Augustine and Jerome wrote several epistles to one another. In these epistles, how did Augustine feel about Jerome producing the Latin Vulgate? What were his concerns?

In doing research primarily online, I have been seeing conflicting claims about how deuterocanonical books were inserted into the Vulgate by Jerome. * Some say that in the original manuscripts of the Vulgate, Jerome put the deuterocanonical books into their own section. * Other sources say that Jerome interspersed the deuterocanonical books and segments into the rest of the Bible, similar to (but maybe not exactly as) the Catholic Bible integrates them now. This question is **not** asking what Jerome's opinions were on the deuterocanonical texts or if he "approved" of the Apocrypha or anything like that. This question is **strictly about how the deuterocanonical texts were placed in the original Vulgate.** Thanks!

In the *"Bondage of the Will"*, Luther mentions *St. Jerome*, no more or less than 27 times. Having some snarky comments to say about him like: *"Jerome is cast in my teeth; a man, (to say no worse of him) of neither judgment nor application"*, obviously not liking him. Why did Luther disliked St. Jerome? Consider *Tabel Talks* – Of the Books of the Fathers, DXXXIX, p 235. > Jerome should not be numbered among the teachers of the church, for he was a heretic; yet I believe that he is saved through faith in Christ. He speaks not of Christ, but merely carries his name in his mouth.

The Catholic Church believes Peter to be the leader of the apostles. Also, by the time that [Pope Damasus I commissioned St. Jerome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Books_of_the_Vulgate) with the Latin Vulgate translation of the Bible (AD 382), the papacy was already firmly established. Why then St. Jerome placed the letters of St. Peter *after* James's letter among the catholic epistles (implying that James's letter is more important Peter's letters), not to mention placing the whole group of Paul's letters before the catholic epistles? Please note that I'm not making the assumption that order automatically implies importance (whether of the subject matter or of the author). For example, the reason why Matthew came before John was that the early church (including St. Augustine) [believed that the canonical order follows the order in which the 4 gospels were written](https://taylormarshall.com/2011/09/why-matthew-is-first-gospel-and-not.html) . Did the same reason apply to the ordering of the catholic epistles? **My question**: In the (presumed) absence of other deliberate ordering reason, why is it that James's letter was placed before Peter's letters among the catholic epistles?

How did St. Jerome defend the Blessed Virgin's virginity *post partum* in light of Matt. 1:25 , which says St. Joseph "knew her not **till** she brought forth her firstborn son"?

It seems that the [Codex Amiatinus](https://www.facsimilefinder.com/facsimiles/codex-amiatinus-facsimile) is the oldest most complete version of the Vulgate bible (which misses the Book of Baruch). What did it look like? Looking up close at the blurry images, the text looks like the [Insular style script](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insular_script) which was used around the 700's in Northumbria. The text on the right page looks like it is devoid of **verse markers**, **chapter markers**, and **page markers**. But it does look like there is primitive punctuation like **spacing between words** and _possibly_ **periods** though I can't quite see clearly enough. According to [this site](http://www.bible-researcher.com/chapter-verse.html) , it was Robert Stephens' Greco-Latin Testament of 1551 which established our current "verse divisioned" bible. Though I'm not sure if this means _no_ verse divisions were present in bibles before. Primitive chapter divisions may have been present in the mid to late 1200's. But I'm confused on dates (first part of question). [Wikipedia says about the Vulgate Bible](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulgate) that it is from the 300's. [This Book of Durrow](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Durrow) is said to have been created around 700. According to [Wikipedia's Biblical Manuscripts page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_manuscript) , the Septuagint (Greek) is from around 200, while the Vulgate is from the 400s, the Codex Amiatinus being the first _complete_ Vulgate in the 700s. How does this relate to the Book of Durrow? Same font, I can see that, was it the same author? Those are tangent questions. According to [etymonline](https://www.etymonline.com/word/vulgate) , the Vulgate was first completed in 405 by St. Jerome (c.340-420). So then we only have a _partial_ copy of this from piecing together the articles, since this was centuries before the Codex Amiatinus. Interestingly, sort of side note, [vulgate](https://www.etymonline.com/word/vulgate) comes through the Medieval Latin _vulgata_, fem. past participle of _vulgare_ "to make common or public; to spread among the multitude", from _vulgus_ "the common people". The Vulgate bible wasn't "confirmed" by the Catholic Church as the "official" Latin Bible until the Council of Trent in the mid 1500s. So from my understanding, the "Vulgate" ... > ...translation was largely the work of Jerome, who in 382 had been commissioned by Pope Damasus I to revise the Vetus Latina ("Old Latin") Gospels then in use by the Roman Church. The Codex Amiatinus was a _version_ of the Vulgate written in Northumbria using the Irish-inspired Insular script. Thus, the original Jerome Vulgate probably didn't look like this. The Wikipedia page for "Vulgate" shows an image of [The Malmesbury Bible](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulgate#/media/File:Bible.malmesbury.arp.jpg) : There is no Wikipedia page for the Malmesbury Bible, so I don't know what it is. Google's first link is the [Gothic Bible](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gothic_Bible) , but there's no reference there to Malmesbury, so I don't know what it is. But [here](https://en.vikidia.org/wiki/Bible) says that Malmesbury image is from the 1400's. So no luck there. The ["Old Latin"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vetus_Latina) "Bible" looks like this: No punctuation whatsoever, justified text, all caps, no spaces, etc. Not sure what font (would love to know!). Looks like the [Uncial script](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncial_script) . Wikipedia says: > There is no single "Vetus Latina" Bible. Instead, Vetus Latina is a collection of biblical manuscript texts that are Latin translations of Septuagint and New Testament passages that preceded Jerome's Vulgate. **So should I assume that Jerome wrote the original Vulgate bible to look exactly like the Vetus Latina manuscripts at the time?** Or is there an image online in a digital museum showing one of Jerome's original manuscripts? Basically I would like to know what font, and what punctuation is used in the earliest Vulgate version. I know that by the 700's the complete copy of Codex Amiatinus was written in Insular script (Latin), with some primitive punctuation, but not exactly sure if they used periods or capital words. I think yes to periods, no to paragraphs, no to verses or chapters, and no to capital words. But _before_ Codex Amiatinus, I am not sure if the Vulgate from Jerome looked like the _Vetus Latina_, or something else. Looking forward to an explanation, specifically of this bible's typography: - The font style (or a close approximation) - If they used capital letters like we do in english Hello There - If they used periods to end sentences - If they used paragraphs - If they marked _books_ or divided them somehow - If they marked _chapters_ or divided them somehow - If they marked _verses_ or divided them somehow - If they used spaces between words (or if they used some other separator like the middle dot seen sometimes in Latin)

I have seen on multiple websites, mostly websites about [seeing the Holy Land](https://www.seetheholyland.net/tag/adoration-of-the-magi/) or otherwise pilgrimage-focused sites, that St. Jerome said: >**If I could only see that manger in which the Lord lay**! Now, as if to honour the Christ, we have removed the poor one and placed there a silver one; however, for me the one which was removed is more precious . . . . The site typically prefaces it similar to the link above saying that St. Jerome, whose cave was nearby (since Jerome lived in Bethlehem at this time), did not approve of the 4th century replacement of the marble manger with the silver manger. Also quoted around the same point in the article is a "biblical scholar" who similarly disapproves of the "men's devotions" around the cave of the nativity. **I have yet to find a basis for this quote by Jerome. Do we have any record of this statement anywhere?** My search found a somewhat contradictory quote in [letter 108, to Eustochium](http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3001108.htm) , dated AD 404: >I too, miserable sinner though I am, **have been accounted worthy to kiss the manger in which the Lord cried as a babe**, and to pray in the cave in which the travailing virgin gave birth to the infant Lord. This quote suggests that he, at least some point in the past up to AD 404, was able to access the original manger. Perhaps the manger replacement came at a later point before his death in AD 420. I could not find the original quote on either [New Advent](http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/) or [Christian Classics Ethereal Library](https://www.ccel.org/) . If anyone could find a basis for this quote attributed to Jerome, that would be great.

In a recent Q&A on Hermeneutics.SE , I made an arguement that carried the implication that Jerome's translation of *κεχαριτωμένη* ('favored one’)† as *gratia plena* ('full of grace’)† in Luke 1:28 was misleading, conflated as it is with another phrase that has a different meaning in Greek. It was rightly pointed out that I didn't discuss the reason *why* Jerome made that decision. Since I don't see an obvious *linguistic* explanation,* I wondered if there might be a doctrinal and/or sociological explanation. In another Q&A on Christianity.SE , Jerome is cited as a key proponent of the doctrine of the perpetual virginity of Mary. I'm not sure whether that has anything to do with the appellation “full of grace” or not. Other aspects of Mariology seem more relevant. I'm interested in knowing: 1. What did Jerome believe about the immaculate conception? 2. What did he believe about Mary as Mediatrix of graces ? 3. Did he use Luke 1:28 in defense of any Mary-related doctrine? --- † Glosses extracted from ESV and Douay Rheims, respectively. *Particularly with regard to translation decisions, even if I disgree with the choice, I can sometimes see the reasons for a different decision. Here I don’t.

In the Vulgate translation of Jonah 4:6–7, 4:9–10, Jerome translated the Hebrew word קִיקָיוֹן (*kikayon*) into Latin as *hedera*, which is the equivalent of the English word "ivy ." Some, including Augustine, expressed their discontent with this particular translation of Jerome. In response, what was Jerome's personal defense for his translation of the Hebrew word קִיקָיוֹן into Latin as *hedera*?