HistoricalChristian.Faith

Julian of Toledo on the Rabbinic Corruption of Scripture

Dates: c. 686 (d. 690; De comprobatione aetatis sextae written c. 686 at the request of the Visigothic king Erwig) · Wikipedia
Summary: The Visigothic archbishop who turns the chronology dispute into a full anti-Jewish treatise — and the clearest Western statement that, where the Septuagint and the Hebrew disagree on the years, the Septuagint is to be followed. Against Jews who reckoned from the shorter Hebrew totals that the world had not yet reached the sixth age in which Messiah comes, Julian argues, first, that the ages of the world are counted by generations, not summed years (so the shorter Hebrew figures prove nothing); and, second, that if one does count years, "it is not the books of the Hebrew translation but the codices of the Seventy translators that are to be followed." He brands the shorter Hebrew reckoning the "falsity of the Jews" (falsitas Judaeorum) — though the patristic authorities he marshals for it (Augustine, Jerome, Epiphanius) are markedly more cautious than his epithet, and the explicit tampering-motive on his page is one he quotes from Augustine, not one he frames himself. He carries the chronology strand of the corruption charge, born in Eusebius, into the seventh-century Latin West.

Claims & evidence

Where the Hebrew and the Greek disagree on the years, follow the Septuagint, not the Hebrew

"…ut pro hac diversitate annorum, quae inter Haebraeos et nostros codices invenitur, non Hebraicae translationis libri, sed Septuaginta interpretum codices sint sequendi, quos in fidem plurimorum auctoritas traxit."

— Julian of Toledo, De comprobatione aetatis sextae, Preface (PL 96, col. 539D–540A), source.¹ This is the program of the whole third book, stated at the outset: "because of this difference of years which is found between the Hebrew and our codices, it is not the books of the Hebrew translation, but the codices of the Seventy translators, that are to be followed — the codices that the authority of very many has drawn into trust." "Our codices" are the Latin of the Septuagint; the rule is to prefer them over the synagogue's Hebrew wherever the two diverge on the chronology. Julian's working translation of the Latin is given here in the prose; the blockquotes preserve the Latin verbatim, no English version of Book III being available.

The shorter Hebrew totals are the "falsity of the Jews" — to be despised

"Quando ergo falsitas Judaeorum, o studiosissime Christiane! per annos ex codicibus suis libatos, aetates saeculi coram te noluerit definire… omnem illam annorum supputationem secundum codices Hebraeos despicias, et has solum enumerationes generationum intendas, quas ab Adam audisti usque ad Christum distinctis lineis terminatas."

— Julian of Toledo, De comprobatione aetatis sextae, bk. III.13 (PL 96, col. 575A), source.² "When therefore the falsity of the Jews, O most studious Christian, by the years drawn from their own codices, refuses to define for you the ages of the world… despise that whole reckoning of years according to the Hebrew codices, and attend only to these enumerations of the generations, which you have heard marked off by distinct lines from Adam to Christ." The epithet falsitas Judaeorum — echoed at the treatise's close, "what now, falsity of the Jews, are you doing?" (quid jam nunc Judaeorum falsitas agis)³ — is Julian's own charge; but note its content. His primary argument is not that the Hebrew was maliciously cut: it is that the world's ages are fixed by a "prefixed limit of generations," not by a sum of years (the five ages from Adam to Christ run by tens and twice-sevens of generations, as Matthew's genealogy shows), so the shorter Hebrew totals cannot prove the sixth age unreached, whatever they say. The year-count is his second front, not his first.

The Septuagint's authority is greatest because the Seventy "translated by prophesying"

"…quibus codicibus major debeatur auctoritas… qui prophetandi potius munere, quam transferendi officio, divinas Scripturas, revelante sibi Domino, transtulerunt… Ergo illa nobis et sola pro his annis est observanda auctoritas Septuaginta interpretum, quae merito omnibus editionibus et translationibus antefertur, quam etiam usque omnes doctores ecclesiastici tenuerunt."

— Julian of Toledo, De comprobatione aetatis sextae, bk. III.16 (PL 96, col. 576D–577A), source.⁴ Asking "to which codices is the greater authority owed," Julian answers from the Septuagint-origin legend: the Seventy "translated the divine Scriptures by the office of prophesying rather than of translating, the Lord revealing it to them," and so their authority "is deservedly set before all editions and translations, and which all the doctors of the church have held." The whole rabbinic-corruption charge rests on exactly this premise — an inspired, prophetic Greek text, against which a divergent Hebrew looks like tampering — the legend itself being traced on the companion doctrine, the Origin and Inspiration of the Septuagint. To prop it Julian quotes Epiphanius (the Seventy "received the gift of the Holy Spirit… so that wherever a word had to be added for clarity, all added it together") and Augustine (the Seventy "are rightly believed to have received the prophetic spirit").⁵

The tampering-motive he names is quoted from Augustine — and Augustine is more careful than Julian

"Inquiunt non esse credibile Septuaginta interpretes, qui uno simul tempore unoque sensu interpretati sunt, errare potuisse… Judaeos vero, dum nobis invident, quod lex et prophetae ad nos interpretando transierunt, mutasse quaedam in codicibus suis, ut nostris minueretur auctoritas."

— Augustine, City of God XV.11, quoted by Julian, De comprobatione aetatis sextae, bk. III.22 (PL 96, col. 580A–B), source.⁶ This is the sharpest corruption-charge on Julian's page — "the Jews, while they envy us because the Law and the Prophets have passed over to us by translation, have changed certain things in their own codices, that our authority might be diminished" — but it is Augustine's sentence, which Julian flags as introduced "by way of an opinion that is merely reported" (relatione opinabili). And the surrounding Augustine that Julian copies out cuts hard against the malice reading: Augustine holds the discrepancy is "not to be thought a falsification" (non… putata mendositas), that the Seventy spoke "not by the office of interpreters but by the liberty of those prophesying" (non interpretantium munere, sed prophetantium libertate), and — in the passage Julian quotes at III.20 — that whoever produced the longer figures added a hundred years to make the patriarchs' early fatherhood credible (the "early-marriage" motive), then subtracted them after the birth to keep the totals square: an editorial pattern that "does not smack of accident but of design" (nec casum redolet, sed industriam).⁷ On Augustine's own account the addition sits on the Greek side, not a Hebrew excision — and he closes by refusing to decide ("however this be taken, whether believed so done or not… I should in no way doubt that it was rightly done"). Julian deploys this hesitant material toward a confident verdict it does not quite license.⁸

The numbers at issue, and Jerome enlisted on the same side

"In illa enim prima aetate inveniuntur ab Adam usque ad diluvium anni 1656. Et a diluvio usque ad Abraham reperiuntur anni 292. Secundum codices autem Septuaginta interpretum reperiuntur ab Adam usque ad diluvium anni 2242. Et a diluvio usque ad Abraham, anni 1072… Ecce minor numerus reperitur annorum in codicibus Hebraeorum quam in codicibus Septuaginta interpretum."

— Julian of Toledo, De comprobatione aetatis sextae, bk. III.15 (PL 96, col. 576B–C), source.⁹ Julian lays the figures side by side exactly as Eusebius had: the Hebrew gives 1,656 years from Adam to the Flood and 292 more to Abraham; the Septuagint, 2,242 and 1,072 — "behold, a smaller number of years is found in the Hebrew codices than in the codices of the Seventy translators." For the verdict he calls Jerome to the stand, quoting the preface to Jerome's Latin Chronicon of Eusebius: "Nor does it escape me that in the Hebrew codices discordant years of the generations are found, more or less… and that one ought rather to follow what the multitude of copies has likewise transmitted" — i.e. the Greek.¹⁰ It is a pointed enlistment: the same Jerome who elsewhere built his Vulgate on the Hebraica veritas is here cited for the Greek — because on the bare chronology of Genesis 5 and 11 even Jerome had deferred to the Septuagint's longer count.

Notes

• What Julian actually adds to the charge. The chronology strand begins with Eusebius, who suspected the Jews "made bold to shorten" the begetting-ages. Julian's distinctive contribution is twofold and worth keeping straight: (1) he largely defuses the year-count dispute by relocating the ages of the world in generations rather than summed years — so the corruption charge is, for him, almost a fallback; and (2) on the year-count itself he gives the West its crispest rule, "follow the Seventy, not the Hebrew," backed by a dossier of Epiphanius, Augustine, and Jerome. The motive he most explicitly states — that the Jews altered their text out of envy, to diminish Christian authority — he quotes from Augustine and frames as merely reported opinion. His own voice supplies the polemical heat (falsitas Judaeorum) more than a new mechanism.
• His sources are cooler than his conclusion. The three Fathers Julian marshals all hedge where he does not. Augustine twice refuses to call the divergence a falsification and reads the extra hundred years as added on the Greek side under prophetic liberty; Jerome defers to the Greek only on this one chronological point while building his Bible on the Hebrew; Epiphanius praises the Seventy's inspiration without here charging the Hebrew. The gap between Julian's epithet and his evidence is itself a datum for the Genesis 5/11 chronology argument: the deliberate-shortening thesis was asserted more confidently than its patristic warrants allowed.
• Genesis 5/11, with a side door to the Flood. The numbers in dispute are the antediluvian and post-diluvian begetting-ages of Genesis 5 and 11 — the same genealogy that fixes the date of the Flood — so Julian feeds the chronology argument on this timeline and connects to the Flood doctrine's reckoning of the antediluvian generations.
• A convert's zeal? The Mozarabic Chronicle reports that Julian was himself of Jewish descent, "a flower of roses sprung from thorns" — a tradition often invoked to explain the heat of his anti-Jewish writing. It is a later notice, not Julian's own statement, and is given here only as context.
• Source note. Julian's De comprobatione aetatis sextae has no published English translation of its third book (an in-progress English version covers only the preface and Books I–II). The text is therefore cited from the Latin of Migne, Patrologia Latina 96 (cols. 537–586), as reproduced on Latin Wikisource; the blockquotes are verbatim Latin and the English in the prose is a working translation. The critical edition is J. N. Hillgarth (ed.), Sancti Iuliani Toletanae sedis episcopi opera I, CCSL 115 (Turnhout, 1976), pp. 143–212; the Wassersteins locate this material at bk. III.16–21 (their pp. 201–05).

Sources