THE REMAINS OF THE HEXAPLA OF ORIGEN
ENLARGED IN MANY PARTS BEYOND WHAT WAS EDITED BY FLAMINIO NOBILIO AND JOANNES DRUSIUS
EXTRACTED FROM MANUSCRIPTS AND PRINTED BOOKS, AND ILLUSTRATED WITH NOTES, BY
D. BERN. DE MONTFAUCON BENEDICTINE MONK OF THE CONGREGATION OF SAINT MAUR.
(Paris, 1715, 2 volumes in-folio.)
DEDICATORY EPISTLE
To the Most Eminent Lord, Caesar d’Estrées, Cardinal Bishop of Albano, Peer and Duke of France, Commander of the Royal Orders, Abbot of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, etc.
I have not had to deliberate long or deeply on whom I should dedicate these labors; for indeed, I have near at hand one whom I would seek in vain elsewhere. For in you alone, most Eminent Cardinal, shine all the ornaments of virtue and letters, all the marks of the ideal patron, whose role it is to embrace literary men with benevolence, to honor them with services, and to incite them by [his own] example. Behold, I offer you this portion of the Hexapla of Origen, which, after a long conflict with moths and bookworms, finally emerges and appears into the light under your auspices.
I believe that you, a man most distinguished and an ardent student especially of ecclesiastical antiquity, will not be mildly indignant that the writers of a later age have allowed a work so vast, which was celebrated by those ancient doctors of the Church with such great praise, to perish to their own great disgrace, so that only by the greatest labor and industry have we been able to rescue these remains of it, which were already on the verge of total destruction.
But that would by no means have happened, most excellent Prince of the Church, if men like you had adorned the Church and the republic of letters in the intervening centuries; men, that is, who could either preserve the liberal arts while they were flourishing, or lift them up while they were in decline. But that which is granted to our own age by the providence of God could not easily be found in many ages past. How many centuries, indeed, must one scan to find a man distinguished by such and so many gifts; a man, I say, so born to handle even the greatest affairs, so skilled in speaking and writing, so cultivated in all letters and disciplines; a man, in short, who, in whatever direction he applied himself, would easily be the leader? For even from the very first flower of his youth, his progress in virtue was always faster than his age.
Dedication Letter
Born into a position of eminence and mindful of ancestral glory, you were eager not only to follow in the footsteps of your forebears but even to outstrip them. Having thus attained the episcopal dignity, you devoted your efforts to organizing the affairs of the Church, or rather the most important among them, as sagaciously as you did successfully. Having subsequently acquired the deserved honor of the purple, and having been delegated by the greatest of kings to handle the most grave affairs of the kingdom among foreign nations, you left no region of Catholic Europe unilluminated by the singular splendor of your deeds. There remain to this day in Rome, throughout all Italy, in Germany, in Spain, and in Lusitania, the outstanding traces of your wisdom and virtue; and if I were to set out to recount them all according to the dignity of the matter,
. . . . . my powers, most excellent Father, would fail; but I leave this palm to a more eloquent tongue; for to me this would be an undertaking full of dangerous risk, and you are accustomed to grant little entrance to praise, being yourself worthy of so many praises from other quarters.
Yet may I be permitted, most Eminent Cardinal, by your modesty, to bring forward here two things alone that are most worthy of wonder, of which I have been an eyewitness. The first is that you have always so watched over the affairs of your homeland, while nevertheless binding to yourself the hearts of foreigners among whom you were conducting business, and conciliating them to yourself by your services and the charm of your speech, that the nobles and courtiers recognized you as though you were a father or a kinsman. For which reason you are considered a stranger in almost no region of Catholic Europe. But if, as the Orator says (a), "there is nothing among human affairs more glorious or more excellent than to deserve well of the republic," how great a heap is added here to your praises in that you have adorned not only your own homeland, but other nations as well, with the greatest benefits; I speak of Lusitania, Bavaria, and Italy, which have felt as much ornament or protection in your friendship and authority as they have convenience laid up in your kindness.
The second thing, which has often brought me great astonishment, is this: that although you have performed the most ample duties throughout the whole course of your life, you have never, despite the mass of business to be conducted, intermitted the cultivation of letters. And I do not merely say that you have attained what other wise men, assigned to public business, are wont to do—who, when they have leisure from their accustomed duty, pass on to literary exercise, or beguile the boredom of solitude with the use of books, a thing which in itself should be placed in the highest degree of praise—but I marvel that it has always been so ordered that, whether there was need to speak, discuss, or write on any genre of literature, whether sacred or profane, you have conducted these tasks no less expeditiously and sagaciously than the most learned masters of the arts and disciplines; so much so that those who saw you handling even the gravest business with such skill would think that you had put all else aside in order to acquire such expertise in the conduct of affairs, whereas those who heard you discoursing on literature of every kind would believe that you had worn away your whole age in the study of letters and neglected all other things.
But under what lucky auspices has it come to pass that, after so many affairs undertaken and successfully managed from all sides, you have found a place of reception with us! We give immortal thanks to Louis the Great, who, famous as you are for the glory of your performed deeds, has constituted you the head of this monastery; in which matter I know not whether he has looked out more for your interests, most Eminent Cardinal, or for our own. Hence that joy poured forth in our monastery, hence that applause of all the brothers mutually congratulating themselves on such shared fortune; in which matter I have not played a minor part. For what could bring more joy to an assembly of men of letters than when they see him designated as their prince by the wisest of kings, whom they themselves, if the choice had rested with them, would have co-opted by the common vote of all?
Moreover, in those buildings of Saint-Germain, which have been the home of so many princes, established as if in a fortress or a certain watchtower, most Eminent Cardinal, you shine with all those ornaments with which you once illuminated the various peoples of Europe, and—miraculous to say—passing through nearly Nestorian years, with a certain divine swiftness of mind and abundance of speech, just as the great Carneades of old, you turn and possess the minds of all. We often admire you in the assembly of the learned discussing any genre of literature so skillfully that all acknowledge you hold the first place no less by your erudition than by your dignity. For whether it is a matter of history or geography, or of ecclesiastical and canonical affairs, you exhibit an equal facility in all things, being in no part of the world of letters a guest, so to speak. Then, if you turn yourself to the gentler Muses—Greek, Latin, and French—you surpass all learned men in the felicity of your memory, which remains as though you were a youth, and by the sharpness of your intellect.
(a) Cic. Fam. x, 5.
PREFACE
A Those whom you deign to summon to your circle are surely struck with amazement, most amiable prince of men of letters, and they think those times have returned in which you shone among men of rank in every field. Everything in you, indeed, is redolent of a flourishing age; good health, supreme grace, such refined wit in jesting, so tempered that the joke takes nothing away from your gravity. Those who see you thus believe they behold with their own eyes what one of the ancients said:
From certain years, the time past returns.
Who, therefore, would not congratulate Origen on his fortune, who is presented to your view almost reborn in the most outstanding part of his works? And he who carried off the palm of erudition among the Christians of his age now seeks you, the ornament of letters, as his patron, so that under your auspices, being led forth from the darkness where he had long hidden, he might find easy access to the circle of the learned, certain by the pledge of your patronage that he will not return to his former gloom. He already awaits this fruit of his labors. For with what sweat he labored over the work of the Hexapla and Octapla, the very condition of the work is a witness, as is Jerome, who calls Origen *chalkenteros* [brazen-bowelled], because he was thought to have, as it were, brazen viscera on account of his assiduousness in writing: in collecting the remains of which, exercised by much labor and long vigils, I have almost become a *chalkenteros* myself; yet I am fortunate if you receive these my lucubrations with a willing mind; more fortunate, if I may continue to use your patronage for a long time, as I hope.
Fr. Bernard de Montfaucon, Benedictine Monk of the Congregation of Saint Maur.
PREFACE
That the Hexapla holds the place of honor among the more outstanding works of Origen, prepared with such great labor and study, is admitted by the learned, both ancient and modern. For since nothing is more opportune for a Christian man in establishing the right faith and forming character than the understanding of the Divine Scriptures, it is surely thought that his benefit is best consulted when something is brought to light adapted to unlocking the mysteries of Scripture and exploring its innermost meanings. But what in that field is more accurate, what more convenient for opening the mind of Holy Scripture than that extraordinary work of the Hexapla and Octapla? For there, besides the edition of the LXX Interpreters, three other interpretations, elaborated by learned men—Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion—appeared in all the books of the Hebrew Scripture; and in not a few books, the editions of three additional anonymous interpreters were present side-by-side, placed under one view; so that by the reading of them all, and by a mutual comparison made, if anything obscure or difficult occurred, it might be explained much more easily by such an aid. Hence it came about that the holy Fathers, and almost all ancient ecclesiastical writers, and especially those who were distinguished for their learned commentaries on Holy Scripture, everywhere commend the use and excellence of Origen’s Hexapla. Eusebius, for instance, Diodorus, Chrysostom, Theodoret, Procopius, and others; and among the Latins, Jerome, who not only constantly uses their help in his own Commentaries, but also in adorning that extraordinary Latin edition which we call the Vulgate today, most frequently follows Aquila or Symmachus, and more rarely Theodotion or the other editions.
If anything worthy of immortality was ever brought to light, if any labor ever deserved to be vindicated from the injury of time, this work was truly such, for it was produced with so many vigils, labors, and expenses. But, alas! for more than eight centuries, this work of immense size has so perished that not even a particle of it, as it had been arranged by Origen, has come down to us, nor does there seem to be hope that anything will ever emerge to make amends for so great a loss; and from the time the work was lost, some centuries have passed, buried so deeply in the darkness of ignorance that even the sense of the loss incurred did not seem to exist among men, even those who were learned for that age. But after the study of literature and the fine arts was restored in the following centuries, when the writings of the ancients, which had long lain on the verge of destruction, began to be rescued from neglect and brought into the public sphere, men were not lacking who thought about restoring at least the scraps of the Hexapla of the Hexapla. But the one who first turned his hand to the matter was Flaminio Nobili, who, in the Greek Bibles printed at Rome in the year 1587, inserted the readings of Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion, and others, into his notes, as many of them, that is, as [had been gathered] from the Roman codices...
and from the books of the ancients, as is evident from the letters of the same Morinus and the testimonies of others.
After this, Johannes Drusius wrote out these same things which Flaminius had published, enriched with not a few additions throughout with scholarly notes; but since, forestalled by fate, he could not publish them, after his death Sixtinus Amama, professor of Hebrew letters at Franeker, took up the task of publishing them; and the work appeared at Arnhem in the year 1622, under this title: *Fragments of the ancient Greek interpreters on the entire Old Testament, collected, translated and illustrated with notes by Johannes Drusius, while he lived, professor of the holy tongue in the Academy of the illustrious Estates of Friesland.* Drusius’s work, praised by celebrated men, was of great use to students of sacred letters. I used to consult this book frequently before I thought of making new additions, and I often wondered that so few fragments remained from so great a work. However, when I was in the habit of examining Greek codices—it is now more than twenty-three years since I began the task with the greatest possible diligence—whenever any passages from the ancient interpreters occurred in manuscripts, I immediately hurried to Drusius to see if they had been observed and published. But in a short time I discovered that many had been omitted, and even that there were not a few among those already observed and published that stood in need of a medical hand. Hence I began to transcribe everything, and gradually, both in Gaul and in Italy, and most especially in Rome, I found such a forest of readings that the Drusian collection, when compared to ours, would not reach even a tenth, or rather, not even a fifteenth part of it.
Although an equal harvest of readings is not offered in all books of Sacred Scripture. For in the Pentateuch, if you count those which we have added in the Appendix from the Coislinian codex, the Drusian readings do not equal even a twentieth part of ours. In the books of Joshua and Judges, Drusius has almost nothing, whereas we present readings for almost every single verse. In the books of Kings, especially in the first and second, he exhibits barely a fiftieth part of ours. In the book of Job, our collection surpasses the Drusian in many parts, and likewise in the Psalms, many of which represent almost the entire Symmachus. In Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Canticles, we do not present much that is new. But in all the prophets, and especially in Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the minor prophets, so many have appeared that had not previously been observed, that the Drusian collection seems to be overwhelmed by them.
These things having been compared, the opinion of friends concerning the manner of organizing and editing the work was not uniform. For some wished the entire Hebrew text to be edited with the translation of the LXX, by the very same method that Origen had edited, so that six columns would be present everywhere, and where the editions of other interpreters were lacking, a blank space would be left there. But when I resisted, pointing out the inconvenience to scholars and the great expense that such a monstrous work would entail (a), even those who had offered such counsel were finally the authors in requesting that the Origenian columns be present only in the first chapter of Genesis, as if for a sample; and that in the chapters which followed, only those passages should be brought forward whose interpretation had been found either according to Aquila or according to others: so that those readings, compared with the Hebrew, the LXX Interpreters, and the Vulgate, might lie under one view, and in the same order, as much as allowed, in which they had been placed by Origen in the Hexapla.
For the sake of brevity, however, where two or three or more interpreters translate in exactly the same way and without any or even the slightest difference, we do not then repeat the version for each individual, as Origen had done, but we place the names of those who have interpreted in the same way, by the first letter of their name only, in this manner: A., S., Th., *in naribus ejus* (in his nostrils) (for [ἐν τοῖς μυκτῆρσιν αὐτοῦ] A., S., Th.). We place the Latin version of the Hebrew reading and of the Greek interpretations that follow it in the other column alongside, with the Latin Vulgate added in another character, so that those who are unskilled in Greek may also be able to use this collection of ours.
There were not wanting those who wished the entire Biblical text to be edited—some the Hebrew, others the LXX, others the Latin Vulgate—so that those who wished to use our Hexapla, where the entire text is present according to no single edition, might nevertheless have at hand the whole series of Scripture according to one of the editions. To be brief, I also judged this counsel to be rejected: since the matter has been arranged in such a way that everyone can conveniently read through either the Hebrew, or the LXX interpreters, or the Latin Vulgate, or finally the Polyglots themselves, with this present and open collection of the Hexapla; and where the readings of the ancient interpreters are available, they may compare them with the text of Scripture they have in their hands, so that with the help of more interpreters, matters that are less well-trodden or obscure may be more easily understood.
To individual chapters we append notes, where it is first stated whence the readings of the ancient interpreters were extracted. Then, if any are available that are useful for asserting the true reading, we present them clearly according to our capability. We add the more select passages of the Fathers and ancient writers, especially of those whose works, besides the [ἀποσπασμάτια] (slight fragments) that survive in the manuscript Catenae, are lost. The learned reader will notice a delightful abundance of these, especially in the Pentateuch. For the sake of brevity, we have refrained from overly long explanations. For it was not our intention to publish new commentaries on Sacred Scripture, but only to bring forward those things that were necessary for either eliciting or confirming the readings of the ancient interpreters.
(a) We have retained the original arrangement, the division namely into six columns, established by Origen himself. A great labor indeed, and greater expenses! Which, however, we have undertaken for the sake of the readers. There go forth, therefore, the glorious remains, no longer in name only, but truly [ἀπαρτίς] distributed. Ed. PATROL.
A We have set in order and transcribed the notes of Drusius, such as seemed more useful. For although he fulfilled the task of a vigorous writer, he nonetheless, according to his custom, filled everything with grammatical annotations to the point of nausea, in such a way that he brings up things entirely trite and everywhere accessible to anyone; a matter which Joseph Scaliger himself turned into a fault, not without derision.
I have deemed the order of editions, which Origen had instituted, to be preserved, so that the Hebrew text is placed first, then Aquila, after that Symmachus, in the fourth place the LXX, and lastly Theodotion; and where the three other editions — the fifth, sixth, and seventh — are had, those latest of all should be placed. Hebrew, Samaritan, and Syriac Greek interpretations, which sometimes occur, we always place after the Hebrew text and before other Greek editions. Hebrew readings are written here always without the Masoretic points and vowel signs: nor was it free to act otherwise, because those Masoretic notes very often determine the meaning toward another interpretation, different from that which they [the old translators] followed. I did, however, decide that the line called *Maccaph*, as it is used in the Masoretic books, should be retained, because those ancients seem to have had some reason for it, as, from the Hebrew words described in Greek which survive, it seems clear.
We have given the Latin interpretation of the Hebrew text such as Santes Pagninus or Arias Montanus gave; for we follow one or the other almost exclusively; yet so that when they produce interpretations that are too pedantic, barbarous, and which can hardly be understood, we substitute others slightly more elegant and clear. For one can hardly bear with an even mind, for example, where *aph* is taken for "anger," which happens everywhere, to translate it "to turn the nose," and for "the nose of God" instead of "the anger of God" everywhere, to say nothing of other examples of *kakozeleia* (bad zeal). Proper names, in truth, we express for the most part not according to the Masoretic reading, but as the ancients read them; if it happens otherwise, it is due either to carelessness or a slip of the printers.
B We have placed asterisks and obeli wherever they were noted in the manuscripts. As for the others, however, which occurred here and there in the Hexapla of Origen and which it would be very difficult to restore now, we thought they should not be sought out. For, as will be said more fully in the *Preliminaries*, the greatest part of the asterisks were of this kind, such that little light for the understanding of the Hebrew letters was added by them. For they had been placed by Origen with such pedantry that they noted even the smallest particles and all the Hebraisms, which could not be elegantly expressed in the Greek language and which contributed nothing to the sense, with an untimely *akribeia* (exactness). Then, however, exclusively, asterisks and the things which were indicated by asterisks were useful when they exhibited clauses or words omitted by the LXX Interpreters: but we have searched with the greatest zeal for asterisks of this kind, which, if they are compared with other superfluous ones, are very few. Obeli, however, noting those things which were redundant in the LXX Interpreters, contributed, for the most part at least, little to achieving the sense of the Scriptures. For this reason, we have taken the greatest care to offer to the studious reader as many readings of the ancient interpreters as we could.
If, furthermore, readings of this kind are offered in Latin only, either by Jerome or by Hesychius, some have attempted to make Greek from Latin without the authority of any manuscript; and they have brought into the light fragments of this kind in Greek, as if they were the genuine text of Aquila, Symmachus, Theodotion, and others. And from such an attempt it generally happens that things far different from the true are substituted, a fact which we have very often experienced when, a true reading having been found, the *pselaphesis* (fumbling) of that substituted one without the authority of any codex was conspicuous. Yet I do not disapprove, when it has been explored from which Greek words the Latin flowed, if then those very Greek words are indicated: for example, if one of the ancients were to say that the reading of Aquila is thus, "and in his name shall the Gentiles hope," then it could be said without danger that the Greek had thus, *καὶ ἐ` ν τῷ ὀνόματι αὐτοῦ τὰ ἔθνη ἐλπιοῦσι*. But even in that case the reader should be warned that the Greek was made from the Latin, a thing which we have also performed with the greatest conscientiousness: and we have always enclosed such places in brackets, when they seemed to us to be either made from Latin or doubtful for some other reason.
C The candid reader must be warned that when he wishes to consult certain places in the Pentateuch, he should not only approach the collection of the Hexapla, which is placed at the beginning, but also always the Appendix: for there he will find many things not yet observed by us when we were editing the Pentateuch, and sometimes even more than we had placed at the beginning. Readings there are many, of a previously unknown interpreter, which are restored to their author; others differently placed are emended. We have held back this part of our collection at the end, in the manner of an Appendix, because we were unable to obtain access (a) to the Coislinian library, from the very distinguished codex of which we borrowed those later readings, until it came into the possession of the most illustrious Lord Henricus Carolus du Cambout de Coislin, Duke and Peer of France, Bishop of Metz, the ornament of the Coislinian family, who, out of his innate kindness, provided the codices for us at our request. Furthermore, this library of Greek manuscripts yields to few in quantity, and truly to none in excellence and antiquity. We are preparing, under his auspices, a very extensive catalogue of these, furnished with very many valuable unpublished notes, to be brought into the light before long.
The most illustrious Abbot de Louvois, prefect of the Royal Library, has always used his customary kindness toward us, offering us the royal codices at our wish, the use of which almost every page of this work testifies. The honorable Nicolaus Clemens has also vied in offering us his services; concerning whose death we are very
(a) We have taken care that the readings of the Coislinian codex, which Montfaucon had cast into the Appendix, should be brought back to each individual chapter, to which they belong. ED. PATROL.