Chapter 2: On the writers and names of the sacred books

1. These are said to be the authors of the Old Testament according to the Hebrew tradition. First Moses wrote a cosmography of divine history in five volumes, which is named Pentateuch.

8. The book of Josue received its name from Jesus, son of Nave, whose history it contains, and the Hebrews assert that the same Josue was its writer, in the text of which, after the crossing of the Jordan, the kingdoms of the enemy are overthrown and the land divided among the people, and by the separate cities, villages, mountains and boundaries the spiritual realms of the church and the heavenly Jerusalem are prefigured.

18. Solomon, son of David, king of Israel, wrote three volumes according to the number of his names, of which the first is in Hebrew Misle, which the Greeks name Parabolae, the Latins, Proverbia, because in it he sets forth figurative expressions and likenesses of the truth under the form of a parallel.

19. The truth itself he has reserved to its readers to understand. The second book is called Coheleth, which in the Greek is Ecclesiastes, in Latin, Concionator, because its discourse is not especially addressed to one, as in Proverbs, but generally to all, teaching that all things which we see in the universe are perishable and short-lived, and for this reason little to be desired.

20. The third book he called Sir hassirim, which is translated Cantica Canticorum in the Latin, where in a marriage song he sings in mystic fashion the union of Christ and the church....

21. The songs in these three books are said to be written in hexameter and pentameter verse as Josephus and Hieronymus say.

40. These are the four Evangelists whom the holy spirit indicated in Ezechiel in the four animals. And there are four animals, because the faith of the Christian religion is spread by their preaching through the four quarters of the world.

41. And they were called animals (_animalia_) because the Gospel of Christ is preached by them on account of the soul (_anima_) of man. And they were full of eyes within and without, since they perceive that what was said by the prophets and what had been promised was being fulfilled.

42. And their legs were straight because there is nothing crooked in the Gospels. And as for the six wings apiece that cover their legs and faces, those things which were hid are revealed at the coming of Christ.

50. These are the writers of the sacred books who, speaking by the holy spirit for our edification, wrote both the precepts of living and the rule for believing.

51. In addition to these there are other volumes called apocrypha, and they are called apocrypha, that is, set aside, because they are doubted. For their origin is hidden and was not clear to the Fathers from whom the authority of the genuine scriptures has come down to us by a most certain and well-known tradition. In these apocrypha, although some truth is found, there is no canonic authority, on account of the many things that are false, and it is rightly judged by the wise that they ought not to be believed [to be the work] of those to whom they are ascribed.

52. For many [works] were brought forward by the heretics under the name of the prophets, and many of later origin under the name of the apostles, and all of those after careful examination were separated from the authority of the canon, under the name of apocrypha.

Chapter 4. On translators.

1. This man [Ptolemy Philadelphus] asked Eleazer the high-priest for the Scriptures of the Old Testament, and had them translated from Hebrew into Greek by seventy translators, and kept them in the library of Alexandria.

2. Being placed separately in separate cells they so translated all, by the influence of the holy spirit, that nothing was found in the text of any one of them, that was different in the rest, even in the order of the words.

5. The priest, Hieronymus, being expert in the three languages, translated the Scriptures also from Hebrew into Latin and expressed them with eloquence, and his translation is rightly preferred to the rest. For it is nearer to the literal, and plainer because of the clearness of its expression, and truer, as being done by a Christian translator.

Chapter 7. Those who wrote much.

1. Marcus Terentius Varro among the Latins wrote innumerable books. Among the Greeks also Chalcenterus is extolled with marvelous praises because he wrote so many books that no one of us could even copy in his own hand-writing as many works of other men.

2. Of our own writers, too, among the Greeks, Origen in his toil upon the Scriptures surpassed both Greeks and Latins in the number of his works. Hieronymus asserts that he had read 6,000 of his books.

3. However Augustine surpassed the zeal of all these by his genius and wisdom. For he wrote so much that no one is able in the days and nights even to read his books, far less to write them.