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INTRODUCTION
scholars who more than sixteen hundred years ago laid the foundation of
all critical knowledge of the Septuagint. The lifelong labour of Origeii
in constructing his immense Hexapla gave an impulse which, even
after the actual volumes which contained his work had perished,
remained in the Church as a living power. It quickened the zeal of
Parnphilus, who in prison spent the hours of awaiting martyrdom in
transcribing, and with the help of Eusebius collating, copies of the
Septuagintal column of that master-work, enriched with a marginal
apparatus of readings gathered from the other columns.* Through these
men in turn that same impulse, transmitted by the medium of their
autograph transcripts still accessible after three centuries, moved Paul,
Monophysite Bishop of Telia, f to reproduce in Syriac the whole of the
Septuagintal Old Testament as thus arranged and annotated. This
great task was executed by him at Alexandria, where he spent some
years (apparently a fugitive from troubles in his own country) in the
second decade of the seventh century.^ And it is a notable fact that
in this, its Syriac reproduction, the result of Origen's vast labour and
learning has reached us in a state nearer to completeness than in the
original Greek in the form into which it was cast by the pious diligence
of Pamphilus and Eusebius. It "forms our chief authority for the
text of Origen's revision. "
*
Some of these copies are even now represented for us by transcripts more or
less partial or incomplete, of which the most notable are Cod. Golberto-Sarravianus
(M) of the Octateuch, and Cod. Marchalianus (Q) of the Prophets, both of which
are now accessible in photographic reproductions. See for these, Dr. Swete's
Introduction to the O.T. in Greek, Part i, ch. v (pp. 137, 144 also ; pp. 148 et sqq.)
t A city of Mesopotamia, distinguished as Tella-Mauzlat.
J The work of Paul on the LXX, like that of his fellow-worker Thomas on the
N.T., was obviously undertaken with a view of bringing the Bible of Syriac-speaking
Christians into conformity with that of their Greek-speaking brethren in the faith,
especially those of Alexandria the Monophysite Churches of Mesopotamia and of
Egypt being in close communion. Both these men carried out their task in "the
Enaton of Alexandria," in the same Antonine convent, at the same time (between
A.D. 613 and 619) ;
both had access there to the same storehouses of Biblical literature.
These facts are gathered from the notes subjoined by Paul and Thomas to
their versions (see the article Paulus Telknsis, D.C.B. vol. iv, p. 266 et sqq.). Their
versions are executed in the same spirit of literal conformity to the Greek, without
regard to the genius of the Syriac tongue. Both together were apparently meant
to be taken as one Revised Syriac Bible. There is reason to believe that Thomas
was one of those who helped Paul in his work (see p. 72 infr., notef on
2 Chron. xxxiii. 3).
Dr. Swete, in Introduction (as in note * above), p. 114.