John Daniel Meade, A Critical Edition of the Hexaplaric Fragments of Job 22-42,
Origen’s Hexapla: A Critical Edition of the Extant Fragments (Leuven: Peeters,
2020)
Zhan
Chen
Beijing Normal University at Zhuhai
Beijing Normal University-Hong Kong Baptist University United International College
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James E. Walters
Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute
2022
Volume 25.1
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https://hugoye.bethmardutho.org/article/hv25n1prchen
Zhan Chen
John Daniel Meade, A Critical Edition of the Hexaplaric Fragments of Job 22-42,
Origen’s Hexapla: A Critical Edition of the Extant Fragments (Leuven: Peeters,
2020)
https://hugoye.bethmardutho.org/pdf/vol25/HV25N1PRChen.pdf
Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies
Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute, 2022
vol 25
issue 1
pp 277-282
Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies is an electronic journal
dedicated to the study of the Syriac tradition, published semi-annually (in
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John Daniel Meade, A Critical Edition of the Hexaplaric Fragments of Job 22-42,
Origen’s Hexapla: A Critical Edition of the Extant Fragments (Leuven: Peeters,
2020). Pp. XIII + 453; $127.96.
This volume is the first one to be published in the long-expected series, Origen’s
Hexapla: A Critical Edition of the Extant Fragments, initiated at the Rich Seminar
on the Hexapla held at Oxford in 1994. Based on his dissertation at the Southern
Baptist Theological Seminary under Prof. Peter Gentry, who has been serving in the
editorial committee of this Hexapla project, this volume is dedicated to replacing
the edition of Frederick Field, who compiled the fragments of Origen’s Hexapla known
to him in the mid-19th century, and also to complement the Hexaplaric readings
included in the second critical apparatus of the Göttingen Septuaginta by Joseph
Ziegler (which Meade abbreviates, not surprisingly, as “the Edition”).
Meade opens his prolegomena with an explicit statement that “this edition does not
provide a new collation of materials but rather a fresh presentation of former
sources collected into one place.” By “former sources” he means, in addition to
Field’s version and Ziegler’s apparatus as mentioned above, new witnesses to Job’s
Hexaplaric text made available by Ursula and Dieter Hagedorn, as well as several
other manuscripts (such as minuscules 161 and 555) that were not accessible to
previous editors of Hexapla. For the Syro-Hexapla, one of the essential sources for
reconstructing the Hexapla, Meade relies on the edition of Ceriani as did Field,
while for the Armenian tradition he draws on the edition of Claude Cox.
This volume is not the first in the project: Nancy Therese Woods critically edited
the first twenty-one chapter of Job in her 2009 at the Southern Baptist Theological
Seminary, also under the supervision of Gentry. However, Meade’s is the first to be
published in the series. Therefore, the apparatus format Meade adopts as well as
adapts will be crucial for all potential users of this new Hexapla edition. For a
critical edition, it is necessary to present in an understandable way how different
sources are evaluated and pieced together: According to which principles is the
apparatus organized? Where does one find the information for solving the enigmatic
numbers or symbols the editor(s) decided to employ? How does each section of the
apparatus relate to the others?
With regard to the numbering system of the manuscripts, Meade sticks to the
Verzeichnis of Rahlfs and thus with the Göttingen Septuaginta, with which most
biblical scholars are familiar. Abbreviations and sigla are largely carried over
from Ziegler’s Edition, except for sigla for the catena. Meade inherited the latter
from the Hagedorns who devised a system different from that of Ziegler. Ziegler
subdivided the cantena manuscripts he used into two groups: the main group,
designated by the capital letter C, and the subgroup, c. In the Hagedorns’ system,
the group cI largely corresponds to Ziegler’s C (with additional minuscules 395 and
3006) while cII corresponds to Zieler’s c (with 512 in addition). The Hagedorns
created another main group C (not to be confused with Ziegler’s C!) for their
purposes. With these differences in mind, the new sigla system should not confuse
those familiar with Ziegler and Rahlfs.
With respect to the layout of the new apparatus system, Meade very kindly offers
three examples to demonstrate how it works (pp. 20-22): The first witness apparatus
(Wit 1) contains the primary Hexaplaric witnesses, the second apparatus (Wit 2)
lists witnesses outside “the Three” (Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion) that may
betray influence from the Three. The third apparatus (Attr) presents variants to the
attribution, the fourth (Var) shows variations within those witnesses mentioned in
Wit 1, while the fifth (NonGr) lists all available non-Greek sources.
For reconstructing the Hexapla, at least two types of information should be properly
registered in a critical edition. One is the diacritical signs which Origen applies
to his fifth column (designated in the following as Type I information), especially
the asterisks: As it is generally supposed, when verses are missing in the
Septuagint in comparison to the Hebrew text, Origen adopted readings from Theodotion
and marked the borrowing with asterisks (and metobelis) to make his fifth column
more isomorphic to the Hebrew text. In the case of Job, asterisked verses are in a
relatively large quantity: one-sixth of the Göttingen LXX of Job, according to
Gentry, or 600 to 700 stichoi, according to Jerome, are asterisked. The second type
of information registered concerns base texts, including the texts of different
Septuagint versions and the Three (Type II).
These two types of information are two dimensions that quite often cross over into
each other: For instance, according to the base text of the Syro-Hexapla, the verses
Job 22:13-16 are under the asterisks (Type I), while according to the marginal notes
on the same page, readings of Symmachus are provided for verse 14b as well as for
verse 15 (Type II). Meade (as well as Woods) decided to present both types of
critical notes in an undifferentiated way by keeping strictly to the five-section
apparatus system, first presenting Type I information and then Type II that might
relate to the same verses. In this seemingly redundant but sophisticated manner,
both types of critical information are well organized and presented parallel to each
other. The three examples Meade gives in his introduction are a great demonstration
of the power of this system: the first two examples belong to Type II, and the third
one belongs to Type I, yet they all follow the same format. It might be beneficial
to make a more explicit statement about the difference there-between to avoid
confusion for the readers.
Following are three general methodological reflections upon the volume. The first
reflection concerns the first witness apparatus (Wit 1). This apparatus is for
variants from “the Three” of the Hexapla. However, by definition, “the Three” are
not necessarily Hexaplaric. As Woods raised the question in her prologue, “can we be
sure that attributions are truly ‘Hexaplaric’ or are they attributions added or
circulated outside of Origen’s Hexapla,” since, “‘the Three’ have also a history of
their own, outside of Origen’s Hexapla” (p. 8)? In other words, it is sometimes
only taken by default that, if there is any attribution to the Three from a specific
manuscript, this attributed citation, and the attribution as well, must descend from
the Hexapla itself. Yet, theoretically, we can never exclude the possibility that a
specific fragmentary citation could be ascribed to some scribe or translator rather
than to Origen himself. For those readers that only interested in how the original
Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion read, it might be unimportant whether a reading
attributed to the Three stands inside or outside the Hexaplaric tradition; however,
for those who are interested in how the original Hexapla looked like, the nuance
between the theoretical definition of “Hexaplaric” as confined to the very
production of Origen, and the practical identification of almost any witnesses of
the Three with “Hexaplaric” is worth being mentioned.
The second reflection concerns the second witness apparatus (Wit 2), which records
readings that “have been corrupted by Hexaplaric readings.” These readings are
primarily taken from Ziegler’s first apparatus. I highly appreciate the effort Meade
makes to keep all relevant readings for the convenience of the readers; however, it
is often subjective to determine whether a variant stands under the influence of the
Hexapla. For instance, in Job 24:22b, where Meade records υπερ L [sic] (Lucianic
recension main group) as against κατά of the Old Greek text in the apparatus in
question, it is far from certain that υπερ is inspired by περί in Symmachus. It is
quite a strenuous effort to build causal relationships among the already very
fragmentary witnesses if practically too many possible candidates are missing.
The final reflection concerns the last apparatus (NonGr) in the case of asterisked
verses (Type I): In these cases, Meade kindly provides all translations available
(e.g., Syrohexapla, Latin version of Jerome, and Armenian for Job 22:13-16), which
occupies much space. However, as noted above, Type I variants are not variants of a
biblical base text but variants of Origen’s diacritical signs. For this purpose, it
seems unnecessary to provide concrete texts of all available translations. A simple
note in the fourth apparatus signifying the status of the signs, like in the case of
Greek manuscripts, should suffice for the purpose.
While producing this critical edition, Meade also undertook highly relevant research
on individual manuscripts, which is not to be taken for granted. For instance, he
confirmed that the minuscule 476 is a descendant of 139 (p. 16), and further
determined that the minuscule 788, which had been ignored by Field, Ziegler, and the
Hagedorns, is the ancestor of 250. This latter discovery is quite crucial for the
purpose of this edition since 250 is the major witness to the Hagedorns’ α-catena
group (the C group). These insights lead to a slight but significant modification of
the Hagedorns’ catena system, which itself differs from Ziegler’s, as presented
above. Especially valuable for scholars interested in the Syro-Hexapla is Meade’s
research on Syro-Hexaplaric Job published 2016, which analyzed several essential
aspects of the marginalia of the Codex Ambrosianus.
With his solid research, accompanied by the well-designed system for registering the
critical notes, Meade has produced a marvelous milestone for the new Hexapla
Project. There are sporadic errors spread in this volume, which might impede the
understanding for a moment: e.g., on page 33, the down arrow for manuscript 248
leads us to expect more information down below while non-existent; or in Job 24:22b,
“+ τῆς ἑαυτοῦ ζωῆς” is provided for the marginal note of the Syro-Hexapla in
comparison to the lemma in question, περί (or ܥܠ in the case of the Syro-Hexapla ),
while the marginal note of the Syro-Hexapla does not need a “harmonization with the
bible text of the LXX” to produce the whole prepositional phrase, but the note is
addressed to the whole phrase ܥܠ ܚ̈ܝܐ ܕܝܠܗ in an understandably redundant way.
These minor deficits can be easily fixed once detected. Overall, Meade’s volume has
successfully provided proof of the practicability of the format employed by the
critical project and has thus laid a robust foundation for all future volumes of
Origen’s Hexapla: A Critical Edition of the Extant Fragments, of which we are
excited to see the publication in the next years. He deserves the congratulations
and profound thanks of all scholars working on Origen, biblical textual criticism
and the Syro-Hexapla.