Rufinus Vindicated

In an article earlier this year, I argued for the general reliability of Rufinus' Latin translations of some of the writings of Origen. Much of what Origen wrote has come down to us, entirely or in part, by means of the work of Rufinus. And the reliability of his translations of Origen has sometimes been disputed. The disputed works contain a lot of significant material, such as the material related to the New Testament canon discussed in my article linked above. Thus, the reliability of Rufinus' translations is an important issue. And since Rufinus was a significant figure in church history, his character has implications in other contexts as well.

I recently read the introduction to Thomas Scheck's translation of Origen's Commentary On Romans (Origen: Commentary On The Epistle To The Romans, Books 1-5 [Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University Of America Press, 2001]). Here are some of Scheck's comments on Rufinus:

Rufinus, like Origen, was never canonized, and a shadow was cast over him in subsequent centuries owing to the malicious and unjust attacks on his character and orthodoxy by St. Jerome. Yet Rufinus is one of the noblest and most productive figures of Christian antiquity. He dedicated the latter part of his life to the unselfish task of translating the works of Greek theologians into Latin. "Through his labors...a considerable part of the works of the great Alexandrian [Origen] have floated down across the ocean of the Dark Ages, and, while lost in their native Greek, have in their Latin garb come to enrich the later civilization of the West." As a translator Rufinus became one of the most important educators of the Latin Middle Ages, although to the present day his significance has scarcely been appreciated or fully measured. "More than any other figure in the fields of hermeneutics, exegesis, and spirituality, he would be the grand master."

Rufinus was born into a Christian family in Concordia, not far from Aquileia....He became a monk and was baptized in Aquileia around 370. In 372 or 373 he went to Egypt, a Greek-speaking part of the Empire, where he met Didymus the Blind, who introduced him to Origen's works. Following Athanasius's death in 373 there was an outbreak of persecution by the Arians against orthodox Christians in Egypt. Rufinus himself was thrown into prison and afterwards he and many other confessors were banished from Egypt by their Arian persecutors.

After his sojourn in Egypt, Rufinus moved to Palestine with a wealthy patroness and sister in Christ, Melania. Together they established on the Mount of Olives a monastic foundation devoted to ascetic practices, to scholarly pursuits such as the copying of manuscripts of Christian and pagan classics, to teaching, and to showing hospitality to visitors of the Holy Land. Palladius relates, "They passed their life, offending none, and helping almost the whole world." It was during this period of eighteen to twenty years that Rufinus was ordained by John, bishop of Jerusalem. The last years of Rufinus's life, during which he carried out his great Latin translations, were spent in Aquileia, Rome, and Sicily, where he died.

In the heat of the Origenist controversy, St. Jerome vilified Rufinus, St. Ambrose, and St. John Chrysostom, attempting to blacken the reputation of all three men for subsequent generations. Only in the case of Rufinus has the cloud of suspicion lingered to the present day. The more objective ancient Christian historians held a different assessment. Palladius described Rufinus as a man of noble birth and manners, very strong in following out his own independent resolutions. "No one of the male sex was ever gentler, and he had the strength and the calmness of one who seems to know everything." In the late fifth century Gennadius saw clearly that Jerome had unjustly attacked Rufinus. He describes Rufinus as a brilliant and gifted teacher of the Church who gave to the Latins a very large part of the library of the Greek writers....And Cassiodorus regarded him as a most eloquent translator, who translated Origen's Commentary [on Romans] even more eloquently....

He [the person who asked Rufinus to translate Origen's commentary on Romans] requested that Rufinus abridge the work to half the space...Thus Rufinus kept his word to Heraclius: He compressed the Greek work to precisely half the space.

Rufinus's open admission of having substantially abbreviated the work [Origen's commentary on Romans] is of importance in assessing his reliability as its translator....The lack of congruence between any given Greek fragment and Rufinus's Latin version may not necessarily impugn Rufinus's reliability as a translator, since the fragment might have been not translated by Rufinus....

In an appendix to his magisterial study of the patristic interpretation of Romans, K.H. Schelkle makes a detailed comparison of the Greek fragments [of Origen's commentary on Romans] with Rufinus's Latin translation. He calls into question the traditional suspicion of Rufinus's reliability and the preference for the Greek fragments, concluding that the reliability of the fragments must be contested. Schelkle denies that they can even be regarded as genuine pieces of Origen's original Commentary. They are instead excerpts from the Commentary, i.e., summaries of longer passages, and they have been shaped into a unique form by the excerptor....

If Schelkle's investigation is correct, it seems that Rufinus's Latin translation has been vindicated, at least in large part. It offers us the best source and most reliable witness for Origen's thoughts, though Rufinus has expressed these thoughts in his own words. Even Scherer, who thinks that Rufinus has substituted his own exegesis at several points, admits, "The translation is often accurate, exact, and in large measure faithful."

It is certain that Rufinus has left out large blocks of text. It is very likely that he has reformulated (or updated) heterodox-sounding passages, particularly those pertaining to the Trinity, since his translations assume that heretics had falsified some passages in Origen's works. We are moreover well advised to keep in mind Hammond Bammel's cautions to the effect that in his translations of Origen, Rufinus has spoken with his own voice to the readers of his time. He has reflected upon the thoughts of Origen and expressed them in his own words for his readers....Rufinus's language was less polished and less technical than Origen's....

These caveats notwithstanding, it is to Origen's interpretations we are listening in the Commentary, not to Rufinus's. A sure method of confirming this is to compare the exegesis found here with that of Origen's other writings. (pp. 10-13, 17-19)

In order to more fully appreciate the significance of some of this information Scheck conveys, see my earlier article that discusses Rufinus' translations.

It's important to note that Rufinus was asked to translate Origen's commentary on Romans, and that the person who made the request asked him to abbreviate the work. Rufinus didn't initiate the translation or its abbreviation. And he openly and explicitly acknowledged that he was abbreviating Origen's work. As I noted in my earlier article, Rufinus handled different translations in different ways, and he was open and explicit about the approaches he was taking to different works he was translating. Similarly, we today will translate documents in a variety of ways, such as in abridged form or in a paraphrase rather than word-for-word. There's nothing dishonest about that.

Note, also, that we have many ways of judging the reliability of Rufinus' translational work. It's not as though all we have to go by is the general reliability of Rufinus as an individual. Rather, we can compare Rufinus' translations to fragments of those works that have been preserved elsewhere. We have comments on the reliability of Rufinus' work from other ancient sources, who would have had access to a lot of evidence not available to us. And, as I explained in my earlier article, some of what Origen says in Rufinus' translations not only is different from what Rufinus believed, but sometimes even contradicts Rufinus. Even if we were suspicious of Rufinus' translations on issues related to Trinitarian doctrine, for example (an example cited by Scheck above), it doesn't follow that we should be equally suspicious of his translations related to other matters. I've been citing Rufinus on issues related to the canon of scripture, and Origen differs from and contradicts Rufinus on some of those issues. Why should we think that Rufinus' alleged unreliability on a subject related to Trinitarianism makes him unreliable on those canonical matters as well?

Since the subject under consideration here is Rufinus' translations of Origen, some of you may be interested in reading something I wrote about Origen last year. Origen deserves criticism on some points, but, like Rufinus, his merits have often been underestimated.