78 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS. 



lu the early part of the third century of the Christian 

 era, vexatious disputation as to the correct rendering of pass- 

 ages cited from the Old Testament was common between Jew 

 and Christian. To prevent such disputes, Origen devoted 

 maiij^ years of his life, and to remove their cause he collected 

 Bible manuscripts from all parts of the Christian world. 

 Carefull}' educated as he had been at Alexandria, he was well 

 equipped for his undertaking, and succeeded in producing 

 that version of the Bible known as the Hexapla. As the 

 name implies, the texts used by him were placed in six par- 

 allel columns. They were arranged in the following order : 

 In the first column was a Hebrew text in Hebrew script ; the 

 second cohnnn contained a Hebrew text in Greek letters ; of 

 the Greek versions that of Aquila was in the third column ; 

 the version of Symmachus in the fourth ; the Septuagint in 

 the fifth; and in the sixth column was the text of Theodotion. 

 In this way Origen adopted what is now recognized to be the 

 true method of diplomatic criticism. The object of textual 

 investigation is to find out what an author really wrote. And 

 iu the absence of authentication by the author himself, it is 

 agreed that the most likely way to accomplish that object is 

 to arrange the best available manuscripts in genealogical 

 order, and to make inter-comparison of them, sentence by 

 sentence and word by word. It is generally believed that 

 the Hexapla was burnt in the Arab tumults of the seventh 

 century, though hope is not altogether extinct that a copy 

 may yet be found in some out-of-the-way monastery in the 

 lyevant. The work was well known to the early Christian 

 fathers, and such fragments of it as have survived have been 

 printed in both England and France. Because of its unique 

 value as a link in the chain of scripture transmission, the Uni- 

 versity of Berlin recently appointed a commission to prepare 

 a critical edition of all that could be found of the Hexapla. 



The next Biblical service worthy to be compared with 

 Origen's great work was done by Kusebius Hieronimus, a 

 great man, wider, if not more appreciatively, known as St. 

 Jerome. He was born near the middle of the fourth century 



