Annotatio CCXLIX

”Seventy weeks are abbreviated.” — Daniel 9:24

To Jerome, expounding the seventy weeks, it was imputed as a fault by [his] rivals that in recounting the opinions of the Jews and of certain heretics he was excessive [too copious]; and that, [these] authors in many things receding from the purity of the faith, he called [them] masters of the Church.¹ To whom he, responding, in the preface of the eleventh commentary on Isaiah, thus writes: “In the little commentaries of Daniel I studied brevity, except [for] the last and the penultimate vision — in which it was necessary for me, on account of the magnitude of the obscurity, to extend [my] discourse, especially in the exposition of the seven, and sixty-two, and one weeks; in the treating of which — what Africanus the writer of times [the chronographer], what Origen and Eusebius of Caesarea, Clement also, presbyter of the Alexandrian church, and Apollinarius of Laodicea, and Hippolytus, and the Hebrews, and Tertullian thought — I briefly comprehended, leaving to the arbitration of the reader what he should choose out of the many. And so, that which I did with the modesty of judging, and for the honor of those who were about to read, displeases certain ones, who desire to know not the opinions of the ancients, but our [own] opinion: to whom [there is] an easy response — that I was unwilling so to receive [adopt] one [opinion], that I might seem to condemn others; and certainly, if [the work] of so great and so erudite a man displeases fastidious readers, what will they do to me, who lie exposed to the bites of the envious for the slenderness of [my] little talent? But if I named the aforesaid men masters of the Church — let them understand this: that I do not approve the faith of all [of them], who certainly are contrary among themselves; but [I cited them] for the distinguishing of Josephus and of Porphyry,

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who disputed very many things concerning this question.” These things Jerome.