Jerome on Diversity in Scriptural Texts
There are almost as many
forms of [Latin] texts as there are copies.... Why not go back to the original
Greek and correct the mistakes introduced by inaccurate translators, and the
blundering alterations of confident but ignorant critics, and, further, all
that has been inserted or changed by copyists more asleep than awake? I am not
discussing the Old Testament, which was turned into Greek by the Seventy elders, and has
reached us by a descent of three steps. I do not ask what
(Jerome, Preface to the Gospels)
The region of Alexandria and
Egypt praises in their Seventy the authority of Hesychius;
the region from Constantinople to Antioch approves the version of Lucian the
Martyr; in the middle, between these provinces, the people of Palestine read
the books which, having been labored over by Origen, Eusebius and Pamphilius published. And all the
world contends among them with this threefold variety.
(Jerome, Preface to Chronicles)