LandonWillis

Category: Biblical History

  • What Is The Syro-Hexapla?

    To understand what the Syro-Hexapla is, we must first understand what it means.

    Syro-

    The “Syro-” part refers to the Syriac language. This is just a form of Aramaic, the common language in the days of Jesus in Judea.

    Hexapla

    “Hexapla” is in reference to the massive translation project of the Old Testament carried out by the Christian scholar Origen in the 200s AD.

    The main point of the Hexapla was to bring together several different translations of the Hebrew Old Testament and make the best possible translation into Greek. Specifically, the fifth column of the Hexapla contained a translation filled with notes, marks, and footnotes. In other words, the Hexapla was pretty much the first ever study Bible for scholars.

    However, there is an issue. We no longer have any copies of the Hexapla. All that remains are little fragments and quotes from other people throughout history.

    There is one exception though.

    The Syro-Hexapla

    In the early 600s AD, there was a Bishop named Pawlos of Tella (also called Paul of Tella).

    This Bishop lived in Syria and then fled to Egypt because of some sort of persecution back home. He ended up in a region of monasteries known as the Enaton.

    Enaton is the Greek word for “ninth” because these monasteries were centered around the “ninth” milepost southwest of Alexandria, Egypt.

    Anyhow, while Paul was in Egypt, he spent a few years working on a translation project. Specifically, he was translating the Greek Hexapla into Syriac.

    From around 613-617, he translated the fifth column of Origen’s Hexapla into the Syriac language.

    The really important thing about this, though, is that he meticulously copied all of the marks and footnotes that Origen had included. In addition, Paul made his own notes where different Greek translations from the Hexapla disagreed. Thanks to Paul’s preservation of all these notes, modern scholars can reconstruct much of what the Old Testament looked like in the first few centuries. Shocker, shocker, it was nearly identical to today. But still, this information does help work out some difficult translation issues, some weird grammar, and some word choices.

    Now, there is one big issue with the Syro-Hexapla. It is a translation of the Greek Hexapla, which is a translation of the original Hebrew Old Testament. So, it’s a translation of a translation. That makes it a bit less reliable when figuring out the original text of the Old Testament.

    But, thankfully, Paul of Tella did decide to translate the Hexapla very very literally. The Syro-Hexapla is written in Syriac, but it is a very literal translation of the Greek Hexapla, so we can use it to pretty precisely figure out what the Hexapla had said in Greek.

    Codex Ambrosianus

    Like I said, we don’t have any copies of the Hexapla.

    As for the Syro-Hexapla, we also don’t have the original copy. But, that’s true for almost every historical document out there.

    Remember, the Syro-Hexapla was translated in the early 600s. And, what we do have is the so-called Codex Ambrosianus, which is a copy of the Syro-Hexapla from either the 700s or 800s. Not too long after the Syro-Hexapla was originally translated.

    Codex Ambrosianus is just Latin for “The Ambrosian Book” because it’s been stored in the Ambrosian Library of Milan since some time before the 1600s.

    This Codex contains all of the Prophetic Books, the Psalms, and a few others. With the help of some other documents, we also have the Syro-Hexaplaric text for much of the Torah and the Historical Books. In the end, scholars have put back together almost the entire Syro-Hexapla, but we are still missing a few sections, especially in the Torah and the Historical Books.

    Interestingly, a scholar from the 1500s, Andreas Masius, wrote about how they originally had the first section of the Codex Ambrosianus, containing the Torah and Historical Books. But, by the time of Masius, that section of the Codex had been lost somehow.

    Summary

    To sum it all up, the Syro-Hexapla was a translation of the fifth column of the Hexapla from Greek into Syriac.

    Bishop Paul/Pawlos of Tella made this translation in the early 600s AD. He included all the critical marks and notes that the original Hexapla had.

    Modern scholars can use these notes to help figure out what the original Old Testament looked like and make footnotes in modern Bibles about different possible translations of verses.

    And, thanks to the Codex Ambrosianus and other documents, we do have a nearly complete idea of what the Syro-Hexapla looked like.

    I hope that helps you learn something new.

  • What Is The Peshitta/Syriac?

    In the footnotes to some Bibles, you’ll find references to the “Syriac Text” of the Old Testament.

    Well, what is that?

    The “Syriac Text” typically refers to something called the Peshitta (more on that later). However, “Syriac” can be more general than that.

    Hebrew, Aramaic, and Syriac

    So, the Old Testament was written almost entirely in Hebrew. But, a few sections were actually written in a language called Aramaic. Hebrew and Aramaic are very similar languages. Think of how Spanish and Italian are similar to each other because they both come from Latin.

    Now, Aramaic was originally the language of the Aramaeans, who were from the country of Aram. The Old Testament talks about these guys a lot.

    Aram was located in what we now call Syria. After the Assyrians conquered Aram, the region began to be known as Syria.

    Once the Assyrians controlled this area though, Aramaic, the language of Aram, began to spread as a common language throughout the Middle East.

    By the time of Jesus it seems that Hebrew was mainly reserved for religious speeches and writings, while Aramaic was the language of the everyday man. So, the main language of Jesus’ day was Aramaic.

    Great. Simple so far.

    Now, what about Syriac?

    Well, Syriac was a dialect of Aramaic that the people in Syria spoke. Think about how the English spoken in Australia is different from in Britain is different from in the United States. We all speak English, just different dialects of English.

    This just means that the people up in Syria were speaking Aramaic slightly differently than the people down in Judea (the dialect in Judea we call “Palestinian Aramaic”). For some reason, scholars decided to make this into a big deal.

    So, remember. Hebrew and Aramaic are similar but different languages (like Italian and Spanish). Syriac is a dialect of Aramaic (like Australian English versus British English).

    Syriac Translations

    Old Testament

    Syriac only started to be a really recognizable dialect by around the time of Jesus in the First Century. However, at some point in either the First or Second Century, some people who spoke Syriac began to translate the Old Testament from Hebrew into Syriac.

    Most scholars agree that these translations started in the city of Edessa, just north of modern Syria. Specifically, many scholars think that Jewish converts to Christianity made the translations (scholars have done some fancy analysis of different handwriting styles to make that guess; it’s not important, just roll with it).

    So, at some point in the first couple centuries, some Christians in Edessa probably made translations of the Old Testament from Hebrew to Syriac. This would make it easier for everyone to learn from the Scriptures in their own language, so that’s good.

    New Testament

    But, around the same time, translations of the New Testament from Greek to Syriac also began to be made. The earliest specific translation we know of is something called “Tatian’s Diatessaron”.

    Diatessaron comes from a Greek word meaning “out of four”. Basically, Tatian took the four Gospels (all originally written in Greek), Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and he lined up their timing to make one, single Gospel. So, this Diatessaron, made “out of four” Gospels, would show the story of the life, teachings, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ in a single, clear narrative. I don’t know why Tatian did this. Maybe he just wanted to have the Gospel all in a single story, instead of having to refer to four different Gospels that say the same thing in different ways.

    But, the important thing for us is that Tatian wrote his Diatessaron in Syriac around the year 170 AD. This is the earliest translation of the New Testament to another language that we know of (there might have been some other earlier translations; we just don’t know of any specific examples).

    We also don’t technically have any copies left of the Diatessaron in Syriac. They were all lost or destroyed over time. The best we’ve got are some later translations of it to other languages.

    Either way, this kicks off our records of translations of the New Testament to Syriac. We have two more manuscripts (rediscovered in the 1800s) which show translations of the Gospels into Syriac from around the 200s or 300s AD. These two documents do contain parts of all four distinct Gospels, not just Tatian’s combined telling of the Gospel story.

    Vetus Syra

    So, we’ve talked about translations of the Old Testament to Syriac, Tatian’s Diatessaron, and two more translations of the four Gospels dating from around the 200s or 300s.

    Collectively, we refer to all of these old Syriac translations as “the Old Syriac” (man, wouldn’t you love it if everything was that simple?). Now, some scholars also call these translations the “Vetus Syra”. Vetus Syra is just “Old Syriac” in Latin. Latin was the language of scholars for a long time, so that name just kind of stuck.

    Peshitta

    Alright, so that leads us into the big point of this article: the Peshitta.

    At some point, probably in the late 300s or early 400s, some scholars decided that they needed a new translation of the Bible in Syriac. The older translations might have been poor quality, or the scholars might have just wanted to make a standardized translation in Syriac that everyone could agree on.

    Either way, by the 400s AD, there was a new, standardized translation of the whole Bible into Syriac. Well, technically not the whole Bible. These Syriac-speaking Christians did not use the Books of 2 Peter, 2 John, 3 John, Jude, and Revelation. But, they did make a translation of the whole Old Testament and the 22 remaining books of the New Testament.

    When talking about this standardized translation, scholars always focus on one man: Rabbula, Bishop of Edessa. This guy, Rabbula, did not like Tatian’s Diatessaron one bit. He ordered that all the churches throughout the region get rid of the Diatessaron and replace it with the four Gospels.

    It seems that, to go along with this, Rabbula either ordered for the new standardized translation to be made, or he actually made the translation himself. However, many scholars think that work on the translation was already started some time in the 300s.

    But, What Does Peshitta Mean?

    This new, standardized translation to Syriac had a couple special things about it.

    First, it was written in pretty simple to understand language and was a very well known, common translation among Syriac speakers.

    Second, it wasn’t any sort of study Bible. Even after this standardized translation was made, there were still some other translations made into Syriac. One of them was the Syro-Hexapla (more on that another day), which used loads of marks and footnotes, like our modern Bibles, to show where translations could be different. This standardized text, however, was very simple; it had none of these markings or footnotes.

    So, for one reason or another, scholars began to call this translation the “simple version” or the “common version”. And that’s what the word Peshitta means in Syriac, “simple” or “common”.

    The first record we have of people calling this the Peshitta is from around the late 800s AD.

    Also, this isn’t the only translation of the Bible to be called “simple” or “common”. In Latin, the term Vulgata also means “common”. That’s why we call the Latin Bible the “Vulgate”.

    So, What?

    Alright, so that’s all really interesting (right? this is just fascinating, isn’t it?). But, why does it matter?

    Well you see, the oldest complete copy of the Old Testament we have in Hebrew dates from 1008 AD. That’s really, really late compared to when the Old Testament was written.

    But remember, Syriac is a dialect of Aramaic. And Aramaic is very similar to Hebrew. So, by looking at the older Syriac translations of the Old Testament, we can confirm that the Bible has been copied and translated correctly over the millennia.

    Our oldest Syriac translations of the Old Testament are from around the 400s and 500s, and our oldest complete copy is from the 600s. Using the Peshitta, modern translators can make sure that they translate what the Bible originally said, even if some later scribes accidentally copied down the wrong word here or there.

    Translators use this same idea with other old translations of the Bible, like the Greek Septuagint and the Latin Vulgate. But, since Syriac is so similar to Hebrew, we can get an even more precise understanding of certain passages by using the Peshitta.

    Other Notes

    There’s one other thing I wanted to mention just because I thought it’s kind of funny.

    In the New Testament, there are a few sections where the authors explain that Jesus said this or that Aramaic phrase (like on the cross, when he says Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?, meaning “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”).

    But, in the Peshitta, it doesn’t explain these phrases… because the Peshitta is written in Aramaic for Aramaic speakers. It wouldn’t make any sense to explain the term.

    If the Peshitta did explain these terms, it would be like me saying to you “This is a dog. Dog is the English word for dog.”

    I just found that little detail funny.

    Summary

    Alright, so we looked at how Syriac is a dialect of Aramaic. In the first couple centuries AD, some people (probably Christians in the city of Edessa) translated much of the Old and New Testaments into Syriac. Then, in the 400s, the Peshitta translation became the most popular, standardized version of the Syriac Bible. Peshitta is just the Syriac word for “simple”.

    I hope that helps make things clear.

  • What Are The Dead Sea Scrolls?

    The Dead Sea Scrolls are a large set of ancient manuscripts found near the Dead Sea in Israel. They are especially important because they contain very old copies of much of the Old Testament.

    Qumran

    To first set the scene, we have to look at the area where this archaeological goldmine was discovered.

    About a mile northwest of the Dead Sea, there is an area of desert and rocks with a large, dry ravine. A few times a year this ravine turns into a raging river when heavy rainfall hits.

    Next to this ravine, there is a large, steep plateau. Nothing but steep cliffs and bare rock.

    At the top of the plateau, however, there are remains of a small, ancient settlement.

    This settlement is called Qumran. (It seems that people only started calling the area Qumran at some point in the 1800s.)

    Thanks to later excavations of the site, we know that the settlement had a couple large buildings, several cisterns for water, and some sort of tower. Different scholars estimate that anywhere from a couple dozen to, at most, 200 people might have lived here at any given time.

    There is significant debate as to who exactly settled this place. Some scholars guess that it was originally a fortress. That would explain the tower.

    Some think it was a small trading settlement or a rural villa.

    But, whatever it originally was, most scholars agree that Qumran eventually became the home for a group of Jews called the Essenes.

    The Essenes

    Josephus, a first century Jewish historian, wrote that in the first century there were three main Jewish sects: the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Essenes.

    We already know about the tradition-loving Pharisees and the afterlife-denying Sadducees from the New Testament.

    But, who are the Essenes?

    According to Josephus and other ancient writers, the Essenes were a group of no more than a few thousand Jews who lived a very strict life.

    I can’t think of any better way to describe them than to say they were basically like medieval Christian monks. The Essenes lived separate from the rest of the world (like at Qumran), didn’t allow their priests to marry, didn’t use money, and had a very communal lifestyle with other Essenes.

    And, very critically, just like later Christian monks, the Essenes also loved preserving written records of religious texts.

    Thanks to the content of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the discovery of a communal dining hall at Qumran, and the finding of a room dedicated to writing documents, most scholars assert that Qumran was an Essene settlement at some point.

    The Fall Of Qumran

    Well, why is this settlement in ruins?

    Because from 66-73 AD, there was a big ole’ war between the Jews and their Roman masters. The Jews got fed up with serving Rome, so they revolted. That didn’t go so well for them.

    Jerusalem got sacked in 70 AD, and the Roman legions ransacked the countryside, killing many and enslaving most of the rest.

    The documents at Qumran date from way back to the 2nd Century BC all the way to some time in the late 1st Century AD. Because of this, most scholars think that the Essenes were forced to flee or just outright killed by the Romans during this Great Jewish Revolt. Some scholars even believe that the Romans occupied Qumran as a fort for a few years afterwards.

    But now you’re wondering. “If the Essenes copied a bunch of documents, how come the Romans didn’t destroy them when they took Qumran?”

    And the answer to that is

    The Caves of Qumran

    Along the steep cliffs of the plateau where Qumran sits, there are many small caves. Caves that are very difficult to get to.

    It is believed that during the Great Jewish Revolt, the Essenes living at Qumran hid all their scrolls and papers in these caves to keep them safe from the Romans. Alternatively, the Essenes might have used the caves as storerooms for a long time.

    Either way, what we know for sure is that someone, at some point, put many, many scrolls into these caves.

    And there they sat.

    For two thousand years.

    The Discovery Of The Dead Sea Scrolls

    In November 1946, three local shepherds were grazing a herd of goats on the limited vegetation in the region northwest of the Dead Sea.

    There are two stories of why what happened next happened. First, one of the shepherds might have been looking for a lost goat. Second, he might have just been bored.

    Either way, at some point, one of these three young men ended up throwing a rock into a cave he could see a little ways up the cliffside. He expected the rock to clatter to the ground of the cave. Innocent fun.

    But instead, he heard the shattering of pottery.

    Now very curious, he walked up this steep cliff to get into the cave. Inside, he found a number of old looking jars and pottery shards. When he opened some of the containers, he found very old looking papers, rolled up as scrolls.

    Together with the two other men, he took seven of these scrolls back to the rest of their families. After some deliberation, they eventually took these scrolls to a local marketplace, hoping to make some money.

    Sources are unclear, but it seems they were able to sell all seven of these scrolls to two different people, three to one and four to the other. In one of the purchases, the shepherds got 7 Jordanian Pounds (equivalent to maybe a little over $400 today).

    The Scramble For More

    When these scrolls got into the open market, they quickly began to make the rounds. Several scholars at the time were shocked at the quality and ancientness of these scrolls.

    As the popularity of these scrolls grew, the locals, like the shepherds, began looking for more documents to get even more money by selling them.

    However, at the time there was trouble in the Middle East (shocking, I know). So, it took over two years before any official archaeology team began to explore the caves around Qumran.

    In January 1949, a team of archaeologists finally rediscovered the cave where the seven scrolls had been found. This cave is now called Cave 1. Eventually, there would also be Caves 2-11.

    Excavations would go on until 1956. During the seven or so years that archaeologists were searching this area, they discovered a total of eleven caves that contained ancient writings, and they studied the ruins of the settlement at Qumran.

    Locals also discovered another set of caves at this time when they were looking for more scrolls to sell. These caves are located on a cliffside in an area called Wadi Murabba’at. From these caves, we have mainly legal and political documents that tell us more about the Third Jewish Revolt that took place in the 130s AD.

    And, in 2017, archaeologists discovered a twelfth cave which contained broken jars and scroll cases, and modern pickaxes. There were no scrolls left in this cave. The main theory is that during the scramble for scrolls and profit in the 1950s, some locals found this cave and stole all the scrolls it had. They then would have sold them on the black market.

    The Dead Sea Scrolls

    Alright, we’ve looked at the area of Qumran and the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls that took place from 1946-1956.

    But, what exactly are these Dead Sea Scrolls that everyone is so excited about?

    Well, to give a quick summary, there are around 1,000 distinct manuscripts, made up of anywhere from 15,000-100,000 fragments (depending on how you define fragment). So, straight away, we can tell that most of the documents are torn into small shreds. But, scholars have pieced much of them back together.

    Around 20% of these writings are copies of Books of the Old Testament. The rest are writings about all sorts of other things, still mostly religious writings though.

    The scrolls contain at least part of every single book of the Old Testament, except for Esther, and maybe Nehemiah.

    About 85% of the documents are written in Hebrew, most of the rest in Aramaic, then a few in Greek, and a small handful in a language called Nabataean.

    Now, the really, really important thing about these documents is that they contain the oldest copies of the Old Testament in Hebrew that we have.

    You see, the oldest complete copies we have of the Old Testament in Hebrew dated back to about 1000 AD. And the oldest copies we had of any of the Old Testament were fragments from a Greek translation that dated back to maybe the 1st or 2nd centuries BC.

    But now, with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, our oldest copies from the original language of the Old Testament (Hebrew) go back over a thousand years earlier than the next oldest copies we have!

    What does this mean for Bible translations and Christians around the world?

    Well, it meant that scholars could analyze these copies of the Hebrew Bible that predated Christ and compare them to our modern Bibles. That way the atheists could show the Bible has been corrupted so much over the millennia and can’t be trusted… except that’s not what happened.

    You see, these copies of books from the Old Testament matched up nearly exactly with the more modern translations we already had. The Dead Sea Scrolls did help clarify some grammar and word choice in certain passages (like Isaiah 53:11), but there were no really major differences between their contents and what we have in our modern Bibles. In the Dead Sea Scrolls, we can even see how meticulous the Jews were with copying the Old Testament back then; there are certain sections where people crossed out their mistakes when they skipped a word or something similar and put the correct word above or below the error.

    Examples

    To finish this up, there are two specific scrolls I want to point out because they are just fascinating.

    The Great Isaiah Scroll

    One of those first seven scrolls that the shepherds found in the first cave was “The Great Isaiah Scroll”. This was the only complete Book of the Bible found among the caves at Qumran. It was a 23 foot long scroll of animal skin that shows the entire Book of Isaiah, minus a couple verses in areas where the parchment got damaged. Some estimate that this scroll was copied in about 125 BC.

    The Copper Scroll

    All of the scrolls and fragments found at Qumran were made of animal skin or papyrus. All except one.

    The Copper Scroll was made of, wouldn’t you guess it, copper! It was originally a thin sheet of copper that could be unrolled. But, by the time archaeologists discovered it, the metal had become so corroded that it would have snapped to pieces if they tried to unroll it.

    So, instead, they had it cut down the middle and took it apart in 23 pieces so that they could read what it said. Unlike the other scrolls which were mainly religious writings, the Copper Scroll is a sort of treasure map!

    It lists 64 different areas where different items of treasure (mainly gold or silver) have been buried. The instructions are all too vague to let us know exactly where it’s talking about. Some archaeologists went out trying to follow the directions to some of the treasures, but they came up empty-handed. If the treasure is real, the Romans might have taken it after interrogating Jews who knew about it.

    There’s lots of debate about what the treasure might have been. A decent number of scholars think it was some sort of treasure stored in the Temple of Jerusalem sent away for safekeeping. No one’s really too sure though. It definitely sounds strange for a bunch of moneyless hermits to be responsible for hiding the treasures of the temple.

    Summary

    Alright, that was a lot.

    In short, the Dead Sea Scrolls are ancient scrolls found near the Dead Sea that contain very ancient Biblical manuscripts. They were likely stored away in caves by a Jewish group called the Essenes before being abandoned for two thousand years after the Great Jewish Revolt in the first century. Then, a group of shepherds found them randomly in 1946, setting off a decade of archaeological discovery. The Dead Sea Scrolls give us new knowledge about ancient Israel and help confirm the consistency and continuity of the Old Testament that we have today and they had back then.

  • Who Was Marcion?

    Marcion of Sinope (also called Marcion of Pontus, which is basically northern Turkey) was a famous Christian heretic in the 2nd Century AD.

    All that we know about him comes from the writings of men who disagreed with him. So, some of the information is probably biased, but we do have a pretty good idea of what Marcion believed.

    He was probably born in the late 1st Century. His father was reportedly some sort of leader in the churches of Pontus. As Marcion grew up in this early period of Christianity, he seemingly had conflicts with the Church pretty early on.

    But, it wasn’t until around the 140s AD when he really went off the deep end.

    You see, Marcion didn’t really like the Jews. So, around this time he started preaching that the God of the Old Testament was a weak, wrathful tribal god of the Jewish people. He contrasted this with the God of the New Testament, the loving, all-powerful, Father of Jesus Christ.

    Now, Marcion ran into an issue pretty quickly. The New Testament is FULL of references back to the God of the Old Testament. All the Gospels and letters of the New Testament make it very clear that there is one God who was the Creator of the universe and the Father of Jesus Christ.

    So, how did Marcion deal with the issue of the Bible disagreeing with his views? Did he change his views and repent? NO! Not good ole’ Marcion!

    Instead, he published his own copy of what he believed were the “canonical scriptures” of the New Testament. First, he included the Gosepl of Luke. Out of all the Gospels, Luke is the least focused on Judaism, so Marcion liked it the best. But, Luke does still make very clear that the God of the Old Testament is also the Father of Jesus Christ.

    To solve this little issue, Marcion heavily edited and deleted sections of Luke. In fact, he changed it so much that we refer to this edited Gospel as “the Gospel of Marcion”.

    Marcion’s Canon

    Modern scholars typically call Marcion’s Gospel the “Evangelion”. This is just the Greek term for “Gospel” or “Good News”. It’s also where we get the English word “to evangelize”, which just means “to spread the Good News”.

    In addition to his heavily edited version of Luke, Marcion included ten more Books of the New Testament in his canon.

    Scholars call these ten other books the “Apostolikon”. As you can probably guess, this is a Greek word which refers to the writings of the “apostle”.

    Notice though, that I said “apostle” and not “apostles”. Marcion believed that Paul was the only true apostle. Again, this is because Paul was the apostle to the Gentiles, so his letters had less of an emphasis on Judaism.

    But, again Marcion ran into the same problem as with Luke: Paul’s letters still mentioned Judaism and the Old Testament quite a lot. So, Marcion’s solution was to just edit out all the parts he didn’t like.

    In the end, Marcion’s canon looked like the following:

    • The Evangelion (a version of Luke edited by Marcion)
    • The Apostolikon (this is the name given to the following ten letters of Paul)
    • Romans
    • 1 Corinthians
    • 2 Corinthians
    • Galatians
    • Colossians
    • Philippians
    • 1 Thessalonians
    • 2 Thessalonians
    • Philemon
    • Laodiceans

    There are a couple things to note about that list. First, Marcion did not include 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, nor Titus.

    Second of all, he included a letter of Paul to the Laodiceans. This is a whole ‘nother can of worms in modern scholarship. To put it simply, there are two main theories. One, the letter to the Laodiceans is just a different name for the letter to the Ephesians. Or two, Marcion made this letter all on his own to support his views.

    God’s Work

    We’ve covered how Marcion was a heretic and argued against all of the Old Testament. He was even officially excommunicated in around the year 144. The movement that he created spread some really bad beliefs. In fact, in the 1930s, some of his theories were resurfaced in Nazi Germany because he accepted God while rejecting the Jews, which is what many Nazis wanted to do.

    But, even though Marcion worked to spread great evil, God was able to use his work for some good.

    You see, when Marcion made his own canon of scriptures in around the 140s or so, there wasn’t a single recognized New Testament. Most Christians agreed on the authority of the Gospels and most of the letters of the apostles, but no one had really organized them into a single list. Until Marcion.

    When Marcion started spreading all his heresies, Christians needed a way to argue against him using scripture. So, in response to Marcion’s canon, the Church began to properly organize the New Testament. Because of this, fewer people would be led astray by theories like Marcion’s, since they would have a single set of organized New Testament Scriptures to refer back to.

    And we can be thankful for that to this very day.

  • What Was The Hexapla Of Origen?

    Origen was an early Christian scholar. He was likely born around 185 and died around 254.

    Of his many written works, there is one that is extremely fascinating to Bible translators: the Hexapla.

    Hexapla is just the Greek word for “six-fold”. We refer to this work of Origen as the “Hexapla” because it contains six different columns, side by side, each with a different translation of the Old Testament.

    Purpose

    Origen’s goal was apparently to verify that the Septuagint was still a faithful translation of the original Hebrew Old Testament.

    So, the most important column is the one which lists the Septuagint translation. He added lots of notes and markings to this column to make it clear where he felt the Septuagint failed to properly translate the original Hebrew.

    Timing

    Now, we don’t know exactly when Origen started on this monumental work (and yes, it was a MONUMENTAL work; he basically had to handwrite the entire Old Testament six times over). But scholars typically agree that he finished by the year 240 and that it must have taken at least 20 years to complete. So, he probably started on this project in the 210s or early 220s.

    One issue with this is that he didn’t have access to the original copies of the Old Testament (they were all long gone by the time he was born). Even though he had older texts than we do, he was still working with copies of copies.

    That again ties in with the whole reason he created the Hexapla. By comparing several different translations with the best Hebrew manuscripts he can get, he would be able to compare them and come to the most likely conclusion of what the original text likely said. This is exactly what modern Biblical scholars do when preparing to make a new translation into English or any other language.

    In fact, because of this, some say that Origen’s Hexapla was the first ever Interlinear Bible.

    The Columns

    As for the columns themselves, remember, the purpose was to ensure that the Septuagint remained as accurate and faithful to the original Hebrew as possible. Every column aside from the Septuagint is there just to help you understand the proper and correct reading. They also all work together to allow you to reconstruct the original Hebrew text.

    Each of the six columns on each page contains the same few verses of scripture, just in a different translation for each column.

    Caveat

    We’ll go into a detailed analysis of each column in a moment, but first, I need to make something clear.

    This great, revolutionary work that compiled translations? The Hexapla? A resource which sounds so beneficial to modern Bible translators?

    It no longer exists.

    Only one complete copy is ever known to have existed, the one created by Origen himself. In fact, there is a common joke told that ancient scholars didn’t believe that a single man could have written out such a massive text in his lifetime. Modern scholars estimate that the Hexapla was probably around 6,000 or so pages long.

    So, yeah, it wasn’t the easiest thing to make a copy of. To do so would require you to handwrite the entire Old Testament six times over in different translations.

    The Hexapla remained in the city of Caesarea Maritima (the city where Origen compiled it and also an important city in the New Testament) for hundreds of years. Many ancient scholars referenced it and used it for their own projects. Jerome, the translator of the Vulgate, wrote about how he used the text when translating the Vulgate.

    We don’t know exactly what happened to the Hexapla, but it seems that it was lost sometime in the early 600s during the wars between the Byzantines and the Persians and the Muslims.

    Anyhow, scholars have managed to reconstruct a decent chunk of the Hexapla by finding a couple small fragments, looking at quotations made by ancient historians, and especially by referencing translations like the “Syro-Hexapla” which translated parts of the Hexapla into other languages.

    Following is the general consensus about the six columns of the Hexapla.

    Column 1

    The first column simply contained the Hebrew text of the Old Testament. Nice and easy.

    As far as I can tell, there’s nothing especially interesting about the Hebrew text Origen used.

    Column 2

    The second column contained the Hebrew text transliterated into Greek letters.

    To give an example, an English transliteration of Greek would be like if I gave the Greek to John 1:1 as  Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ Λόγος and then gave the same Greek phrase using English letters instead of Greek letters: En archē ēn ho Logos.

    The purpose of this column was probably just to help people unfamiliar with Hebrew know how to pronounce the words. That’s just my speculation though.

    This column is usually known as the Secunda of Origen by scholars. Secunda is the Latin word for “second”. So, this refers to the “second” column of the Hexapla.

    Column 3

    Now, we finally get into a Greek translation of the Hebrew. The third column contains the translation made by Aquila of Sinope.

    Aquila’s translation is an extremely literal, word for word, translation of the Hebrew into Greek.

    It makes sense why the word for word translation would be placed right next to the Hebrew text columns.

    Column 4

    The fourth column is the Greek translation of Symmachus. This is a very “meaning for meaning” translation, like most of our modern English Bibles.

    Column 5

    This is the really important column. It’s a version of the Septuagint filled with notes and marks where Origen believes that the translation has diverged from the Hebrew.

    Since this was the column that ancient scholars copied and translated the most, it’s also the one that modern scholars have reconstructed best.

    Column 6

    Finally, there was the Greek translation of Theodotion. This was less so a translation and more so Theodotion fixing up the Septuagint to align more closely with the original Hebrew.

    Basically, Theodotion’s translation was a smaller attempt to do what Origen is doing with his Hexapla, to make the Septuagint a more faithful translation of the Hebrew.

    Final Notes

    There you have it. The Hexapla.

    Before summarizing everything we went over, though, I should also point out that there are some variations of Origen’s Hexapla.

    Apparently, Origen also made a Tetrapla (four-fold), which contained just the last four columns, no Hebrew.

    And, to complicate matters, several ancient writers, but especially Eusebius, tell us about how Origen used other translations as well for certain Books of the Old Testament. Because of this, sometimes the Hexapla is also called the Heptapla, Octapla, or Enneapla (seven-fold, eight-fold, or nine-fold).

    Eusebius writes a neat story about Origen finding another Hebrew manuscript in a clay jar outside of Jericho. Along with other translations, he apparently had a total of nine columns for the Book of Psalms.

    Some of that stuff is disputed, but most scholars can wholeheartedly agree on the existence of the six columns that we discussed above.

    Summary

    Anyhow, that covers the Hexapla of Origen. It was a MASSIVE work done by Origen in the early 200s AD where he laid out six (or more) columns of the Old Testament, two columns of Hebrew and four of Greek. The text was lost by the mid-600s AD. But, through extensive work, modern scholars have reconstructed what some of it might have looked like.

    That was a lot. I hope it helped you learn something new.

  • Who Was Tertullian?

    Tertullian was a Roman Christian who wrote some of our earliest works in defense of the Christian faith.

    Unfortunately, we know very little about his life, and many of his writings have been lost.

    To start out, he was probably born sometime around 150 AD (I’ve seen several sources disagreeing with each other, but most say somewhere in the range of 145-155). He was born in the city of Carthage in Roman North Africa as Quintis Septimus Florens Tertullianus. His father was apparently a centurion in the local legion.

    Now, that much is pretty solidly agreed upon. Scholars then disagree heavily about the next several decades of his life. You see, Tertullian grew up as a pagan. He doesn’t convert to Christianity until around the age of 40.

    So, what did he do for the first 40 years of his life?

    Well, there are two options. Option A) We don’t know. Option B) He went to school in Rome and then served as a lawyer for many years.

    There are plenty of arguments on both sides using historical accounts and analyzing Tertullian’s word choice. But, overall, some people think Tertullian was a lawyer. Some people don’t.

    Alright, well when Tertullian was about 40 he converted to Christianity. Why? Surprise, surprise, we don’t know!

    One of the most popular theories though is that Tertullian was awe-stricken when he saw Christians boldly facing death in the arenas when they were executed for their faith. This led him to learning more about Christianity and eventually converting.

    From what I can tell, the main evidence for this theory is that Tertullian would later write about how “Christians are made, not born” and how a radical act of conversion is important to Christianity. When you combine this with Tertullian’s praise of Christian martyrs, you get the theory above about how Tertullian himself became a Christian.

    Now, the most important stuff we do know about Tertullian come from after age 40. His writings. Several of his works are lost. But, 31 still remain.

    Tertullian wrote in defense of the Christian faith and against many heresies of his day. If you want to quote an ancient, sarcastic Christian author, then Tertullian is your guy. His writings contain plenty of irony, sarcasm, and plays on words.

    One of the most important facts about Tertullian is the language he wrote in. He was the first Christian that we know of to write extensive works in Latin. Because of this, he is commonly called “the father of Latin Christianity”.

    Later in his Christian life, he apparently became a “Montanist”. We don’t know much about the Montanists (shocker), but they were at best a new branch of Christianity and at worst an outright heresy. Either way, Tertullian apparently supported them. And a few scholars (but not many) think he may have formally left the mainstream church.

    Throughout his writings he also coined several terms (or he was just the first person to write them down). One famous example is “trinity”. In defense of his views about the oneness of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, he used the Latin word trinitas to describe his viewpoint.

    Several of the words he introduced are just translations of Greek words into Latin, like “idolatry” (idololatria), “pentecostal” (pentecostalis), “Gehenna” (Gehenna), “patriarch” (patriarcha), “Pentateuch” (Pentateuchus), and “alphabet” (alphabetum).

    But, a couple seem to be unique to Latin, like “trinity” (trinitas), and interestingly “pagan” (paganus). That word, paganus, was Latin for “rural” or “a civilian”. Tertullian used this word to compare the “civilians” of the world with the “soldiers of Christ”. So, thanks to Tertullian, we now describe unbelievers as pagans.

    Ultimately, Tertullian died at a nice, old age. Or, at least that’s what the Latin scholar Jerome tells us. Some modern scholars guess that he was actually martyred, which would be a fitting end to a man who praised martyrs to the hilt.

    Overall, we don’t know too much about Tertullian. But we do know that he grew up as a pagan (a word that he later created) in the late 2nd Century. He might or might not have been a lawyer. Then, he converted to Christianity and staunchly defended the faith. He then either died at an old age or didn’t. Still, as the father of Latin Christianity, he greatly impacted the early church with his writings.

  • What Is The Douay-Rheims Bible?

    When talking with Catholics, you might hear them mention “the Douay-Rheims”.

    Well, what exactly is that?

    To understand that, we have to go back to the time of the Protestant Reformation in the mid-1500s.

    During that time there was much, much fighting and arguing in England over whether to be Catholic or Protestant. Eventually, the Protestants got the upper hand for long enough that they made Catholicism effectively illegal. At times, it was punishable by death to be a Catholic priest.

    So, in response, many Catholics fled over to “the continent”, or in other words, the rest of Europe. Their main destination was France.

    One group of these Catholics fled to the city of Douay (now spelled Douai) in northeastern France around the year 1560. While there, they helped set up a college/seminary to train exiled English Catholics as priests. In an attempt to make England Catholic again, they even sent 300 priests to England to secretly minister to the people. Around 130 of these men ended up being executed for being priests.

    This new college then decided to create its own English translation of the Bible to compete with the Protestants’ English translations. 

    However, since the Catholics really love Latin, they decided to not translate from the original Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic of the Old and New Testaments. Instead, they decided to translate from the Latin Vulgate.

    Now, the Vulgate is a good translation. But, it is weird to translate from a translation, rather than from the original. It would be like if we wanted to make a new translation of the Bible into French. Should we A) translate from Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic into French or B) translate from an English version of the Bible into French?

    Either way, the Catholics in Douay decided to translate from the Vulgate. After some time, they finished their translations. But, when they had finished, the college had actually temporarily relocated to the French city of Rheims (now spelled Reims).

    A big issue the Catholics at the college faced was that they were short on money. At the end of 1582, while in Rheims, they published a few hundred cheaply made copies of their New Testament translation. It wasn’t until 1609 and 1610, though, that they had enough money to also publish their translation of the Old Testament. By this time, they were back in the city of Douay. So, the New Testament is typically called the “Rheims New Testament”, and the Old Testament is typically called the “Douay Old Testament”. Together, they make up the “Douay-Rheims Bible”.

    This translation is a very direct, literal translation from the Latin, making it very hard for modern English readers to understand. So, just like how the King James Version was revised and updated in 1769, so too was the Douay-Rheims.

    Throughout the mid-1700s, a Catholic named Richard Challoner updated much of the translation of the Douay-Rheims. He made it far easier to read for the average English speaker.

    And, through many more updates and revisions, we still have the Douay-Rheims available today.

    In summary, the Douay-Rheims was the first ever English translation of the Bible approved by the Catholic Church. It was translated by some English Catholics who fled to France. And it is a very literal translation of the Latin Vulgate, rather than the original Scriptures.

  • Who Were The Tannaim?

    Do you remember how throughout Jesus’ ministry He constantly criticized the Jewish leaders of His day for focusing on small, unimportant traditions?

    As a reminder, this is a quote from Jesus in Matthew 15:3

    3 Jesus replied, “And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition?

    Well, even after His death and resurrection, the Jews who refused to recognize Him as the Messiah continued to argue over little, unimportant traditions.

    They argued about how far you could walk on a Sabbath Day. They argued about handwashing. They argued about the ritual cleanliness of the stems of fruit. They argued about everything.

    Now, since Judaism spans all of human history, historians have broken up the different time periods of Judaism by different names to describe the main scholars of the time. One such time period stretches from about 10 AD to about 220 AD. This is the period of the Tannaim.

    The word Tannaim is Aramaic for “the repeaters” or “the teachers” because these were the scholars who repeated all of the “Oral Law” that was passed down to them. What’s the “Oral Law”? It’s basically all of those Jewish traditions that Jesus had criticized the Jews for following so legalistically.

    So, as the Tannaim continued to argue about Jewish traditions, the three Jewish Revolts broke out, and the Romans destroyed much of Judea. Since the Romans killed so many of these “repeaters” of the Oral Law, the remaining Tannaim began to fear that their traditions would be forgotten.

    To solve this issue, around 200 AD, the last of the Tannaim wrote down all the traditions that they had memorized. This is what we call the Mishnah. This forms the basis for the Jewish Talmuds that are so important to modern Jews. Also, the word Mishnah is Hebrew for “the repetition”. And that makes perfect sense because it was written down by “the repeaters”.

    That was a lot of information, but in summary, the word Tannaim means “repeaters” and describes the Jewish scholars from around 10-220 AD who focused heavily on Jewish traditions and who wrote down the Mishnah.

  • Who Was Theodotion?

    In the Second Century AD, there were three men who created new translations of the Hebrew Old Testament into Greek: Aquila, Theodotion, and Symmachus.

    This urge to create new translations was spurred on by a few factors.

    First of all, copies of the Greek Septuagint, which the Jews had been using for hundreds of years, had developed several scribal errors. So, by the Second Century, it was in need of a revision where it could be compared to the original Hebrew to make sure that it was still a faithful translation. In fact, of these three scholars, Theodotion’s translation was little more than a revision of the Septuagint.

    But, there was a second, more pressing concern.

    Christianity.

    All three of these scholars (except maybe Symmachus) were Jews. So, they wanted to try and discredit the many prophecies mentioned in the Christian New Testament. To do this, they made their own translations to show how the Septuagint’s translation of the Hebrew prophecies in the Old Testament was not always the same word-for-word.

    For example, the Gospel according to Matthew quotes Isaiah 7:14, saying that:

    …The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son…

    And that is what the Septuagint says. However, the original Hebrew likely said:

    …The young woman will conceive and give birth to a son…

    So, Aquila, Theodotion, and Symmachus seemingly wanted to try and discredit the prophecies mentioned in the New Testament by showing that, in the original Hebrew, the prophecies didn’t necessarily say the exact same thing word-for-word.

    Theodotion

    We don’t know much about Theodotion. But, it seems that he was a convert to Judaism who lived in the city of Ephesus (the same city where Paul stayed for a couple years).

    Theodotion’s Translation

    His translation was a sort of middle ground between Aquila’s strict word-for-word translation and Symmachus’ looser meaning-for-meaning translation.

    Theodotion kept to a translation very similar to the Septuagint while updating certain parts to make the translation either sound better, or to better reflect the original Hebrew.

    The Timing Issue

    Now, when studying Theodotion, there is one big issue that scholars love to rack their brains over.

    When did Theodotion live?

    Ancient writers typically say that he lived in the late Second Century AD. Specifically, one says that he made his translation around the 180s AD.

    However, there are many modern scholars who disagree with this, and for good reason.

    You see, when the New Testament authors quote from the Old Testament, they would use whatever translation best drives their point home. So, for example, in 1 Corinthians 15:54, when Paul is quoting from Isaiah 25:8, we read this:

    54 …Death has been swallowed up in victory.

    But, if you look for Isaiah 25:8 in your Old Testament, you’ll find something like this:

    8 He will swallow up death for all time…

    Now, that’s obviously different. But, it’s even more different than it looks at first. In our modern English Old Testaments, we usually use the Hebrew Text of the Middle Ages. If we were to look at what the Greek Septuagint (the version of the Old Testament that most Jews in Paul’s day would have been using) says in Isaiah 25:8, we would read:

    8 Death, having prevailed, swallowed them [nations] up…

    So, why does Paul say that he’s quoting Isaiah 25:8 when his quote is different from what Isaiah 25:8 actually says?

    Well, because Isaiah 25:8 does say exactly what Paul quotes… in Theodotion’s translation.

    So, that answers the question, right? In 1 Corinthians 15:54, Paul is just quoting from Theodotion’s translation, right?

    Well, that sounds good until we remember that Paul was writing in the 50s AD. If Theodotion didn’t make his translation until the 180s AD, how did Paul quote from it?

    That’s where the modern theory comes in. Some scholars suggest that Theodotion was actually born around the same time as Jesus (plus or minus a decade or two). According to this theory, he made his translation in the early First Century AD, with plenty of time for Paul to get a copy to quote from.

    There is also another theory though. Some think that Theodotion did make his translation in the 180s AD, but that someone else had made another, similar translation back in the First Century BC.

    The Book of Daniel

    And, while much of Theodotion’s translation is lost, we actually still use a large portion of it to this very day: the book of Daniel.

    Apparently, as Jerome, the Fourth Century translator of the Vulgate, tells us, the Septuagint translation of Daniel wasn’t a very good translation. So, the Church ended up adopting Theodotion’s translation of it instead.

    Summary

    In the end, we can’t be too sure about anything concerning Theodotion’s life or translation. But, it seems that he was a convert to Judaism who lived in Ephesus sometime during either the 1st or 2nd centuries AD. The apostle Paul used his translation, or an earlier translation made by someone else, in a few areas, including 1 Corinthians 15:54. And, Theodotion’s version of Daniel was such an improvement over the Septuagint that it became the main version used even to this day.

  • Who Was The Translator Aquila Of Pontus?

    In the Second Century AD, there were three men who created new translations of the Hebrew Old Testament into Greek: Aquila, Theodotion, and Symmachus.

    This urge to create new translations was spurred on by a few factors.

    First of all, copies of the Greek Septuagint, which the Jews had been using for hundreds of years, had developed several scribal errors. So, by the Second Century, it was in need of a revision where it could be compared to the original Hebrew to make sure that it was still a faithful translation. In fact, of these three scholars, Theodotion’s translation was little more than a revision of the Septuagint.

    But, there was a second, more pressing concern.

    Christianity.

    All three of these scholars (except maybe Symmachus) were Jews. So, they wanted to try and discredit the many prophecies mentioned in the Christian New Testament. To do this, they made their own translations to show how the Septuagint’s translation of the Hebrew prophecies in the Old Testament was not always the same word-for-word.

    For example, the Gospel according to Matthew quotes Isaiah 7:14, saying that:

    …The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son…

    And that is what the Septuagint says. However, the original Hebrew likely said:

    …The young woman will conceive and give birth to a son…

    So, Aquila, Theodotion, and Symmachus seemingly wanted to try and discredit the prophecies mentioned in the New Testament by showing that, in the original Hebrew, the prophecies didn’t necessarily say the exact same thing word-for-word.

    Aquila

    While we know very little about all three of these scholars, we do have a decent bit of information on Aquila.

    He seemingly lived in the early second century AD. And he likely completed his famous translation around the year 129-130 or so.

    Aquila was probably originally from the city of Sinope in the region of Pontus (so, be careful not to mistake him for the other Aquila of Pontus, mentioned in the New Testament).

    According to one legend, he was the nephew of the Roman Emperor Hadrian (ever heard of Hadrian’s Wall?).

    Now, the timeline gets muddled, and there are many conflicting stories. But, one source tells us that Hadrian ended up sending Aquila on assignment to Judea, where Aquila converted from Roman Paganism to Christianity, and then from Christianity to Judaism. Another source just says that he converted straight from Paganism to Judaism though.

    Either way, ancient writers would commonly call him “Aquila the Proselyte”. So, we can confidently say that at some point he was not a Jew, but then he converted to Judaism at some point in his life.

    Aquila’s Translation

    Again according to legend, Aquila was the disciple of an important Second Century Rabbi who was very interested in analyzing every last word and letter of the Old Testament for some sort of hidden meaning. This was similar to many other Jews of the time.

    So, seemingly under the guidance of this Rabbi, Aquila made his translation of the Old Testament from Hebrew into Greek. The hallmark of his translation was that it was an overly literal, word-for-word translation. Not caring whether it even made sense, Aquila just translated every single word to mean exactly what the Hebrew said.

    This reminds me of nothing so much as Young’s Literal Translation in English (look it up if you want). Both translations were focused on giving the reader the most precise meaning of each word, no matter the context of the sentence or passage. Obviously, this results in a very difficult to read translation, but one which is very useful for scholars.

    Unfortunately, almost all of his translation is now lost.

    But, from what fragments we do have left, we can learn a lot about the Hebrew text he was working with. First of all, since he was so precise in his translation, scholars can pretty easily figure out what the Hebrew translation he was using looked like. This allows us to better ensure that our modern Bibles say the same things that the original writers wrote.

    Second of all, because Aquila would often transliterate words from Hebrew into Greek instead of translating them, scholars can better determine how Hebrew was pronounced during the Second Century.

    Relation To Onqelos

    As a brief note, there’s a big ole’ dispute over whether or not Aquila and Onqelos are the same guy.

    “Who’s Onqelos?” You ask.

    Well, he was a Roman nobleman who converted to Judaism and wrote a translation of the Hebrew Old Testament into Aramaic during the early Second Century.

    Sounds a lot like Aquila, doesn’t it?

    The Jewish Talmuds also tell identical stories about Aquila the Proselyte and Onqelos the Proselyte.

    Thanks to all these similarities in the sources we’ve got, many people think that Onqelos was just another name for Aquila. But, some people still make arguments that they are, in fact, two different people.

    Jerome’s Use Of Aquila

    Jerome was the man who compiled the Latin translation of the scriptures, known as the Vulgate, in the late 300s and early 400s AD.

    I found some conflicting sources on whether Jerome liked or disliked Aquila’s translation. One of the sources though gave a quote of Jerome’s where he specifically criticizes Aquila for making a translation that is just about unreadable.

    I don’t have any clue why some sources were saying that Jerome praised Aquila’s translation, but I did read that in a couple spots. Overall, from my familiarity with Jerome’s translation methods and from reading his specific quote, it seems that he did not particularly like Aquila’s translation.

    With all that said, I did read one source which said that Jerome did still refer to Aquila’s work when making his own translation to Latin. The evidence given for this is that in the Book of Psalms, Jerome translates the Hebrew word Selah as Semper (meaning “always”), which lines up with Aquila’s use of the word ἀεὶ (also meaning “always”).

    Summary

    Well, we unfortunately don’t have too much information on Aquila, but still I hope this helped give you some good new knowledge.

    Aquila was likely a convert to Judaism in the early Second Century AD, who created a very literal, word-for-word translation of the Old Testament from Hebrew into Greek.