The Jerome Conspiracy: Second Edition
I didn't begin digging into the history of Jerome with the idea of uncovering any dirt on him - let alone pegging him with a fifth century religious conspiracy that changed the course of Christianity.Rather I backed into the discovery quite accidentally while solving a Dead Sea Scroll puzzle I was working on. For centuries Christians believed there was only one Hebrew version of the Jewish scriptures - the version that is contained in the Old Testament section of the modern Christian Bible. However the Dead Sea Scrolls found in cave four revealed something quite startling: There once were three Hebrew versions of the Jewish scriptures. One Hebrew version (from the Jews in Egypt) was translated by Egyptian Greeks in the second century BC. This translation of the Egyptian Jewish scriptures is called the Septuagint (also known as the LXX). Another Hebrew version (from the Jews in Palestine) was translated into Aramaic.This translation of the Palestinian Jewish scriptures is called the Peshitta. And the remaining Hebrew version (from the Jews in Babylon) is what is used in Christian Bibles today. It is called the Masoretic Text. In a nutshell, there were three textual lines of Jewish scriptures by the time Jesus was born: Egyptian, Palestinian, and Babylonian. Jesus, his disciples, and the early church all quoted the Greek Septuagint (which was based on the Egyptian version of the Jewish scriptures). Modern Bibles, however, contain the Babylonian version of the Jewish scriptures. So the initial historical puzzle that started it all was: When and why did the church abandon the Egyptian version of the Jewish scriptures for the Babylonian one? In investigating the answer to that question, it didn't take long to learn that Jerome was the one who replaced the Egyptian version of the scriptures with the Babylonian one. He did this when translating the Latin Vulgate Bible. So once I learnedwhenthe change occurred, I then wanted to knowwhyit occurred. Why did Jerome replace the original Christian version of thirty nine biblical books with a significantly different set? And it was during my investigation into that question I fell down the rabbit hole. As I peeled back the layers of the onion I began to realize Jerome did a lot more than just swap one version of the Old Testament for another. He was a very busy man.  So I made a list of all the changes Jerome made to the Bible and early Christian writings (which were many). I was determined to connect the dots. I was determined to understand what all the changes he made had in common. That's when I realized they all converge on one inescapable conclusion - the conclusion I callThe Jerome Conspiracy. And ironically, the discovery of Jerome's conspiracy led me full circle back to the Dead Sea Scrolls found in cave four. The very scrolls that started me down this unexpected path ended up providing the requisite empirical proof of Jerome's conspiracy. Jerome's motivations were related to his pet doctrine of eternal damnation in hell - a doctrine believed only by a tiny minority of Christians during his day. The Jerome Conspiracyparable begins with an evangelical couple losing their adult atheist son to a car accident.They are convinced his rejection of Christianity has damned him to an eternity of hellfire. However, as the story unfolds, the evangelical parents begin to uncover many surprising historical facts regarding the original Bible and the original Christian faith. In the end, they realize that all the facts connect back to one man ... Jerome.What they learn next forces them to reassess both sacred cows: their view on eternal damnation and their viewpoint of their son's fate in the afterlife.--This text refers to an alternatePaperbackedition.