From what language did St. Jerome make his translation for the Vulgate?

Question

I understand that sometime around 200 B.C. the books of the old testament had been canonized into the Septuagint, which was a translation of Hebrew text into Konine Greek.

Around 400 C.E. St. Jerome was commisioned to create a standardized Latin version, but was his Latin version made exclusively from the Greek Septuagint, or was it made exclusively from the original Hebrew text upon which the Septuagint itself was made?

Answer 1

From Wikipedia:

Thirty-eight of the thirty-nine protocanonical books of the Vulgate's Old Testament (all except for the Psalms) were translated anew by Jerome from Hebrew. He also translated Judith and Tobias. The rest of the Vulgate was a revision of earlier Latin translations from Greek. Jerome thoroughly revised the psalms and the four Gospels; how much the rest of the New Testament was revised is difficult to judge today. The rest of the Old Testament was perhaps revised only slightly, or not at all.

In his prologues, Jerome described those books of the Old Testament which were not found in the Hebrew as being non-canonical; he called them apocrypha.[1][2] Nevertheless the Old Testament of the Vulgate contained them, following the tradition of the Vetus Latina and the Septuagint, which was at that time the translation most widely used by Greek-speaking Christians. Of these books, Jerome translated only Tobit and Judith anew. The others retained the Old Latin renderings. Their style can still be markedly distinguished from Jerome's.

Answer 2

I'm not an expert in Church Fathers, or Catholic history, but I believe Jerome used the Septuagint for his translation of the Hebrew scriptures. This would explain why Roman Catholic Bibles include the Apocrypha, which was also included in the Septuagint. The Apocrypha wouldn't have been included had Jerome used the Hebrew text, as the Jews did not, and to this day, do not include the Apocrypha as inspired text(s). The Septuagint came about because Greek philosophers wanted a translation of the Hebrew texts while Israel was under Greek rule. Perhaps the Greeks wanted the Apocrypha as well, and had the Jewish scribes translate those works too.

Answer 3

St. Jerome made good use of all the existing sources available in his time, in both Greek and Hebrew, and likely, a few others.

The Septuagint would have been his primary reference, mainly because of its' wide use during the time of Christ, and it's rich, precise, and very distinctive lexicon.

Unfortunately, many of the documents he referenced no longer exist.

Answer 4

It was directly from the Hebrew.