Origen, Hexapla
- Language
- Hebrew and Greek
- Composed
- c. AD 240
- Oldest surviving copy
- Fragments; Syro-Hexapla; marked Greek manuscripts
- Status
- Christian scholarship
Additions marked with asterisks.
Ancient Mysteries & Interpretations
The Shorter Greek Job
The Old Greek of Job lacked roughly 390 of the Hebrew's poetic lines, mostly in the later chapters. Origen (c. AD 240) supplied them from Theodotion and marked them with asterisks; later copies kept the additions and lost the marks. Most scholars think the translator abridged a Hebrew text much like ours; some propose a shorter Hebrew original. The Sahidic Coptic preserves the shorter form; the library's Coptic copy lacks 168 verses, concentrated in chapters 21–42.
Shorter Old Greek: documented · Cause: debated (abridgement favoured)
1 What Scripture says
Origen, Letter to Africanus: in Job many passages, "sometimes three or four verses, sometimes fourteen or nineteen," are missing from the Greek.
2 What evidence we might expect
- Greek manuscripts with Origen's asterisks; pre-Origen translations; Hebrew fragments.
3 What ancient sources survive
Sahidic Coptic Job
- Language
- Coptic
- Composed
- c. 3rd–4th century AD
- Oldest surviving copy
- Coptic manuscripts
- Status
- Christian Bible
Translated from the pre-Origen Greek.
4 What discoveries exist
Ziegler's Göttingen edition (1982) and Gentry's study (1995) reconstruct the Old Greek and the asterisked materials.
5 How interpretations compare
Scholarly reconstruction
Translator's abridgement
The translator condensed repetitive and difficult poetry.
Source: M. Gorea, "The Book of Job," in The Oxford Handbook of the Septuagint (2021) (abstract) ↗; NETS, "Iob," translator's introduction and translation (after Ziegler's Göttingen edition, 1982) ↗
Alternative explanation
Shorter Hebrew source
The translator had a shorter Hebrew Job.
6 The strongest supported reconstruction
The Old Greek abridged a full-length Hebrew text in most places; each difference must be judged separately.
7 What remains possible or unknown
- Which lines, if any, reflect a shorter Hebrew text.
What the evidence shows
- The Old Greek of Job was about a sixth shorter than the Hebrew.
Source: M. Gorea, "The Book of Job," in The Oxford Handbook of the Septuagint (2021) (abstract) ↗
- Origen filled the gaps from Theodotion with asterisks.
Source: P. J. Gentry, The Asterisked Materials in the Greek Job (SBLSCS 38, 1995)