Peter John Gentry, The Asterisked Materials in the Greek Job

US 49. 95 (cloth), 33. 95 (paper). 1. One of the most problematic areas in Septuagintal research is the remarkably comprehensive text-critical work executed by Origen, especially the six-columned description found in his Hexapla. This massive compilation of textual variants was of course never transmitted in its entirety; however, the fifth column, which contained the Old Greek as constructed by Origen, had a major impact on later textual traditions. 2. A major problem with this detailed work, as is well known, is Origen's use of appropriate symbols to describe the differences which he encountered in the texts he used. The intentions of Origen were naturally clear: to distinguish between those passages that were extant in the Hebrew but not in the Greek, which he marked with an asterisk, and the passages that appeared in the Greek without any counterparts in the Hebrew, which he marked by means of an obelus. The problem, however, remains; during the later historical vicissitudes of the Hexapla, these sigla unfortunately became intermingled, with the result that it became impossible to trust any diacritical mark which referred to the monumental work by Origen. His work has a bearing on the whole of the transmission history of the LXX, as it contaminated many later manuscripts. Subsequent scribes inaccurately rendered these sigla or in many instances simply omitted them, and the result was textual confusion. Two positive developments are the preservation of parts of Origen's text-critical work by Eusebius of Caesarea and the translation of the fifth column into Syriac. This Syro-hexapla can be used as basic comparative material, even though it has problems of its own. Fortunately these problems are now being dealt with systematically by the newly formed Syro-hexaplaric project, an undertaking of the Peshitta Institute in Leiden. Methodological Orientation3. The various textual problems I mentioned above are nowhere more evident than in the Greek book of Job. And as to be expected of a student of the "Toronto school", Peter Gentry has formulated a novel research proposal, focussing