Origen and his Hexapla
Origen of Alexandria (ca. 185–254) was a
fascinating figure from church history who left behind many works in
theology and philosophy. But he also left his mark on early Christian
philology and textual criticism in his magnum opus, which his followers
later entitled, the Hexapla or six-fold version of the Old Testament. As fascinating as Origen and his oeuvre
are to church historians and theologians, most people will not read
them. But all readers and students of the Bible will encounter his
achievement in the Hexapla when they read translations of the Bible
and commentaries on the books of the Old and New Testament. Thus, often
without knowing it, many will encounter Origen of Alexandria’s Hexapla,
and that is why the Hexapla Institute’s Edition of all known hexaplaric
fragments remains a clear desideratum for scholarly and pastoral work in the text of the Scriptures.
Significance of the Hexapla Institute
The Hexapla Institute collects and edits
textual witnesses to the Hebrew Bible / Old Testament that are quite
early and significant, and yet often unknown to nonspecialists: namely
the early Jewish Greek revisions of the Septuagint by Theodotion,
Aquila, and Symmachus (i.e., “the Three”). Although much about the
history of these texts remains uncertain, we can probably date
Theodotion to the turn of the era (50 BC–50 AD), Aquila to circa 120 and
Symmachus to circa 180. Since these revisions attempted to bring the
text of the Septuagint (the traditional Greek translations of Jews and
early Christians) into closer alignment with the current Hebrew text of
their day, they are important and valuable witnesses to the earliest
stages of the Hebrew text. But their significant witness has been
overshadowed by relatively recent discovery of other texts like the Dead
Sea Scrolls. Since these Greek revisions are quite literal translations
of the Hebrew text, scholars can reconstruct their Hebrew parent text
in a straightforward and clear manner, and thus their witness to the
Hebrew text becomes invaluable.
In 2025, we recognized the one-hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Frederick Field’s Origenis hexaplorum
“The Hexapla of Origen,” published by Oxford in 1875. Currently,
scholars in the fields of biblical studies and patristics cite Field’s
edition for hexaplaric readings. As elegant and magisterial as this
edition is, it has become outdated as more manuscripts containing
hexaplaric readings have been discovered (Meade 2022; Salvesen 2017;
Romeny and Gentry 2001; Barthélemy 2012: 580). A new edition based on
newer manuscript collations is necessary to ensure a more accurate text
of the Three and also a more expansive collection of them than what
Field was able to deliver in 1875.
The Hexapla Institute’s new critical
edition would not only increase our knowledge of these valuable Jewish
Greek texts and their reception within Judaism and Christianity, but
also a new edition would contribute to scholarship of the Hebrew Bible /
Old Testament, the Septuagint, the New Testament, early Christianity,
and rabbinic exegesis. Hebrew Bible scholars have long recognized the
value of the Three as witnesses to the history of the transmission of
the Hebrew text. Likewise, Septuagint scholars analyze the readings of
the Three to determine how they have may have corrupted the transmission
of the original Septuagint translation and they remove those later
intrusions to reconstruct the original Septuagint translation. For New
Testament research, a complete lexicon of the hexaplaric materials will
aid in the task of New Testament lexicography, for many words in the NT
do not occur in the Septuagint, and rare words in the NT may be found or
be best represented in the hexaplaric fragments.
Furthermore, the new critical edition will
illuminate the history of these versions of scripture used by Syriac
and Armenian Christians. The value of the so-called Syro-Hexapla has
been known for some time and will continue to be incorporated into this
new Edition. An area that has received little attention to date is how
the readings of the Hexapla reached Armenia and its manuscript
traditions. This new edition is committed to incorporating all relevant
evidence of the Hexapla.
Lastly, the Hexapla Institute plans both a
print and digital edition. The former will be published with Peeters
(Leuven), and the digital edition will be the result of the Institute’s
online and innovative database project.
The Method used for our Edition
For a more detailed survey of the history of editions of the Hexapla with images, see here. The Hexapla Institute employs the principles of textual criticism used by the Göttingen Septuaginta series articulated by Paul Maas (Textkritik
1927), starting with a base text (typically the majority text reading)
and emending it as necessary according to sound textual critical method.
The aim of the Hexapla Institute’s project is not to produce a critical
edition of the Hexapla in its original columnar format. As romantic as
this aim is, such an edition is not practical, since we do not know how
the whole Hexapla, word by word, was arranged. Certainty of the exact
arrangement for each biblical book eludes us at this time, but even if
one possessed this information, one would still not know the exact
arrangement of each word in each line of the Hexapla as originally
constructed. Therefore, the goal of this project is more attainable: to
create a critical edition of the remains of the Hexapla according to its
original wording or text.
The edition will unfold like Federick
Field’s edition: (1) the relevant Hebrew text will be supplied from the
Masoretic Text (usually St. Petersburg [Leningrad], National Library of
Russia, Firkovitch I, B 19a), (2) the relevant Septuagint text will be
supplied from the Göttingen Septuaginta (where available), and
(3) the original texts of Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion will be
reconstructed according to sound textual critical principles with all
variants placed into a series of apparatuses. Thus, the new edition will
be based on more recent discoveries and better texts than Field’s. This
project will be able to use and incorporate the following:
- the Göttingen Septuaginta’s new collation of manuscripts;
- Göttingen Septuaginta of the Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen’s digitally achived manuscripts;
- the new critical editions of patristic works like Corpus Christianorum: Series Graeca, Corpus Christianorum: Series Latina, Sources Chretienne, Biblia Patristica, volumes 1–7 and Supplement, along with better editions of catena materials.
The Hexapla Institute is governed by the
principles presented by the Modern Language Association Committee on
Scholarly Editions including: the editors will establish the reliability
of the edition by accurate representation of the texts through adequate
and appropriate documentation of its editorial principles and
practicing consistent and explicit methods. Thus, the new edition will
consist of:
- an introduction stating the editorial principles, describing the
textual witnesses, and narrating the textual history of the work;
- an eclectically reconstructed text of the remains of the Hexapla
with a series of apparatuses documenting textual variants and non-Greek
languages;
- commentary in the form of notes on the texts discussing editorial
justifications for decisions and prior scholarship on the text.
As mentioned above, the primary goal is to
reconstruct the original readings of the Hexapla, not the original
columnar form. The new edition will make a clear advance on previous
editions because those editions of hexaplaric remains were more akin to
collections of hexaplaric readings—not edited texts of the Hexapla. Although the Göttingen Septuaginta
freshly collated the materials and collected the hexaplaric readings in
its second apparatus, this is only a wonderful, primary step.
Göttingen’s goal is not to create a new edition of the hexaplaric
remains. The Hexapla Institute’s goal is precisely to reconstruct the
original wording of the Hexapla and place those readings into a context
like Origen’s original synopsis; that is, we will place the readings of
the Three next to the readings of the Hebrew and the Septuagint. In
previous centuries, the method of simple collection was probably
suitable for the state of the evidence at that time. But with newer
manuscript discoveries in Greek, Syriac, Latin, and Armenian, the time
for a new edition has never been more ostensive.
The Hexapla Institute’s new edition has a
clear goal for an eclectic, edited text with apparatuses recording all
variant readings. Most fields of research produce and require eclectic
editions. That is, an editor reconstructs and publishes a text not
necessarily found in any one manuscript but only after examining the
readings of all the manuscripts the editor reconstructs the oldest
retrievable form of the text. By contrast, a diplomatic edition, such as
that found in the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (BHS), aims to
reproduce the text of one manuscript and record variants to that text in
the apparatus. The Hexapla Institute’s edition will not be a mere
collection of readings or a simple diplomatic text; rather, it will be a
responsibly assembled and reconstructed eclectic text. The editors will
record the variants and provide textual commentary showing the
justification for decisions between conflicting readings.
Another problem with Field’s edition is
that it is often poorly sourced so that scholars do not always know
whence a hexaplaric reading comes. This situation leaves scholars with
uncertainty at best and at worst outright skepticism about Field’s work
for the twenty-first century. The new edition clearly shows whence the
readings came. Not only does it accurately show from which manuscripts a
reading comes but it also shows which patristic authors cited a
reading. At every turn, the editor shows the provenance of the readings
of these Jewish Greek revisers within the textual history. In this same
spirit, the new Edition also provides the non-Greek texts in Syriac,
Latin, and Armenian. Thus, the user of the new Edition can see the
Editor’s presentation of the original Greek reading and the non-Greek
evidence for that reading simultaneously.
A further advance the new edition avails
itself is scholarship’s progress in analyzing and understanding the
translation approaches taken by Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion.
Previous work on the hexaplaric remains did not always approach the
Three as Greek translators of a Hebrew source, and therefore, did not
analyze the Three’s tendencies when rendering specific Hebrew words and
syntactical constructions. But the twentieth century has highlighted the
Septuagint texts as translations and therefore analyzed the respective
“translation techniques” or approaches to the Hebrew source text (e.g.,
literal or functional approaches). This same type of analysis has been
applied to Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion. In several places, a
translator’s tendencies aid an editor in evaluating which text to choose
and which to designate as the variant. Paying close attention to
translation technique adds another layer of control to the new edition
which was not always appreciated in previous ones.
The last time an edition of the hexaplaric
remains was done (1875), Field wrote the Prolegomena and explanatory
notes in Latin, making his edition and scholarship less accessible
today. Furthermore, some of his work is outdated particularly its
explanations of key topics like Origen’s method of correction, the
Tetrapla, the placement of the “Origenian” signs, etc. All of Field’s
Latin annotations remain untranslated. The Hexapla Institute’s edition
will base both its introductions and explanatory notes on the best and
most up to date evidence of the remains of the Hexapla. For each book of
the Hebrew Bible / Old Testament, the editor will provide an up-to-date
Introduction that situates the texts contained in the edition, showing
how they relate to the Hexapla and its textual transmission.
Furthermore, given the nature of this project, the editor will explain
the different kinds of manuscripts and editions that went into the
creation of the new text and apparatus. Since there is about one hundred
and fifty years between the Hexapla Institute’s edition and Field, the
Edition’s Introduction and Notes will inevitably contribute to our
knowledge of the Hexapla, its reception history, and subsequent
scholarship on it.
Further Reading
Barthélemy, Dominique. Studies in the Text of the Old Testament: An Introduction to the Hebrew Old Testament Text Project.
Translated by Stephen Pisano, Peter A. Pettit, Joan E. Cook, and Sarah
Lind. Textual Criticism and the Translator 3. Winona Lake, IN:
Eisenbrauns, 2012.
Meade, John D. “The Dream for a ‘New
Field’ Comes True: A Description and Defense of the New Critical Edition
of Job 22–42.” Pages 131–153 in Editing the Septuagint: The
Unfinished Task: Papers presented at the 50th anniversary of the
International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies. Eds. Felix Albrecht and Frank Feder. De Septuaginta Investigationes 16. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2022.
Meade, John D. A Critical Edition of the Hexaplaric Fragments of Job 22–42. Origen’s Hexapla: A Critical Edition of the Extant Fragments 1. Leuven: Peeters, 2020.
Romeny, Bas ter Haar and Peter J. Gentry.
“Towards a New Collection of Hexaplaric Material for the Book of
Genesis.” Pages 285–299 in X Congress of the International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies, Oslo 1998. Ed. Bernard A. Taylor. SBLSCS 51. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2001.
Salvesen, Alison. “A ‘New Field’ for the
Twenty-First Century? Rationale for the Hexapla Project, and a Report
on Its Progress.” Pages 286–309 in The Text of the Hebrew Bible and Its Editions: Studies in Celebration of the Fifth Centennial of the Complutensian Polyglot. Eds. Andres Piquer Otero and Pablo Torijano Morales. Leiden: Brill, 2017.
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