52. For many [works] were brought forward by the heretics under the name of the prophets, and many of later origin under the name of the apostles, and all of those after careful examination were separated from the authority of the canon, under the name of apocrypha.
Chapter 4. On translators.
1. This man [Ptolemy Philadelphus] asked Eleazer the high-priest for the Scriptures of the Old Testament, and had them translated from Hebrew into Greek by seventy translators, and kept them in the library of Alexandria.
2. Being placed separately in separate cells they so translated all, by the influence of the holy spirit, that nothing was found in the text of any one of them, that was different in the rest, even in the order of the words.
5. The priest, Hieronymus, being expert in the three languages, translated the Scriptures also from Hebrew into Latin and expressed them with eloquence, and his translation is rightly preferred to the rest. For it is nearer to the literal, and plainer because of the clearness of its expression, and truer, as being done by a Christian translator.
Chapter 7. Those who wrote much.
1. Marcus Terentius Varro among the Latins wrote innumerable books. Among the Greeks also Chalcenterus is extolled with marvelous praises because he wrote so many books that no one of us could even copy in his own hand-writing as many works of other men.
2. Of our own writers, too, among the Greeks, Origen in his toil upon the Scriptures surpassed both Greeks and Latins in the number of his works. Hieronymus asserts that he had read 6,000 of his books.
3. However Augustine surpassed the zeal of all these by his genius and wisdom. For he wrote so much that no one is able in the days and nights even to read his books, far less to write them.
Chapter 16. On the canons of the councils.