Saint Jerome's Hebrew questions on Genesis

St. Jerome was one of the very few early Christian scholars who knew Hebrew. This is the first translation, complete with a comprehensive introduction and commentary, of his Hebrew Questions on Genesis - providing a striking and fascinating picture of that knowledge put to work.

It shows clearly that Jerome was not only familiar with biblical Hebrew, which he had to know in order to translate the Old Testament into Latin; but that he was also aware of Jewish tradition, now preserved in the classic writings of Judaism, the Talmuds and the Midrashim. Jerome was interested in popular Jewish tradition as well as scholarly lore, and he often records details known to the Aramaic Targumim, the popular combined translations and interpretations of the Hebrew Bible in the every-day Aramaic language of the common Jew. Jerome's work provides unique evidence for the dating of much early Jewish material, now of increasing importance as modern critical study of Jewish texts has begun to question hitherto accepted dates.

As a Christian who knew Hebrew, Jerome's influence on the Church was very great; but he acquired his knowledge with great effort, and his work reflects the curious relations between this particular Christian and his Jewish informants which is not without interest for current Jewish-Christian relations. Why Jerome wrote the Hebrew Questions is one of the major concerns of the book.