Jerome wrote his commentaries on Titus and Philemon in 386, in the first year after he settled at Bethlehem following his expulsion from Rome. They belong to a set of four Pauline commentaries composed in quick succession, together with those on Galatians and Ephesians, and were dedicated to Paula and Eustochium, the Roman women whose patronage sustained his monastic community. In the prefaces Jerome names his sources openly: for Titus he had Origen's three books and a homily on the letter, and he leaned on them heavily, so that these commentaries now preserve much Origenian exegesis that would otherwise be lost. Rufinus later threw this dependence back at him during their quarrel, charging that Jerome had passed off Origen's work as his own.
The commentaries proceed verse by verse, but a few arguments give them their lasting shape. In the preface to Titus Jerome attacks Marcion, Basilides, and Tatian for rejecting the Pastoral Epistles, insisting that whoever receives Paul must receive these letters too. On Titus 1:5 he produces his best-known patristic statement on church order: a presbyter is the same as a bishop, and the elevation of one presbyter over the rest arose by custom, as a remedy against schism, rather than by dominical institution; he reads the interchangeable language of Acts and the Pauline letters as evidence. At Titus 1:12 he pauses over Paul's quotation of the Cretan poet Epimenides and defends the apostle's use of pagan literature, a theme close to his own anxieties about his classical education. The Philemon commentary opens by answering readers who dismissed the letter as too slight and domestic to be Paul's; Jerome argues that its very ordinariness confirms its authenticity, since a forger would have reached for weightier matter. He then reads the letter as a study in apostolic tact, tracing how Paul, who could have commanded, instead persuades Philemon to receive Onesimus as a brother.
The Titus commentary has mattered far beyond its size because the passage on presbyters and bishops was quoted for a thousand years, by canonists, by medieval theologians, and by sixteenth-century reformers arguing that episcopacy was a human arrangement. The Philemon commentary remains one of the earliest sustained defenses of that letter's place in the canon. Both works also show a translator-scholar at the beginning of his Bethlehem years, testing Greek against Latin and reading Paul through Origen before he had turned decisively against him.
Who should read this: students of patristic exegesis, of the history of ministry and episcopacy, and of Origen's lost Pauline commentaries will find these short works repay close attention. Readers looking for a devotional meditation on Philemon, or for historical-critical treatment of the Pastorals, should look elsewhere; Jerome is arguing with heretics and with his sources, not preaching.
Commentaries on Titus and Philemon
by Jerome
For For students of Jerome on the pastoral epistles: two short commentaries written with the Galatians and Ephesians ones, the Titus commentary his fullest statement on the clergy's duties; Latin only.
Jerome wrote his commentaries on Titus and Philemon in 386, in the first year after he settled at Bethlehem following his expulsion from Rome. They belong to a set of four Pauline commentaries composed in quick succession, together with those on Galatians and Ephesians, and were dedicated to Paula and Eustochium, the Roman women whose patronage sustained his monastic community. In the prefaces Jerome names his sources openly: for Titus he had Origen's three books and a homily on the letter, and he leaned on them heavily, so that these commentaries now preserve much Origenian exegesis that would otherwise be lost. Rufinus later threw this dependence back at him during their quarrel, charging that Jerome had passed off Origen's work as his own.
The commentaries proceed verse by verse, but a few arguments give them their lasting shape. In the preface to Titus Jerome attacks Marcion, Basilides, and Tatian for rejecting the Pastoral Epistles, insisting that whoever receives Paul must receive these letters too. On Titus 1:5 he produces his best-known patristic statement on church order: a presbyter is the same as a bishop, and the elevation of one presbyter over the rest arose by custom, as a remedy against schism, rather than by dominical institution; he reads the interchangeable language of Acts and the Pauline letters as evidence. At Titus 1:12 he pauses over Paul's quotation of the Cretan poet Epimenides and defends the apostle's use of pagan literature, a theme close to his own anxieties about his classical education. The Philemon commentary opens by answering readers who dismissed the letter as too slight and domestic to be Paul's; Jerome argues that its very ordinariness confirms its authenticity, since a forger would have reached for weightier matter. He then reads the letter as a study in apostolic tact, tracing how Paul, who could have commanded, instead persuades Philemon to receive Onesimus as a brother.
The Titus commentary has mattered far beyond its size because the passage on presbyters and bishops was quoted for a thousand years, by canonists, by medieval theologians, and by sixteenth-century reformers arguing that episcopacy was a human arrangement. The Philemon commentary remains one of the earliest sustained defenses of that letter's place in the canon. Both works also show a translator-scholar at the beginning of his Bethlehem years, testing Greek against Latin and reading Paul through Origen before he had turned decisively against him.
Who should read this: students of patristic exegesis, of the history of ministry and episcopacy, and of Origen's lost Pauline commentaries will find these short works repay close attention. Readers looking for a devotional meditation on Philemon, or for historical-critical treatment of the Pastorals, should look elsewhere; Jerome is arguing with heretics and with his sources, not preaching.
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