Jerome’s Boast of His Teachers, Didymus and the Jew Baranina

I think very little, indeed, of one reproach he aims at me, and hardly think it worth a reply. In listing the various teachers he says he hired from the Jewish synagogue, he says, to give me a sharp jab, “I have not been my own teacher, like some people.” He means me, of course, for he brings the whole weight of his invective to bear on me from beginning to end. In fact, I am surprised that he chose to make a point of this, when he had a bigger and easier matter at hand to belittle me with: namely, that though I stayed a long time among many eminent teachers, I have nothing to show that is worthy of their teaching or their training. He, for his part, has never in his whole life stayed more than thirty days at Alexandria, where Didymus lived. Yet almost all through his books he boasts, at length and at large, that he was the pupil of Didymus the Seer, and that he had Didymus as his “guide,” as he calls him in Greek, that is, his teacher in the holy Scriptures. And the material for all this boasting was gathered in a single month. But I, for the sake of God’s work, stayed six years, and again after an interval two more, where Didymus lived, the one teacher you boast of. Others lived there too who were in no way inferior to him, but whom you did not know even by sight: Serapion and Menites, men who are like brothers in life and character and learning; and Paul the old man, who had been the pupil of Peter the Martyr. And, to come to the teachers of the desert, whom I visited often and eagerly: Macarius the disciple of Antony, and the other Macarius, and Isidore and Pambas, all of them friends of God, who taught me the things they themselves were learning from God. What material for boasting I would have from all these men, if boasting were fitting or useful! But the truth is, I blush even as I string together these past experiences. I do it not to show you, as you put it, that my teachers did not do justice to my talents, but, what grieves me far more, that my talents have not done justice to my teachers. [a]

But it is foolish of me to list these holy Christian men. It is not of them that he is thinking when he says that he has not, like me, been his own teacher. He is thinking of Barabbas, whom, unlike me, he took as his teacher from the synagogue, and of Porphyry, through whose Introduction he, and not I, was introduced to logic. Forgive me for preferring to be thought an untrained and unlearned man rather than to be called the disciple of Barabbas. For when Christ and Barabbas were offered for our choice, I in my simplicity chose Christ. You, it seems, are willing to join your shouts to those who say, “Not this man, but Barabbas.” And I would like to know what that friend of yours, Porphyry, who wrote his blasphemous books against our religion, taught you. What good did you get from either of those masters you boast of so much, the one drawing his inspiration from the idols that represent demons, the other, as you tell us, from the synagogue of Satan? Nothing, so far as I can see, but what they knew themselves. From Porphyry you learned the art of speaking evil of Christians: to strike at those who live in virginity and self-control, at our deacons and presbyters, and to slander every order and rank of Christians in your published writings. From that other friend of yours, Barabbas, whom you chose out of the synagogue in place of Christ, you learned to hope for a resurrection not in power but in weakness, to love the letter that kills and to hate the spirit that gives life, and other more secret things, which, if the occasion requires, will be brought to light later, in due time.