Hexapla (Greek, Ancient (to 1453);: Ἑξαπλᾶ||sixfold), also called Origenis Hexaplorum, is a critical edition of the Hebrew Bible in six versions, four of them translated into Greek,[1] preserved only in fragments. It was an immense and complex word-for-word comparison of the original Hebrew Scriptures with the Greek Septuagint translation and with other Greek translations.[2] The term especially and generally applies to the edition of the Old Testament compiled by the theologian and scholar Origen sometime before 240.The subsisting fragments of partial copies have been collected in several editions, that of Frederick Field (1875) being the most fundamental on the basis of Greek and Syrian testimonies. The surviving fragments are now being re-published (with additional materials discovered since Field's edition) by an international group of Septuagint scholars. This work is being carried out as The Hexapla Project[3] under the auspices of the International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies,[4] . and directed by Dr Neil McLynn. The members of the editorial board are: Peter J. Gentry (Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and the Göttinger Septuaginta-Unternehmen), Dr Alison G. Salvesen (Oxford University), and Bas ter Haar Romeny (Leiden University).
Origen began to study biblical Hebrew in his youth; forced to relocate to Palestine during the persecution of Christianity in Alexandria, he went into biblical textology. By the 240s, he commented on virtually all books of the Old and New Testaments. His method of working with the biblical text was described in a message to Sextus Julius Africanus (c. 240) and a commentary on the Gospel of Matthew:
Origen, in his Commentary of the Gospel of Matthew, explained the purpose for creating the Hexapla:
The text of the Hexapla was organized in the form of six columns representing synchronized versions of the same Old Testament text, which placed side by side were the following:
At the end of his life Origen prepared a separate work called Tetrapla (a synoptic set of four Greek translations), placing the Septuagint alongside the translations of Symmachus, Aquila and Theodotion.[6] Both Hexapla and Tetrapla are found in Greek manuscripts of the Septuagint, as well as manuscripts of the Syro-hexaplar version. However, in a number of cases, the names of "Hexapla" and "Octapla" (in the Book of Job from the manuscripts of the Syro-Hexapla and the hexaplar Psalms) are also applied to the work of Origen. This caused a discussion in its time about whether these were separate works. According to Eusebius of Caesarea, the Hexapla contained three more translations of the Greek Psalms (Quinta, Sexta and Septima), which, however, have not been preserved (for a total of 9 columns, a so-called Enneapla).[7]
According to Epiphanius, the original Hexapla compiled by Origen had a total of eight columns and included two other anonymous Greek translations, one of which was discovered in wine jars in Jericho during the reign of Caracalla.[8] The so-called "fifth" and "sixth editions" were two other Greek translations supposedly discovered by students outside the towns of Jericho and Nicopolis: these were later added by Origen to his Hexapla to make the Octapla.[9]
