The Vulgate Genesis and St.

Jerome's Attitudes to Women

Jane Barr

Much has been written about Jerome's attitudes to women as expressed in his letters
and pamphlets, and it has not gone unnoticed that his exegesis contains anti-feminist
material. To quote from David Wiesen's work, St Jerome as a Satirist:

The major vehicles of Jerome's propaganda were his letters and polemical works.
When composing his biblical commentaries, however, he naturally found it difficult to
suppress entirely thoughts of those causes for which he was simultaneously
campaigning in his other works. Satiric comments, therefore, intended to promote
such causes, frequently obtrude themselves incongruously into his exegesis.\1
Wiesen then goes on to quote examples of "profound anti-feminism" in Jerome's
commentary on Isaiah.

I would like to carry this argument a stage further and to suggest that Jerome's
attitudes to women were such a powerful and all-pervasive influence upon him that
the accuracy of his Vulgate translation itself has been affected.

It is Jerome's hostility to women (and his suspicion and fear of them) that is usually
emphasized. Some of my examples show evidence of this bias. But some of my
examples also show a great warmth and sensitivity on his part to the women
concerned in the passages, and I am inclined to attribute to St. Jerome a much more
sympathetic and affectionate nature than does David Wiesen, who says:

In his relationship with Paula alone does Jerome reveal any natural tenderness or
affection. The tone of his relationship with other people was determined above all by
the harsh and inexorable nature of a scholarly and doctrinaire ascetic.\2
Now it was, as is well known, Jerome's intention to produce a strictly accurate
translation from the Hebrew. In his introduction to his translation of the Psalms from
the Hebrew he says emphatically (and I believe that the same statement would have
equal validity with reference to his translation of the Pentateuch): "Certe confidenter
dicam . . . me nihil, dumtaxat scientem, de Hebraica veritate mutasse."

It is my contention that in the Book of Genesis Jerome is, as a general rule, a very
careful and accurate translator (I am confining myself to a discussion of this one book
only, although similar examples could be adduced from other books). When I
assembled my list of passages in the Book of Genesis where Jerome's translation is
either quite inaccurate, or is too free to accord with his aim of attaining Hebraica
veritas, I was interested to find that most of these irregularities occurred in passages
concerning women. It is my observation that whenever Jerome approached a passage
where women were involved his usual objectivity deserted him, and his translation
became less precise, and, not infrequently, biased. (I would, as an aside, want to make
this plain: this paper does not spring from a preconceived belief that Jerome's attitude
might have affected his Vulgate translation, or from a feminist stance. It sprang from
observations made during a linguistic study of the Vulgate Genesis in relation to the
LXX, the pre-Vulgate Latin and, especially, the Hebrew.)

It is of course important for us to be sure that Jerome knew Hebrew well, otherwise
we might have to attribute his mistakes to simple ignorance. As we have just heard, it
was his declared intent to change nothing, at any rate, not knowingly. I am quite sure
that he knew Hebrew well. Where the Septuagint and Old Latin had an error, Jerome
usually noticed and produced a correct rendition.

In both of the following instances it would have been easy to overlook the error
because the LXX translation made sense in the context. But Jerome noticed and

corrected:
Now the examples I am bringing forward to support my argument are by no means all
errors. Most of them are examples of a rather free translation. My argument would
have less validity if it were the case that Jerome did translate rather freely throughout
the Book of Genesis. But, as I have already said, this is not the case. I use the term
"free" with regard to meaning and content. The one exception I would make is the
matter of adverbs. Jerome is inclined to insert these gratuitously. This is an interesting
observation, suggesting, I think, that he noticed a dearth of adverbs in the Hebrew
language and felt that Latin called for them. While he insists that elegance of style
should be shunned in a Bible translation,\3 I think that he was an instinctive stylist and
felt that the insertion of adverbs was essential for a readable and smooth-flowing
Latin version. While many of his added adverbs are somewhat conventional ones like
magis, valde, vere, etc., he also uses highly descriptive words like sapientissime or
violenter, for which there is no Hebrew equivalent.
I have therefore treated adverbs as a special case and have excluded them from
consideration, but the following example will illustrate their use. As you will see, the
first adverb, propius, though pleonastic, has some basis in the Hebrew verb, but the
second, confidenter, is pure addition:

Now at this point I have to make a qualification. The possibility cannot be excluded
that Jerome had in places a different Hebrew text from ours or that of the early Greek
or Latin translators. It is also possible that the Vulgate itself has suffered alteration
and that we do not have Jerome's version at all points. But for practical purposes we
are entitled to work with the texts as we have received them and draw our conclusions
on the basis of them.

Another question might be put. Jerome is known to have consulted Jewish scholars on
difficult points. Might not they have persuaded him of some unusual interpretation?
They might indeed, and, except where we have evidence in the Targums or other
relevant sources, it is impossible to be sure. But one should not suppose that Jewish
interpretations worked so frequently on Jerome's mind that they caused him to differ
from the plain sense of the language of the text; there are many places where Jewish
interpretations are well known, but where there is no sign of them in the Vulgate. If
Jerome in fact produced renderings which were not required by the language of the
text, whether or not these interpretations reached him from other sources, he produced
them because they appealed to him at these particular points. It was not his normal
practice to fly in the face of the accepted text and the traditional meaning of the
passage.

The following are only a few instances from a large collection of examples, and they
are treated only very briefly. They have been chosen for their variety. Some betray
Jerome's antipathy to women, some show a deep sensitivity and awareness. Some may
seem trivial at first sight, but Jerome is a faithful translator of the Hebrew as a rule,
and therefore any divergence from it is unusual and assumes importance.

First, an example from the story of Dinah:

Here Jerome has both perceived the correct meaning of the Hebrew verb (in contrast
to the Greek and the Old Latin) and used an extremely vivid expression, conglutinata
est: the Hebrew means, literally, "to stick," and his vivid rendering is also very close
to the original.

In the second part of the same verse we find:

The Hebrew seems to say, "he spoke to the heart of the girl," which is commonly
understood to mean "he spoke kindly to the girl." The Greek and Latin hardly express
the emotional depth of the phrase; they are something like,"he spoke according to the
understanding of the girl." Jerome goes much farther: "He soothed her in her sadness
with soft words." Notice the tristem, an addition to the bare text. Here Jerome is
adding his own comment. The girl is grief-stricken, and he is interpreting her feelings
sympathetically. The tenderness towards her is shown by two words: "He soothed her
with soft words."

In the next example we again have an addition:

The LXX and OL follow the Hebrew and say simply "he went in to Rachel." Jerome
says "having at last obtained the desired marriage." Then he produces the strained and
periphrastic phrase amorem sequentis priori praetulit in place of the simple and
touching "he loved Rachel more than Leah." I do not think he has improved on the
original; his usual good judgement is here at fault.

A much more marked lack of taste is evident in the next example, from the story of
Judah and Tamar:
Here for the simple Hebrew "Behold, she is with child" we have videtur uterus illius
intumescere. Jerome found the sight of pregnant women disgusting, and in his letters
speaks with distate of tumor uteri.\4 He inserts the reference here quite unnecessarily
and crudely. Look however at v. 28:

Here Jerome again adds his own material, this time however in a most striking and
effective manner. The Hebrew has simply "at her giving birth." The birth (of twins),
you will remember, is complicated. First one child appeared (the nurse tied a colored
cord round its hand); then it disappeared again, making way for the other. Jerome,
with a touch of brilliance, says in ipsa effusione infantum.

The rest of my examples contain a hint, sometimes more than a hint, of moral
judgement. Not surprisingly the story of Potiphar's wife yields some examples. In
Genesis 39.7 we have her demand to Joseph, "Lie with me." In the next verse the
Hebrew, followed by the LXX and OL, then says simply "And he refused."

Jerome makes Joseph's denial much more emphatic, and stresses the wickedness of
the deed: Vg nequaquam adquiescens operi nefario. Two verses later, at 39.10, the
woman is called molesta and her crime is called stuprum, a very strong word. While
one may agree with the justice of Jerome's condemnation, the fact is that these words
are not in the Hebrew. I have noted two other insertions by Jerome in the same story,
at verse 13 se esse contemptam and verse 19 nimium credulus.

Then a minor but typical example from the story of Rachel's theft of her father's idols.
Rachel is sitting on them to conceal them from Laban.
The Hebrew says, "He searched and did not find the teraphim," The Vulgate has
"Thus the anxious care of the searcher was cheated" - a much more emotive phrase
than the original.

We now have a more serious instance, from Genesis 3.16:

It is the first half of the verse that concerns us. In the Hebrew we have the word [ ]
which means "strong desire," probably of a sexual nature, giving "Your desire will be
for your husband." The LXX amd OL have the unsatisfactory [] and
conversio, "turning"; but the general meaning is not too far from the original. In the
Vulgate however we have sub potestate, "you will be under the power of your
husband." Now it is not the case that Jerome found the Hebrew word difficult. In the
next chapter in the story of Cain, the same word occurs and Jerome there translated it
as appetitus, "strong desire." So unless the Vulgate has meantime been changed by
another hand we must conclude that Jerome intended to suppress the true meaning
here, and this alteration is of the greatest significance.\5

My last example is from the story of Abraham, Sarah and Abimelech. Abimelech is
addressing Sarah before sending her away:

The Hebrew form [ ] is still difficult today. Probably it may be understood as from the
root [ ] and therefore as meaning "to be found to be right," that is, "be vindicated" (cf.
RSV, NEB). The Greek and the Old Latin, however, probably identified it as
belonging to the root [ ] (cf. LXX  for this at Isaiah 26.10), and this led to
their interpretation "tell everything true" or "tell the whole truth." Even more
uncertain is the basis for Jerome's rendering quocumque perrexeris, mementoque te
deprehensam. We shall leave aside the first phrase, as it makes better sense if taken as
belonging to the previous clause; or else it may arise from double translation of the
Hebrew. The second phrase, however, is very interesting indeed: "Remember that you
were caught [i.e. caught out in wrongdoing]." There are several ways in which Jerome
may have analyzed the Hebrew in order to reach such an understanding of the sense:
possibly, for instance, he derived it from another meaning of the verb [ ], coming
close to "convince, convict, reprove, chide"; or else he might even have diagnosed it
as a form from [ ], with the meaning therefore of "to be taken." In any case, his
rendering, as it emerges, expressed more than a hint of moral judgement; it is a very
strong reproof to an erring wife. Jerome uses deprehendere for the catching out of a
woman in immorality also in places like Leviticus 21.9, Numbers 5.13, where there is
no closely corresponding Hebrew term. The expression seems to have appealed to
him. Was his mind perhaps echoing the more famous mulier deprehensa, the "woman
taken in adultery," of John 8?

If it is true, and here I quote J.N.D. Kelly, that "Jerome's treatment of questions of
celibacy and marriage enormously helped to shape the Christian sexual ethic that was
to dominate Western civilization until the Renaissance at least"\6 - then, if it can be
shown that the accuracy of the Vulgate was even to a small extent affected by his
attitude and prejudices, this is of considerable importance.

Oxford, England

Notes

1 David Wiesen, St. Jerome as a Satirist (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1964), p.
160.
2 P. 142.
3 Epistle 49.4.
4 Epistle 107.11, cf. Epistle 22.2.
5 See Jane Barr, "The Influence of St. Jerome on Medieval Attitudes to Women," in
After Eve: Women in the Theology of the Christian Tradition, ed. Janet Martin
Soskice (London: Marshall Pickering, 1990), esp. 94-95.
6 J.N.D. Kelly, Jerome, His Life, Writings and Controversies (New York: Harper,
1975), p. 106.

See also the review of Cary J. Nederman, Nancy Van Deusen, and E. Ann Matter.,
eds. Mind Matters: Studies of Medieval and Early Modern Intellectual History in
Honour of Marcia Colish. Disputatio, vol. 21. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols Publishers
n.v., 2009. Pp. viii, 308. €60.00. ISBN: 978-2-503-52756-7. Reviewed by Charles G.
Nauert Emeritus, University of Missouri NauertC@missouri.edu
The essay "Fake Fathers" by Gary Macy deals with a problem of scholarship that has
concerned modern classicists and medievalists but not medieval authors themselves,
few of whom subjected manuscripts to critical evaluation. The problem is that many
supposedly authoritative classical and patristic texts were falsely attributed to a
respected authority, sometimes in error, sometimes deliberately forged. Macy begins
with the great collection of canon law made in the twelfth century by the monk
Gratian, the Decretum. It became the standard authority for teaching in faculties of
canon law. Gratian himself had no legislative authority. His Decretum was a
collection of the opinions of others: popes, councils, and patristic authors. As a
collector, he and his continuators carefully specified the source for each document.
But, Macy notes, Gratian sometimes accepted forgeries or misattributed works to
influential authors and thus also attributed authoritative standing to false documents.
On some points of law, there were so many genuine authorities available that the
inclusion of false texts made little difference. But Macy notes one specific legal issue
on which many of the texts were either forgeries or misattributions. This issue was the
status of women in the church, specifically the texts that declared women ineligible to
serve at the altar and in other respects made them legally inferior to men. Many of
these documents were forgeries, notably the works of an unidentified author known as
Ambrosiaster, which were attributed to either Ambrose or Augustine. Thus many of
the laws that limited women to subordinate, inferior status in the church rested on
flimsy foundations and established principles that were not reflected in the genuine
works of the two great Latin Fathers. Macy provides a detailed analysis of the rule
forbidding women to serve at the altar, showing that the authorities found in the
Decretum were either forgeries or had been so corrupted by scribal errors that they
appeared to support views not found in the original. One text forbidding women to
teach men and laypersons to teach clerics is presented as a decree of the Fourth
Council of Carthage, an assembly that never existed. That rule was patched together
from two passages in the greatest medieval collection of forged legal documents, the
pseudo-Isidorean Decretals, which Gratian had incorporated without suspecting that it
was full of forgeries. Macy continues with other forgeries demeaning and subjugating
women that Gratian accepted without question. He does not claim that these forgeries
were the sole cause of the restrictions imposed on women by the canon law, but the
inauthentic documents in Gratian's Decretum were "at least one factor" in the process.