TNDL: "Which bible is considered the best of the translated versions? According to bible Scholars, it is the "VOLGATE" translated by St Jerome. In around the year 342- 347."

TNDL: This is a brief historical synopsis of St Jerome. St. Jerome

CHRISTIAN SCHOLAR
BY: Walter John Burghardt
See Article History
Alternative Titles: Eusebius Hieronymus, Sophronius
St. Jerome, Latin in full Eusebius Hieronymus, pseudonym Sophronius, (born c. 347, Stridon, Dalmatia—died 419/420, Bethlehem, Palestine; feast day September 30), biblical translator and monastic leader, traditionally regarded as the most learned of the Latin Fathers. He lived for a time as a hermit, became a priest, served as secretary to Pope Damasus I, and about 389 established a monastery at Bethlehem. His numerous biblical, ascetical, monastic, and theological works profoundly influenced the early Middle Ages. He is known particularly for his Latin translation of the Bible, the Vulgate, and is considered a doctor of the church.


Life
Jerome was born of well-to-do Christian parents at Stridon, probably near the modern Ljubljana, Slovenia. His education, begun at home, was continued in Rome when he was about 12. There he studied grammar, rhetoric, and philosophy. A serious scholar enamoured of Latin literature, he frequented the catacombs and near the end of his Roman education was baptized (c. 366), probably by Pope Liberius.

He spent the next 20 years in travel and impermanent residences. At Treveris (later Trier), he was profoundly attracted to monasticism. Possibly as early as 369 he was back in the vicinity of Stridon. In Aquileia (Italy) he was linked with an ascetic elite—including Tyrannius Rufinus, a writer and scholar, who translated the 3rd-century Alexandrian theologian Origen—grouped around Bishop Valerianus. When the group disbanded (c. 373), Jerome decided to go on a trip through the East. On reaching Antioch in 374, fatigued by travel and by inner conflict, he rested as a guest of the priest Evagrius of Antioch and there may have composed his earliest known work, De septies percussa (“Concerning Seven Beatings”). There also, in mid-Lent 375, during a near-fatal illness, he had a celebrated dream. In that dream, in which he was dragged before a tribunal of the Lord, he was accused of being a Ciceronian—a follower of the 1st-century-BCE Roman philosopher Marcus Tullius Cicero—rather than a Christian, and he was severely lashed; he vowed never again to read or possess pagan literature.