Letter 119

To Minervius and Alexander

Minervius and Alexander, two monks of Toulouse, had written to Jerome asking him to explain for them a large number of passages in scripture. Jerome in his reply postpones most of these to a future time but deals with two in detail viz. (1) we shall not all sleep but we shall all be changed, 1 Cor. xv. 51; and (2) we shall be caught up in the clouds, 1 Thes. iv. 17. With regard to (1) Jerome prefers the reading we shall all sleep but we shall not all be changed, and with regard to (2) he looks upon the language as metaphorical and interprets it to mean that believers will be ‘assumed’ into the company of the apostles and prophets. The date of the letter is 406 A.D.