The name most closely associated with the Latin Versions of the New Testament is that of =Jerome= (Hieronymus). This scholar was born at Stridon, on the borders of Dalmatia,[92] about the year 345, and educated at Rome. After leading for some time a hermit life in Palestine, Jerome returned to Rome, and it was during his residence there, in the year 382, that he was urged by Pope Damasus to undertake a revision of the Latin version of the New Testament then in use. This he did, and in 383 sent the Pope, who died in the following year, the first instalment of the work, the Four Gospels, accompanied with a letter beginning thus:—“Thou compellest me to make a new work out of an old; after so many copies of the Scriptures have been dispersed throughout the whole world, I am now to occupy the seat of the arbiter, as it were, and seeing they disagree, to decide which of them accords with the truth of the Greek; a pious task, verily, yet a perilous presumption, to pass judgment on others and oneself to be judged by all.” He anticipates that everyone, no matter who, learned or ignorant, that takes up a Bible and finds a discrepancy between it and the usual text will straightway condemn him as an impious falsifier who presumed to add to or alter or correct the ancient Scriptures. But he comforts himself with the reflection that it is the High Pontiff himself that has laid this task upon him, and that the testimony of his jealous opponents themselves proves that discrepancies are an indication of error (verum non esse quod variat, etiam maledicorum testimonio comprobatur); for if they tell us we are to rest our faith on the Latin exemplars, they must first say which, because there are almost as many versions as manuscripts (tot enim sunt exemplaria paene quot codices); if it is to be the majority of these, why not rather go back to the Greek original which has been badly rendered by incompetent translators (a vitiosis interpretibus male edita), made worse instead of better by the presumption of unskilful correctors (a praesumptoribus imperitis emendata perversius), and added to or altered by sleepy scribes (a librariis dormitantibus aut addita sunt aut mutata). In a letter to his learned friend Marcella, written in the year 384, he gives instances of what he complains of, citing, _e.g._, Romans xii. 11, where _tempori servientes_ had hitherto been read instead of _domino servientes_ (καιρῷ instead of κυρίῳ), and 1 Tim. v. 19, “against an elder receive not an accusation,” where the qualifying clause, “except before two or three witnesses,” was dropped, and also 1 Tim. i. 15, iii. 1, where _humanus sermo_ was given in place of _fidelis_. In all three instances, our most recent critical editions decide in favour of Jerome, against the Old Latin Version. In the last instance cited, we know of only one Latin-Greek manuscript that has ἀνθρώπινος instead of πιστός, and that only in c. iii. 1, viz. D*.