{"collection":"chr","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/chr/ecf/206/2060029.htm","path":"chr/ecf/206/2060029.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/206/2060029.htm","text":"p. 22 Letter XVIII. To Pope Damasus.\nThis (written from Constantinople in a.d. 381) is the earliest of Jerome\u2019s expository letters. In it he explains at length the vision recorded in the sixth chapter of Isaiah, and enlarges upon its mystical meaning. \u201cSome of my predecessors,\u201d he writes, \u201cmake \u2018the Lord sitting upon a throne\u2019 God the Father, and suppose the seraphim to represent the Son and the Holy Spirit. I do not agree with them, for John expressly tells us 326 that it was Christ and not the Father whom the prophet saw.\u201d And again, \u201cThe word seraphim means either \u2018glow\u2019 or \u2018beginning of speech,\u2019 and the two seraphim thus stand for the Old and New Testaments. 327 \u2018Did not our heart burn within us,\u2019 said the disciples, \u2018while he opened to us the Scriptures?\u2019 328 Moreover, the Old Testament is written in Hebrew, and this unquestionably was man\u2019s original language.\u201d Jerome then speaks of the unity of the sacred books. \u201cWhatever,\u201d he asserts, \u201cwe read in the Old Testament we find also in the Gospel; and what we read in the Gospel is deduced from the Old Testament. 329 There is no discord between them, no disagreement. In both Testaments the Trinity is preached.\u201d\nThe letter is noticeable for the evidence it affords of the thoroughness of Jerome\u2019s studies. Not only does he cite the several Greek versions of Isaiah in support of his argument, but he also reverts to the Hebrew original. So far as the West was concerned he may be said to have discovered this anew. Even educated men like Augustine had ceased to look beyond the LXX., and were more or less aghast at the boldness with which Jerome rejected its time-honored but inaccurate renderings. 330\nThe letter also shows that independence of judgment which always marked Jerome\u2019s work. At the time when he wrote it he was much under the sway of Origen. But great as was his admiration for the master, he was not afraid to discard his exegesis when, as in the case of the seraphim, he believed it to be erroneous.\nJerome greatly prides himself on this explanation, and frequently reverts to it.\n22:328 22:329\nCf. Augustine\u2019s dictum: \u201cThe New Testament is latent in the Old; the Old Testament is patent in the New.\u201d\n22:330\nSee Augustine\u2019s letters to Jerome, passim.","title":"Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Ser. II, Vol. VI: The Letters of St. Jerome.: Letter XVIII","type":"page"}