Today (9/30/2020) is the 1600th death anniversary of Saint Jerome and also the closing of the Year of the Word of God. You can download here Pope Franci's Letter on the Sixteen Hundredth Death Anniversary of Saint Jerome.
Jerome was, next to Origen, the most outstanding biblical scholar of the early Church (CHB I, p. 510).
The Young Biblical Scholar
Born to a rich Christian family in AD 346 in Stridon (a town in the Roman Province of Dalmatia, today's Bosnia), he was tutored "almost from the very cradle" by grammarians, rhetoricians, and philosophers.
At age 27, he set out for the East (Antioch in Syria). He had a fever that he almost died. When he recovered, he made an oath to devote himself to the study of the Sacred Scriptures. He asked to be taught the Hebrew language as he lived there an extremely ascetic life.
In 382, he went to Rome and became the secretary to Pope Damasus. Later on, the pope commissioned Jerome to revise the Latin Bible.
Because of his reputation as a scholar, high-born and wealthy Roman ladies became his "fans" and also his Bible "students". Unfortunately, Pope Damasus died and the next pope did not believe in Jerome's capabilities as had Damasus.
With Paula, one of the Roman lady supporters, he left Rome forever and settled in Bethlehem beginning in the autumn of 386.
The Scholar in Bethlehem and the Vulgate
It is on this birthplace of Jesus that Jerome embarked on his most productive period as a scholar, both as a teacher, commentator, and translator. He continued to learn the Hebrew language, asking some of his Jewish friends to tutor him.
He resumed his revision of the Latin Bible even if he was no longer under the patronage of the pope. However, the Septuagint (Greek Old Testament or LXX), which has gained authority even in the church in the West, and thus the basis of the revision, proved to Jerome problematic. He found it complicated and unsatisfactory since it is itself a translation and so secondary. He was more and more convinced that the Latin version of the Old Testament would be better if the basis is the Hebrew original.
This was the reason why Jerome finally decided to produce a new translation based on what he called HEBRAICA VERITAS (the Hebrew verity).
Despite the many external problems he encountered: failing eyesight and other serious health problems, the loss of his friends like Paula who died in 404, he was able to finish the work in 405. This "Jerome's Bible" is popularly known as "the Vulgate", which was to become the official Latin Bible of the Church.
Jerome and the Biblical Canon
Because of his passion and conviction for the HEBRAICA VERITAS ("the truth of the Hebrew Text" over the Greek Septuagint and old Latin translations), Jerome's view of the Old Testament canon is different from what we Catholics have as our official list of biblical books. He listed 22 books by their names. Any book that is not on the list -- those books that are not rendered in Hebrew but are in the Septuagint (e.g. Baruch, Tobit, Judith, Sirach, Wisdom of Solomon, 1-2 Maccabees), he called "apocryphal." Today, Catholics call these seven books, the Deuterocanonical Books. The canon or list of biblical books of the Protestants follows that of Jerome's.
Death on September 30, 420
Almost already blind, Jerome was even more productive after the Latin Bible project. Jerome's major Old Testament commentaries were written during these last years. He died 1600 years ago leaving behind an unfinished commentary on the book of the prophet Jeremiah.
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