Simone Rickerby: The LXX Text of Jerome’s Biblical Commentaries

Jerome exerted much effort producing commentaries on various books of the Old Testament. In these commentaries we find certain readings associated with the term “Septuaginta” or the letters “LXX”. These designations—which are still used today to refer to the Greek translation of various books of the Hebrew Bible—draw our attention to a Latin translation of a Greek text, the character of which is not fully apparent. While we may posit that these Latin translations are the work of Jerome we cannot assume that this is the case. In this paper we will examine several examples of these LXX readings from Jerome’s commentaries, each providing a different insight into the complex relationship between Jerome’s LXX text and the extant textual traditions. Our first point of examination must be the relationship between the LXX texts of Jerome's commentaries and the older Latin textual traditions, also the result of translation(s) from the Greek. When we compare Jerome’s LXX text with the extant older Latin manuscript and Patristic evidence we discover that Jerome's text is often similar, but not identical, to the older Latin. This variation may be attributed to either Jerome's own lexical preferences or his dependence on an otherwise lost older Latin textual tradition(s). Our second, and related, line of inquiry, concerns the nature of the Greek text underlying Jerome’s LXX text. It will be suggested that Jerome's LXX text may provide access to a Greek text that is otherwise unattested.