Where’s the part about the granddaughter?
Paula was a friend of Jerome. The letter is addressed to Laeta. Laeta was Paula’s daughter. The letter is speaking about how to raise Leata’s daughter as a consecrated virgin; that is, it is about how to raise Paula’s granddaughter.
I highly doubt Chat GPT is giving the exact opposite meaning as you say. Clear this up.
I’m not sure how much more I can do to clear it up; I already pointed out the specific things that the chatbot had previously gotten dead wrong, and gave the explanation for why it was dead wrong.
You yourself have already noticed that the chatbot is inconsistent, so I don’t know why it would surprise you that some of its answers were perfectly wrong.
By the way, the translation you just posted (#19) was adequate.
I am quoting from the Christian History Institute. “Paula: A Portrait of 4th Century Piety” by Nancy A. Hardesty, 1988
Here:
Like many of the earlier church fathers, Jerome equated “woman” with “body,” and thus with sexuality and evil.
He wrote with total disgust of the life of the average woman.
In a letter written about 403 concerning the upbringing of Paula’s granddaughter, Jerome said
she should not be taken to the baths, because there she might see the totally revolting sight of a pregnant woman.
Second, I quoted from:
“The Influence of Saint Jerome on Medieval Attitudes to Women” by Jane Barr
First published as Ch. 6, in After Eve,
edited by Janet Martin Soskice.
Collins Marshall Pickering 1990
Reproduced on our website with the necessary permissions
His true feelings are also vividly expressed when he says, ‘Women with child present a revolting spectacle.’
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So you’re saying
Google search and Google ai,
The Christian History Institute,
and
Jane Barr in the book After Evee, edited by Janet Martin Soskicegot
and ChatGPT got it 180 degrees wrong.
= = = = =
Jane Barr and her editor got it wrong.
= = = = = =
You’re saying some other people, not Jewrome, gave instructions/opinion:
Married women display the ugliness of their swelling wombs.
Jerome just repeats what OTHERS have said. You’re saying he doesn’t agree with that instruction/opinion?
He certainly is giving his voice to that opinion.
But Jerome DOES ask:
Why does she reignite the smothered flames with the heat of the baths?
You do not have more than a moot point: He didn’t say it first, he just repeated it.
Yes, I’m telling you that both Hardesty and and Barr are calumniating Jerome in those passages.
We needn’t quibble over authority or credentials when we have Jerome’s words sitting in front of us to read.
You’re saying some other people, not Jewrome, gave instructions/opinion: . . . Jerome just repeats what OTHERS have said. You’re saying he doesn’t agree with that instruction/opinion? He certainly is giving his voice to that opinion.
I’m saying Jerome is explicitly reporting what others have said in the offensive line, and when he then offers his own, contrasting opinion on the question, it has nothing to do with eunuchs, married women, or pregnant bellies.
I am also saying that it is plainly dishonest to attribute a view to someone when that person only reports that others held it and offers no indication that he endorses it. That is like saying, based on Mt. 5:43, that Jesus teaches that we should hate.
I can hardly use strong enough language to express what academic misconduct it is for a classicist to say without qualification that that line gives Jerome’s “true feelings”. I have trouble believing that a scholar with Barr’s command of Latin could have so blatantly misrepresented her source in good faith. Then again, even scholars sometimes deceive themselves.
Either way, I find Barr’s indictment of Jerome in her essay in _After Eve_ (p97), not a little ironic: “[Jerome] was driven by the desire to convince his audience by any means he could, and he failed to see the weaknesses in his arguments.”
Part 1
“I know that some have given instructions that a virgin of Christ should not bathe with eunuchs, nor with married women, because the former do not suppress the passions of men, and the latter display the ugliness of their swelling wombs.
Part 2
For my part, I am entirely opposed to baths for a virgin of full age, who ought to blush at herself and be unable to look upon her own nakedness.
Part 3
For if she mortifies her body with vigils and fasts and brings it into subjection, if she seeks to extinguish the flame of lust and the desires of her fervent youth with the chill of chastity, if she hurries to defile her natural beauty by embracing filth, then why, on the contrary, does she reignite the smothered flames with the heat of the baths?”
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Part 1 is the offensive remark.
Part 2, I would say, is also offensive. The virgin of full age should be unable to look upon her own nakedness.
Shame? Why? Shame even when bathing? Why?
Part 3 – bathing is embracing filth? Where should she bathe, then? Baths are places that have smothering flames of sexual heat?
If she fasts to keep herself from getting overweight, that is defiling? ? ?
If she has the vigil of being sure to bathe, that is defiling?
Clean and not overweight is defiling and filthy?
You are in error. I tried to see it your way but I disagree with what you are saying about Jerome, @Porphyry.
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