Origen's Hexapla (Mercati Palimpsest)

Reflection

In the middle of the third century, Origen of Alexandria undertook what may be the most ambitious work of biblical scholarship in the early church. He produced the Hexapla — a six-column synopsis of the Old Testament in which the Hebrew text stood beside its Greek transliteration, beside three independent Greek translations (Aquila, Symmachus, Theodotion), beside the Septuagint marked with critical signs to show where it diverged from the Hebrew. The completed work filled fifteen volumes and stayed in the library at Caesarea Maritima for nearly four centuries.

Jerome consulted it. Eusebius catalogued it. And then, in the seventh-century Arab conquest of Caesarea, the master copy disappeared. What we have left of it now is fragments — citations in church fathers, marginal notes in later Septuagint manuscripts, and one extraordinary palimpsest discovered by Cardinal Giovanni Mercati at the Ambrosian Library in 1896. Beneath a later liturgical text, the older script preserved five columns of the Hexapla for portions of ten Psalms.

What Origen was doing was honest textual work. He wanted to know where the Greek Bible his church read differed from the Hebrew Bible the Jewish scholars he knew read, and he wanted those differences visible. He was not threatening scripture; he was serving it.

For the believer today, the Hexapla is a witness to the church's confidence that the more carefully scripture is examined, the more clearly it shines. Origen did not fear comparing Greek translations to Hebrew originals. He did not fear noting the variants. He trusted that the Word would survive the scrutiny. He was right. The text Origen labored to clarify is the text in your Bible. The Christ the Hebrew Scriptures foretold is the Christ Origen preached. Critical study and devout faith have never been enemies — they were never meant to be.