A COMMITMENT TO EXCELLENCE IN THE FACE OF ADVERSITY.
HE SPENT 30 LONG YEARS IN A GROTTO, NEXT TO THE CHURCH OF NATIVITY IN BETHLEHEM, TRANSLATING THE BIBLE IN LATIN - VULGATA.
Jerome didn't write the Bible but merited a bookmark in the history of Bible. The long road of scholarship and commitment to the Bible began when young Jerome was shipped off to school in Rome, a few hundred kilometers from home. There Jerome studied Latin under a taskmaster named Donatus, a master of the language and famous grammarian. In the 4th century, Latin had become the common language of the world. By then the Bible had been translated into Latin, but the translation was poor and often misrepresented the original languages - Hebrew and Greek.
After he finished his studies in Rome, Jerome went to Israel, where he studied Hebrew and began to translate the Gospels into Latin.
He lived 4 years in the Syrian desert as a hermit and he is said to have removed a thorn from the paw of a lion, which became his faithful friend.
Somewhere along the line, he was commissioned by Pope Damascus as a Bible translator, but his serious contribution to history came after the death of Damascus, when Jerome went to Bethlehem and labored for 30 years translating the Bible into Latin- which become known as the VULGATE.
He was a champion of what the Hebrew and Greek texts really said, rejecting the corrupt Old Latin texts that were widly used; and for this he was vilified and hated. Jerome stood by his convictions in spite of the fact that it cost him friends and acclaim. He had a commitment to excellence in the face of adversity, too, something we desperately need today . And last of all, Jerome persevered.
If you ever get to the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, you will undoubtedly visit the grotto where a silver star marks the birthplace of Jesus - but don't rush off the your bus. Ask to be shown the grotto adjacent to the church, where Jerome spent 30 long years translating the Bible - and thank God for the men who, without thanks or celebration, dedicated their lives to preserving the text of Scripture and giving it to people in languages they can understand...(Profiles in Faith, Harold Sala).
Many children in the 1960's, like the kindergartner pictured above, were born with phocomelia as a side effect of the drug thalidomide, resulting in the shortening or absence of limbs. (Photo by Leonard McCombe//Time Life Pictures/Getty Images).
The drug interfered with the babies' normal development, causing many of them to be born with phocomelia, resulting in shortened, absent, or flipper-like limbs. A German newspaper soon reported 161 babies were adversely affected by thalidomide, leading the makers of the drug—who had ignored reports of the birth defects associated with the it—to finally stop distribution within Germany. Other countries followed suit and, by March of 1962, the drug was banned in most countries where it was previously sold.
In July of 1962, president John F. Kennedy and the American press began praising their heroine, FDA inspector Frances Kelsey, who prevented the drug’s approval within the United States despite pressure from the pharmaceutical company and FDA supervisors. Kelsey felt the application for thalidomide contained incomplete and insufficient data on its safety and effectiveness. Among her concerns was the lack of data indicating whether the drug could cross the placenta, which provides nourishment to a developing fetus.