New Book: A Critical Edition of the Hexaplaric Fragments of Job 22–42

I can finally announce that my critical edition is set to be released this Fall. I still need to work through  another round of proofs this summer, but it will appear by SBL in San Diego. This is the first volume to be published by the Hexapla Institute in Peeters’ new series, Origen’s Hexapla: A Critical Edition of the Extant Fragments. The description for the series is as follows:

Frederick Field’s marvelous late Victorian edition (1875) of the remains of Origen’s Hexapla is now outdated. Field rearranged earlier collections, and added new material, notably retroversions into Greek from Syriac sources. In the course of work on critical editions of the Septuagint, new manuscripts and patristic sources have become available, as well as new editions of Church Fathers and catenae. Some of these contain better readings and even previously unknown material from Origen’s Hexapla. This new critical reconstruction of all known hexaplaric materials is being prepared by the Hexapla Project, a project spawned by the Hexapla Institute under the aegis of I.O.S.C.S.

 The description for A Critical Edition of the Hexaplaric Fragments of Job 22–42 is as follows:

A Critical Edition of the Hexaplaric Fragments of Job 22-42 contains the established text of all the preserved readings of Origen’s Hexapla in Greek, Syriac, Latin, and Armenian for Job 22-42 with variant author attributions and variant readings presented in a series of apparatuses. In most entries, the editor has supplied Notes in the form of brief commentary on the readings. This edition of hexaplaric fragments surpasses previous editions (e.g. Frederick Field’s work) in two ways: (1) the edition contains more readings of Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion and (2) the critical text of each reading is based on the most up-to-date manuscript evidence for the hexaplaric readings of Job. The new edition will have immediate relevance for textual criticism of the TaNaK/Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, the Greek lexicon of the late second temple period, and early Jewish and Christian interpretation of the Hebrew scriptures in Greek.

I’m thrilled to see this project nearing completion and hope this volume represents well the vision of its editorial committee: Peter Gentry, Alison Salvesen, and Bas ter Haar Romeny. There are several more volumes for the series in the pipeline, and it’s exciting to see growing interest in this field, both for its own sake and also as it relates to Old Testament textual criticism.

Modern Editions of the Hexaplaric Fragments

Last week, I posted on a small part of Origen's Hexapla in Job 24:25, and before writing further posts on the matter, readers should be aware of the modern editions of the Hexapla. There is a lot to say about the history of the Hexapla and research into its primary sources, but the greatest benefit to the student of the Bible is access to the modern editions and collections of its fragmentary remains.

Collections of Hexaplaric Fragments

First, several collections of the hexaplaric fragments led up to Frederick Field’s magnum opus (as the extended title of his work indicated). Michael Law has helpfully told that story in BIOSCS/JSCS vol. 40 (2007): 30-48 [free PDF of issue]. Field's innovation was not in collecting the fragments. Rather, he advanced our knowledge of the Hexapla and its readings by including the Syriac evidence for the hexaplaric versions. Thus, from 1875, Field’s two-volume Hexapla became the departure for all scholarly study.