’      
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).
    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.
18  ’      
formal commentaries and exegetical homilies—on most of the Pauline epistles as

well.⁶⁸ Did Jerome intend to follow suit and comment on more epistles than just
these four and perhaps even the rest of the Pauline corpus? The simple answer is
that we do not know. Nevertheless, certain circumstantial considerations seem to
tip the scales in favor of him intending to confine his labors to only four epistles.
For one thing, he does not drop the slightest hint in his Pauline commentaries or
their prefaces, nor in any other extant writing, about continuing his work on Paul.
This silence is potentially telling for the simple reason that he was in the habit of
announcing major and even minor works in progress as well as future projects, to
keep his readers apprised of his ever-growing literary output.⁶⁹
Another consideration has to do with timing. By the time Jerome was working
on the last of his four commentaries (Titus), the close of that year’s sailing season
rapidly was approaching. Between early November and April, the Mediterranean
Sea was mare clausum, meaning that far-offshore travel which was not absolutely
necessary typically was suspended due to volatile seasonal weather conditions.⁷⁰
One can imagine how Jerome, facing this looming deadline, was keen to dispatch
his work to Rome.⁷¹ His sense of urgency would only have been heightened by an
eagerness to reconnect, sooner rather than later, with his Roman literary circle via
Marcella. Several months earlier he had reached out to her, evidently in vain, in a
letter of invitation to Bethlehem,⁷² and now he would try again to cultivate her as a
patron by offering his new body of exegetical work on Paul ostensibly as a way to
console her for the recent death of her mother, Albina.⁷³ Moreover, if he had
planned to write more Pauline commentaries, he would have had the safety net of
the next several months to complete them and then to send them to Rome once
the sailing season reopened in the spring. Nothing at all materialized, however. It
is not that he was distracted in the interim by other scholarly projects, either:
almost a full year would pass before his next literary production, a translation of
Didymus’s treatise On the Holy Spirit he had begun in Rome, would come to
⁶⁸ Commentaries on Romans, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 & 2 Thessalonians,

Titus, Philemon, and Hebrews(?). Homilies on 1 & 2 Corinthians, Galatians, 1 & 2 Thessalonians, and
Titus.
⁶⁹ E.g., Comm. Ion., prol. ll. 1–8; Comm. Hiez., lib. 1, prol. ll. 30–1; lib. 11, prol. ll. 4–5; lib. 14, prol. ll.
21–6; Comm. Mt., prol. ll. 104–10, 121–5; Comm. Gal. 2.11–13; V. Mal. 1.3; Ep. 65.22.4.
⁷⁰ E. de Saint-Denis, “Mare clausum,” REL 25 (1947): 196–209; J. Rougé, “La navigation hivernale
sous l’empire romain,” REA 54 (1952): 316–25; Rougé, Recherches sur l’organisation du commerce
maritime en Méditerranée sous l’empire romain (Paris, 1966), 32–5; L. Casson, Ships and Seamanship in
the Ancient World (Baltimore, 1995), 270–3.
⁷¹ As a comparandum from later in Jerome’s life, as Easter of 398 approached and the sailing season
was about to reopen, Eusebius of Cremona pressured him to dictate a commentary on Matthew in a
tight two-week time frame. Despite the fact that he was still recovering from a prolonged illness, Jerome
was able to complete the commentary in a hurry, but only because his team of stenographers worked
overtime (Comm. Mt., prol. ll. 98–103).
⁷² Ep. 46. See P. Nautin, “La lettre de Paule et Eustochium à Marcelle (Jérôme, Ep. 46),”
Augustinianum 24 (1984): 441–8. This letter was drafted by Jerome but sent in the names of Paula
and Eustochium; see N. Adkin, “The Letter of Paula and Eustochium to Marcella: Some Notes,” Maia
51 (1999): 97–110.
⁷³ See below, pp. 57–8.
    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: Canonicity, Apostolicity, and Utility
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.”
20  ’      
named members of the Christian congregation (ἐκκλησία) associated with his

house (οἴκος), and that it therefore deals with concerns within a specific commu-
nal religious situation.⁷⁹
In the early church, too, Philemon sparked vigorous debate, though of a
markedly different kind. It was excluded from the canon by some—on the broad-
est known scale, by the Syriac church in the third and fourth centuries.⁸⁰ By the
mid- to late fourth century, however, it generally was accepted by the vast majority
of mainstream churches as a canonical document.⁸¹ Even still, many Christians
regarded it as an inferior New Testament writing, especially when compared to
Paul’s other epistles. Some, for instance, bemoaned that it is too light on theology,⁸²
a criticism echoed by not a few modern biblical scholars.⁸³ The general complaint
was that because its subject matter is trivial, it lacks any real instructional value for
the Christian reader.⁸⁴ This prevalent attitude could well explain why there is no
evidence for it at the earliest developmental stages of the New Testament canon. As
Wilson puts it: “Nobody had any occasion to mention it. There is no doctrinal
content which might have led to its being quoted, no contribution to the evolution
of Paul’s theology, or of Christian theology in general.”⁸⁵
The debate about Philemon’s relevance intensified in the late fourth century; or,
at least, this is the period for which we are best informed about the status
quaestionis.⁸⁶ We gain glimpses of its problematic reception through the pleadings
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).
    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
22  ’      
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
    23
Jerome opens the preface by summarizing his unnamed opponents’ position.⁹⁸

He mentions in passing that some reject out of hand Philemon’s Pauline author-
ship,⁹⁹ but he focuses his attention on the skeptics who do accept its Paulinity but
do not believe that it was written under divine inspiration. Their argument,
according to Jerome’s selective framing of it,¹⁰⁰ hinges on Paul’s request for
Philemon to prepare lodging for him (Phlm. 22), which they claim evinces a
concern with everyday practicalities that someone writing in the power of the
Holy Spirit would not express. Alongside this passage they cite two other New
Testament proof texts in which Paul displays his humanity (2 Tim. 4.13: asking
Timothy for a cloak; Gal. 5.12: cursing theological enemies),¹⁰¹ and they also point
out that the Old Testament prophets (Ezekiel is singled out), like the apostles, did
not always speak under the direct influence of the Spirit but each of them, as soon
as he uttered divinely inspired prophecies, went back to being himself—a regular
person (rursum in semet revertens, homo communis).¹⁰² Moreover, in support of
their argument that Philemon’s author adopts a tone that is beneath the dignified
apostolic one that Paul maintains in other epistles, they point out that twice in
Philemon, in the greeting (v. 1) and in its body (v. 9), Paul self-identifies not as an
“apostle” but as “a prisoner of Christ Jesus.”
In the second half of the preface Jerome develops his counterargument. He first
defends Philemon’s canonicity by citing its catholicity: it has been accepted by all
churches throughout the world.¹⁰³ He also says that if the critics reject Philemon
on the basis of Paul’s request for lodging, then they should at least be consistent
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).
24  ’      
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
Jerome advances an implicit twofold claim here. First, because it is a divinely

inspired writing, Philemon is as worthy of exegetical analysis as other shorter
biblical books (i.e., the Minor Prophets) whose canon-worthiness is unquestioned
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.
    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
¹⁰⁷ Cf. below, pp. 62–3.

¹⁰⁸ On this exordial trope, see E. R. Curtius, Europaïsche Literatur und lateinisches Mittelalter (Bern,
1948), 240–1; T. Janson, Latin Prose Prefaces: Studies in Literary Conventions (Stockholm, 1964),
144–5; P. Klopsch, Einführung in die Dichtungslehren des lateinischen Mittelalters (Darmstadt, 1980),
21–30; cf. Juvencus, Evang. lib. IV, praef. 25–7; Ambrose, Off. 1.25; Paulinus of Nola, Carm. 23.20–1;
John Cassian, Coll. 10.1; Possidius, V. Aug., praef. 2; Sidonius, Carm. 16.5–6; Theodoret, Hist. rel. 1.1.
Jerome deploys this Spirit-as-Muse trope in other prefaces as well. See, e.g., the opening of the prologue
to his Vita Hilarionis: Scripturus vitam beati Hilarionis habitatorem eius invoco Spiritum Sanctum, ut
qui illi virtutes largitus est, mihi ad narrandas eas sermonem tribuat, ut facta dictis exaequentur. In Adv.
Helv. 2 he calls upon the entire Trinity: Sanctus mihi invocandus est Spiritus, ut beatae Mariae
virginitatem suo sensu, ore meo defendat. Invocandus est Dominus Iesus, ut sacri ventris hospitium,
cuius decem mensibus inhabitator fuit, ab omni concubitus suspicione tueatur. Ipse quoque Deus Pater
est imprecandus, ut matrem Filii sui, virginem ostendat fuisse post partum, quae fuit mater antequam
nupta. Cf. Comm. Am., lib. 2, prol. ll. 34–8: Jerome invokes Solomon’s Lady Wisdom as his Muse. See
also Comm. Es., lib. 7, prol. l. 4: his interpretive work relies on the prayers of Eustochium and the help
of Christ himself.
¹⁰⁹ Other patristic commentators likewise emphasize Paul’s apostolic persona in Philemon.
Theodoret of Cyrrhus finds in his willingness to write on behalf of Onesimus a strong affirmation of
his apostolicity: “Did this man, who was not without compassion for a runaway, a worthless slave and
petty thief, and instead accorded him salvation through the spiritual teaching—did he ever bypass
anybody?” (Ὁ δὲ οἰκέτου δραπέτου, καὶ μαστιγίου, καὶ λωποδύτου μὴ ἀμελήσας, ἀλλὰ διὰ τῆς
πνευματικῆς αὐτὸν διδασκαλίας ἀξιώσας τῆς σωτηρίας, τίνος ἂν ἠμέλησε πώποτε; (Comm. Phlm.,
prol. [PG 82:872]). For Origen’s general emphasis on Paul’s authority as an apostle, see Cocchini, Il
Paolo, 56–9.
¹¹⁰ Sed iam ipsa apostoli verba ponenda sunt, quae ita incipiunt (Comm. Phlm., prol. ll. 77–8).
¹¹¹ Wiles, The Divine Apostle, 14–25; C. Roetzel, Paul: The Man and the Myth (Columbia, 1998),
152–77; B. White, Remembering Paul: Ancient and Modern Contests over the Image of the Apostle
(Oxford, 2014), 7–10; cf. W. S. Babcock (ed.), Paul and the Legacies of Paul (Dallas, 1990);
D. L. Eastman, Paul the Martyr: The Cult of the Apostle Paul in the Latin West (Atlanta, 2011);
J. L. Kovacs, “Paul the Apostle,” in P. M. Blowers and P. W. Martens (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of
Early Christian Biblical Interpretation (Oxford, 2019), 614–25. On Paul’s reception in second-century
Christian literature in particular, see E. Aleith, Paulusverständnis im ersten und zweiten Jahrhundert
26  ’      
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).
    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
¹¹⁴ Comm. Phlm. 1–3.

¹¹⁵ For a similar explanation of Paul’s reference to himself as a “prisoner” of Christ, see Jerome,
Comm. Eph. 3.1–4.
¹¹⁶ Dignum siquidem erat agere gratias Deo super caritate Philemonis, qui internum cordis affectum
et profundos animi sanctorum recessus suscipiendo refecerat. Et hoc idioma apostolicum est; ut semper
viscera vocet, uolens plenam mentis ostendere caritatem (Comm. Phlm. 7).
¹¹⁷ For the implausible theory that Onesimus was not a runaway slave but a wandering person
seeking Paul’s intervention in some kind of squabble with Philemon, see S. Winter, “Paul’s Letter to
Philemon,” NTS 33 (1987): 1–15.
¹¹⁸ Multis in Philemone laudibus ante praemissis, cum res talis sit, pro qua rogaturus est, quae et
praestanti sit utilis et roganti, poterat Paulus magis imperare quam petere. Et hoc ex fiducia illa veniebat
quod, qui tanta ob Christum opera perpetrarat, utique impar sui in ceteris esse non poterat. Sed vult
magis petere quam iubere, grandi petentis auctoritate proposita, per quam et apostolus obsecrat, et senex,
et vinctus Iesu Christi (Comm. Phlm. 8–9). As Jerome emphasizes in his commentary on Ephesians, the
same can be said for Paul’s claim to be the least of all Christians (Comm. Eph. 3.8–9).
28  ’      
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:
If anyone thinks that Philemon was commanded not in a diplomatic but in a

frank way to prepare lodging for him: the lodging is to be prepared for the apostle
rather than for Paul. Being about to arrive in a new city, preach the Crucified, and
reveal unheard-of teachings, Paul knew that a great many people would flock to
him. There needed first of all to be a house in a well-known part of the city where
people could conveniently congregate. Secondly, the house needed to have no
trace of inappropriate behavior, be spacious enough to accommodate a large
audience, and not be next to venues of public entertainment, lest it be loathsome
on account of its disreputable locale.
Si autem hoc non dispensatorie, sed vere quis aestimat imperatum, ut sibi hospi-
tium praepararet, apostolo magis quam Paulo hospitium praeparandum est.
Venturus ad novam civitatem, praedicaturus crucifixum et inaudita dogmata
delaturus, sciebat ad se plurimos concursuros; et necesse erat primum, ut domus
in celebri esset urbis loco ad quam facile conveniretur; deinde, ut ab omni
importunitate vacua, aut ampla, quae plurimos caperet audientium, ne proxima
spectaculorum locis, ne turpi vicinia detestabilis.¹²⁰
As we saw earlier, Jerome closes the preface to his Philemon commentary by

declaring that the epistle has enormous instructional value for Christian readers,
contrary to the surface impression given by its brevity and content, and despite his
concession that it is indeed a private letter written to one person (epistula privata
ad unum hominem).¹²¹ In his comments on certain passages he illustrates these
edifying lessons that materialize through his expert handling of the text. For
instance, in his exposition of v. 6 (“I pray that the sharing of your faith may
become effective when you perceive all the good that we may do for Christ”),
Jerome inculcates how this passage teaches that faith must be demonstrated by
good works and thus gives a much-needed reminder for his own time, when many
perform good deeds but lack faith as well as knowledge of the very good they are
doing. He concludes with an exclamatory affirmation of the epistle’s overall
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.
    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).
30  ’      
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: Law and Gospel and Hebrew Philology
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
¹²⁶ Gen. 50.20.

¹²⁷ D. A. DeSilva, The Letter to the Galatians (Grand Rapids, 2018), 1–2. For an overview of a few
(dated) attempts to disprove Paul’s authorship on stylistic grounds, see E. de Witt Burton, Syntax of the
Moods and Tenses of New Testament Greek (Chicago, 1898), lxix–lxxi.
¹²⁸ See M. Meiser, Galater (Göttingen, 2007); J. Riches, Galatians through the Centuries (Malden,
2013).
¹²⁹ See below, pp. 142–9.
¹³⁰ R. J. Hoffmann, Marcion: On the Restitution of Christianity: An Essay on the Development of
Radical Paulinist Theology in the Second Century (Chico, 1984), 75.
¹³¹ On Martin Luther’s exegesis of Galatians, see, e.g., K. Bornkamm, Luthers Auslegungen des
Galaterbriefs vom 1519 und 1531: Ein Vergleich (Berlin, 1963); K. Hagen, Luther’s Approach to Scripture
as Seen in His Commentaries on Galatians, 1519–1538 (Tübingen, 1993); V. Stolle, Luther und Paulus:
Die exegetischen und hermeneutischen Grundlagen der lutherischen Rechtfertigungslehre im
Paulinismus Luthers (Leipzig, 2002); J. Mikkonen, Luther and Calvin on Paul’s Epistle to the
Galatians: Analysis and Comparison of Substantial Concepts in Luther’s 1531/35 and Calvin’s 1546/48
Commentaries on Galatians (Åbo, 2007); cf. R. Kolb, “The Influence of Luther’s Galatians Commentary
of 1535 on Later Sixteenth-Century Lutheran Commentaries on Galatians,” ARG 84 (1993): 156–84.
See more generally J. Pelikan, Luther the Expositor: Introduction to the Reformer’s Exegetical Writings
(St. Louis, 1959), and M. L. Mattox, “Martin Luther’s Reception of Paul,” in R. W. Holder (ed.), A
Companion to Paul in the Reformation (Leiden, 2009), 93–128.
¹³² “The Epistle to the Galatians is my dear epistle. I have put my confidence in it. It is my Katy von
Bora”; T. G. Tappert (ed.), Luther’s Works, vol. 54: Table Talk (Philadelphia, 1967), 20.
    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
¹³³ Epistle, 217.

¹³⁴ See K. Pollman and M. Elliott, “Galatians in the Early Church: Five Case Studies,” in M. Elliott,
S. Hafemann, N. T. Wright, and J. Frederick (eds.), Galatians and Christian Theology: Justification, the
Gospel, and Ethics in Paul’s Letter (Grand Rapids, 2014), 40–61.
¹³⁵ Adgrediar opus intemptatum ante me linguae nostrae scriptoribus et a Graecis quoque ipsis vix
paucis, ut rei poscebat dignitas, usurpatum (Comm. Gal., lib. 1, prol. ll. 23–5).
¹³⁶ This is not the only time Jerome implants in a preface a self-congratulatory note on the novelty of
a particular scholarly venture. For example, he describes exegesis of the Minor Prophets as an activity
“completely neglected by the Latins” (certe intermissum a Latinis) and speaks of his own commentaries
on them as an opus quod nullus ante nos latinorum temptare ausus est (Comm. Os., lib. 2, prol. ll.
175–6). He likewise characterizes his Hebrew Questions on Genesis as “a new work hitherto unheard of
among both Greeks and Latins” (opus novum et tam Graecis quam Latinis usque ad id locorum
inauditum) (Lib. int. Heb. nom., prol. ll. 17–18).
¹³⁷ See P. Nautin, “La liste des oeuvres de Jérôme dans le De viris inlustribus,” Orpheus n.s. 5 (1984):
319–34.
¹³⁸ . . . in epistulam Pauli ad Galatas commentariorum libros tres, item in epistulam ad Ephesios
commentariorum libros tres, in epistulam ad Titum librum unum, in epistulam ad Philemonem librum
unum . . . (Vir. ill. 135.3).
¹³⁹ For overviews of the manuscript tradition of the individual commentaries, see 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), cxxxix–cliii; F. Bucchi, “Sulla tradi-
zione manoscritta del Commento alla Lettera a Tito di Girolamo,” Eikasmos 12 (2001): 301–21;
G. Raspanti (ed.), S. Hieronymi Presbyteri Opera. Pars I. Opera exegetica 6. Commentarii in
Epistulam Pauli Apostoli ad Galatas, CCSL 77A (Turnhout, 2006), xiv–clvii.
32  ’      
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).
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“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.”
“There everlasting spring abides,

And never withering flowers;”—
Fan murmured softly.

“That is just it. She has had some troubles, also.”
“Indeed she has,” returned mamma, “Losses, deaths and trials.
But now she has gone out of her own life. Her perceptions are so
quick, tender and unerring. She seems to discern from afar off the
needs and wants of human souls and ministers gently to your own
thought, not hers.”
“What is it, Mrs. Endicott?”
Mamma answered with a smile and said it all. She often talked
with the expressions of her face in that sweet instantaneous manner,
explaining a subject better than many words would have done.
“I begin to believe that religion has something in it. There is a point
beyond natural amiability.”
“Have you been doubting?”
He blushed and laughed in an embarrassed, school-boy fashion.
“I don’t know that I have exactly doubted, but I have not believed
in any vital way. Still I considered myself a Christian gentleman until
very recently.”
“And what then?”
“I found myself a proud and honorable gentleman instead, who
abhorred meanness, falsehood, dishonesty and the whole catalogue
of those sins because they were blots and stains, hideous in my
sight. I had no patience with them in that they never tempted me. I
liked my life to be pure and just, but it was for myself alone. I did not
think of what God might require; the higher aim. After all, it is His
relation with every human soul, His holding out the faith and love and
atonement to us, made for us so long ago in His great wisdom, and
which is for us whether we take it or not. But we want to try our
wisdom first.”
“That leads to the trouble and the clashing. We so often set up our
own will and when we are buffeted about take it as a sort of direct
martyrdom, when it is only a natural result of an ordinary cause. We
sometimes cry out—‘Why has God sent this upon me?’ when we
bring the trials upon ourselves.”
“Yes. Then we have to go back. We find the plans and
specifications and the materials all right, left on the highway, while
we used stones and timber of our own, changed the plan according
to our liking. We have to take out a good deal of work in this life.”
“And we learn by degrees to be careful, to come to Him, to ask
first of all—‘Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?’”
“And learning to follow it, is the great lesson.”
He turned his head a trifle and lapsed into deep thought. Fan
glanced over at me in a peculiar manner as if she triumphed in what
he said, and it was only proving a well established point. She
puzzled me. Why, when she liked him so well herself, was there not
the deeper and farther-reaching sympathy of love? He was really
nobler than Winthrop Ogden.
We did not have any confidence until late Saturday afternoon. Fan
was writing a letter in her room and mamma had gone to visit some
sick people. I had Edith fenced off in a corner of the porch and was
amusing her while I sewed a little.
He came and studied me curiously. That was what I did not like. If
I had been as pretty as Fan, or if my hair were any other color!
“You have not asked me a word about your friend. Have you lost
interest in him now that he is delivered over to my keeping?”
I understood whom he meant.
“Why, we have all talked—I have heard—” and I paused in
surprise, for a tiny frown came in his brow.
“But the work was so much yours.”
“You exaggerate it, Mr. Duncan.”
I might have spoken coldly. Somehow I could not let myself be
praised in his words, and with his eyes upon me.
“Are you so used to good deeds that you consider this nothing?”
I flushed and felt a lump rising in my throat.
“I would have done it for any one.”
“I believe you, Miss Endicott. Louis is not so admirable that he
should be singled out.”
“He is—you don’t do him justice;” I said almost ready to cry.
“I did not I will admit, but I am trying to now. Will you not accept my
penitence and my sincere desire to be tender as well as just?”
“I know you mean to do the very best. I think you will.”
“Thank you. I am afraid you consider us all rather heathenish. I
have only recently come to understand the full duty that I owe my
brothers. I had left them in my uncle’s hands, quite satisfied, and
believing that boys came up, somehow. I had no great trouble.”
“Because you were stronger. And Louis’ health and temperament
are so different.”
“I have learned that I could not make him come to me, so I have
gone to him.”
“He did come—”
“Yes; that was not the point I referred to, however. It is in the
matter of confidence. He is so very reserved, so sensitive, so touchy,
to use a common phrase. At a word he draws into his shell and
keeps silence.”
“I found that out last summer,” I said with a smile.
“How did you manage?”
“I don’t know,” I answered looking over at the distant hills. “It just
came, I think. When he wouldn’t talk on any subject I let it drop.”
“Ah, wise little one, there may be a secret, in that. I fancy that I
have a failing in my desire to convince people. I want them to see
the right.”
“It is easier seen than confessed, sometimes.”
“True. And Louis has a giant of pride. If he is hurt he will not stop
to explain. If you misunderstand, he will not set you right. You have
to grope your way along in perplexity. Yet I think we are coming a
little nearer to each other, through you.”
“And Mrs. Whitcomb. She has a way of uniting people, of healing
differences.”
“I am doubly fortunate in having her. Otherwise I must have
borrowed—your mother.”
I smiled a little at this. It made me think of the Churchills borrowing
Fan. Isn’t it so the world over? The sweetness and brightness of
other lives comes into ours, sometimes the darkness and sorrow. We
rarely stand alone.
“I believe I like frank, open natures the best;” he went on. “And
cheerfulness. A great outgiving like the world and the sunshine.”
“But when one has been in a cave a long while the light dazzles.
Some people do not want to take in but a little at a time, and perhaps
we hurt them by thrusting so much into their very souls.”
“Yes,” he answered, “When a man is starving you do not feast him
at once. I must remember that.”
Edith began to worry. I took her up in my arms and hushed her
softly.
Mr. Duncan was not looking at me, but a strange, tender light
came into his face, a half smile that brought the dawn to my mind by
way of comparison. He seemed to pay no attention to me for many
minutes, but just to be occupied with his own reflections. I rose to
take Edith in, as she evinced unmistakable symptoms of hunger.
He put his arm over her and partly over my shoulder.
“I cannot let you go without an acknowledgement,” he began
hurriedly. “I should like to tell you just how Louis came back. There
was a manliness in his penitence that has given me a great deal of
hope. Yet I know that he did not come out of actual love for me. If we
ever could reach that state, but I must wait patiently. I have thought
so little of him all these years, except to look after his personal
comfort, that I must not complain if I reap weeds instead of flowers.
You were brave and strong in your advice to him, and God above
knows how deeply and sincerely I thank you. Your note to me was
wisdom itself. Only—”
There was a peculiar wistfulness in his face that somehow gave
him a little look of Louis.
“Only what?” If there was any fault to find let us have it out now.
“If you could have trusted me unreservedly. Do you think I am so
very stern and rigid and unforgiving?”
“I was afraid you might—I did not know—” and I stopped,
distressed and blushing.
“Will you have a little more faith in me?”
He uttered the words slowly.
“I know you desire to do what is best.”
He looked a trifle disappointed, I thought, but I went in with Edith
and left him standing there.
After all I had not done anything very wonderful that there should
be such a fuss and thanks and all that bother. It annoyed me. I could
not carry triumphs gracefully as Fan did, sit in the centre and have
an admiring audience around me.
One part of the visit proved an unalloyed delight, and that was
papa’s enjoyment of it. He and Mr. Duncan fitted, if you can
understand the term. It was almost like father and son. Plans were
talked over, the boys’ future discussed, and in Stephen’s newer
experience there was a great charm. Like the young man who came
to Christ, he had kept the commandments from his youth up, he had
been truth and integrity itself, but the one greater thing had come to
him now. It crowned his manliness. He did not speak of it in a
shame-faced way, as if it was something to be kept on one side of
his life and rather in the background, but he set it in the very midst. A
rare, almost boyish humility was discernable in his conversations
with papa. I liked so much better to listen than to have him talk to
me.
“I am afraid I shall grow proud in my old days,” said papa a few
evenings afterward. “Such first fruits as Mr. Duncan and Miss
Churchill seem a whole harvest. I shall never be discouraged again.”
Indeed, Miss Churchill had become the Lady Bountiful of the
parish. I do not mean simply among the poor. The rich need the
gospel of charity and loving kindness as well. They were meeting
together, being incited to good works, losing the narrow feelings and
prejudices.
Fan and I had a lovely episode this summer. Just at the beginning
of the hot weather Miss Lucy had a spell of feeling very weak and
miserable.
“She must have a change,” declared good old Doctor Hawley.
“She has been among the mountains so long that she has worn
them out. Take her away to the sea-side.”
“I can’t go,” said Miss Lucy in faint protest. “I do not like strange
faces nor places, and the worry and bustle will consume what little
strength I have.”
“You will wear out this old strength and get some new. You are
tired to death of this, though you are so set in your way that you will
not confess it. I know what is best for you! Miss Esther, if you want to
keep Christmas with her, take her away now.”
Then he thumped his cane resolutely on the floor, a way he had
when he was very much in earnest.
When it came to that something must be done.
They talked it over—Miss Churchill and her brother, then Miss
Churchill and mamma. And this came out of it all, as if we were to be
in the midst of everything.
They would go to Martha’s Vineyard. In earlier years they had
spent whole summers there. And she and Miss Lucy wanted us. We
had seen so little outside of our own home, that the change would do
us good. There was the great sea, the islands all about, and a new
world, so to speak.
“I don’t know how to get both of them ready,” mamma exclaimed in
a hopeless puzzle.
“You are thinking of the dresses—but we are not going to be
fashionable. Some nice light worsted goods for traveling, and
beyond that there is nothing as pretty as white. We shall have a
cottage to ourselves and our meals sent in. Then I intend to take
Martha, who is an excellent laundress, so the dresses will be no
trouble. Kenton is counting on the pleasure, and you must not
refuse.”
“It is a great—favor,” said mamma timidly.
“I don’t want you to think of it in that light. Kenton and I are getting
along in years, and Lucy will not last forever. We might as well take
and give a little pleasure. It is just as if a sister asked you.”
And it actually came about. We had new gray dresses trimmed
with bands of pongee; Fan’s a shade lighter and mine two or three
shades darker than the material. When they were all finished they
had cost but twenty-three dollars. Our spring straw hats were
retrimmed, our gloves and ribbons and boots looked over.
“One trunk will hold our modest wardrobe,” declared Fan. “I often
think of the Vicar of Wakefield and the many devices the girls
resorted to. It is rather funny to be poor, after all! You are not so
much worried and fidgeted and dissatisfied. You take the best you
can get, and you know you cannot do any better. So you enjoy the
tour or the journey or whatever it is, because you are altogether
outside of your troublesome self.”
“But you will be—very well off—some day,” I said with bashful
hesitation.
“I don’t think of that, any more. Until the very day of my marriage
my life is here. What papa can give me will always be infinitely
precious to me. We will have all the happiness out of our poverty that
we can.”
“Yes,” I answered.
“And I know just how Miss Churchill is giving us this. So far as the
money goes she will never feel it. We will afford her pleasure,
satisfaction and delight in return, which will make it quite an even
thing.”
We remained three weeks and it was enchanting. The great ocean
with its ceaseless surges and swells, its floods of molten gold at
sunset, the showers and one tremendous storm, the walks and rides
on the sands, the short sails hither and thither, the quaint cottages,
the strange people from almost everywhere, some of whom we soon
became acquainted with, the newness and the variety was splendid!
We enjoyed every moment. Sometimes I felt quite wild indeed, as if I
could race along the sea sands and shout with the wildest of the
birds.
The last week was the crowning point. Winthrop came and Miss
Churchill took us to Newport for one night and two days. There was
elegance and fashion at the hotel to be sure, but Fan in her pretty
white over-dress and the bloom of her fresh, sweet youth, attracted
many a glance of admiration on the one side, and almost envy from
some of the worn and faded women. It was a bit of Arabian Nights’
Entertainment brought into our own lives.
Miss Lucy did improve ever so much. She could not bathe to be
sure, but the pungent air revived and strengthened her. We were all
so bright and happy, so full of fun and whims and oddities. There is a
fascinating queerness about almost every person when the true self
comes out and you forget that any one is watching you.
It was so delightful that we came home with almost a sigh, until we
reached the familiar places. It was the first time that we had ever
been so long away from mamma, and when we thought of that our
hearts were full to overflowing.
There was Mrs. Whitcomb in the midst helping to keep house,
filling up our vacant places.
“You need not think you are the only ones who can have a
holiday!” she exclaimed laughingly.
Oh, the blessedness of being right among the accustomed faces,
to be kissed and kissed again, to be pulled about hither and yon, to
be shown this and that, “which was not so when you went away;” the
atmosphere of home-living and thinking, which is so different from
railroad cars and hotels, or even other people’s cottages.
“But the sea still sings in my ears,” I said to Fan as I laid my head
on my pillow.
“And to-morrow morning it will be robins or swallows ‘twittering’
under the eaves. What a great, grand thing it is to live and be happy!
Rose, if people could realize the satisfying joy they put in the lives of
others when they share their pleasures I think the whole world would
go at it. It would be giving and receiving all round the wide earth.”
Are we thankful enough for happiness, I wonder? For that is
something a little apart from life, one of the things not surely
promised, like the peace of God. Should there not be a special
thanksgiving for every blessed day, for the breath of fragrance, the
pleasantness of sunshine, and the subtle essence of delight that
wafts itself across our sky—tender human love?
CHAPTER XVI.
TEPHEN DUNCAN had taken the boys West, and

would be gone a month or more. They had grown so
much, Mrs. Whitcomb said, and were almost men.
“Which do you like best?” asked Fan.
“I think Louis will make the nobler character. Stuart would rather
take life just as it is, picking out the best for himself, to be sure, and
not minding much what scraps fall to other people. He may feed the
hungry after he is satisfied, he never will before.”
“Everybody likes him,” I replied.
“Yes. He is fascinating.”
“And you don’t need real virtues to be fascinated with,” I said
rather blunderingly, the thought being more than the sentence.
“No, only outside pleasantnesses. That is, they answer.
Sometimes when you are down deep in the heart of things, you
cannot take quite so much pains with the finishing. Not but what I
consider finishing a great deal. Clean paths beautify a garden so
much, but I have seen people just hoe off the tops and sprinkle
gravel or sand over them. The weeds spring up after a rain.”
“Has not Louis the outside and inside faults as well?” asked Fan.
“Yes. Only his weeds are seldom covered up. Some folks never
can cover up anything. He cannot be good outside until he has killed
the weeds inside. Stuart may be fair all his life without any fighting.”
“He is good-tempered;” I subjoined.
“He has a pleasant, sunny temper, perfect health, and no nerves
to speak of. It is no effort for him to be jolly. He is gentlemanly by
instinct, he likes to be in the centre, shooting rays in every direction.
Is it wonderful if somebody comes within their radius? The
somebody may think this particular brightness is meant for him, but
in an instant Stuart may wheel round and leave this very person in
the dark.”
“I am glad you have some hope of Louis;” I said.
She seemed to study Fan, the great column of wisteria and me, all
at the same moment.
“There are some special providences in this world, I do believe,”
she began. “Mr. Duncan’s coming here was one, and your taking the
boys another.”
“Which we should not have done if we had not been very poor,”
said Fan with an odd pucker in her face.
“Well, we will give poverty the credit. Mr. Duncan’s visit here taught
him some new ideas of duty. Not but what he would have been a
just, even a kind brother in any event. But relationship counts for so
little now-a-days. Very few people expect to be their brothers’
keepers. They are willing to do grand things for others, for the
heathen, for some great accident that stirs up the sympathy of the
whole world, but the common every day duties are tiresome.”
“They are,” said Fan. “It may be heterodox, but it is true all the
same.”
“That is just it,” and Mrs. Whitcomb gave her sweet, tender smile
that was worth a week of June sunshine. “God knew how tiresome
they would be, or he would not have given such continual lessons of
patience and love, of working and waiting. Think of the mustard seed
and the corn, and the candle; the piece of money and the one lost
sheep. It is nearly all little things. And when He saith—‘If a man love
not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he
hath not seen.’ It is the home love that is going to save the world.
Stephen saw it here, and it roused his dormant affection.”
“You see it would not do for us to quarrel,” said Fan drolly. “We are
packed in like peas in a pod, or birds in a nest, or bricks in a
sidewalk. There isn’t any room.”
“I am glad you have learned that. I think too, it is the lesson you
are all to teach the world.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Fan with a blush of real humility.
“We must be poor and barren indeed, if we do not teach
something. And the influence last summer did a great deal for Louis.
It was the beginning of his salvation. It was the beginning of
Stephen’s higher life, also. Before that he would have saved his
brothers for pride’s sake, now he will endeavor to do it for God’s
sake, because he has been redeemed in the love, as well.”
“It is sermons in everything,” said Fanny.
“Mrs. Whitcomb,” I began presently, “do you know anything about
—Louis when he came home?” Somehow I could never have asked
Stephen, much as I wanted to know.
“It was late in the afternoon, just growing dusky. I did not know him
when he asked for Mr. Duncan, but before I had crossed the hall I
guessed, so I took him to the library, and summoned Stephen from
his room up stairs. They talked for a long while and then Stephen
asked that tea might be brought to them. Louis lay on the sofa while I
spread the little table. I could hear the sound of tears in Stephen’s
voice at every word he spoke. At nine, perhaps, he took Louis up to
the chamber that had been prepared for him. When he came down I
was busy putting the library in order. I just asked—‘Is it all right?’ and
he answered—‘It is the beginning of right.’ And then he added—shall
I tell you Rose?—‘I think Louis and I will owe something of what is
best in our lives to Rose Endicott!’”
“I wish they wouldn’t;” I cried in distress. “But it is all made up
between them?”
“Yes, in a better manner than if the trouble had not happened. Out
of it all they have learned to love each other. Louis has a great, shy,
morbid, hungry heart, and a most unfortunate temper.”
“And we are as poor as church mice, and angelic;” said Fan in her
gayest mood. “After all, the gifts and graces are pretty fairly
distributed.”
We went into supper and had other topics of conversation. One of
the most important was sending papa away for a little vacation.
When Mr. Churchill heard of that he held up both hands, and they
were not empty. Papa must stay over one Sunday and he would see
about a clergyman. It was very odd to be without a head to our
household that length of time. He went to Long Island, to Cape May
and Philadelphia, bringing Daisy home with him.
In the meanwhile Fan and I were in the midst of a small
excitement. Jennie Ryder was to be married and wanted us both for
bridesmaids, “that is,” she said—“I want you, and Richard wants
Fan. And I don’t wish you to make a bit of fuss. I am going to be
married in church at eight in the morning, in white organdie, because
Richard loves white so much. Otherwise I should take my traveling
dress. We do not intend to send out any invitations, and you must be
simple, so as not to outshine me.”
“I am glad you have instructed us. We might have rushed into
some extravagance. May we have our white gowns done up fresh,
please?” asked Fan comically.
Jennie laughed. She was very happy, one could see that. A
connection had come to stay with Mrs. Ryder while Jennie was
away, for Richard had insisted upon Niagara and the Canadas.
Afterward they were to move into the great house.
Papa came home on Saturday night, looking brown and bright and
rested. On Tuesday morning Jennie was married. Winthrop came to
stand with Fan, I think he would not have trusted any one else. He
was troubled with an insane belief that every body wanted Fan,
“which is werry flattering on his part,” said Fan, “considering that the
only other lover I ever had has gone off and married some one else,
never breaking his heart a bit!”
“Would you have had him, Fanny?”
“No, little goosie! And he has the best wife that he could have
found in the wide world.”
The fact had been noised abroad, and the marriage was quite
largely attended. It provoked various comments. I think there were
some who did envy Jennie Ryder her good fortune, and many who
rejoiced in it. Still there was a feeling that Richard’s mother would not
quite approve. He had written to her and Kate, not giving them time
to answer by the marriage date.
I felt my own heart beat as I stood there so still and solemn. There
was a great awe in going out of the old life and putting on the new,
belonging to yourself one moment, and the next having the sense of
ownership irrevocably taken away. I shivered a little wondering how
any one could be glad to do it. Some day Fan would stand there, and
I would feel her gone out of my life.
Then Mrs. Whitcomb had to return to get the house in order. Louis
expected to enter Columbia College. Stephen thought it better on
account of his health, and the home influence. Stuart would be away
another year.
Enclosed in her letter was a note to mamma. Would it be
agreeable for Louis to spend a week or ten days with us? He was
very anxious so to do.
“Of course,” answered mamma.
Indeed we were pleased with the opportunity of seeing him.
Somehow he had become quite a hero in our eyes.
I really do not think I should have known him elsewhere. I was up
in my room sitting on the low window-sill in the breeze, reading a
magazine. The blinds were tied a little apart, bowed, and as I heard
the gate click I looked down. He was nearly as tall as Stephen, and
though slender had filled out to a certain manly roundness. He
nodded to some one, threw back his head and laughed, and he was
positively handsome. His complexion was dark but no longer sallow,
it had the bronze tint of exposure and a healthful red in the cheeks.
His black hair was cropped pretty close, but it showed his broad
forehead, and there was a tiny line of dark moustache that
contrasted with the fresh scarlet of his lips.
I ran down. Mamma and Edith were on the porch. I do really
believe that mamma had been kissing him, at all events his face was
flushed and his eyes had a soft, dewy look.
“You are the same, you haven’t altered a bit! It was so good of you
to let me come.”
“Why, we wanted to see you,” replied mamma.
He was still holding my hands, and I could not help blushing under
his steady gaze.
“But you have grown and changed out of all reason.”
“Minnesota did that! For the first time in my life I am not absolutely
scrawny! We had such a splendid tour! Stephen was just royal, as
much of a boy as either of us. We have climbed mountains, camped
out, hunted and fished and everything! I did not want to come back.”
“I am glad to see you so much improved,” and mamma glanced
him over with a sort of motherly pride.
He sat down on the step at her feet, and began to play with Edith
who affected baby shyness. We did not have him long to ourselves
though, for Nelly came and in a moment or two the children. They
were all surprised.
I watched him as he talked. He was so much more fluent and self-
possessed. It was not Stuart’s brightness, but more like Stephen’s
reliance, and a peculiar command of self, an earnestness that sat
well upon him.
“You cannot think how I wanted to see this place once more. How
good you were to me when I lay sick up-stairs. Miss Rose, do you
remember getting me some honeysuckle blooms one afternoon? I
shall always associate them with you. I shall be glad to the latest day
of my life that Stephen sent me here, though I made a desperate
fight to go to Lake George with some school-fellows.”
“It was fortunate that you did not, for you would have been ill in
any event,” answered mamma quietly.
“Yes. How is—everybody? And that Mr. Fairlie is married? Does
Miss Churchill come as she used?”
She was still among our best friends, we told him. Fanny was
there spending the day.
Presently papa returned and he was full of joy at the improvement.
Why, it was almost like having a boy of one’s very own! I would not
have believed that he could be so agreeable if I had not seen it, or
else I wondered if we had not made a mistake last summer.
There was supper and music after that, and Fan’s return, and the
next day papa invited him to go over the river with him, as he had a
horse and wagon. Consequently I saw nothing of him until evening.
Mamma asked me to take some grapes to a sick parishioner.
“Allow me to accompany you;” he said, getting his hat.
It was very foolish but I could not help the color coming into my
face as we walked down the path. He had such a grown-up,
gentlemanly air; he opened the gate and closed it again, and took
the outside of the walk and glanced at me in a kind of protecting
fashion.
“Do you know that you are very little?” he began presently.
“Fully five feet.”
“But then I am getting to be such a great fellow!”
I looked at him and laughed.
“What now?” and he colored suddenly.
“I was thinking—of something so absurd! Fan used to accuse me
of preaching—”
“And very good sermons they were. I may want you to preach
again.”
“I should be afraid,” glancing up at him.
He laughed then. After a moment or two another expression
crossed his face, and it grew more and more serious.
“I believe the sermons saved me. There was a time when I should
have hated to own such a thing—and from a woman, too; so you
may know how I have conquered myself.”
“The best of all victories.”
“Looking back at myself I wonder how you tolerated me last
summer. I was ill and nervous to the last degree, but I had a frightful

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Jerome's Commentaries on the Pauline

Epistles and the Architecture of

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OXFORD EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES

Gillian Clark Andrew Louth

THE OXFORD EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES series includes scholarly volumes on

At the University of Colorado–Boulder, my home institution since 2003,

7. Between East and West: Latin Sources 195

A&R Atene e Roma

JHS Journal of Hellenic Studies

SJTh Scottish Journal of Theology

¹ C. H. Turner, “Greek Patristic Commentaries on the Pauline Epistles,” in J. Hastings (ed.), A

2 ’     

preserved in a manuscript of the Hungarian National Museum in Budapest,⁶

Jerome’s four Pauline commentaries have received a modicum of scholarly

4 ’     

6 ’     

he interprets Paul through an asceticizing lens to center his own ideological

The Commentaries: Circumstances of Composition

¹ See above, pp. 1–2.

8  ’      

10  ’      

¹⁵ Jerome, Ep. 108.10.2–3, 7 (Cain, Jerome’s Epitaph on Paula, 55, 57).

commentary he gives us the kind of over-the-shoulder glimpse into his scholarly

12  ’      

prematurely through excessive study and asceticism.²⁸ The arresting anecdote he

You wanted me to dictate [commentaries] on Paul’s epistles in inverted and ﬂip-

14  ’      

⁴³ Comm. Phlm. 1–3.

16  ’      

18  ’      

formal commentaries and exegetical homilies—on most of the Pauline epistles as

⁶⁸ Commentaries on Romans, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 & 2 Thessalonians,

Philemon: Canonicity, Apostolicity, and Utility

20  ’      

named members of the Christian congregation (ἐκκλησία) associated with his

22  ’      

Jerome opens the preface by summarizing his unnamed opponents’ position.⁹⁸

24  ’      

Jerome advances an implicit twofold claim here. First, because it is a divinely

¹⁰⁷ Cf. below, pp. 62–3.

26  ’      

¹¹⁴ Comm. Phlm. 1–3.

28  ’      

If anyone thinks that Philemon was commanded not in a diplomatic but in a

As we saw earlier, Jerome closes the preface to his Philemon commentary by

30  ’      

Galatians: Law and Gospel and Hebrew Philology

¹²⁶ Gen. 50.20.

¹³³ Epistle, 217.

32  ’      

“There everlasting spring abides,