JEROME (ca. 349-ca. 419)

A Monk, biblical scholar. He was born at Strido, near Aquileia at the head of the Adriatic. He studied in Rome, where he was baptized. He devoted himself to asceticism. He moved to the Syrian Desert near Chalcis, where he began learning Hebrew and Greek with intense study of the scriptures. In Egypt he attended the Catechetical School of Alexandria under Origen and visited Coptic monasteries. From 382 to 385, he was back in Rome, where he became a secretary to Pope Damasus I. Jerome’s greatest achievement was the translation of most of the Bible into Latin from Greek and Hebrew.

The vulgate Bible became the version that the Roman Church used almost exclusively throughout its history until modern times. Jerome wrote many biblical commentaries and translated several works of Origen and Eusibius of Caesarae into Latin, and continued the Historia ecclesiastica of the latter. He combated fiercely Arianism, Pelagianism, and Origenism. In 404, he translated the cenobitic, or communal, rules of St. Pachomius into Latin from a Greek translation, which had been made for him from the Coptic text.

GAWDAT GABRA