SEPTUAGINT
SEPTUAGIXT
443
took tlie greate-:t biblical work which Christian antiquity ever saw— the first Polyglot Bible, the Bo-callol Hexapla, anil a smaller edition of it, the Tetrapla.
In the first column he placed the Hebrew text !n Hebrew lettere, in the second the same in Greek trant^lileration ; then loliowed the version of At^uiia the Jew, — no doubt because it was the most literal one ; in the fourth column that of Sym- machus. Then followed the column of 0 with the critical marks ; finally, the version of Theodotion, as bein^ a recension of C tor some biblical books, especially the poetical, he added a iyfth, tixth, and even a seventh version ; • so that in those parts there were seven, eipht, and even nine columns. The Tetrapla was an abridiLied edition, — whether later or earlier is nut quite 0|:rtaln, — contaiuini; only Aquila, Symuiachus, i3, and Theodo- Uou.
Till quite recently Origen's great work was known only from the description of Eusebius, Kpii)lianiu3, Jerome, and other writers, and some specimens preserved in scluilia of biblical MSS ; but in 189G Giovanni Mercati discovered in a pal- imiiscst MS of the 10th cent, at Milan tlie first continuous fragments of a copy of the Hexapla (Psalms). These helped us to understand what an enormous task it must have been to arrange the whole OT in such a way, and at tlie same time showed also how easily mistakes might arise in it, and whence the variants come which are found in the statements about tlie Hexaplaric text.
And now there has been pulilished quite recently by C. Taylor another leaf from among tlie Hebrew- Greet; Cairo Ge.nizah Palimpsests from the Taylor- Schechter Collection (Camn. 1900, 4°), containing a fragment of Ps 22. From this double-leaf the outer columns and some lines of the top are cut away, but it is at least 200 years older than the MS discovered by Mercati, and conlirms the view th.at the arrangement according to coin (oicXiij/ tc Trpis Kui\ov), of which Eusebius speaks IJiE vi. 16), (onsisted in this, that Origen generally placed only one Ilebrew word, or at the most two, in one line, and was careful to see that the Greek corre- »TH>nded to it exactly. Even so small a word as Vx i:» Ilebrew, nil in Greek, had a separate line. In the Cairo Palimpsest all the Hebrew lines, 105 in Dumber, consisted — they are cut oil', but we are quite certain about their extent — of only one word ; in the Milan-text this was the case with 10 out of 17, the re.st contain two, none more than two. As a full page of the Cairo Palimpsest contained 42 (or 43) lines, just as many as Codex B, wliirh, when opened, repre.sents with its six columns the appearance of the Hexapla, a manuscript of the Hexapla Psalter arranged like the preserved Cairo fragment must have tilled about 4o0 leaves ; for I he Hebrew Psalter has about 19,000 words.t As the Psalter Ls, furtlier, something like the 14th or 15th part of the Hebrew Bible, the whole Hexapla
Wt kftBfUt wmpmrmi int^ytptdtf^i, j^^ovnr xtreLyfjuittif it^J^iiXout «4Mj'y3«*Ti; * 0iffXi»ypii^4 Tl 41^;^ rirrcuf, ktJtM xtti Kepcut in T« KitX^.iypx^li* ijrxr,/Mttti{' Sf etranrmi' rr,t htbusoit rij» iriTx^l'O'* kiOatoi iiptourlett i 'Au^peritt witpiffTr.fecT* . . . ^McA.rra acvro, wpalrplTIt iri ryjw Ta»» UTe/xifj/Mcnt, ffu»Toe<i,. It is true, Etisehius
■peaks here only of the commentaries of Orijten ; but Kpiph- aiiius refers the help of Ambrosias uImj to tlie Hexapla, and 'copyists* {^i^XitypttSit) and ' typf-^'irls' would be needed by Ori^n for this costly work even more than for his connuen- taries
' husebiuB {BE vl. 16) goes on after the words quoted p. 442^. note ' ; i^' Mr (the other versions besides' Aquila, Symmachus, and Hicixlotion) ilk vv;* klnkirr^a, rAor kp' ttl* outt i.'d^, «vra rtur* fAbtty iwT^^tar*, irt kpa r^t fju» lOpoi i> rit wpif ' AurtM NjJur«Ai,, vr,, di ii inpv ruiit riwti^ It yi ij,r,* ran iixirX*7t rail ,]/MXfMi lAtrk rat iriry.utuf ■rtrfatpat txiirtil *u ixove* wlf^mtr, •AX« «<xj ixTiir mMi x^4ur,i rxpaOiic ipmitlixt, in /jui( xldit rvtiuXArrtu, atf i* ll^iX** qv^^rqf i* nv*p. Hark raie ^pittvt ' Air*ni,9l/ vtu fj'eu ^i^r.ptv. rttirtti di kritfot i«i rxCri* rviayayiii, diiAWr vi wpit moika*, mtu kiTiw*p<Jiui «XAr,Aajf fAArk tUil etiiTr,t «1K 'iL^paitn niu4i*truit, rk T^t ktyaiMitan fi/jur iiarrXvt kmypaica MarttXiXaint, liiaH riit ' \kCX*u sa^ £uufM(;(^«v «ai Hi«^*riw,a( iMiorit «/XA r^ riir i^our.K«fT« it T»i{ TITPetrkait iviK*riKffxiuat€»t,
f Kor the Ileb. Psalt«r the ilas,sorelic numljering docs not •eem to be ]>reserved, but for the Svriac Psalt«r the number of words is |;iven as 19,gil4, of letters u 0U,B&2.
would have filled more than 6000 leaves or 12,000 pages. It is probable that these ligures go beyond the real extent, for we may assume tliut other books were treated less luxuriously than the Psalms. At all events, the Hexapla was much larger than even the latest estimate supposed.* These Bpeciniens,t besides givin" a glimpse of tho whole, show at the same time that tor the Church at large, and even for its most learned members, so costly a work was not necessary ; it was sufficient to copy the C column, and to place on it« margins the most notable various renderings from the other versions. This was done partially already by Origen himself, and especially by his followers Pamphilus and Eusebius. Such manuscripts, more or less carefully copied by later copyists, trans- lated into Latin, Syriac, and Arabic, and excerpted by the commentators, are the souries from which hitherto our knowledge of the Hexapla has been derived, thanks to Drusius (1581, 1022), Nobilius ( 1587, 1588), Mont faucon (1713, 1769), and esjiecially Fred. Field (1875, 2 vols.) : see on this highly de- serving scholar Expos. Times, viii. IGO, 274, 325.