when did jerome translated the bible into latin
Jerome Jerome was a scholar at a time when that statement implied a fluency in Greek. He knew some Hebrew when he started his translation project, but moved to Jerusalem to strengthen his grip on Jewish scripture commentary. A wealthy Roman aristocrat, Paula, funded his stay in a monastery in Bethlehem and he completed his translation there. He began in 382 by correcting the existing Latin language version of the New Testament, commonly referred to as the Vetus Latina. By 390 he turned to translating the Hebrew Bible from the original Hebrew, having previously translated portions from the Septuagint which came from Alexandria. He believed that the mainstream Rabbinical Judaism had rejected the Septuagint as invalid Jewish scriptural texts because of what were ascertained as mistranslations along with its Hellenistic heretical elements.[24] He completed this work by 405. Prior to Jerome's Vulgate, all Latin translations of the Old Testament were based on the Septuagint, not the Hebrew. Jerome's decision to use a Hebrew text instead of the previous translated Septuagint went against the advice of most other Christians, including Augustine, who thought the Septuagint inspired. Modern scholarship, however, has sometimes cast doubts on the actual quality of Jerome's Hebrew knowledge. Many modern scholars believe that the Greek Hexapla is the main source for Jerome's "iuxta Hebraeos" translation of the Old Testament.[25] However, detailed studies have shown that to a considerable degree Jerome was a competent Hebraist.[26]
Septuagint The Greek title Ἡ μετάφρασις τῶν Ἑβδομήκοντα, lit. "The Translation of the Seventy", and its abbreviation "LXX", derive from the legend of seventy-two Jewish scholars (6 from each of the 12 tribes of Israel, who worked independently to translate the whole and ultimately produced identical versions) in the court of Ptolemy II in seventy-two days (see Aristeas, Letter of, below), who translated the Five Books of Moses into Koine Greek as early as the 3rd century BCE.[4][5] Separated from the Hebrew canon of the Jewish Bible in Rabbinic Judaism, translations of the Torah into Koine Greek by early Jewish Rabbis have survived as rare fragments only.