Jerome

Jerome gave the Latin West its Bible. He learned Hebrew when most Christian scholars still depended on Greek, settled in Bethlehem, and translated scripture from the original languages into the Latin text later known as the Vulgate. For a thousand years, when Western Christians heard, copied, preached, and argued over scripture, Jerome's Latin was usually the text in front of them. His temperament was sharp and often unpleasant, but his scholarly achievement changed the daily life of the church.