Friends, there are all kinds of good things. An engaging baseball game, a beautiful sunset, a properly operating car — all of these are good. We also notice that the goods of the world are arranged in a kind of hierarchy. There is good, better, and best, in regard to anything. But at the summit of all possible goods, there’s the summum bonum, the highest good: God. What’s our basic problem? We order our lives toward lesser goods. That’s not to deny that they’re good or to say we should pay no attention to them. But don’t order your life and your powers in the direction of anything less than God!

My favorite example is how “equity” isn’t part of the apostolic Greek Bible’s characteristic justice vocabulary. The Septuagint speaks instead in terms like dikaiosynē (δικαιοσύνη), righteousness or justice, krisis (κρίσις) and krima (κρίμα), judgment, and euthytēs (εὐθύτης), straightness or uprightness. Greek also had epieikeia (ἐπιείκεια), a term for equitable reasonableness or restraint and, in classical legal thought, the adjustment of a general rule when strict application failed to produce justice. Greek Scripture even uses epieikeia elsewhere, as in Wisdom 12:18. But that isnt the word used in the Psalm passages that later appear in English as “equity.” Western Christians inherited Scripture through several layers of translation. In Latin, aequitas became familiar biblical language. The word already had a Roman moral and legal history, with meanings that included fairness, evenness, proportion, equitable treatment, and justice. It overlapped with iustitia, but carried associations of its own. Once biblical language was rendered through aequitas, those associations became available to readers of Scripture too. Jerome didnt invent aequitas, and some biblical uses clearly predate his revisions. Hilary of Poitiers already quotes aequitas iudicia tua in his commentary on Psalm 118:75. Hilary reads the verse in terms of God’s just judgments, suffering, and purification. His reading shows that aequitas by itself does not imply a developed theory of equitable adjustment. Jerome did, however, help transmit the Latin biblical tradition in which aequitas became familiar Scripture language. His Gallican Psalter would become the dominant Psalter of the medieval Latin West. The Latin West ultimately prayed and memorized this Greek-derived Psalter, not Jerome’s later Hebrew Psalter. Even the Gallican Psalter’s Greek basis had already passed through a post-apostolic layer. Jerome revised an existing Latin Psalter against Origen’s Hexapla, which compared the Septuagint with Hebrew and with Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion. The Western Psalter had already been shaped by textual comparison before Jerome gave Hebrew its stronger role through Hebraica veritas, “Hebrew truth.” Jerome learned Hebrew through people as well as manuscripts. He began with a Christian teacher of Jewish background, later studied with the Jewish teacher Baraninas, paid a distinguished Jewish scholar from Lydda to help him understand Job, and elsewhere records consulting an authority in the Law from Tiberias before undertaking translation work. These contacts went well beyond pronunciation. They gave him access to Hebrew language, textual explanation, and living Jewish interpretation in late fourth-century Palestine. Jerome was learning Hebrew more than three centuries after the destruction of the Second Temple. Before and during the apostolic period, several Hebrew textual forms circulated. Some stood close to the ancestors of the later Masoretic Text, while others underlay readings preserved in the Septuagint. After AD 70, the proto-Masoretic stream increasingly displaced that earlier plurality withn rabbinic Judaism, while the Hebrew textual tradition itself continued to change through transmission. Many proto-Masoretic readings were already ancient, but some readings preserved in the later Masoretic tradition are secondary to competing readings preserved in the Septuagint. Jerome’s “Hebrew” was therefore not some pristine snapshot of the Hebrew Bible as it existed in the apostolic age. It was a living post-Temple textual tradition more than three centuries later. Simply appealing to “the Hebrew” cannot establish that a reading is earlier than the Greek. Each reading has to be judged on its own textual history. Jerome entered that post-Temple textual world directly. His Hebraica veritas increasingly gave Hebrew a deciding role when Greek and Latin texts disagreed. In Letter 106.2, he directs readers back to Hebrew in Old Testament textual disputes. Elsewhere in the same letter, he preserves the Septuagint’s place in church reading because of its antiquity while directing scholars to remember the Hebrew reading for textual accuracy. The older Greek Bible remained in worship, while Hebrew increasingly became the critical court of appeal. His Jewish teachers helped make that appeal possible by giving him access to the language and the interpretive tradition around it. Jerome then used Hebrew as the deciding standard when Greek and Latin readings conflicted. Augustine saw how significant the shift was. In Letter 71, he preferred a Latin translation of the Septuagint and worried that Jerome’s Hebrew-based version could produce different biblical readings in the Greek and Latin churches. He also noted how much harder disputed Hebrew readings would be for ordinary Christians to verify. The dispute over textual authority was already visible in Jerome’s own lifetime. Jerome’s Hebrew work also helps explain how aequitas could enter through Hebrew. Proverbs 1:3 ends with tsedeq, mishpat, mêšārîm (צֶדֶק וּמִשְׁפָּט וּמֵישָׁרִים), roughly “righteousness, judgment, and uprightness.” The key word is mêšārîm, from yāšār, “straight, level, upright.” The Septuagint handles the verse without an equity noun. It speaks instead of true righteousness and directing judgment aright. Jerome’s Latin gives: iustitiam et iudicium et aequitatem “justice, judgment, and equity.” Hebrew mêšārîm carries the image of straightness, levelness, and uprightness. Latin aequitas, from aequus, likewise begins with the idea of what is level or even, so the translation makes sense. But aequitas came with a much wider Roman moral and legal range. It could suggest fairness, proportion, even-handed treatment, and, in some contexts, justice beyond rigid adherence to the wording of a rule. A Hebrew word rooted in straightness or levelness could therefore enter Latin Scripture as aequitas and pick up associations the Hebrew itself did not require. Jerome’s Jewish teachers were part of the Hebrew-centered method behind these lexical choices, alongside Aquila, Symmachus, Theodotion, Origen, and earlier Christian scholarship. We can’t trace aequitas in Proverbs 1:3 to a particular lesson or teacher, but Jerome’s Hebrew-based translation work clearly drew in part on living Jewish scholarship. The Psalms show another route into the Western aequitas vocabulary. Jerome’s Gallican Psalter revised an existing Latin Psalter against the Greek of Origen’s Hexapla. His Psalterium iuxta Hebraeos was a separate translation from Hebrew. The Gallican Psalter became the dominant Psalter of the medieval Latin West. Psalm 119:75 and 119:144, numbered Psalm 118 in the Greek and Latin traditions, make the contrast clear. Psalm 119:75 has Hebrew tsedeq mishpatekha, “your judgments are righteous.” The Septuagint has dikaiosynē ta krimata sou, “your judgments are righteousness.” The Gallican Psalter gives aequitas iudicia tua, “your judgments are equity.” Jerome’s Hebrew Psalter gives iustum iudicium tuum, “your judgment is just.” Psalm 119:144 follows the same pattern. Hebrew has tsedeq edotekha leʿolam, “your testimonies are righteousness forever.” The Septuagint has dikaiosynē ta martyria sou eis ton aiōna, “your testimonies are righteousness forever.” The Gallican Psalter gives aequitas testimonia tua in aeternum, “your testimonies are equity forever.” Jerome’s Hebrew Psalter gives iusta testimonia tua semper, “your testimonies are always just.” The same Latin word can gather different source terms. In Proverbs 1:3, Jerome renders Hebrew mêšārîm with aequitas. In the Gallican Psalter, aequitas appears where the Greek has dikaiosynē. Elsewhere, Greek euthytēs also becomes Latin aequitas. In the Latin Bible, aequitas begins to gather several different source terms under one word. Hebrew mêšārîm, Greek dikaiosynē, and Greek euthytēs can all appear as aequitas. Straightness, uprightness, and righteousness now share the same Latin vocabulary, along with its existing Roman moral and legal associations. Distinctions visible in the source languages become harder to see. The contrast is still verry visible in modern English. The NIV repeatedly uses “equity” where the Septuagint uses the εὐθύς / εὐθύτης family, the language of what is straight, right, or upright. Psalm 9:8 (LXX 9:9) LXX: “And he will judge the world in righteousness; he will judge the peoples in uprightness.” Greek: ἐν δικαιοσύνῃ … ἐν εὐθύτητι NIV: “He rules the world in righteousness and judges the peoples with equity.” Psalm 58:1 (LXX 57:2) LXX: “If indeed you speak righteousness, do you judge rightly, O sons of men?” Greek: δικαιοσύνην λαλεῖτε; εὐθείας κρίνετε NIV: “Do you rulers indeed speak justly? Do you judge people with equity?” Psalm 67:4 (LXX 66:5) LXX: “Let the nations rejoice and exult, for you will judge the peoples in uprightness and guide the nations on the earth.” Greek: κρινεῖς λαοὺς ἐν εὐθύτητι NIV: “May the nations be glad and sing for joy, for you rule the peoples with equity and guide the nations of the earth.” Psalm 75:2 (LXX 74:3) LXX: “When I take the appointed time, I will judge uprightly.” Greek: ἐγὼ εὐθύτητας κρινῶ NIV: “You say, ‘I choose the appointed time; it is I who judge with equity.’” Psalm 96:10 (LXX 95:10) LXX: “Say among the nations, ‘The Lord reigns’ … he will judge the peoples in uprightness.” Greek: κρινεῖ λαοὺς ἐν εὐθύτητι NIV: “Say among the nations, ‘The Lord reigns.’ The world is firmly established, it cannot be moved; he will judge the peoples with equity.” Psalm 98:9 (LXX 97:9) LXX: “For he comes to judge the earth; he will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples in uprightness.” Greek: ἐν δικαιοσύνῃ καὶ λαοὺς ἐν εὐθύτητι NIV: “let them sing before the Lord, for he comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples with equity.” Psalm 99:4 (LXX 98:4) LXX: “The king’s honor loves judgment; you have prepared uprightnesses; you have accomplished judgment and righteousness in Jacob.” Greek: καὶ τιμὴ βασιλέως κρίσιν ἀγαπᾷ· σὺ ἡτοίμασας εὐθύτητας, κρίσιν καὶ δικαιοσύνην ἐν Ἰακὼβ σὺ ἐποίησας. NIV: “The King is mighty, he loves justice— you have established equity; in Jacob you have done what is just and right.” The pattern is striking here. In these passages, the NIV’s “equity” corresponds overwhelmingly to the LXX’s εὐθύς / εὐθύτης family, the language of what is straight, right, or upright. None uses ἐπιείκεια, the Greek term more naturally associated with equitable reasonableness or, in classical legal thought, the adjustment of strict rule. By the time “equity” becomes established in Western biblical, moral, and legal English, it carries a much larger history than the underlying Greek terms. In these passages the Septuagint does not use Greek’s specifically equity-like vocabulary. It uses righteousness, straightness, and uprightness. None of these “equity” passages uses epieikeia.

Could be that American politics for the rest of our lives will be parties switching power, engaging in ever more flagrant corruption and grifting, then prosecuting the other side for crimes and non-crimes, in just a never ending cycle - all while the intelligent people we want to steer politics are so bored with the Jerry Springer quality of things that they just check out.

I believe it was Nietzsche who said we will never be rid of God until we stop believing in grammar. Since that did not fully work, the NYC educational apparatus is working hard to overthrow the oppressive authority of the quadratic formula.

‘I am utterly DISGUSTED by your rampant, pathetic cowardice.’ Former Metropolitan Police detective Peter Bleksley BLASTS @alexarmstrong after he suggested he wouldn’t fight for his country.