<P> Amply provided by Paula with the means of livelihood and of increasing his collection of books, he led a life of incessant activity in literary production . To these last 34 years of his career belong the most important of his works; his version of the Old Testament from the original Hebrew text, the best of his scriptural commentaries, his catalogue of Christian authors, and the dialogue against the Pelagians, the literary perfection of which even an opponent recognized . To this period also belong most of his polemics, which distinguished him among the orthodox Fathers, including the treatises against the Origenism later declared anathema, of Bishop John II of Jerusalem and his early friend Rufinus . Later, as a result of his writings against Pelagianism, a body of excited partisans broke into the monastic buildings, set them on fire, attacked the inmates and killed a deacon, forcing Jerome to seek safety in a neighboring fortress (416). </P> <P> It is recorded that Jerome died near Bethlehem on 30 September 420 . The date of his death is given by the Chronicon of Prosper of Aquitaine . His remains, originally buried at Bethlehem, are said to have been later transferred to the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, though other places in the West claim some relics--the cathedral at Nepi boasting possession of his head, which, according to another tradition, is in the Escorial . </P> <P> Jerome was a scholar at a time when that statement implied a fluency in Greek . He knew some Hebrew when he started his translation project, but moved to Jerusalem to strengthen his grip on Jewish scripture commentary . A wealthy Roman aristocrat, Paula, funded his stay in a monastery in Bethlehem and he completed his translation there . He began in 382 by correcting the existing Latin language version of the New Testament, commonly referred to as the Vetus Latina . By 390 he turned to translating the Hebrew Bible from the original Hebrew, having previously translated portions from the Septuagint which came from Alexandria . He believed that the mainstream Rabbinical Judaism had rejected the Septuagint as invalid Jewish scriptural texts because of what were ascertained as mistranslations along with its Hellenistic heretical elements . He completed this work by 405 . Prior to Jerome's Vulgate, all Latin translations of the Old Testament were based on the Septuagint, not the Hebrew . Jerome's decision to use a Hebrew text instead of the previous translated Septuagint went against the advice of most other Christians, including Augustine, who thought the Septuagint inspired . Modern scholarship, however, has sometimes cast doubts on the actual quality of Jerome's Hebrew knowledge . Many modern scholars believe that the Greek Hexapla is the main source for Jerome's "iuxta Hebraeos" translation of the Old Testament . However, detailed studies have shown that to a considerable degree Jerome was a competent Hebraist . </P> <P> For the next 15 years, until he died, Jerome produced a number of commentaries on Scripture, often explaining his translation choices in using the original Hebrew rather than suspect translations . His patristic commentaries align closely with Jewish tradition, and he indulges in allegorical and mystical subtleties after the manner of Philo and the Alexandrian school . Unlike his contemporaries, he emphasizes the difference between the Hebrew Bible "apocrypha" and the Hebraica veritas of the protocanonical books . In his Vulgate's prologues, he describes some portions of books in the Septuagint that were not found in the Hebrew as being non-canonical (he called them apocrypha); for Baruch, he mentions by name in his Prologue to Jeremiah and notes that it is neither read nor held among the Hebrews, but does not explicitly call it apocryphal or "not in the canon". His Preface to The Books of Samuel and Kings includes the following statement, commonly called the Helmeted Preface: </P>

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