Edition

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 As elegant and magisterial as this edition is, it has become outdated as more manuscripts containing hexaplaric readings have been discovered (Meade 2022; Salvesen 2017; Romeny and Gentry 2001; Barthélemy 2012: 580).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.

Origen and his Hexapla

Significance of the Hexapla Institute

The Method used for our Edition

Further Reading