In his
Hexapla, the first critical edition of the Hebrew Bible, he wrote of biblical names that "are so powerful that when linked with the name of God the formula 'Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob'...exorcises demons, and [it is] used not only by members of the Jewish nation but also by almost all those who deal in magic and spells." Adamantius correctly understood that Jews used the exact same words and liturgical formulations in both "normal" and magical settings.
But at the beginning of this letter, the patriarch had taken up other matters, including that he had received a Syriac translation of Origen's Greek
Hexapla. Timothy describes the painstaking work that copying of the manuscripts entailed:
John Owen (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1849), 96-97; and Andrew Willet,
Hexapla: that is, A Six-fold Commentarie upon the most Divine Epistle of the Holy Apostle S.
Hexapla in Exodum: That is, a Sixfold Commentary upon the Second Booke of Moses.
Not only, then, as Origen's
Hexapla made clear, (18) did the
edition later called the "
Hexapla"(from the Greek word for
A sampling of topics: Amoraic Hebrew in the light of Ben Sira's linguistic innovations, aspects of the verbal systems in Qumran Hebrew, the infinitive absolute as finite verb and standard literary Hebrew of the Second Temple Period, constituent order in existential clauses, reflections on adjunct expression in the Manual of Discipline, spoken Hebrew of the late Second Temple period according to oral and written Samaritan tradition, and the weak consonants in the language of the Dead Sea Scrolls and in the
Hexapla transliterations.
Reduced Vowels in the Transcriptions from Hebrew in
Hexapla. Leshonenu 67: 121-41 (Hebrew).
(13) Andrew Willet,
Hexapla in Genesin; that is, A Sixfold Commentarie upon Genesis (Cambridge, 1605), P.