12.  The text of the Septuagint was never preserved so carefully as that of the Hebrew, and in the days of Origen it had fallen into great confusion.  To meet the objections of the Jews, as well as to help believers in their study of the Old Testament, Origen undertook first the work called the Tetrapla (Greek, fourfold), which was followed by the Hexapla (Greek, sixfold).  To prepare himself he spent twenty-eight years, travelling extensively and collecting materials.  In the Tetrapla, the text of the Septuagint (corrected by manuscripts of itself), and those of Aquila, Theodotion, and Symmachus were arranged side by side in four parallel columns.  In the Hexapla there were six columns—­(1) the Hebrew in Hebrew characters; (2) the Hebrew expressed in Greek letters; (3) Aquila; (4) Symmachus; (5) the Septuagint; (6) Theodotion.  See Davidson’s Bib.  Crit., 1, p. 203; Smith’s Bib.  Diet., 2, p. 1202.  In some books he used two other Greek versions, and occasionally even a third, giving in the first case eight, in the second, nine columns.

“The great work,” says Davidson, “consisting of nearly fifty volumes; on which he had spent the best years of his life, does not seem to have been transcribed—­probably in consequence of its magnitude and the great expense necessarily attending a transcript.  It lay unused as a whole fifty years after it was finished, till Eusebius and Pamphilus drew it forth from its concealment in Tyre, and placed it in the library of the latter in Caesarea.  It is thought to have perished there when Caesarea was taken and plundered by the Saracens, A.D. 653.”  Bib.  Criticism, 1, p. 206.  Well did Origen merit by his vast researches and labors the epithet Adamantinus [Adamantine] bestowed on him by the ancients.  Fragments of the Hexapla, consisting of extracts made from it by the ancients, have been collected and published in two folio volumes by Montfaucon, Paris, 1713, and reprinted by Bahrdt in two volumes octavo, Leipzig and Lubeck, 1769, 1770.  It is the hope of biblical scholars that these may be enriched from the Nitrian manuscripts.  See further, Chap. 28, No. 8.

For the four “Standard Text Editions” of the Septuagint Greek version, with the principal editions founded on them, the reader may consult the Bibliographical List appended to the fourth volume of Home’s Introduction, edition of 1860.

III.  THE CHALDEE TARGUMS.

13.  The Chaldee word Targum means interpretation, and is applied to the translations or paraphrases of the Old Testament in the Chaldee language.  When, after the captivity, the Chaldee had supplanted the Hebrew as the language of common life, it was natural that the Jews should desire to have their sacred writings in the language which was to them vernacular.  Thus we account, in a natural way, for the origin of these Targums, of which there is a considerable number now extant differing widely in age as well as character.  No one of them extends to the whole Old Testament.