The purpose of this article is to show how Jerome in his translations, in the prefaces to the translation of individual books of the Bible, in commentaries, and letters, expresses his commitment to Greco-Roman rhetoric on the one hand and various peculiarities of biblical language, style, and message on the other. Jerome was a great expert in classical literature, literary theory, and dialectics. When he began translating the Bible, he realised that the truth of the Bible transcends all pagan archetypes, tropes, and ideals. As Jerome rose above Greco-Roman models in his spiritual maturity, he began to emphasise the uniqueness of biblical texts, manifested above all in the diversity of meaning of actual events, characters, and symbols. He advocated clarity of expression and accuracy in translating biblical texts in terms of content and literary form. The specific aim of this paper is the question of what factors influenced the development of Jerome’s hermeneutic principles in the translation and interpretation of the Bible. The fundamental question is what an important factor is the ambiguity of biblical texts, which in the Middle Ages gave rise to the development of Jewish and Christian hermeneutic principles regarding the relationship between the literal and the spiritual meaning of biblical texts. The parallel aim of the article is to determine what factors led to the fact that Jerome’s translation of the Bible (Vulgate) in the Middle Ages was given the status of an official Latin translation of the Bible in the Catholic Church.
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