Book Two: On the Hebrew, Chaldee, Greek and Latin Vulgate Editions

Chapter One: It is Shown that the Hebrew Edition of Moses and the Prophets has never Perished.

We discoursed in the previous book about the sacred books themselves, so as to vindicate their number and authority from the calumnies of the heretics. What follows is for us briefly to discourse of the various editions of the same books, that is, the Hebrew, the Chaldee, the Greek, the Latin, the German, the Gallic, and the like, which are called vulgates. For it would profit little to know the number of the divine books if we do not know to which among such various editions as are now extant we should attribute authority.

To begin then from the Hebrew edition, there are two things that come into question. One, whether the Scripture itself, which was put together by Moses and the Prophets, has come down to us. The second, whether the Scripture, which is contained in the Hebrew codices, has become so corrupted and disfigured by the perverse zeal of the Jews that it deserves no authority in the Church.

On the first question there is a twofold opinion. One is of those who teach that the whole of sacred Scripture perished at the time of the Babylonian captivity, when the city was overthrown and the temple burnt, and that it was then restored again by Ezra, the Holy Spirit suggesting and dictating to him everything as it had been before. So Basil seems to think in his epistle to Chilon: “This is the field where retreat was made and where Ezra brought forth, by command of God, all the divine books.” So Basil. Some add to the same opinion Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Clement of Alexandria, but they do not openly teach this.

This opinion seems to us improbable. For it rests on no other foundation than the witness of an apocryphal book, that is, of the fourth book of Ezra, in the fourteenth chapter, where it is written in expressive words that Ezra, inspired by the Holy Spirit for a whole forty days, dictated to fifteen men who, with supreme speed, received what was said by him and in this way the whole Scripture, which had plainly perished, was restored. But this book is not only apocryphal and never received by the Catholic Church, but is also in many places redolent of Jewish fables, and in this very fourteenth chapter it speaks no otherwise of certain occult and more perfect books than all the Talmudists do of their Cabala. Wherefore the testimony of this book rather takes faith away from this opinion than confers faith upon it; but nothing of this sort is gathered from the canonical books.

But as to what some say, that this is gathered from the second book of Ezra ch.8, it is so far from being true that the contrary may rather be collected therefrom. For thus we read: “The scribes said to Ezra that he should bring forward the book of the law of Moses. Therefore Ezra brought it forward etc.” They did not say that he should again compose the book of the law, but that he should bring it forward, because they knew that it was still found. Besides, although the Scripture that was kept publicly was burned in the temple and perished, yet it is not incredible that there were also other examples, or at least certain parts of them, in the hands of private men, and especially in the hands of Ezekiel, Daniel, Jeremiah, Haggai, Zachariah, Mardoch, and Ezra himself, who were then living and who without doubt cared for the law of the Lord.

There is therefore a second opinion, that Ezra was indeed the restorer of the holy books, not by dictating them all again, but by collecting and arranging the Scriptures in one body, whose parts he had found in various places, and even by emending them if anything had been distorted by the negligence of the scribes, since the law was carelessly observed during the whole time of the captivity, for the Jews had neither temple nor tabernacle.

So do the most grave authors seem to have thought. For Chrysostom Homily 8 on the epistle to the Hebrews teaches that Ezra put it together again from the remains of the Scriptures. Hilary in his preface to the Psalms says that Ezra collected all the psalms and made one book out of them. Theodoret in his preface to the Psalms says that the old Scripture, which was corrupted in the time of the captivity, was restored by Ezra. Which same thing seems to me to have been indicated by Irenaeus bk.3 ch.25, by Tertullian in his book on the Female Habit, and by Clement in his first book of Stromateis. For they say that Ezra reviewed and restored all the books of the Old Testament, but they do not from memory add, nor do they make mention of, the story that is contained in the fourth book of Ezra.

Blessed Jerome in the Galeatic Prologue says that Ezra invented new Hebrew letters and the old ones indeed he left to the Samaritans but the new ones he handed over to the Jews, and they use them even now. For, as the same Jerome testifies on ch.9 of Ezekiel, the last letter of the ancient Hebrew alphabet was similar to the ‘T’ of the Greeks and carried the shape of a cross, since the end of the law is Christ crucified; but now the last letter of the alphabet seems to have no likeness to the cross. Therefore without doubt we have new letters. But about the new edition of the sacred books made by Ezra, Jerome says nothing, although however that was most especially the place to say it.

Lastly, if Ezra had dictated the sacred books again, it is very likely that he would have done it, not in the Hebrew tongue, but the Chaldaic, or one mixed of Hebrew and Chaldaic, which was then in us and in which we see that the books of Ezra and Daniel were written; and it is certain that the sacred books besides these of Ezra and Daniel were written in the Hebrew tongue, and the very tongue with which Adam and Eve and all the Patriarchs spoke. This is manifestly collected from the etymology of the proper names, which are often not found in any other tongue.

But to produce a few examples from many: Adam said of his wife just created, “she shall be called woman [using a certain Hebrew word], because she was taken from man” [using a similar Hebrew word], Genesis 2. But in no other tongue do ‘man’ and ‘woman’ have this likeness of name. For in the Chaldaic tongue, which is akin to Hebrew, man and woman are referred to by words that have no one letter in common. In like manner the Greek and Latin words for man and woman have no likeness of letters between them. Either then Adam did not say those words which we set down above, and he will be an exceptional liar among the Prophets, or let us confess that the divine books must needs have been written in the tongue that the first humans used.1 Similar are the things that are said in Scripture about the nature of the name of Esau, Cain, Abel, Seth, Noah, Phaleg, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and of all this sons, and also of mountains, rivers, cities, and many other things, since in the Hebrew tongue allusions of similar words are always found, but in the other languages either none or rarely.

Lastly that the Hebrew tongue, in which we see the sacred books to have been written, is very ancient and, what is more, the first of all tongues, is testified both by its brevity and simplicity and by the authority of the most learned men. See Eusebius Praep. Evangel. bk.10 ch.2, Ambrose on the third chapter of Philippians, Jerome in his epistle to Damasus on the vision of Isaiah, Augustine City of God bk.16 ch.11. Nor is it repugnant to these things that Augustine City of God bk.16 last chapter says that the Hebrew tongue was invented after the times of Noah. For Augustine did not wish to indicate that the language did not exist before, but that it only then first begin to be called the Hebrew tongue. For, as Eucherius rightly explains on Genesis ch.11, before the division of languages the Hebrew tongue was common to all men, and therefore it did not have a definite name. But at the time of Heber, since many tongues had begun to exist, the common tongue, to distinguish it from the others, was called Hebrew because it remained in the house of Heber from whom Hebrews are called.

Since therefore it is plain that the books of Ezra are full of Chaldaic words, but the books of the law and the Prophets are written in the pure Hebrew idiom, it should also seem plain that the books of the law and the Prophets that we have were not written down by Ezra but by Moses and the ancient Prophets.

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