Adversus Jovinianum libri duo begins on p. 221 (DjVu p. 117)
Pace Fr. Unger's book on the single life, which says "(A.D. 393), where, however, he somewhat exaggerates the excellence of virginity.", I think St. Jerome is more balanced than St. John Chrysostom and St. Gregory of Nyssa, who both seem to depreciate marriage much more than some claim St. Jerome does.
Interesting points:
1. St. Jerome (§7, col. 230C) does an excellent job relating 1 Peter 3:7 ("…ut non impediantur orationes vestræ") to 1 Cor. 7:5, giving some insight into exactly why coitus impedes prayer.
2. Animals in Noah's ark come in pairs, division seemingly not good (§16):
Nuptiæ terram replent, virginitas paradisum. Sed et hoc intuendum duntaxat juxta Hebraicam veritatem, quod cum Scriptura in primo, et tertio et quarto, et quinto, et sexto die expletis operibus singulorum dixerit : Et vidit Deus quia bonum est ( Gen. I, 10, 11, 12, 18, 21, 25), in secundo die hoc omnino subtraxit; nobis intelligentiam derelinquens non esse bonum duplicem numerum, quia ab unione dividat, et praefiguret fœdera nuptiarum. Unde in arca Noe omnia animalia, quæcumque bina ingrediuntur, immunda sunt ( Gen. vii et viii) Impar numerus est mundus.
3. §20:
Iste nempe Moyses est, quicum vidisset visionem magnam, et angelum, sive Dominum loquentem in rubo nequaquam valuit ad eum accedere, nisi solvisset corrigiam calceamenti sui, et abjecisset vincula nuptiarum.
4. §26: In the context of St. Peter being married and St. John not, St. Jerome argues St. John had more merit because "nec sordes nuptiarum abluere cruore martyrii" seems to imply ( pace Summa suppl. q. 96 a. 12) that martyrdom is not of more merit than virginity.
5. §37 alludes to 1 Cor. 15:44 ("…εἰ ἔστιν σῶμα ψυχικόν, ἔστιν καὶ πνευματικόν ") and mentions v. 47 ff.
- In John1:13, the underlying plural (αἱμάτων) is in fact a Semitic grammatical feature, cf. in the Psalms (and elsewhere in Scripture), for ex. in Psalm 59/58:2 (lit. “men of bloods,” דָמִים isliterally a plural).
Spiritual adoption is indeed a great and truly astounding gift to us, incomparablygreater than any biological filiation (God being by essence spiritual Himself, and intending for usto be like Him, Gen 1:26-27, 1 John 3:2). Whereas the worldly culture around us appears to be increasingly concerned and hyping about DNA tests, genealogy research, and all manner of naturalistic, ultimately vain pursuits…
Carissimi,nunc filii Dei sumus : et nondum apparuit quid erimus. Scimus quoniam cum apparuerit, similes ei erimus :quoniam videbimus eum sicuti est.
§47 is the only source of Aristotle's disciple Theophrastus "golden book" ("worth its weight in gold") On Marriage , the ending of which ("Indeed, the surest way of having a good heir is to ruin your fortune in a good cause while you live, not to leave the fruit of your labour to be used you know not how.") is remniscent of Ecclesiastes 2:18-19: "…being like to have an heir after me, Whom I know not whether he will be a wise man or a fool, and he shall have rule over all my labours with which I have laboured and been solicitous: and is there anything so vain?"
* cf. Lessius, S.J. ch. 5: "And as for heires, our friends & our neighbours whom we loue, are better & more sure heyres vnto vs, being chosen thereunto by vs freely, thē those whome wee are constreyned to haue whether we will or no: though indeed it be a for more assured inheritance to make our selues our owne heires, (by doyng good workes whilst we liue, (for otherwise we do but abuse the same) then to leaue it, being gotten all by our owne industry and pains, to the vncertein vses of any others whatsoeuer."
Adversus Jovinianum bk. II c. 5-17 discusses how there is a difference between fasting and eating food in thanksgiving. St. Jerome gives many examples of vegan/vegetarian philosophers and cultures of antiquity:
Dicæarchus in his book of Antiquities, describing Greece, relates that under Saturn, that is in the Golden Age, when the ground brought forth all things abundantly, no one ate flesh, but every one lived on field produce and fruits which the earth bore of itself. Xenophon in eight books narrates the life of Cyrus, King of the Persians, and asserts that they supported life on barley, cress, salt, and black bread. Both the aforesaid Xenophon, Theophrastus, and almost all the Greek writers testify to the frugal diet of the Spartans. Chæremon the Stoic, a man of great eloquence, has a treatise on the life of the ancient priests of Egypt, who, he says, laid aside all worldly business and cares, and were ever in the temple, studying nature and the regulating causes of the heavenly bodies; they never had intercourse with women; they never from the time they began to devote themselves to the divine service set eyes on their kindred and relations, nor even saw their children; they always abstained from flesh and wine, on account of the light-headedness and dizziness which a small quantity of food caused, and especially to avoid the stimulation of the lustful appetite engendered by this meat and drink. They seldom ate bread, that they might not load the stomach. And whenever they ate it, they mixed pounded hyssop with all that they took, so that the action of its warmth might diminish the weight of the heavier food. They used no oil except with vegetables, and then only in small quantities, to mitigate the unpalatable taste. What need, he says, to speak of birds, when they avoided even eggs and milk as flesh. The one, they said, was liquid flesh, the other was blood with the color changed? Their bed was made of palm-leaves, called by them baiæ : a sloping footstool laid upon the ground served for a pillow, and they could go without food for two or three days. The humours of the body which arise from sedentary habits were dried up by reducing their diet to an extreme point.
Josephus in the second book of the history of the Jewish captivity, and in the eighteenth book of the Antiquities, and the two treatises against Apion, describes three sects of the Jews, the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes. On the last of these he bestows wondrous praise because they practised perpetual abstinence from wives, wine, and flesh, and made a second nature of their daily fast. Philo, too, a man of great learning, published a treatise of his own on their mode of life. Neanthes of Cizycus, and Asclepiades of Cyprus, at the time when Pygmalion ruled over the East, relate that the eating of flesh was unknown. Eubulus, also, who wrote the history of Mithras in many volumes, relates that among the Persians there are three kinds of Magi, the first of whom, those of greatest learning and eloquence, take no food except meal and vegetables. At Eleusis it is customary to abstain from fowls and fish and certain fruits. Bardesanes, a Babylonian, divides the Gymnosophists of India into two classes, the one called Brahmans, the other Samaneans, who are so rigidly self-restrained that they support themselves either with the fruit of trees which grow on the banks of the Ganges, or with common food of rice or flour, and when the king visits them, he is wont to adore them, and thinks the peace of his country depends upon their prayers. Euripides relates that the prophets of Jupiter in Crete abstained not only from flesh, but also from cooked food. Xenocrates the philosopher writes that at Athens out of all the laws of Triptolemus only three precepts remain in the temple of Ceres: respect to parents, reverence for the gods, and abstinence from flesh. Orpheus in his song utterly denounces the eating of flesh. […]
re: Against Helvidius: 3. In support of his preference of virginity to marriage, Jerome argues that not only Mary but Joseph also remained in the virgin state (19)
These §§ are St. Jerome's brief commentary on 1 Cor. 7:that, though marriage may sometimes be a holy estate, it presents great hindrances to prayer (20), and the teaching of Scripture is that the states of virginity and continency are more accordant with God’s will than that of marriage (21, 22).
§22 (p. 213D // DjVu p. 113) regards the divisus est (St. Jerome has: "Et divisus est mulier" in 1 Cor. 7:32-33) the verses of which St. Jerome seems to divide differently, and the English translater here really butchers:"He that is unmarried is careful for the things of the Lord, how he may please the Lord: but he that is married is careful for the things of the world, how he may please his wife. And there is a difference also between the wife and the virgin. …"
See DjVu p. 216-262 note (f):"Divisa est mulier, et Virgo. Quae…" is old Italian version, but Vulgate is: "…et divisus est. [1Cor 7:34] Et mulier innupta…"
DjVu pp. 415ff. is his Liber de nominibus Hebraicis
St. Jerome writes in Liber de Nominibus Hebraicis col. 886:
Mariam plerique aestimant interpretari, illuminant me isti, vel illuminatrix, vel Smyrna maris, sed mihi nequaquam videtur. Melius autem est, ut dicamus sonare eam stellam maris, sive amarum mare: sciendumque quod Maria, sermone Syro domina nuncupetur.
[Many, they tell me, think Maria means either illuminator or the Smyrna sea, but it does not at all seem so to me. For it is better that we say it signifies the star of the sea or bitter sea: and understanding that Maria in Syrian means lady.]
The OED for "Mary" says:
The Hebrew name may be < Amorite, with the meaning 'gift (of God)'; compare the Akkadian root rym 'to give as a gift'. [...] one element of the name has often been interpreted as 'sea', e.g. in pseudo-Epiphanius' explanation σμύρνα θαλάσσης 'myrrh of the sea' [...] and St Jerome's stella maris
Moses: col. 833
Moses, attrectans, vel palpans, aut sumptus ex aqua, sive assumptio.
It appears St. Jerome was aware that the biblical Hebraic etymology of the name ‘Moses,’from the verb משה ( MaSHaH ), “pulling out” (in מְשִׁיתִהוּ in Ex2:10), is not in fact the only basis of the prophet’s famous name. Hebraicnames in Scripture have both direct consonantal root-based meanings and indirectlayers of semantic derivations, from combined play on words, subtle pictographicassociations, and varied origins. The name also derives from single-consonant Egyptianglyphs, consisting of two uniliteral phonetic signs in what Egyptology calls MiddleEgyptian (in used during the time St. Moses was born, raised, and trained inEgypt). But there is no clear consensus as to what are the original Egyptoglyphsof his name, their individual and combined meaning.
St. Jerome’s use of attractans and palpans suggests that, like other Fathers commenting Scripture and here especially the paramountfigure of Moses, he saw a relationship between the name of the great prophetand lawgiver (as it is explicitly derived in Ex 2:10) and what Scripture subtlybut crucially says of him before he is actually found by the daughter ofPharao, namely (Ex 2:2):
וַתֵּרֶאאֹתוֹ כִּי-טוֹב הוּא
This refers to the attractive beauty (in Greek ἀστεῖον,a rare term which more commonly in this context could just as well have beenanother semantically-related adjective, e.g. όμορφος) of his appearance andgood-liness (טוֹב/ TôV in the original Hebrew, the very word usedthroughout Genesis 1 to speak of the intrinsic goodness of everything God hasmade; and likewise by the Archangel Gabriel when greeting Our Lady in Aramaicat the Annunciation, calling her literally “full of goodliness,” טיבותא/ TïVuTâ = “grace-ful[l]” = “fully graced,” κεχαριτωμενη, as the Greek literally has it)pointing to the inward grace Moses is already given before God (cf. Acts 7:20).
This is rendered by elegantem in theVulgate—whereas bonum , pulcher , or speciosus , in my sense,would have more closely related the Semitic richness of the root טב/ T-V :“good,” “in order,” “pleasing,” “desirable,” “beauteous,” “graceful”.
Not at all a small anecdotal piece of revelation,since Scripture underscores this fact another two times after Exodus 2:2, namelyin the mouth of St. Stephen in Acts 7:20 (…ἀστεῖος τῷ θεῷ, … fuit gratus Deo ), and in the Epistleto the Hebrews 11:23 (…εἶδον ἀστεῖον).
Moses is characterized from the start by his attractiveness --> the beauty of his appearance (according to the Greek ἀστεῖον and theLatin elegantem ) and goodliness of his soul before God (according to theHebrew טוֹב). Inthe episode of his infancy, this intimates the touchable reality ( attrectare --> attrectans ) of his pleasingand palpable ( palpare --> palpans ) countenance (whichSt. Jerome, using both attrectare and palpans , seems to have thoughtto be an important revealed trademark of the Ancient Egypt-born Hebraic Saint),pointing to the manifest and tactual beauty of the newborn, archetypal prophet,so revealed before being “taken out of the waters” ( sumptus ex aqua ). This (Moses’ attractive beauty), of course, is a prophecy of the Incarnation (cf. 1 John 1: “That /.../ which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled...”)
S. Moyses,hominis Dei, o.p.n.
Contra Jovin. i.49:
Xystus in his Sentences tells us that " He who too ardently (ardentior) loves his own wife is an adulterer. "
alternate translation: "Sixtus the Pythagorean says in his Maxims : 'He that is insatiable of his wife is an adulterer'"
Latin original, PL 23 col. 293: "Xystus in sententiis: Adulter est, inquit, in suam uxorem amator ardentior."
St. Jerome continues:
It is disgraceful to love another man’s wife at all, or one’s own too much. A wise man ought to love his wife with judgment, not with passion. Let a man govern his voluptuous impulses, and not rush headlong into intercourse. There is nothing blacker than to love a wife as if she were an adulteress.
Latin original, PL 23 col. 293: "In aliena quippe uxore omnis amor turpis est, in sua nimius. Sapiens vir judicio debet amare conjugem, non affectu. Regat impetus voluptatis, nec præceps feretur in coitum. Nihil est fœdius quam uxorem amare quasi adulteram."
cf. the quotes of St. Thomas et al. on this