In the early era of Christianity, several church fathers such as Tatian the Syrian (c. 120–180), Clement of Alexandria (150–211), Origen (184–253), Eusebius (260–339), John Chrysostom (347–407), Saint Ambrose (339–397), Saint Jerome (347–419) and Saint Augustine (354–430), expressed their opinions on the literary characteristics of biblical texts. In the second and third centuries, the prevailing view among scholars was that the literary and rhetorical qualities of the Bible could not be measured by the leading standard of classical Greco-Roman rhetoric since the writers of Scripture were not driven by literary or rhetorical conventions but by the content of Revelation. In the 4th century, conversely, church fathers of broad knowledge and literary ability recognized some unique literature characteristics in the Bible. This contribution deals with Saint Jerome (Eusebius Hieronymus), a lover of Classical literature and a LatinGreek bilingual, who translated the Bible from original languages and wrote many Biblical commentaries and letters. Jerome was an artist of the Word with a subtle sensitivity to the beauty of language. He demonstrated more convincingly than any other ancient biblical scholar that the Hebrew Old Testament shows its own unique way of being profoundly artistic. He found that the literary genres of the Bible have an artistic value as literature and can best be distinguished through the literary conventions that shaped the Old Testament. This contribution focuses on Jerome’s introductions to his translations of the biblical books, to his letters and his biblical commentaries, which best demonstrate his belief in the artistic quality of the Bible.
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