Teppei Kato: Greek or Hebrew? Augustine and Jerome on Biblical Translation

This paper elucidates what the main topic is in the discussion between Augustine and Jerome about biblical translation by focusing on their views about the source text of translation. The difference of the understanding of the "Old Testament" between the two is usually considered to lie in their theological interpretation of the origin of the LXX. Augustine inherits Philo's understanding and regards the LXX to be more legitimate than the Hebrew text. According to Augustine, since the LXX translators were inspired by the Spirit, the prophecy reflected in the original text was updated during the translation. Jerome, on the other hand, indicates that the LXX translators intentionally made a different translation from the original text: the LXX is, accordingly, unreliable because it disagrees not only with the original, but also the Old Testament quotations in the New Testament, some of which were clearly cited from the Hebrew text. These explanations are reasonable, but we can more simply explain the difference between the two from the viewpoint of Translation studies: educated people in Latin-speaking world were accustomed to reading a translated text while comparing its original. Accordingly, Augustine claims that the source text of the Bible must be in Greek so that many readers can refer to both the original and translation, while Jerome chose the Hebrew text because even non-Hebrew readers would be able to know the meaning of the original by consulting with the Jews. In other words, Augustine and Jerome discussed the readers' readability of the source text.