Apology against Rufinus 2.23–3.1

After these and such great things, you dare to say in your Apology that you are not the defender or champion of Origen, for whose defence Pamphilus and Eusebius seemed to you to have said too little. Against those volumes (if the Lord gives me length of this life) I will try to answer elsewhere. For now let it suffice to have met your assertions, and briefly to have instructed the prudent reader that I first saw this book, which went under the name of Pamphilus, written in your manuscript; and since it was no concern of mine what was said for a heretic, I always held it as if the work of Pamphilus and of Eusebius were different. But afterwards, when the question was raised, I wished to answer their writings, and for this reason read what each thought for Origen, and plainly discovered that the first book of Eusebius's six volumes was the very one which alone you published under the name of Pamphilus, both in Greek and in Latin, with only the meanings about the Son and the Holy Spirit changed, which displayed open blasphemy. Hence also, about ten years ago, when my friend Dexter, who held the prefecture of the praetorium, asked me to weave a catalogue of the writers of our religion, I put this book too among the other writers as published by Pamphilus, thinking it was so, as it had been spread abroad by you and your disciples. But since Eusebius himself says that Pamphilus wrote nothing except short letters to friends, and the first book of his six volumes contains the same things in the same words that were feigned by you under the name of Pamphilus, it is plain that you wished to spread this book abroad in order to bring in heresy under the person of a martyr. And since you have corrupted much of this very book which you pretend is Pamphilus's, and it is one thing in Greek, another in Latin, you ought not to impute your fraud to my error. For I believed it to be the book of him whose name the title bore, just as with the Peri Archon and many other works of Origen and of very many Greek writers, which I either did not read before, or am now compelled to read, the question of heresy having been raised, so that I may know what I ought to avoid, what to approve. Hence too in my youth I simply translated, for those who asked, only his homilies which he spoke to the people, in which there were not such great stumbling blocks, prejudicing no one by those that are approved to accept those that are manifestly heretical. Certainly (to cut short a long speech), as I show that I received the book from those who copied it from your manuscript, so you show from whom you received the copy, so that he who cannot give another as author of the book may be held guilty of the falsehood. "The good man out of the good treasure of the heart brings forth good things"; and from the sweetness of the fruit the tree of noble seed is known.

Brother Eusebius writes that, among the African bishops who had come to the court on church business, he found a letter written as if in my name, in which I did penance and testified that I had been led on in youth by the Hebrews to translate the Hebrew volumes into Latin, in which there is no truth. Hearing this, I was astounded. And since "in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word stands," and one witness was not believed even if he were Cato, the letters of many brothers from the City told me the same thing, asking whether it was so, and tearfully indicating by whom the letter had been spread among the people. He who dared to do this, what would he not dare? It is well that malice has not as much strength as effort. Innocence would have perished if power were always joined to wickedness, and slander prevailed in all it desires. My style, such as it is, and my form of speech the most eloquent man could not reproduce; but amid the very tricks and another's person, with which he had fraudulently clothed himself, he showed who he was. So he who had forged under my name a letter of penance for having badly translated the Hebrew volumes is said to object that I translated the holy Scriptures to condemn the Seventy; so that, whether what I translated is false or true, I remain under the charge: for either I confess I erred in the new work, or the recent edition is a condemnation of the old. I wonder that in the same letter he did not call me a murderer, an adulterer, a sacrilegious man, a parricide, and whatever foulness the silent thought of the mind can turn over within itself. I owe him thanks that, with so great a forest of crimes, he charged me with only one crime of error or falsehood. Did I say anything against the Seventy translators, whom many years ago I gave, most carefully corrected, to the students of my own tongue, whom I expound daily in the assembly of the brothers, whose Psalms I sing in constant meditation? Was I so foolish as to wish to forget as an old man what I learned as a boy? All my treatises are woven with their testimonies. My commentaries on the twelve prophets expound both my edition and the Seventy's. O labours of men, always uncertain! O pursuits of mortals, sometimes having contrary ends! In what I thought I deserved well of my Latins, and stirred the minds of our people to learning, since even the Greeks do not disdain a version from the Latin after so many translators, there I am called to blame, and I am forcing food on a nauseated stomach. And what in a man is safe, if innocence is criminal? While the father of the household slept, an enemy sowed tares over the wheat. "The boar from the forest has ravaged the vineyard, and the solitary wild beast has fed on it." I keep silent, and letters not mine speak against me. I do not know the crime, and I confess the crime in the whole world. "Woe is me, my mother, why did you bear me, a man to be judged and condemned by all the earth?"

All the short prefaces to the Old Instrument, of which I have appended examples in part, are witnesses of this. And it is superfluous to write otherwise than was said there. I will begin, then, with Genesis, whose prologue is this: "I have received the longed-for letters of my Desiderius, who, by a kind of presage of the future, has been allotted the same name as Daniel, begging me to hand to the ears of our people the Pentateuch translated from the Hebrew tongue into Latin. A dangerous work certainly, and open to the barking of detractors, who assert that I forge new things for old to discredit the Seventy translators, testing genius as if it were wine, though I have very often testified that I offer in the tabernacle of God what I can according to my share, and that another's wealth is not stained by others' poverty. What emboldened me to this was the zeal of Origen, who mixed Theodotion's translation with the old edition, marking the whole work with the asterisk and obelus, that is, a star and a spit, either making to shine what was lacking before, or cutting the throat of and piercing everything superfluous; and above all what the authority of the evangelists and apostles proclaimed, in which we read many things from the Old Testament which are not in our manuscripts, such as this: 'Out of Egypt I called my son'; and, 'For he shall be called a Nazarene'; and, 'They shall look on him whom they pierced'; and, 'Rivers of living water shall flow from his belly'; and, 'What eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man, what God has prepared for those who love him'; and many others which call for a treatise of their own. Let us ask them, then, where these are written; and when they cannot say, let us bring them out of the Hebrew books. The first testimony is in Hosea, the second in Isaiah, the third in Zechariah, the fourth in Proverbs, the fifth likewise in Isaiah. Not knowing this, many follow the ravings of apocrypha and prefer Iberian trifles to authentic books. It is not my part to set out the causes of the error. The Jews say it was done by prudent counsel, lest Ptolemy, a worshipper of one God, should detect among the Hebrews too a double divinity; which they did above all because he seemed to be falling into Plato's doctrine. Finally, wherever Scripture testifies something sacred about the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, they either translated it otherwise or were entirely silent, so as both to satisfy the king and not to divulge the secret of the faith. And I do not know who first built with his lie the seventy cells at Alexandria, in which, divided, they wrote the same things, since Aristeas, the champion of that same Ptolemy, and much later Josephus, report nothing of the kind, but write that they compared their work gathered in one hall, not that they prophesied. For it is one thing to be a prophet, another to be a translator. There the Spirit foretells things to come; here learning and wealth of words translate what is understood. Unless perhaps Tully is to be thought to have translated Xenophon's Oeconomicus, Plato's Protagoras, and Demosthenes' speech for Ctesiphon inspired by a rhetorical spirit; so that the Holy Spirit wove testimonies of the same books one way through the Seventy translators and another way through the apostles, so that what the former kept silent, the latter lied was written. What then? Do we condemn the ancients? By no means. But after the studies of our predecessors we labour as we can in the Lord's house. They translated before the coming of Christ, and what they did not know they set out in doubtful sentences. We, after his passion and resurrection, write not so much prophecy as history. For things heard are narrated one way, things seen another. What we understand better, we also express better. Hear, then, rival; listen, detractor: I do not condemn, I do not censure the Seventy; but I confidently prefer the apostles to all of them. Through their mouth Christ speaks to me, whom I read are placed among the spiritual gifts before prophets, among which translators hold almost the last rank. Why are you tormented with spite? Why do you stir up the minds of the unskilled against me? If anywhere I seem to you to err in translation, ask the Hebrews, consult the teachers of different cities: what they have about Christ, your manuscripts do not have. It is another matter if they have since proved against themselves the testimonies used by the apostles, and the Latin copies are more correct than the Greek, the Greek than the Hebrew."

In the books of Samuel and Malachim too, which we call the four of Kingdoms, after the catalogue of divine Scripture I added this: "Since these things are so, I beg you, reader, not to think my labour a censure of the ancients. In the tabernacle of God each offers what he can: some gold and silver and precious stones; others offer fine linen and purple and scarlet and blue. It goes well with us if we offer skins and goats' hair. And yet the Apostle judges our more contemptible parts more necessary. Hence the whole beauty of the tabernacle, and the distinction, by its several kinds, of the present and future church, is covered with skins and haircloth; and the things that are cheaper keep off the heat of the sun and the harm of the rains." See with how proud a brow I swell against the Seventy translators, that I profess that they offered gold and precious stones and purple in the tabernacle of God, and I skins and goats' hair!

I will set down another testimony too, lest you say that I have now changed my opinion under the compulsion of circumstances. In the book of Times, that is, Paralipomenon, which in Hebrew is called Dibre Yamim, I used this short preface to the holy Pope Chromatius: "If the edition of the Seventy translators remained pure, and as it was turned by them into Greek, you would urge me superfluously, my Chromatius, most holy and most learned of bishops, to translate the Hebrew volumes for you into Latin. For what had once occupied the ears of men and strengthened the faith of the newborn church was rightly approved by our silence too. But now, since different copies circulate according to the variety of regions, and that genuine and ancient translation has been corrupted and violated, you think it lies with my judgment either to decide from several which is true, or to forge a new work within the old work, and, while the Jews mock, to pierce the eyes of crows, as they say. Alexandria and Egypt praise Hesychius as the author of their Seventy. Constantinople as far as Antioch approves the copies of the martyr Lucian. The provinces between these read the Palestinian manuscripts, which, prepared by Origen, Eusebius and Pamphilus published; and the whole world fights within itself with this threefold variety. And certainly Origen not only composed copies of four editions, writing each word opposite, so that one dissenting is at once refuted by the others agreeing among themselves; but, what is of greater daring, in the edition of the Seventy he mixed Theodotion's edition, marking with asterisks what was lacking and with little rods what seemed added superfluously. If, then, others were permitted not to keep what they had once received, and after the seventy cells, which are commonly bandied about without author, they opened single cells, and in the churches is read what the Seventy did not know, why should my Latins not receive me, who, leaving the old edition inviolate, have composed a new one in such a way as to prove my labour by the Hebrews and (what is greater than they) by the apostles as authors? I recently wrote a book on the best kind of translating, showing that those words of the Gospel, 'Out of Egypt I called my son,' and 'For he shall be called a Nazarene,' and 'They shall look on him whom they pierced,' and that of the Apostle, 'What eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man, what the Lord has prepared for those who love him,' and others like them, are found in the books of the Hebrews. Certainly the Apostle and the evangelists knew the Seventy translators. And whence have they the ability to say what is not in the Seventy? And Christ our Lord, founder of both Testaments, says in the Gospel according to John: 'He who believes in me, as the Scripture says, rivers of living water shall flow from his belly.' Certainly it is written, what the Saviour testifies is written. Where is it written? The Seventy do not have it; the church does not know apocrypha. We must return, then, to the Hebrews, from whom both the Lord speaks and the disciples take their examples. I say these things with the leave of the ancients, and answer only my detractors, who gnaw me with a dog's tooth, disparaging me in public, reading in corners, at once accusers and defenders, since they approve in others what they reject in me, as if virtue and vice were not in things but changed with the author. For the rest, I remember that I long ago gave our people the edition of the Seventy translators corrected from the Greek, and that I ought not to be thought an enemy of those whom I always expound in the assembly of the brothers. And that I have now translated Dibre Yamim, that is, Words of Days, I did so that I might set out more plainly, and by cola of verses, the inextricable delays and the forest of names, which were confused by the fault of copyists, and the barbarism of the meanings, singing, like Ismenias, to myself and to my own, if the ears of others are deaf."

In the volume of Ezra I prefaced similar things, and after much else added this: "What I am about to bring in is most fair. I have published something which is not in the Greek, or is otherwise than I have turned it. Why do they tear the translator? Let them ask the Hebrews, and on their authority either grant or withhold credit from my translation. It is another matter if, with eyes closed, as they say, they wish to curse me, and do not imitate the zeal and goodwill of the Greeks, who after the Seventy translators, when the Gospel of Christ was already shining, curiously read Jews and Ebionites as translators of the old law, namely Aquila, Symmachus and Theodotion, and through Origen's labour dedicated them in the Hexapla to the churches: how much more ought my Latins to be grateful, that they see exulting Greece borrowing something from them! For in the first place it is a matter of great expense and infinite difficulty to have all the copies. And then those who have them and are ignorant of the Hebrew tongue will err the more, not knowing which of the many said the truer thing. This happened recently to a certain very wise man among the Greeks, that sometimes, leaving the sense of Scripture, he followed the error of some one translator. But we, who have at least a little knowledge of the Hebrew tongue, and in some fashion do not lack Latin speech, can both judge better of the others and express in our own tongue what we ourselves understand."

I will pass to the book of Job, which, after the edition of the Seventy translators which Origen marked with obeli and asterisks, had been given to the Latin tongue many years ago; when I turned it again according to the Hebrew itself, I spoke thus: "I am forced in each book of divine Scripture to answer the curses of adversaries, who charge my translation as a censure of the Seventy translators: as if among the Greeks too Aquila, Symmachus and Theodotion had not expressed either word for word, or sense for sense, or a kind of translation mixed of both and tempered in between; and as if Origen had not marked all the volumes of the Old Instrument with obeli and asterisks, which he inserted into the ancient translation either as additions or as taken from Theodotion, proving that what was added had been lacking. Let my detractors learn, then, to receive in the whole what they have accepted in parts, or else erase my translation together with their asterisks. For it cannot be that those whom they perceive to have left out much, they do not also confess to have erred in some things: especially in Job, from which, if you take away what has been added under asterisks, the greatest part will be cut off. And this among the Greeks only. But among the Latins, before the translation which we recently published under asterisks and obeli, about seven or eight hundred lines are missing, so that the book, mutilated, torn, and gnawed, shows its foulness to those who read it publicly." And after much which I pass over for brevity's sake, I added this at the end: "Let my dogs hear, then, that I laboured on this volume not to censure the ancient translation, but that what in it is either obscure, or omitted, or at any rate corrupted by the fault of copyists, might be made plainer by our translation, who have learned the Hebrew tongue in part, and in Latin have been worn almost from the cradle among grammarians, rhetoricians and philosophers. But if among the Greeks, after the edition of the Seventy, when the Gospel of Christ was already shining, the Jew Aquila, and Symmachus and Theodotion, Judaizing heretics, were received, who hid many mysteries of the Saviour by deceitful translation, and yet they are kept in the Hexapla among the churches and are expounded by churchmen: how much more ought I, a Christian, born of Christian parents, and bearing the banner of the cross on my forehead, whose aim was to restore what was omitted, to correct what was corrupted, and to open the mysteries of the church in pure and faithful language, not to be rejected either by fastidious or by malicious readers!"

The Psalter too, which Rome long ago received from our labour, certainly most corrected according to the Seventy translators, I turned again according to the Hebrew and fortified with a preface, and in part of the prologue spoke thus: "Since, then, disputing recently with a Hebrew, you brought forward certain testimonies from the Psalms about the Lord Saviour, and he, wishing to mock you, asserted at almost every word that it was not so in the Hebrew as you objected from the Seventy translators, you most earnestly asked that after Aquila, Symmachus and Theodotion I should translate a new edition in the Latin tongue. For you said that you were more troubled by the variety of translators, and that, for the love with which you are carried away, you would be content with either my translation or my judgment. Driven by you, then, to whom I ought not to refuse even what I cannot do, I have again handed myself over to the barking of detractors, and preferred that you should look for my strength rather than my will in friendship. Certainly I will say confidently, and will cite many witnesses of this work, that I have changed nothing, at least knowingly, from the Hebrew truth. Wherever, then, my edition differs from the old ones, ask any of the Hebrews, and you will see clearly that I am torn in vain by rivals, who prefer to seem to despise splendid things rather than to learn them. Most perverse men: for while they always seek new pleasures, and the neighbouring seas do not suffice their gullets, why in the study of the Scriptures alone are they content with the old flavour? Nor do I say this to bite my predecessors, or think anything should be taken from those whose translation, most carefully corrected, I long ago gave to the men of my own tongue: but because it is one thing to read the Psalms in the churches of believers in Christ, another to answer Jews who cavil at every word."

Solomon's books too, which I had once turned into Latin according to the Seventy with obeli and asterisks added, when translating them from the Hebrew and dedicating them to the holy bishops Chromatius and Heliodorus, I appended this at the end of my short preface: "If anyone prefers the edition of the Seventy translators, he has it, corrected by us long ago. For we do not forge new things in such a way as to destroy the old."

I will come to Isaiah too, and append part of its prologue on the Seventy translators. When I had said that he should be called an evangelist rather than a prophet, because he followed out all the mysteries of the church of Christ so clearly that he would be thought not to prophesy about the future but to weave a history of the past, I added this too: "Hence I conjecture that the Seventy translators did not wish at that time to betray the mysteries of their faith plainly to the heathen, lest they give what is holy to dogs and pearls to swine. When you read this edition, you will notice these things hidden by them. Nor am I unaware how great a labour it is to understand the prophets, and that no one can easily judge of a translation unless he has first understood what he reads; and that we too are exposed to the bites of very many who, goaded by envy, despise what they cannot attain. Knowingly and with open eyes, then, I put my hand into the flame. And nevertheless I beg this of fastidious readers: that as the Greeks after the Seventy translators read Aquila and Symmachus and Theodotion, either for the study of their doctrine or to understand the Seventy better by comparison with them, so these too would at least deign to have one translator after the earlier ones. Let them read first and despise afterwards, lest they seem to condemn what they do not know, not from judgment but from the presumption of hatred."

About Daniel I will answer briefly: I did not deny that he was a prophet, whom at the very front of the prologue I confessed to be a prophet; but I wished to show what the Hebrews say, and by what arguments they try to prove their opinion, and to teach the reader that the churches of Christ read this prophet according to Theodotion, not according to the Seventy translators. If I said that their edition in this book is far from the truth, and rejected by the right judgment of the churches of Christ, it is not the fault of me who said it, but of those who read it. Four editions are at hand, of Aquila, Symmachus, the Seventy, and Theodotion: the churches read Daniel according to Theodotion. What sin did I commit if I followed the judgment of the churches? As for my reporting what the Hebrews usually say against the story of Susanna, and the hymn of the three young men, and the fables of Bel and the Dragon, which are not in the Hebrew volume, he who accuses me proves himself a foolish sycophant. For I explained not what I myself thought but what they usually say against us. If I did not answer their opinion in the prologue, studying brevity lest I seem to write not a preface but a book, I think I added at once; for I said: "Of which this is not the time to discourse." Otherwise, from my asserting that Porphyry said much against this prophet, and calling as witnesses of this Methodius, Eusebius and Apollinaris, who answered his madness in many thousands of lines, he will be able to accuse me of not writing against Porphyry's books in a short preface. Let him who pursues such trifles, and will not receive the truth of the Hebrew Scripture, hear me proclaim freely: no one is forced to read what he does not wish. I wrote for those who asked, not for the fastidious; for the grateful, not the envious; for the studious, not the yawning. And yet I wonder how he reads Theodotion, a heretic and Judaizer, and disdains the translation of a Christian, however much a sinner.

I beg you, sweetest friend, who are so curious as to know even my dreams, and call into accusation everything I wrote over so many years without fear of future slander, to answer how you do not know the prefaces of the books you accuse, which, by a kind of prophecy, answered the future slander, fulfilling the proverb, "The antidote before the poison." What harm does our translation do to the churches? At great expense, as I know, you bought the Jewish translators of Aquila, Symmachus and Theodotion, and the fifth and sixth editions. Your Origen, and (lest you complain that you are struck with figured praise) our Origen (I call him ours for the learning of his genius, not for the truth of his doctrines), in all his books after the Seventy translators explains and expounds the translations of the Jews. Eusebius too and Didymus do the same. I pass over Apollinaris, who with good zeal but not according to knowledge tried to sew patches of everyone's translations into one garment, and to weave the sequence of Scripture not by the rule of truth but by his own judgment. Apostolic men use the Hebrew Scriptures; it is plain that the apostles and evangelists themselves did this. The Lord and Saviour, wherever he mentions the old Scripture, sets down examples from the Hebrew volumes, as in this: "He who believes in me, as the Scripture says, rivers of living water shall flow from his belly." And on the very cross: "Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani," which is interpreted, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?", not as it is put by the Seventy: "God, my God, look on me, why have you forsaken me?" And many things like these. Nor do we say this to discredit the Seventy translators, but because the authority of the apostles and of Christ is greater; and wherever the Seventy do not disagree with the Hebrew, there the apostles took examples from their translation; but where they differ, they set down in Greek what they had learned among the Hebrews. As, then, I show that many things are set down in the New Testament from the old books which are not in the Seventy, and teach that these are written in the Hebrew, so let the accuser show anything written in the New Testament from the Seventy translators which is not in the Hebrew, and the dispute is ended.

From all this it is proved both that the edition of the Seventy translators, which has been confirmed by the long use of readers, is useful to the churches, since the nations hear that Christ will come before he comes; and that the other translators are not to be rejected, since they translated not their own but divine volumes; and that my friend ought to accept from a Christian and a friend what he hastened to have copied for himself at great expense by Jews. I have exceeded the limit of a letter; and I, who had already fixed my pen against an abominable heresy, have been compelled to answer for myself, awaiting my friend's three volumes and hanging with my whole mind on the heap of his charges; except that it is lighter to beware of a professed enemy than to bear a foe hiding under a friend's name.

Having read the letter of your prudence in which you inveigh against me, and now challenge to answer with books the man you once praised, whom you called a true colleague and brother, and terrify him with charges, I understood that the saying of Solomon was fulfilled in you: "In the mouth of a fool is a rod of insult"; and, "A fool does not receive words of prudence, unless you say what is in his heart." And Isaiah: "The fool," he says, "will speak foolish things, and his heart will understand vain things, to fulfil iniquity and speak a lie against God." For what need was there to send volumes of accusation and bring curses into the open, if, in the last part of your letter, by announcing death you frighten me from daring to answer the charges, or rather your praises? For you both proclaim and accuse the same things, and from one spring come sweet and bitter. Therefore I beg you to show first the modesty and shame which you demand of me; and you who accuse another of lying, stop lying yourself. I cause scandal to no one, nor am I in the meantime your accuser. For I do not consider what you deserve, but what befits me; and I dread the word of the Saviour, who says: "Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble, it is better for him that a millstone be hung around his neck and that he be drowned in the depth of the sea." And: "Woe to the world because of scandals. For it is necessary that scandals come; but woe to the man through whom the scandal comes." I too could heap falsehoods on you, and say that I had heard or seen what no one notes, so that among the ignorant impudence might be thought truth and fury constancy. But far be it from me to imitate you, and do myself what I censure in you. Let him speak filth who can commit filth. "The evil man out of the evil treasure of the heart brings forth evil things. Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks." Meanwhile take this gain, that your former friend, now accused, will not cast base things in your teeth. And I say this not because I fear the swords of your accusation, but because I would rather be accused than accuse, and suffer injury than do it, knowing the Apostle's precept: "Do not avenge yourselves, beloved, but give place to wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine, and I will repay, says the Lord. But if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him drink. For in doing this you will heap coals of fire on his head." For he who avenges himself does not merit the Lord's vengeance.