About Jerome Institute

Jerome Institute launched in 2025 as a force to press forward the opportunity and call for Catholics to engage the Scriptures deeply. In the words of our patron, we seek to "pluck upon earth the fruit which has its root in heaven."

OUR GOALS ARE TO:

Pursue a relevant synthesis between biblical interpretation and systematic theology that both informs and is informed by the teachings of the Catholic Church
Support the formation and development of the next generation of scholars leveraging biblical studies as the shortest and surest path to truth
Further the dissemination and publication of key works in a new orchard of Catholic biblical exegesis

Our patron, St. Jerome, famously said, "Ignorance of Scripture is Ignorance of Christ."

Less famously, he tells of a vision that came to him on route to Jerusalem during Lent one year. Jerome had been trying to read the Hebrew prophets, but he found their style to be "rude and repellent" when compared to the great authors of Greece and Rome. He would fast and keep prayer vigils, only to comfort himself at night on the writings of Cicero and Plautus.

He reports that, about the middle of Lent, he fell ill. His sickness worsened to the point that those around him began to make funeral preparations for the poor scholar. In his fever, among the throes of death, he was caught up in the spirit and dragged before the heavenly Judge. The Judge asked, "Who are you?" and he replied, "A Christian". But the judge said, "You are lying, you are a follower of Cicero and not of Christ. For, 'where your treasure is, there will your heart be also'". And it was this experience that changed everything for Jerome. He would now devote his life exclusively to reading, translating, and interpreting the Sacred Scriptures. But he did not do this alone. Along with the aid of the Holy Spirit, many people helped Jerome in his new quest. For the Bible cannot be understood in isolation, as the Church has always held.

Consider Philip's encounter with the Ethiopian, who was reading the prophet Isaiah. Philip asked, "Do you understand what you are reading?" "How can I," the man said, "unless someone explains it to me." And the same is true for us today. "Scripture and plain reason" are, obviously, not enough. And yet, "access to Sacred Scripture ought to be open wide to the Christian faithful." This cannot mean merely handing an English translation of the Bible to individual believers; but rather, "access" must be what Philip provided the Ethiopian when he interpreted the passage of Isaiah for him. He opened his eyes and baptized him. But even those who wish to have "eyes to see", such as Jerome before he appeared before the heavenly Judge, when he said, "I failed to see the light with my blinded eyes" needed to seek out training in Biblical studies. A person can help another see the humanity of the Scriptures, but only the Holy Spirit can quicken a heart.

And so, to be understood properly, the Holy Bible, consisting of two natures (i.e. being divinely inspired yet man made) requires the gifts of the Holy Spirit activated in humans who are grounded in the tools of human knowledge for understanding ancient literature in all its forms. This is what we at St. Jerome's Institute provide to our students––the human tools for accessing the Scriptures deeply.

We do this by teaching the languages in which they were written: Hebrew and Greek, giving special place to the Latin translations that have been with us since well before Jerome.

An outgrowth of his experiences while completing his doctoral degree under the supervision of Dr. Gerd Lüdemann at Georg-August-Universität in Göttingen, Germany, as well as during his many years as a teacher and professor in Catholic institutions in the US, Dr. Jordan Almanzar felt called to found a Catholic research and educational institution devoted to the Sacred Scriptures. In this conception, rather than a "great books" education where the Bible is often included along side other, secular works as a means to obtaining a liberal arts degree, Jerome Institute offers a "Great Book" paideia that, while relegating all other works of literature, elevates the Sacred Scriptures to their rightful position as the crowning jewel of scholarly pursuit, which in turn validates and provides true meaning to the rest.