Published in Mirabilia Journal 31 (2020/2)  

Keywords: Keywords: Hebraica veritas, Jerome, Septuagint.

Among modern scholars Jerome is specially recognised as having rescued the Hebrew language as the main source for Bible studies, both on matters of translation and of interpretation. It is said, besides, that Jerome’s Hebrew methodology might be summarized under the famous phrase hebraica veritas, which he himself used quite frequently. The paper attempts to explain, beginning with a study of the expresion hebraica veritas, that putting too much weight on this expression and the hermeneutical principle involved, could bring us to forget the esteem Jerome had for the Septuagint. To bring forward the discussion the paper evaluates four aspects of Jerome’s exegesis: 1) the priority of the Hebrew original text; 2) the priority of the sense over the letter in translation; 3) the priority of the spiritual interpretation over the litteral one; and, 4) the translation of both Hebrew and Greek texts as lemmas in Jerome’s commentaries.