Between East and West

This chapter interrogates the Latin sources of Jerome’s Pauline commentaries, an important but often neglected component of their literary pedigree. It begins by taking stock of how he handles classical literary references and it finds that he draws from an eclectic spread of texts. In the remaining bulk of the chapter his numerous unattributed borrowings—virtually all of which have gone undetected by modern scholars—from the writings of Tertullian, Cyprian, and Lactantius are adduced and discussed. As a result of these source-critical investigations, Jerome’s four Pauline commentaries emerge as an even more colorful literary patchwork than they traditionally have been given credit for being.