4. The Translation of the Book of Esther

The fourth chapter of this monograph deals with the Book of Esther. Jerome stated on multiple occasions that he rendered the Hebrew of Esther ‘word for word, very accurately’ (verbum e verbo pressius), ‘literally’ (per singula verba), ‘with absolute reliability’ (plena fide), ‘just as it is in Hebrew’ (sicut in hebraeo habetur), without “lengthening it” or “adding even a single thing.” In this chapter, the author demonstrates that it is precisely not the verbum e verbo but the sensus de sensu method that Jerome employed. More than just a sensus de sensu rendering of the Hebrew, the Vulgate of Esther is arguably one of the Vulgate translations that departs the most from the original wording of the Hebrew. The sensus de sensu was pushed to an extreme, as it were, as Jerome paraphrased most of the text, often in a very approximate way; he also relied less on his usual sources and worked more independently than in his other Vulgate translations. Indeed, the vast majority of his paraphrases do not match any of the known versions. These paraphrases can either curtail the Hebrew or expand on it: in the former case, they attest to the reality that Jerome worked particularly fast; in the latter, they tell us that he also enjoyed literary creativity as a translator. In the first section, the author deals with paraphrases of the Hebrew that either fully or partly agree with the Greek and Old Latin versions of Esther: while most of the Vulgate of Esther reflects Jerome’s stylistic independence, these two examples shed light on certain exceptions. The author then turns to paraphrases of the Hebrew that are mostly, but not entirely, independent of the other versions: he first investigates Jerome’s rendering of a verse and then his responses to the syntagm משתה היין and to the word משתה. Following this section, the author explores Jerome’s rendering of two verses: these paraphrases, which he produced without consulting the other versions, are representative of the majority of his renderings in the Vulgate of Esther. The author finally addresses a Vulgate expansion on a syntagm which seems to have been inspired by a reading attributed to Origen’s edition of the LXX.