Jerome

English

But the earth was empty and void, and darkness [was] upon the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God was borne over the waters.

Fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt · cc-by

Latin

PL 28, col. 163C · pd

Notes

Jerome's own Vulgate keeps the Old Latin/LXX 'ferebatur' even though his Hebrew Questions (same decade) insist the Hebrew means brooding. The Latin bench inherits the verb he declined to change. PL 28 prints Jerome's text without 'erant' and flags the Vulgate's addition.

Threads

• → transmits · The Seventy
  Vulgate 'ferebatur' renders LXX ἐπεφέρετο, not the Hebrew merahefet; the Latin bench inherits a Greek verb of motion.
• → transmits · The Seventy
  Jerome renders tohu va-vohu 'inanis et vacua', where the Greek had ἀόρατος καὶ ἀκατασκεύαστος and the Old Latin 'invisibilis et incomposita'. The two Latin lemmas ask different questions — what the earth looked like, and what it lacked — and both are on the bench from the fifth century on.