HEXAPLA (formed from iξ, six, and αcraoω, I open, I unfold), in Ecclesiastical History, a bible disposed in six columns, containing the text, and different versions thereof, compiled and published by Origen, with a view to secure the sacred text from future corruptions, and to correct those which had been already introduced.

Eusebius relates that Origen, after his return from Rome under Caracalla, applied himself to learn Hebrew, and began to collect the several versions which had been made of the Sacred Writings, and from these to compose his Tetrapla and Hexapla; others, however, are of opinion that he did not begin till the time of Alexander, after he had retired into Palestine, about the year 231.

To understand what this Hexapla was, it must be observed that, besides the translation of the Sacred Writings, called the Septuagint, made under Ptolemy Philadelphus, about 280 years before Christ, the Scriptures were translated into Greek by other interpreters. The first of these versions, or, reckoning the Septuagint, the second, was that of Aquila, a proselyte Jew, the first edition of which he published in the twelfth year of the emperor Hadrian, or about the year of Christ 128; the third was that of Symmachus, published under Marcus Aurelius, or, at least, under Septimius Severus, about the year 200; the fourth was that of Thcodotion, prior to the version of Symma- [7:11:290]‘ chus, which appeared under Commodus, or about the year 175. These Greek versions, says Dr Kennicot, were made by the Jews from their corrupted copies of the Hebrew, and were designed to stand in stead of that by the Seventy, against which they were prejudiced, because it seemed to favour the Christians. The fifth was found at Jericho, in the reign of Caracalla, about the year 217; the sixth was discovered at Nicoolis, in the reign of Alexander Severus; and Origen himself recovered part of a seventh, containing only the Psalms.

Now Origen, who had held frequent disputations with the Jews, both in Egypt and in Palestine, having observed that they always objected against those passages of Scripture quoted against them, and appealed to the Hebrew text; in order the better to vindicate those passages, and to confound the Jews by showing that the Seventy had given the sense of the Hebrew, or rather to show by a number of different versions what the real sense of the Hebrew was, he undertook to reduce all these several versions into a body along with the Hebrew text, so that they might easily be confronted, and thus afford a mutual illustration.

He made the Hebrew text his standard; and allowing that corruptions might have taken place, and that the old Hebrew copies might and did read differently, he contented himself with marking such words or sentences as were not in the Hebrew text, nor in the later Greek versions, and adding such words or sentences as were omitted in the Seventy, prefixing an asterisk to the additions, and an obelisk to the others.

With this view he made choice of eight columns, in the first of which he gave the Hebrew text in Hebrew characters; in the second the same text in Greek characters; whilst the rest were filled with the severaí versions above mentioned, all the columns answering verse for verse, and phrase for phrase; and in the Psalms there was a ninth column for the seventh version.

This work of Origen was called 'Eξαcraα, Hexapla, or work of six columns, as regarding only the first six Greek versions. But Epiphanius, taking into account the two columns of the text, calls the work Octapla.

This celebrated work, which, Montfaucon imagines, consisted of fifty large volumes, perished long ago, probably with the library at Caesarea, where it was preserved in the year 653; though several of the ancient writers have preserved fragments of it, particularly St Chrysostom on the Psalms, and Philoponus in his Hexameron. Some modern writers have earnestly endeavoured to collect fragments of the Hexapla, particularly Flaminius Nobilius, Drusius, and Montfaucon.