| Summary: | Jerome's explanation of Ecclesiastes 12:1—7 in his Commentary on Ecclesiastes relies on sources from the Jewish, Christian, and Classical worlds. The Jewish, Christian and Classical traditions utilized by Jerome interact with each other in Jerome's effort to interpret Eccl 12:1—7. This interaction explains why Jerome prefers two Jewish interpretations of the verses: an allegory of the destruction of the Temples (Ecclesiastes Rabbah and Lamentations Rabbah) and an allegory of old age (b.Šabb. 151a—153a). Following Gregory Thaumaturgus and Didymus, Jerome reads the text allegorically, but opts for the Jewish versions because of the influence of Classical tradition. This influence appears in three ways: 1. Jerome situates the Jewish allegory of old age within Classical traditions concerning old age; 2. the physical decline associated with old age in contrast to the eternality of the soul fits his reading of Ecclesiastes as a refutation of Epicureanism — Jerome's treatment of the old-age allegory essentially rejects the "aging of the soul" described in Lucretius' On the Nature of Things (Book III); 3. the allegory of the Temples' destructions combined with the old-age allegory correlates with Classical notions about the "biological" development of political regimes. Rather than simply juxtapose Jewish traditions with Christian ones, Jerome reads and reworks Jewish traditions through a Classical refractor. Thus, the Commentary on Ecclesiastes embodies the permeable cultural borders characteristic of Late Antiquity. Although not the central thesis of the paper, the source-critical argument has significant implications for the study of aggadic traditions in the Babylonian Talmud. The old-age allegory appears in Leviticus Rabbah and Ecclesiastes Rabbah, but Jerome more closely follows the tradition preserved in the Bavli. Therefore, Jerome provides evidence that the Bavli used a fixed aggadic collection of Palestinian provenance.
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