ABSTRACT
This paper is to put forward some reflections about a curious silence. As people know only from Jerome, Origen delivered twenty-five homilies on Isaiah. Nine of them are preserved in Latin translation. In the manuscript tradition the name of the translator is not indicated. Only one piece of evidence confirms that this translation is Jerome's. Rufinus of Aquileia twice quoted a sentence from these homilies, stating explicitly that Jerome had translated them. Surprisingly, Jerome himself never mentioned this translation either in his own works on Isaiah or in the famous for his De viris illustribus, where he enumerated the books he had written down to 392/3. This suppression, which is not typical of a man such as Jerome, who constantly spoke about his literary production, has long been noticed and has given rise to various explanations.
