“I Allowed the Rest to Remain”

Jerome, Damasus, and the Selective Revision of the Four Gospels

Jerome’s Preface to the Four Gospels, addressed to Damasus at Rome in approximately A.D. 383, ought to be read with extraordinary care because it provides something far more valuable than a later historian’s reconstruction of how the Latin Bible developed. Jerome himself explains what he was asked to do, why he considered the undertaking dangerous, what condition the Latin Gospel manuscripts were in, which textual authority he believed should control their correction, which Greek witnesses he rejected, and, most significantly, why he deliberately refrained from correcting every divergence that he discovered.

One year later, in Letter XXVII to Marcella, he was forced to defend himself publicly against precisely the accusation he had anticipated: that he had altered passages in the Gospels against ancient authority and the opinion of the Christian world.

In another letter to Marcella from the same year, Letter XXXII, he then revealed that while investigating Old Testament textual differences he was prepared to ask whether “the synagogue” had altered the Hebrew text “from hatred to Christ.” Read together, these documents expose a complicated and deeply human history of biblical transmission in which manuscript evidence, scholarly judgment, ecclesiastical authorization, existing Christian custom, theological expectation and polemical assumptions all have to be carefully distinguished.

The argument must begin with an important qualification because otherwise Jerome can be accused of something his own words explicitly deny. Jerome does not confess that he invented Gospel passages, fabricated sayings of Christ, or considered himself authorized to create revelation. In Letter XXVII he expressly insists that he is not so ignorant as to imagine that “any of the Lord’s words is either in need of correction or is not divinely inspired.” His defence is that the inspired words themselves are not defective; the manuscripts transmitting those words have become defective. That distinction must be preserved. Yet preserving it does not make the historical problem disappear. Jerome’s own description shows that the correction of those manuscripts was not mechanical. He selected witnesses, rejected others, judged competing readings, decided which differences altered meaning sufficiently to require correction, and consciously permitted other divergences to survive because he wished to avoid disturbing the Latin wording with which Christians had become familiar.

Damasus Did Not Merely Ask Jerome to Translate: He Asked Him to Judge

Jerome begins his Preface with language that deserves to be retained almost in full because the significance lies partly in the way he himself understood his task:

“You urge me to revise the old Latin version, and, as it were, to sit in judgment on the copies of the Scriptures which are now scattered throughout the whole world; and, inasmuch as they differ from one another, you would have me decide which of them agree with the Greek original.”

This is already very different from the simple picture of an unchanged Latin Bible passing intact through the centuries. Jerome says that copies of Scripture are scattered widely, that they differ from one another, and that Damasus has asked him to decide which of them correspond to the Greek. The undertaking therefore involves judgment from its first sentence.

Jerome is acutely conscious of the seriousness of what has been requested. He continues:

“The labour is one of love, but at the same time both perilous and presumptuous; for in judging others I must be content to be judged by all.”

He then anticipates the reaction of Christians who open their familiar Gospel book and discover that the words have changed:

“Is there a man, learned or unlearned, who will not, when he takes the volume into his hands, and perceives that what he reads does not suit his settled tastes, break out immediately into violent language, and call me a forger and a profane person for having the audacity to add anything to the ancient books, or to make any changes or corrections therein?”

Those words are exceptionally important. Jerome anticipates being called “a forger and a profane person.” He knows that changing the wording of books received as Scripture could be perceived as an act of profanation. He even frames the anticipated charge as having the audacity “to add anything to the ancient books, or to make any changes or corrections therein.”

Again, Jerome is not confessing that he is deliberately adding invented material. He is describing how his work will appear to those accustomed to existing copies. Nevertheless, the passage demonstrates that the Christians of his own generation did not regard alteration of the Gospel text as a trivial matter, and neither did Jerome. He understood that there was a boundary between restoring a corrupted witness and interfering with sacred revelation, and he knew that his critics believed he was dangerously close to that boundary.

Scripture itself explains why such anxiety would exist. Deuteronomy 4:2 commands, “Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish ought from it.” Proverbs 30:6 warns, “Add thou not unto his words, lest he reprove thee, and thou be found a liar.” Revelation 22:18–19 places its own solemn prohibition against adding to or taking away from “the words of the book of this prophecy.” Revelation’s immediate warning concerns Revelation itself and should not dishonestly be presented as though John were specifically discussing fourth-century textual criticism of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Yet these passages establish an unmistakable scriptural attitude toward divine revelation: God’s words are not material which human beings possess unrestricted liberty to enlarge, diminish or manipulate.

Jerome’s defence must therefore be assessed on the basis on which he himself presents it. If he is restoring the apostolic text, textual correction may be necessary precisely because fidelity to Scripture requires the removal of later error. If, however, considerations other than recovering the apostolic text are allowed to determine which known divergences remain, then another question arises: at what point does preservation of familiar ecclesiastical language begin to compete with restoration to the “fountainhead”?

Jerome Says the Latin Manuscripts Were Already Profoundly Divided

Jerome gives a compelling reason why textual work had become necessary:

“For if we are to pin our faith to the Latin texts, it is for our opponents to tell us which; for there are almost as many forms of texts as there are copies.”

That statement is enormous in its implications. Jerome is not describing a single perfectly stable Latin New Testament. He is describing a manuscript tradition so variable that he can rhetorically say there are “almost as many forms of texts as there are copies.”

Jerome therefore rejects the idea that antiquity or familiarity alone can determine the correct reading. If Latin manuscripts disagree, merely pointing to “the Latin Bible” resolves nothing because one must first answer Jerome’s question: which Latin text?

He therefore proposes returning behind the divided Latin tradition:

“If, on the other hand, we are to glean the truth from a comparison of many, why not go back to the original Greek and correct the mistakes introduced by inaccurate translators, and the blundering alterations of confident but ignorant critics, and, further, all that has been inserted or changed by copyists more asleep than awake?”

This passage is equally significant because Jerome openly acknowledges several mechanisms by which biblical texts can become altered during transmission. He speaks of mistakes produced by “inaccurate translators,” of “blundering alterations” introduced by people who were confident but ignorant, and of material “inserted or changed” by careless copyists. Jerome therefore knew perfectly well that additions and changes could enter copies of Scripture through human agency.

His proposed remedy is the obvious one: return as closely as possible to the earlier-language source.

There is nothing objectionable about that principle. If a later copy contains an addition that was not written by an apostle, fidelity to Scripture requires its removal rather than its preservation. Correcting a scribal addition is not “taking away from Scripture”; it is an attempt to distinguish Scripture from what a later person added to it. The serious question is therefore not whether textual criticism is intrinsically unlawful. The serious question is how the textual critic decides what the original reading was, and whether anything other than evidence from the textual tradition is permitted to govern that decision.

Jerome expresses his textual principle through one of the most memorable metaphors in the Preface:

“We must confess that as we have it in our language it is marked by discrepancies, and now that the stream is distributed into different channels we must go back to the fountainhead.”

That is an excellent principle.

If later textual streams have divided, the goal should be to recover the fountain as faithfully as surviving evidence permits.

Yet the problem immediately becomes more complicated because Jerome does not possess one uncontested Greek manuscript containing an unquestionably pristine apostolic text. Greek manuscripts themselves have histories, and Jerome knows it.

He explicitly rejects certain Greek textual traditions:

“I pass over those manuscripts which are associated with the names of Lucian and Hesychius, and the authority of which is perversely maintained by a handful of disputatious persons.”

He then reasons from ancient versions in other languages, arguing that these provide evidence against additions occurring in certain Greek textual forms:

“versions of Scripture which already exist in the languages of many nations show that their additions are false.”

The important point is not whether each of Jerome’s textual judgments was correct. The important point is that a judgment had to be made at all.

Jerome must determine which Greek manuscripts are reliable. He must decide which readings are additions. He must compare independent translations as witnesses to an earlier Greek form. He must decide which textual family lies closer to what the evangelist wrote.

Jerome then expressly identifies one of his criteria:

“Only early ones have been used.”

The age of the Greek witnesses therefore matters to him.

This is recognisably textual-critical reasoning. It is also unmistakably human reasoning. Nothing in the Preface suggests that Damasus miraculously revealed the original readings to Jerome, nor that Jerome claimed prophetic inspiration for his textual decisions. Damasus commissioned the work; Jerome did the comparing, rejecting, selecting and correcting.

Jerome himself tells us one reason he was willing to endure the accusation that he was presumptuously changing sacred books:

“the command is given by you who are the supreme bishop.”

This must neither be exaggerated nor ignored.

The passage does not say that Damasus dictated the wording of Matthew, Mark, Luke or John. It does not say that Damasus determined which Greek manuscript was inspired. It does not say that an infallible Roman judgment supplied missing apostolic readings. What it establishes is that Damasus gave ecclesiastical authorization for the revision and that Jerome regarded this authorization as one of the reasons he could endure the hostility the work would provoke.

The textual decisions themselves nevertheless remain Jerome’s. Jerome chooses the Greek witnesses he considers early. Jerome rejects the traditions associated with Lucian and Hesychius. Jerome identifies supposed additions. Jerome judges translation errors. Jerome decides which variant changes the meaning. Jerome ultimately decides what to alter in the Latin Gospel placed before Western Christians.

This distinction matters because later authority attached to the Latin biblical tradition must not be projected backwards as though the text had existed in a finished, universally stable form before Jerome’s intervention. Jerome is describing the opposite situation: instability already exists, Damasus wants it addressed, and Jerome is employed to make the textual judgments necessary to address it.

The Most Important Admission Comes After Jerome Has Reached the “Fountainhead”

If Jerome had concluded his Preface by saying simply that he compared every Latin reading with the earliest Greek manuscripts available and corrected every demonstrable deviation, the principle would at least be completely straightforward. The later Latin would be made to conform as closely as possible to the earlier Greek evidence.

But Jerome does not say that.

Instead he writes:

“But to avoid any great divergences from the Latin which we are accustomed to read, I have used my pen with some restraint.”

He then explains exactly what that restraint means:

“I have corrected only such passages as seemed to convey a different meaning, I have allowed the rest to remain as they are.”

This is the passage around which the entire investigation should turn.

Jerome has just told us that the Latin streams are divided and that the proper solution is to return to the Greek fountainhead. He has selected early Greek manuscripts precisely because he considers them closer to that source. Nevertheless, he now introduces another consideration: he wishes to avoid “great divergences from the Latin which we are accustomed to read.”

This means that textual correspondence with the Greek witnesses was not the only factor determining what appeared in the revised Latin text.

Familiarity was also a factor.

The established expectations of Latin Christians mattered sufficiently for Jerome to restrain his pen.

He consequently corrected only those passages which “seemed to convey a different meaning” and “allowed the rest to remain.”

The significance does not depend on pretending that every retained difference was doctrinally important. Jerome’s language strongly suggests that he considered the uncorrected variations insufficient to alter the substantive meaning. Many may have involved vocabulary, syntax, style or equivalent expressions. Nevertheless, the methodological fact is unmistakable: Jerome knew differences existed between his Latin text and his chosen Greek witnesses and consciously decided that some of them could remain because correcting everything would produce too great a departure from accustomed Latin usage.

That is selective textual revision.

“Seemed to Convey a Different Meaning”: Who Determines Meaning?

The phrase “seemed to convey a different meaning” deserves particular scrutiny because it identifies the point at which Jerome’s own interpretive judgment enters the process.

A textual difference exists.

Someone must decide whether it changes the meaning.

That someone is Jerome.

One reading can therefore be examined and judged harmless enough to remain. Another can be judged sufficiently meaning-changing to require correction. A Greek witness can be accepted as early. Another textual tradition can be rejected as corrupt. A supposed addition can be identified as false. A Latin rendering can be retained because its divergence is judged insignificant.

None of this proves dishonesty. Modern translators and textual critics necessarily exercise similar forms of judgment because manuscripts do not interpret themselves. Yet precisely because human judgment is unavoidable, the result should not later be described as though no human editorial mediation occurred.

There is a profound difference between saying, “Jerome deliberately fabricated Scripture,” for which this Preface supplies no evidence, and saying, “Jerome’s revised Latin Gospel was produced through manuscript selection, textual criticism, interpretation of competing readings and conscious decisions about how much departure from familiar Latin usage was pastorally acceptable.”

The second statement is simply what Jerome himself tells us.

His own description gives us something closer to the following process: earlier Greek witnesses are selected from among competing Greek traditions; existing Latin copies are compared against those witnesses; differences are evaluated; readings which Jerome believes change the meaning are corrected; readings he regards as less significant may be allowed to survive; and the extent of the revision is deliberately restrained because Christians are already accustomed to the existing Latin wording.

That is not an untouched chain of transmission. It is an editorial history.

The Fountainhead Metaphor Creates a Problem Jerome Never Fully Removes

Jerome’s own metaphor now turns back upon his method.

If the later Latin manuscripts are streams that have separated into different channels, while the earlier text is the fountainhead, then the natural objective is to restore the stream to the water of the fountain as faithfully as possible.

Yet Jerome effectively says that after reaching toward the fountain he will not correct every downstream difference because Latin Christians are accustomed to the existing stream.

That creates a legitimate question:

If a reading is known to diverge from the earlier source, why should familiarity with the later form determine whether it remains?

Tradition can explain why a reading is familiar. It cannot, by itself, make that reading apostolic.

Likewise, unfamiliarity cannot make an original reading false.

If textual evidence shows that Matthew wrote one thing, generations of Christians becoming accustomed to another cannot alter what Matthew wrote. If textual evidence shows that a phrase is secondary, repeated liturgical usage cannot send it backwards through time and place it into the evangelist’s original manuscript.

This is where Jerome’s concern for the “Latin which we are accustomed to read” becomes so important. His motive may have been conservative and pastoral rather than deceptive, but it demonstrates that ecclesiastical continuity entered into the practical administration of textual correction.

The fountainhead was the theoretical standard.

Familiar usage affected how fully that standard was applied.

Letter XXVII Shows That Jerome’s Critics Saw the Problem Immediately

Jerome’s fears were soon realised. In Letter XXVII to Marcella, written at Rome in A.D. 384, he reports that criticism had erupted over his revision:

“certain contemptible creatures were deliberately assailing me with the charge that I had endeavored to correct passages in the gospels, against the authority of the ancients and the opinion of the whole world.”

This accusation deserves careful attention because Jerome’s contemporaries were appealing precisely to the authority of inherited textual usage. They did not merely complain that Jerome had produced an unattractive translation. They accused him of correcting Gospel passages “against the authority of the ancients and the opinion of the whole world.”

Jerome responds in his characteristic polemical style. His opponents become:

“contemptible creatures”

and he invokes the proverb that:

“it is idle to play the lyre for an ass.”

Later he returns to his:

“two-legged asses.”

This rhetorical behaviour matters because it has appeared elsewhere in Jerome’s controversial works. The intellectual or moral degradation of an opponent frequently accompanies his theological rebuttal. That does not automatically make his textual argument wrong, but it means that contemptuous treatment of critics cannot substitute for proof that his textual decisions were correct.

Behind the insults, however, Jerome gives a defence that must be treated fairly and preserved exactly:

“I am not so dull-wilted nor so coarsely ignorant … as to suppose that any of the Lord’s words is either in need of correction or is not divinely inspired.”

This is decisive evidence against the careless claim that Jerome believed himself entitled to correct Christ.

Jerome’s position is precisely the opposite.

The Lord’s words are divinely inspired.

What is faulty is their Latin transmission:

“but the Latin manuscripts of the Scriptures are proved to be faulty by the variations which all of them exhibit”

and his purpose has been:

“to restore them to the form of the Greek original.”

That is Jerome’s formal defence.

The difficulty emerges only when this claim is placed beside his earlier methodological admission.

Letter XXVII says that his object is to restore the Latin to the Greek original.

The Preface says that he intentionally refrained from correcting all divergences from his Greek witnesses because he wished to avoid excessive difference from the Latin Christians were accustomed to reading.

Those statements are not necessarily logically contradictory if the differences he left were genuinely immaterial to meaning. But they reveal that “restore them to the form of the Greek original” must not be interpreted as meaning that Jerome reproduced every reading of his preferred Greek witnesses without compromise.

He explicitly says that he did not.

“We Are Content to Err With the Greeks”

Jerome then supplies a concrete example of the priority he assigns to Greek. Where Latin copies contain one reading but the Greek supports another, he says:

“we are content to err with the Greeks, that is to say with the apostle himself, who spoke Greek.”

He contrasts a Latin wording with what he regards as the apostolic Greek and concludes:

“Our version, therefore, is, it is ‘a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation.’”

This is an important principle. If an apostle originally wrote in Greek, a later Latin translation cannot become more authoritative merely because Latin Christians have become familiar with it. The earlier-language witness must control the later translation.

But this returns us to the same question:

Which Greek?

Jerome himself has already rejected certain Greek manuscript traditions and selected others. “The Greek” therefore represents not merely the existence of Greek manuscripts but Jerome’s critical determination of which Greek manuscripts best preserve the apostolic form.

The apostle may indeed have spoken Greek.

Jerome does not possess the apostle’s autograph.

He possesses manuscript witnesses to it.

His task is to infer the earlier reading from those witnesses.

Again, the authority belongs to the apostolic text, while Jerome’s role is evidential and interpretive.

That distinction is essential.

Letter XXXII Reveals a Strikingly Different Suspicion About Jewish Textual Variation

The textual question becomes more troubling when Letter XXXII to Marcella, also written in A.D. 384, is placed beside Jerome’s defence of his Gospel revision.

Jerome explains his current work:

“for some time past I have been comparing Aquila’s version of the Old Testament with the scrolls of the Hebrew, to see if from hatred to Christ the synagogue has changed the text”

and then adds:

“and—to speak frankly to a friend—I have found several variations which confirm our faith.”

This is an extraordinary statement.

Jerome does not merely ask whether the Hebrew and Greek traditions differ. He approaches the comparison with a particular suspicion: perhaps “from hatred to Christ the synagogue has changed the text.” (deflection?)

We must be exact about what this passage proves.

Jerome says he is investigating whether such alteration occurred. The words “to see if” matter. He then says he has found several variations which, in his view, confirm Christian faith.

But finding a variation does not itself establish deliberate falsification.

Variation proves difference.

To establish intentional anti-Christian corruption one must determine which reading is earlier, when the alternative arose, who introduced it, and whether hostility toward Christianity actually motivated the change.

Jerome does not demonstrate all of that in this short letter.

Yet the very readiness to frame Jewish textual difference in terms of possible deliberate corruption “from hatred to Christ” is significant when compared with his explanation of Christian textual corruption.

When Christians Change a Text, Jerome Speaks of Error; When Jews Differ, He Can Suspect Hatred

In the Gospel Preface, Jerome describes the corruption of Christian manuscript transmission in recognisably ordinary human terms. There are:

“inaccurate translators”

there are:

“blundering alterations of confident but ignorant critics”

and there are:

“copyists more asleep than awake.”

Human beings mistranslate.

Editors make misguided corrections.

Copyists insert or change things.

No grand conspiracy is required.

Yet in Letter XXXII, confronted with differences in Hebrew textual tradition, Jerome is prepared to ask whether:

“from hatred to Christ the synagogue has changed the text.”

The asymmetry should not be exaggerated into a universal rule that Jerome always excused Christian alteration and always accused Jews of deliberate falsification. His textual scholarship was considerably more complicated than that, and his enormous dependence upon Hebrew and Jewish learning makes any simplistic picture impossible.

Nevertheless, the contrast within these documents is real enough to deserve investigation.

Christian textual alteration can be attributed to ignorance and carelessness.

Jewish textual difference can be suspected of deliberate theological corruption motivated by hostility toward Christ.

That difference becomes particularly significant because Jerome is simultaneously depending upon Jewish textual resources to recover the Scriptures.

Jerome Distrusts “the Synagogue” While Depending Upon Jewish Textual Knowledge

Jerome says that he is comparing Aquila’s Greek translation with:

“the scrolls of the Hebrew.”

Aquila was himself a Jewish translator whose Greek rendering was famously close to Hebrew forms.

This creates a striking tension within Jerome’s intellectual world.

He can suspect “the synagogue” of changing Scripture from hatred toward Christ while at the same time relying upon Hebrew manuscripts, Jewish linguistic traditions and Jewish translations to establish what Scripture says.

The knowledge is valuable.

The textual tradition is indispensable.

Yet the people associated with that tradition may be treated with polemical suspicion.

This fits the broader pattern visible elsewhere in Jerome: he can seek the Hebraica veritas, learn from Jewish teachers, consult Jewish interpretations and make Hebrew knowledge central to his biblical scholarship while simultaneously using extremely hostile rhetoric about Jews and Judaism.

That broader question deserves its own treatment, but Letter XXXII already demonstrates that theological prejudice cannot simply be excluded from the historical context in which Jerome made textual judgments.

Melchizedek Shows Why Correct Translation and Correct Interpretation Are Two Different Questions

There is another piece of Jerome’s work which strengthens this investigation precisely because it demonstrates that even when Jerome preserves the wording of a biblical passage correctly, his theology can go considerably further than the words he has translated.

Genesis 14:18 describes the meeting between Abram and Melchizedek. The KJV reads:

“And Melchizedek king of Salem brought forth bread and wine: and he was the priest of the most high God.”

Jerome’s own Latin preserves the same basic action:

proferens panem et vinum

which means bringing forth bread and wine.

Jerome does not translate the verse with a verb meaning “sacrificed.” He does not translate it as saying that Melchizedek immolated bread and wine upon an altar. His Latin says that Melchizedek brought them forth.

That is important because the narrative itself then says that Melchizedek blessed Abram and that Abram gave him tithes. Genesis 14 does not mention an altar in this encounter, although Genesis certainly knows how to mention altars elsewhere. It does not describe anything being burnt. It does not say that bread was offered to God. It does not describe wine being poured out as a libation. It does not employ the ordinary narrative language of an immolated victim. The text says that Melchizedek brought forth bread and wine and that he was priest of the Most High God.

Jerome’s theology, however, goes further.

In Letter 73 to Evangelus, while discussing the order of Melchizedek, Jerome contrasts animal victims with bread and wine and speaks of a:

simplici puroque sacrificio

a “simple and pure sacrifice,”

through which the mystery or sacrament of Christ is prefigured.

In his Commentary on Matthew 26, Jerome makes the interpretive connection still more explicitly when, discussing Christ taking bread at the Last Supper, he refers to Melchizedek as:

panem et vinum offerens

“offering bread and wine.”

Elsewhere, in Letter 46, Jerome speaks of Melchizedek as a type of Christ who brought bread and wine to Abraham and thereby prefigured the Christian mystery of Christ’s body and blood.

The distinction is crucial.

Jerome’s translation says that Melchizedek brought forth bread and wine.

Jerome’s theology interprets this as sacrificial prefiguration.

Those are not the same proposition.

One may believe that Melchizedek typologically foreshadows Christ; Hebrews itself explicitly compares Christ’s priesthood with Melchizedek. The issue is narrower. Genesis 14:18 does not say that the bread and wine constituted a sacrifice to God, and Hebrews 7, while making extensive use of Melchizedek, does not identify his bread and wine as the sacrifice that defines his priesthood. The sacrificial interpretation is therefore an exegetical conclusion supplied by later theological reasoning rather than something explicitly stated in the Genesis sentence.

This example matters enormously to the present investigation because it demonstrates why “Jerome translated the text correctly” can never by itself establish that “Jerome interpreted the text correctly.”

Jerome himself gives us evidence for the difference.

He can preserve proferens — bringing forth — in the biblical text, while theological interpretation turns the scene into a sacrificial offering.

That does not prove that he altered the Gospels to support his theology.

It proves something subtler and more important: the theological conclusions Jerome teaches must always be tested separately from the text he translated, because his exegesis can introduce a doctrinal category that his own translation does not state.

This Makes the Word “Meaning” in the Gospel Preface More Important, Not Less

Once the Melchizedek example is understood, Jerome’s statement that he corrected only Gospel passages which “seemed to convey a different meaning” becomes even more worthy of scrutiny.

Meaning is not a neutral mechanical quantity.

A translator can accurately translate a sentence and later invest that sentence with a theological interpretation that goes beyond its explicit wording.

Jerome does precisely that with Genesis 14.

Therefore, when Jerome says that he corrected Latin Gospel variants when they seemed to convey “a different meaning,” the question naturally arises: whose assessment of meaning governed that threshold?

Jerome’s.

Again, that does not prove deliberate manipulation.

It proves that the human interpreter cannot be removed from the process.

The same scholar who determines which manuscript reading changes meaning is also a theologian capable of reading sacrificial significance into “bringing forth bread and wine.” This does not invalidate his textual criticism; it does mean that his theological assumptions cannot simply be treated as irrelevant when examining how he understood textual meaning.

Later Theology Makes the Melchizedek Difference Even More Significant

The later Roman sacrificial interpretation of Genesis 14 developed this connection much further. Catholic theological tradition came to argue that Melchizedek did not merely refresh Abraham but offered bread and wine sacrificially to God, making the episode a type of the Eucharistic sacrifice. A traditional Catholic exposition even states that proferre, “to bring forth,” must in effect be understood as offerre, “to offer,” because Melchizedek was a priest.

That is an extraordinarily revealing exegetical move.

The biblical wording says bring forth.

The theology requires offer as sacrifice.

The theological argument therefore supplies what the narrative itself does not explicitly say.

Jerome stands within the early history of precisely this interpretive movement. He did not corrupt Genesis 14:18 by translating proferens as though it explicitly meant sacrifice. His translation actually preserves the distinction. But his theology subsequently crosses it.

This is exactly why Scripture must remain the test of doctrine rather than the prestige of the interpreter.

The fact that Jerome says something does not make it apostolic.

The fact that an interpretation becomes ancient does not make it textual.

The fact that an interpretation becomes ecclesiastically useful does not put words retrospectively into Genesis.

Melchizedek was a priest.

Melchizedek brought forth bread and wine.

Melchizedek blessed Abraham.

Abraham gave him tithes.

Hebrews presents Melchizedek as a type against which Christ’s superior and eternal priesthood is explained.

Those are textual statements.

The proposition that Genesis describes Melchizedek sacrificing bread and wine to God must be demonstrated rather than inserted between them.

Jerome’s Own Rule Should Therefore Be Applied to Jerome

The fairest standard by which to evaluate Jerome is the standard he repeatedly invokes himself: return to the source.

When Latin copies disagree, return toward the Greek source.

When translations obscure Hebrew wording, return toward Hebrew.

When a later interpretation claims that a biblical narrative says something, return to the narrative.

When theology converts “brought forth” into “sacrificed,” return to the words.

When later ecclesiastical tradition claims apostolic authority for a doctrine, return to the apostles.

Jerome’s intellectual achievement is undeniable, but intellectual achievement is not inspiration. Jerome himself admits that only the Lord’s words possess that character. He says that he would be ignorant to imagine that:

“any of the Lord’s words is either in need of correction or is not divinely inspired.”

That sentence should be turned into the governing principle of the entire investigation.

If Christ’s words are inspired, Jerome’s commentary on them is not automatically inspired.

If the apostolic Greek is authoritative, Jerome’s textual selection is an attempt to recover that authority, not a replacement for it.

If Genesis is inspired, Jerome’s sacrificial interpretation of Melchizedek must be tested by Genesis.

If Paul is inspired, Jerome’s theology must be tested by Paul.

The distinction between revelation and interpretation must never be erased merely because the interpreter later receives the title “Saint” or “Doctor of the Church.”

The Real Problem Is Larger Than the Question “Did Jerome Change the Bible?”

Asking whether Jerome “changed the Bible” is too imprecise to carry the weight of the evidence.

In one sense he undeniably changed the wording of Latin Gospel manuscripts: that was precisely the task Pope Damasus gave him, and contemporaries complained about it. Jerome does not deny making corrections. He defends them.

In another sense, the accusation that he deliberately changed divine revelation is not demonstrated. Jerome believed that he was restoring corrupted Latin witnesses to an earlier Greek form.

The serious historical problem lies between those two crude alternatives.

Jerome was given authority to revise Scripture as it existed in Latin.

He found extensive variation.

He selected Greek manuscripts.

He rejected other Greek traditions.

He judged supposed additions.

He evaluated translation errors.

He decided which variants changed meaning.

He restrained his revision because he did not want excessive divergence from familiar ecclesiastical usage.

He expressly says:

“I have corrected only such passages as seemed to convey a different meaning, I have allowed the rest to remain as they are.”

One year later, when accused of acting against:

“the authority of the ancients and the opinion of the whole world,”

he defended himself by saying that Latin manuscript variation proved corruption and that his object was:

“to restore them to the form of the Greek original.”

Those two statements must be held together.

Jerome claims restoration.

Jerome simultaneously admits selective restraint.

The issue is not solved by pretending that one of those statements does not exist.

Ecclesiastical Custom Cannot Determine Apostolic Truth

Jerome’s desire not to disturb the Latin Christians were accustomed to reading may be understandable as pastoral policy, but it cannot establish textual truth.

A reading is not apostolic because Rome has heard it for a long time.

A reading is not non-apostolic because Rome finds it unfamiliar.

If an earlier textual witness demonstrates that a later reading entered through scribal error, centuries of repetition cannot make the scribal error original.

Jerome himself effectively concedes this principle when he declares that Latin manuscripts must be judged by earlier Greek evidence.

This makes his decision to “allow the rest to remain” especially interesting.

If those remaining differences were genuinely semantically inconsequential, then no major doctrinal consequence follows from leaving them. Yet even then the historical point remains that the final form was not determined exclusively by exact conformity to Jerome’s preferred Greek witnesses.

Existing church usage exercised conservative pressure upon the revision.

The institutional church did not merely receive the result after an entirely neutral textual operation.

Institutional circumstances were already part of the operation.

Letter XXVII Was Not an Isolated Defence: Jerome Continued to Exercise Judgment Over the Gospel Text

Jerome’s Letter XXVII to Marcella becomes considerably more important once it is recognised that it was not the only place in which he discussed correcting the New Testament. The controversy recorded in that letter was part of a much larger textual history. Jerome continued to describe the Latin New Testament as something that had required restoration from Greek; Augustine independently confirmed that Jerome’s Gospel revision was being checked against Greek manuscripts and that Jerome could occasionally be mistaken; Jerome himself acknowledged that people who knew Greek were “competent judges” of his work; and his biblical commentaries preserve concrete examples in which he explicitly decided that words appearing in some Gospel manuscripts did not belong to the authentic text and ought to be removed. The evidence therefore takes us considerably further than the general accusation reported to Marcella that Jerome had “endeavored to correct passages in the gospels, against the authority of the ancients and the opinion of the whole world.”

Matthew 5:22 Shows Jerome Actually Making the Kind of Decision Marcella’s Letter Describes

One of the clearest examples occurs in Jerome’s Commentary on Matthew at Matthew 5:22. The familiar form of the saying, preserved in the KJV, reads:

“whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment.”

Jerome knew that the words translated “without a cause” occurred in some manuscripts, but he rejected them. His commentary states:

“In some codices the words are added: ‘without reason.’”

He immediately contrasts those copies with what he regards as the superior textual witnesses:

“But in the authentic texts the judgment is definite…”

After explaining that Christ’s teaching removes the opportunity for anger, Jerome reaches an explicit textual conclusion:

“Therefore, the words ‘without reason’ should be erased.”

The underlying Latin is even more striking: Radendum est ergo: sine causa — literally, “Therefore ‘without cause’ must be erased.”

This is extraordinarily useful evidence when placed directly after Letter XXVII to Marcella. In that letter Jerome had defended himself against the accusation that he was correcting Gospel passages by insisting that the Latin manuscripts were faulty and that his object was “to restore them to the form of the Greek original.” Matthew 5:22 allows us to watch that principle operating upon an actual saying attributed to Christ. Jerome has competing manuscripts before him. Some contain words which others do not. He decides which manuscripts represent the “authentic” reading and concludes that the additional words must be removed.

It would be unfair to say that this example proves Jerome corrupted Matthew, because that assumes the very textual question that Jerome was attempting to solve. Indeed, the shorter form of Matthew 5:22 has substantial ancient manuscript support and is accepted by many modern critical editions. The significance lies elsewhere. Jerome considered himself competent to decide that words appearing in existing Gospel copies were not genuinely part of Matthew and should therefore disappear from the corrected Latin text.

The distinction is essential. If “without cause” was a later scribal addition, removing it was an act of restoration rather than corruption. Yet the decision that it was an addition remained a textual judgment. The original autograph of Matthew was not lying before Jerome. Manuscripts disagreed, and Jerome had to decide which reading represented what Matthew had written. Letter XXVII tells us why he believed he had the right to make such decisions; his Commentary on Matthew demonstrates that he actually did make them.

The example also illustrates why Jerome’s statement in the Gospel Preface that he corrected passages which “seemed to convey a different meaning” matters so much. “Angry with his brother” and “angry with his brother without a cause” do not communicate precisely the same proposition. Jerome’s own theological explanation demonstrates that he understood the difference. He rejects sine causa precisely because he believes its presence weakens the absolute force of Christ’s prohibition against anger. Textual criticism and interpretation therefore meet at the same point: Jerome determines both which reading is authentic and what difference that reading makes to the meaning of Christ’s words.

Years after the controversy recorded in Letter XXVII, Jerome returned to exactly the same subject in Letter LXXI to Lucinius. The immediate context is particularly revealing because Jerome is complaining about the way manuscripts become corrupted during copying. He tells Lucinius that errors and omissions may arise through:

“the ignorance or carelessness of the copyists”

and says that copyists:

“write down not what they find but what they take to be the meaning.”

He then adds that in attempting to correct others they:

“expose their own mistakes.”

Immediately after discussing this human tendency to change a text according to what the copyist believes it ought to mean, Jerome describes what he himself had done to the New Testament:

“The new testament I have restored to the authoritative form of the Greek original.”

He then states his governing principle with unmistakable clarity:

“the true text of the new requires for its decision an appeal to the Greek.”

This passage should be placed directly beside the defence to Marcella because it demonstrates that Jerome did not later retreat from his claim that the received Latin New Testament required correction. He continued to describe his own work with the language of restoration, and once again he placed the final textual court of appeal not in familiar Latin ecclesiastical usage but in the earlier Greek tradition.

The juxtaposition with his remarks about copyists is especially important. Jerome knew how easily textual transmission could become interpretive rather than merely reproductive. A careless scribe, he says, may cease copying “what they find” and instead write “what they take to be the meaning.” That is almost a definition of one of the dangers confronting any textual tradition: the person transmitting the text begins correcting it according to his own understanding of what the author ought to have said.

Jerome therefore understood perfectly well that a person intending to correct error can create further error. This makes his own New Testament revision worthy of examination rather than automatic acceptance. His motive may have been restoration, but the correctness of each restoration still depended upon whether his judgment of the Greek evidence was right.

The important principle is supplied by Jerome himself. The textual critic does not become the source merely because he is trying to recover the source. His work remains open to testing against the manuscripts from which he claims to restore the text.

This is where Augustine becomes exceptionally important, because we are no longer dependent solely upon Jerome’s description of his own work. Augustine knew Jerome, corresponded with him, respected his scholarship, and nevertheless treated Jerome’s Gospel revision as something that could and should be checked against Greek manuscripts.

In Augustine’s Letter 71 to Jerome, he says:

“we are in no small measure thankful to God”

for Jerome’s work translating the Gospels:

“from the original Greek.”

Augustine then explains that scholars had actually compared Jerome’s version against Greek Scripture:

“in almost every passage we have found nothing to object to”

when they:

“compared it with the Greek Scriptures.”

The words “almost every passage” deserve attention. Augustine’s praise is considerable, but it is not an assertion that Jerome’s work is incapable of error. Indeed, Augustine immediately acknowledges the possibility that an exception may occasionally be found:

“if, as indeed very rarely happens, something be found to which exception may be taken…”

His language is generous toward Jerome, but the principle is unmistakable. Jerome’s revision is judged by comparison with the Greek text rather than becoming correct merely because Jerome produced it or because Damasus commissioned it.

Augustine even describes how an older erroneous Latin reading should be handled. Someone defending an:

“old false translation”

can, he says, be corrected through:

“the production and collation of manuscripts.”

That sentence fits perfectly with the argument already developed from Jerome’s Preface and Letter XXVII. Antiquity by itself does not establish textual truth. A reading may be old and still be false. Familiarity may explain why Christians resist its removal, but familiarity cannot establish that an evangelist originally wrote it. Manuscripts must be produced, compared and judged.

Augustine therefore agrees with Jerome on the fundamental principle while simultaneously preserving the right to test Jerome’s execution of that principle.

This is tremendously important for the question of authority. Damasus’s command authorized Jerome to undertake the revision, but Augustine does not treat that authorization as rendering the finished text immune from scholarly examination. He compares Jerome with the Greek and effectively says that the work is extremely good precisely because such comparison usually confirms it.

That is a radically different proposition from saying that Jerome’s revision must be accepted because Roman ecclesiastical authority commissioned it.

Jerome’s reply to Augustine confirms the same point from his own side. Referring directly to Augustine’s approval of his New Testament revision, Jerome says:

“you approve of my labours in revising the translation of the New Testament”

and identifies Augustine’s reason:

“very many are acquainted with the Greek language”

and consequently:

“are therefore competent judges of my work.”

This admission deserves to be placed prominently in the article because it places a clear limit upon any attempt to transform Jerome’s revision into an act that possessed unquestionable ecclesiastical authority merely because Damasus commissioned it.

Jerome himself calls other people “competent judges of my work.”

They are competent because they know Greek.

In other words, they possess access to the linguistic and manuscript evidence by which Jerome’s translation can be tested.

Jerome therefore recognises an authority above his own textual judgment: the evidence of the source text.

This is entirely consistent with what he had written to Marcella. When accused of correcting the Gospel against “the authority of the ancients and the opinion of the whole world,” Jerome did not answer that Damasus’s episcopal authority made his changes correct. He answered that the Latin manuscripts were demonstrably faulty and that he had attempted to restore them to Greek.

The Greek evidence was therefore the justification.

Consequently, Greek evidence could also expose a mistake.

Jerome’s own words establish this.

The Ending of Mark Shows How Large the Textual Questions Could Become

The textual problems known to Jerome were not confined to a single word such as sine causa in Matthew 5:22. In Letter 120 to Hedibia, written around A.D. 406–407, Jerome discusses one of the most famous textual questions in the history of the New Testament: the ending of Mark.

In responding to an apparent difficulty between the resurrection narratives, Jerome presents one possible solution as refusing to accept the disputed Markan testimony because the passage occurs:

“in few gospels”

while:

“almost all the books of Greece”

lack the passage at the end.

This statement concerns the material following Mark 16:8, the passage conventionally numbered Mark 16:9–20.

The evidence needs to be handled carefully. Jerome’s discussion follows Eusebius’s earlier treatment of essentially the same problem so closely that the statement about “almost all” Greek manuscripts should not simply be presented as though Jerome personally conducted an independent census of every Greek Gospel manuscript known to Christendom. Scholars have long noted Jerome’s dependence upon Eusebius at this point.

Even with that qualification, however, the passage is highly significant for our present investigation. Jerome is participating in a textual world in which Christians were fully aware that manuscripts of Mark could end differently, and the extent of the Gospel itself could become part of textual argument.

This is far more substantial than variations in spelling or grammar.

A whole resurrection passage could be discussed in terms of whether it occurred in the manuscript tradition.

Jerome nevertheless included Mark 16:9–20 in the Vulgate Gospel tradition. That fact requires caution before suggesting that his Letter to Hedibia represents a straightforward rejection of the longer ending. What it unquestionably establishes is that Jerome knew the passage had a contested manuscript history and was willing to discuss its textual status openly.

That evidence reinforces what his Preface to Damasus had already told us: “the Greek” was not itself a perfectly uniform object. Returning to Greek did not eliminate textual criticism because Greek manuscripts themselves could disagree about the presence or absence of significant material.

Against the Pelagians Preserves an Even More Extraordinary Markan Variant

Jerome’s Dialogue Against the Pelagians provides another extraordinary example. There he says that a particular addition occurs:

“In some copies, and especially in the Greek codices”

near:

“the end of his Gospel”

according to Mark. He then quotes Mark 16:14 and continues with additional words in which the disciples explain their unbelief.

This additional material later became known as the Freer Logion. It is particularly remarkable because when Codex Washingtonianus was discovered many centuries later, the Greek manuscript actually contained a form of this additional passage after Mark 16:14. Jerome’s earlier testimony was therefore evidence of a genuine ancient Gospel variant rather than an imaginary example.

The implications for the present article are substantial. Jerome had encountered Gospel manuscripts in which the textual form of Mark differed not merely by individual words but by whole blocks of additional speech attributed to the risen Christ and His disciples.

Again, the point should not be sensationalised into the claim that Jerome personally invented or removed these passages.

The opposite lesson is more historically important.

The Gospel manuscript tradition known to Jerome already contained significant textual variation.

That meant someone attempting to produce a corrected Latin text necessarily had to decide which readings represented the evangelist and which represented later addition.

The editor could not escape judgment.

The only question was whether the judgment was correct.

Oecumenius Preserves “Stone” Where Later Bibles Read “Linen”

A striking example of textual alteration appears in the earliest surviving Greek commentary on Revelation, attributed to Oecumenius and usually dated to the late sixth or early seventh century. At Revelation 15:6, the familiar KJV reads:

“And the seven angels came out of the temple, having the seven plagues, clothed in pure and white linen, and having their breasts girded with golden girdles.”

The crucial word in the familiar Greek form is λίνον — linon, “linen.” Oecumenius, however, was reading λίθον — lithon, “stone.” His text therefore described the angels as clothed in a “pure, bright stone,” and his interpretation proves that this was not a casual slip. He explains:

“That the angels are clothed in a pure, bright stone is indicative of their rank, purity and brightness, and that they possess a nature wholly given to the good, since they have put on Christ.”

He then explains why the word “stone” matters:

“For the Lord is called stone by the divine Scriptures.”

He appeals to Isaiah:

“Behold, I am laying for the foundations of Zion a costly and select stone”

and to the Psalm:

“The stone which the builders rejected, he has become the head of the corner.”

He even connects the imagery with Paul:

“Put on our stone, Jesus Christ.”

Oecumenius therefore clearly possessed a textual tradition in which Revelation 15:6 read λίθον, “stone,” rather than λίνον, “linen.” His entire explanation depends upon that reading.

The visual difference between the two Greek words is tiny:

λίθον — stone

λίνον — linen

Yet the effect on the verse is enormous. One form presents the angels in linen; the other presents them in something interpreted as precious stone and therefore, in Oecumenius’s theology, as clothed in Christ . A minute textual change produces a completely different image and therefore a completely different interpretation.

Rufinus Shows How Dangerous Jerome’s Biblical Revision Appeared to His Contemporaries

The controversy becomes still clearer in the bitter dispute between Jerome and Rufinus. Rufinus’s principal complaints at this point concern Jerome’s Old Testament translation from Hebrew rather than the Gospel revision specifically, so his accusations should not dishonestly be presented as though he were commenting directly upon Matthew 5:22 or Jerome’s revision of Mark.

Nevertheless, Rufinus provides invaluable contemporary evidence for the anxiety produced by Jerome’s willingness to revise biblical books.

He accuses Jerome of:

“audacity to alter the books of the divine Scriptures”

and asks how Christians should treat translations Jerome is distributing:

“through our churches and monasteries”

and:

“through all our cities and walled towns.”

Rufinus’s objection is theological as well as textual. He regards Jerome’s claim to possess a “truer form” than the version traditionally received by Christians as extraordinarily dangerous, particularly because the Septuagint had been associated with apostolic usage.

Elsewhere the controversy is framed still more sharply. Jerome, presenting the accusation directed against him, writes:

“You may correct the Latin Scriptures from the Greek”

and:

“deliver to the Churches to read something different from what they received from the Apostles.”

This passage requires the same caution as before. It occurs in Jerome’s own polemical Apology Against Rufinus, so it should not be placed inside quotation marks as though we possess an independent stenographic transcript of Rufinus speaking those exact words. It is Jerome’s representation of the accusation being made against him.

Yet the underlying controversy is unmistakable. Jerome’s biblical revision raised a question that Christians around him could not avoid: if the churches had inherited and read one form of Scripture for generations, what happened when an individual scholar announced that the inherited wording was wrong and supplied another?