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Although religious ethicists commonly assess the content of public communication to determine its merits, this article argues that the style and techniques of communication deserve similar analysis. Propaganda often employs rhetorical techniques that impress the recipient through persuasive sleight-of-hand or emotional appeal. Drawing on the church fathers' suspicion of classical rhetoric, as well as Augustine's guarded defense of a specific type of rhetoric, the author formulates two principles of ethical propaganda that may assist public communicators in persuading ethically. These two principles are the procedural movement of beauty from truth, and the use of caritas as a primary motivator in persuasion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Origen adopted two critical signs from the philological tradition in Alexandria: the obelos, which denotes the elements found in the Septuagint (LXX) but not in the Hebrew Bible, and the asteriskos, which designates the elements found in the Hebrew text but not in the LXX. By examining how Origen and other Church Fathers (including Epiphanius, Jerome, and Augustine) understood the critical signs, this study raises the question of what their attitude toward the Bible was. Therefore, I analyze whether they regarded the obelized elements as an excess in the LXX or a lack in the Hebrew text, or whether they regarded the asterisked elements as an omission in the LXX or an addition in the Hebrew text. This form of analysis leads to the conclusion that Origen and Epiphanius are LXX-centered, Jerome is Hebrew-centered, and Augustine is both LXX-centered and Hebrew-centered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article was to compare Jerome’s and Augustine’s sermons on the fifth book of the Psalms with regard to their views on the rich and the poor. After a brief consideration of the different audiences of Jerome and Augustine, we focused on their attitudes to wealth and poverty, and almsgiving and its relationship to eschatology. In both Jerome’s and Augustine’s commentaries we were confronted with problems regarding the nature of the collections, the composition of the audiences, and a lack of overlap between the two works, but it was possible to discern congruences and differences in their exegesis. In their preaching on poverty and riches, both homilists associated Judas with the devil and wealth. With regard to the identification of Christ and the poor, Jerome offers a somewhat uneasy exegesis in explaining that Christ stands at the right hand of the pauper, although the Lord himself is rich. Augustine mentioned the identification of Christ and the poor a few times in Enarrationes in Psalmos and framed the poverty of Christ within the body of the church, emphasising the common humanity of his congregation. In his sermons, mainly delivered to monks, Jerome advocated total renunciation. Augustine made more allowances for human frailty, advocating partial and gradual dispossession. The Songs of Ascent provided both our authors with the opportunity to consider the place of almsgiving in an eschatological context. Contribution: We investigate the views of two prominent Latin fathers on wealth and poverty in their sermons on Psalms 109–150. The focus on wealth and poverty is evident. Judas is identified with the rich and Christ with the poor, placing Christ and riches against each other in an either/or position.

In several places the anonymous Roman presbyter, now known as "Ambrosiaster," expressed concern over the compensation given to presbyters. This article examines his comments in the context of several fourth-century developments: first, restrictions imposed on the members of the curial class in respect to holding clerical office, a phenomenon attested both in imperial legislation and in patristic sources; second, the spread of ascetical ideals of clerical life, fostered especially by writers such as Ambrose and Jerome. While Ambrosiaster shared the view that a member of the clergy (ecclesiasticus) should abstain from "worldly business activities" (negotia saecularia), in contrast to his more ascetic contemporaries, he stressed the importance of adequate payment for the clergy and encouraged wealthy Christians to provide it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the last book of the Pentateuch, Deuteronomy was considered divine law par excellence in early and medieval Christianity. Circa AD 400, Jerome, Ambrose and Augustine, each with their own emphasis, provided expositions for this biblical book, thus shaping the beginning of the Latin exegesis of Deuteronomy. Jerome transmitted to the Latin world Origen’s typological motif and his allegorical expositions; as he was meanwhile developing a philology-based exegetical approach of his own. Ambrose was interested in expounding the “precepts of the Law,” and used them as the guide to the ethics of the Christian common life. Augustine searched for the link between the Old Law and the Gospel via “spiritual understanding”; he was more inclined to study “the proper sense” of the biblical text later in his life. The exegetical heritage of these three Fathers was then gradually received by the Latin exegetes of later centuries, and functioned as the diverse foundation for the Latin exegetical tradition of Deuteronomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many scholars have sought to understand renaissance culture in terms of self-fashioning, a concept that sees the sixteenth-century preoccupation with imitation and performance as symptoms of a desire to conform outwardly to social expectations. Historians of Tudor England and biographers of Thomas More, influenced by this concept, have despaired of discovering the "true" Thomas More behind a bewildering array of self-fashioned masks that More "wore" as both an author and public figure. Recent scholarship seeks to show the coherence of More's character, despite the fact that his life and writings do not fit neatly into contemporary scholarly categories. Understanding More as a "Christian Humanist" and focusing on More's intervention in a controversy between his friends Erasmus and Dorp, this study positions More as engaging in typological emulation, whereby in imitating the correspondence of Jerome and Augustine, he seeks to embody more perfectly the ideal of the Christian orator. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In their polemical as well as their ostensibly non-polemical writings, SS. Jerome and Augustine refer to the Church’s enemies as an unholy triad: Jews, pagans, and Christian heretics. These inimici, they assert, are linked by their com­mon failure to accept the Gospel of the orthodox Catholic Church, as well as by the root cause of their unbelief: pride, which leads them to resist the truth. In this article, I focus on the links Jerome and Augustine purport to find between Judaism and Christian heresy. I draw from polemical and non-polemical works by both writers, including Jerome’s biblical commentaries and anti-Pelagian treatises, and Augustine’s De Civitate Dei as well as his writings adversus Jews, Donatists, and Pelagians. In addition to identifying the doctrinal commonalities that Jerome and Augustine assert exist between Judaism and Christian heresy, I examine the often-similar rhetorical devices employed by both writers in their denunciations of these inimici. The article concludes by speculating on the possible roots of these denunciations in the authors’ doubts and insecurities, and notes that, para­doxically, Jerome and Augustine’s epistemological doubts regarding divine elec­tion led them to retain a measure of hope for their theological enemies, and so to counsel tolerance toward them.

Deconstructing one's adversary's image is a traditional tool of judicial rhetoric. Cicero, for example, represents adversaries as illiterate, unable to write or speak. The heresiologists, as Jerome or Augustin, could have been influenced by this strategy. They ask, Do the heretics know how to write ? Their answers vary according to which authors they have in mind and which text genre they use. In the Catalogue of Famous Men Jerome emphasizes the heretics' literary talent, because of the genre in which he is writing, but also since they are dead. In his polemical works, influenced by judicial speech, he represents the relevant heretic as unable to write, because, as a heretic, he is unable to do anything, and because he is outside the church ; by deconstructing the heretic's image, Jerome wants to avoid the others to be contamined by heresy. For Augustine, the heretic can write well, even too well ; and for him the problem is precisely that. Augustin emphasizes the heretic's skill to highlight the heretic's danger, caused by his eloquence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the historical period that we call late antiquity, strongly marked by the tension between continuity and rupture, the epistolar genre undergoes a renewal, particularly under the influence of Christianity. This documentary typology, not only heir to the classical period, but also deeply inserted in the Roman cultural universe, is diversified into different forms from the personal missive to the Pontifical Epistles. Our goal in this opportunity is to reflect the appropriation of the Paidéia by Christianity, as well as the conflicts existing in the intellectual field Christian, from the epistles exchanged between two of the most important thinkers who live during the late Antiquity, which is: Augustine and Jerome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cicero and St Jerome are often thought to belong to opposite schools of translation theory. This assumption neglects an important continuity between the two translators, namely their understanding of translation as a master-slave relationship. A far more important discursive break occurred in the work of St Augustine, who was the first to project onto translation the religious role of a fidus servus (faithful slave) in relationship to the divine word. His theorization of how truth could be revealed in both original and translated texts is radically different from our received ideas about the hierarchy of source and target. It also initiated an epistemological shift that would have a profound effect on later Christian translators. The scholar Boethius was the first to use Augustine's model of translation with secular texts, paving the way for this eschatological theory to take precedence throughout early medieval Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Because of the paucity of purely philosophical texts produced during the early Middle Ages, the history of philosophy is forced to look for philosophy in texts actually belonging to other branches of thought. One example is that of Isidore of Seville (560636). Isidore was one of the foremost compilers of encyclopedia-like knowledge of his time. The author analyses Isidore's De Differentiis Verborum, a work which is known usually as a contribution to the history of philology. Its encyclopedia-like content was continued and perfected in Isidore's later Etymologiae. In this way, the author's discussion of the De Differentiis has bearing also on the study of the Etymologiae, Isidore's most influential work. The author discusses isidore's work from a philosophical point of view and his intention is to show which philosophical ideas were present in Isidore's work. On the one hand, it would seem that the philosophemes of the Stoics indirectly influenced Isidore's content and method. On the other hand it is possible to differentiate several ways in which various philosophical ideas were actually present: 1) the rudiments of philosophical ideas in the lemmas which refer to the domain of grammar; 2) isolated philosophemes in the framework of single lemmas which have usually been lifted from patristic texts but which were not further developed by Isidore; 3) philosophemes which were further creatively developed within the framework of thematic groups of lemmas.

In this paper, I would like to focus on one of the issues raised in the correspondence between Saints Augustine of Hippo and Jerome, with respect to the questioning by the first of the necessity or even the validity of translating the Old Testament into Latin from the Hebrew, as advocated by the latter, instead of continuing to give credit to the Greek translation of the Septuagint as the only textual authority for the Christians in both East and West. I shall discuss below the motives and the style of Augustine' criticism, as well as those of Jerome's refutation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Świętego Hieronima znamy przede wszystkim z komentarzy biblijnych oraz z Vulgaty, łacińskiego przekładu Biblii. Zmiana podejścia do Pisma Świętego zaproponowana przez Hieronima to bezsprzecznie jeden z momentów przełomowych, wręcz rewolucyjnych dla Kościoła IV i V wieku, moment wprowadzenia do intelektualnego i liturgicznego obiegu nowego tekstu, który z czasem utrwalił swą niezaprzeczalną pozycję na Zachodzie. W przekładzie tym Hieronim przyjął zasadę powrotu do veritas hebraica, jako nadrzędnej w interpretacji Starego Testamentu. Oczywiście w akceptacji tego stanowiska od razu pojawiło się wiele sprzeciwów oraz kontrowersji. Powstał dylemat: czy tłumaczyć z hebrajskiego jak chciał Hieronim, czy bronić kanoniczności Septuaginty, której podjął się św. Augustyn. W niniejszym artykule epizod ten, na podstawie korespondencji Hieronima z Augustynem, zostanie przedstawiony jako jeden z momentów przełomowych tego okresu, który utrwalił niezaprzeczalną pozycję tego tłumaczenia na Zachodzie.

Various critics of the New Perspective on Paul (NPP) often highlight the lack of church tradition as one deficiency of the various interpretations of Paul. To some, the lack of church history automatically renders such newer interpretations suspect. In turn critics of the NPP often turn to the reformers such as Calvin and Luther to defend the traditional reading of Paul and trace this traditional reading back to Augustine. For the critics, church tradition stands on the side of the traditional reading.This article seeks to highlight an often neglected early church view on one aspect of the NPP, that of Paul and the Law. This article highlights one of the fiercest exchanges between two church fathers. Through a series of letters, Jerome and Augustine corresponded on Jerome's interpretation of Galatians 2 and the Antioch incident. For Augustine the pastor, nothing less than the veracity of scripture was at stake and Augustine mounts a defence of Paul's actions in Galatians 2 in response to Jerome's insistence of an agreed-upon lie between Peter and Paul. In the process of Augustine's rebuttal of Jerome, he notes that Paul followed the law without ‘pretence’ and that there was a period in early Christianity where Jewish Christians practised law observance. Augustine highlights the divine origin of the Mosaic law, which renders a positive role for the law in early Christianity, and notes that the negative critique of the law comes within the context of a Gentile audience, but did not have implications for Jewish Christians. Augustine rightly notices and raises the important context of Paul's negative statements on the law and offers a nuanced discussion of Paul's treatment of the law.Augustine notes some of the important conclusions drawn by the NPP, namely a positive view of the law and its practice by Paul and other Jewish Christians. He also notes the various ways the law functions in Jewish and Gentile contexts. Such a positive view of Paul and the law may appear striking to many, but must be considered by those who are otherwise critical of the NPP. This article shows that there was at least one voice, among others, within the early church which advocated for a positive reading of Paul and the law. The history of interpretation of Galatians 2 offers many insights for contemporary Pauline scholars which ought to be heeded in future discussions. This article, by highlighting the exchange between Jerome and Augustine, seeks to give the NPP a historical ‘rootedness’ and placement within the history of interpretation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Western churches have long had disagreements as to what books form the `canon' of the Old Testament, and, therefore, which books can be used in theological argument. This article argues that this dispute is itself a function of earlier disputes in the late patristic and early medieval periods, and explores how the solution to those disputes left a legacy of confusion that fuelled the Reformation and later debates. This exploration is focused on the canon listings that were produced as part of the patristic and early medieval debates. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In his Sermones Augustine is often obliged to ward off misunderstandings which might arise from differences between standard Latin and the colloquial language of his listeners. This is why he opposes their wish to replace mulier with femina in the scriptures. He explains the matter as follows: it is only in popular speech that mulier means a married woman, whereas in the Bible women of any age—including the Virgin Mary—are called mulieres. Femina is a word which in Old Latin inspires reverence through its use in sacral contexts and which was preferred by poets from Augustan times onwards. Thus it is regarded as more elevated than the commoner mulier. Nevertheless, because mulier, unlike femina, agrees with Hebrew išah and Greek γυνη in being used only of human beings (though applicable to women of all ages and conditions), it remains the most appropriate Latin translation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines Augustine's text of the Gospel according to John to trace the process by which he adopted Jerome's revision of the Gospels. An important feature is the distinction between 'primary citations' taken from a codex and 'secondary citations' likely to have been made from memory, which change affiliation at different rates. Augustine's progress from Old Latin to Vulgate text-types is illustrated by the comparison of selected passages with surviving manuscripts. Textual variants in these citations suggest that Augustine's biblical text has been transmitted accurately. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]