102 5»- SHADY CHARACTERS
marked spurious passages in the LXX that did not occur in the origi¬
nal Hebrew; where verses from the Hebrew were found to be missing
from the LXX, he copied them from one of the other Greek transla¬
tions and marked them with an asterisk.23 Also, like Aristarchus, he
occasionally placed the two characters together to indicate that the
ordering of the LXX was at odds with the Hebrew.24 Origen’s sole
addition to this system was the metobelus, or closing obelus: having
marked a line as spurious or missing, he placed a metobelus to mark
the end of the erroneous text.
The visual appearance of the asterisk and obelus, as used by Ori¬
gen and his later copyists, varied over time. The asterisk took the
familiar form of *, though in later versions it was occasionally rotated
to yield Ф, and the Hexapla’s obeli ranged from simple horizontal lines
to dotted forms known as the lemniscus (-r) and hypolemniscus (-).
Epiphanius, a fourth-century bishop and Bible scholar, espoused a
theory that the Septuagint’s seventy translators had been confined to
cells in pairs while they carried out their work, and that the number
of dots surrounding an obelus indicated how many of those pairs of
translators had seen fit to introduce those new, explicatory words into
the LXX.25 Later scholars consider this convenient theory of two-man
cells to be hogwash, and view the lemniscus and hypolemniscus as
simple variant forms of the obelus. Lastly, the metobelus was variously
represented as two vertically-aligned dots somewhat like a heavyset
colon (:), a slash with an accompanying dot or dots (/. or /), or, in later
versions, a malletlike character (A).26
Unfortunately, rather than clarifying matters, Origen’s grand
work ultimately had the opposite effect. Unaware of the significance
of the marks littering the text, later scribes tasked with copying out
Origen s carefully annotated LXX either copied these critical signs
incorrectly or omitted them altogether, causing the text to be trans¬
mitted in a form even more muddied and confused than when Origen
THE ASTERISK AND DAGGER 103
.c1'eÿ^ X 1*7 Moyï-I'UYUUKï хуіикпдаух » i » у tre IT rii»- V Г V tscu kl « ШМ М i oyuhti моумхм►* -}' onx i oiv -чау l'oril I cîj-yw ЙНИГ нуi ixѵкг»кпянлхлИУ I H MOi'OXH -H'IJWtfl кук КП' ' Vi I H ST;riri:0( » к ìJk’WY'XSil |»,to «.угнскиан о псе i Tiyriwutnoir»*«' VfUiKYt) уЛЛІ 3 p : i- at л » t nt tri ö » лутги M'r- MOII CliJIVI lIHKlOHf» iiipjuim мктсо ля; у л»'-1 1FK J.<5 «глупИн мт»Улс ту ту <У і>іѴггVP«.i г* М1 < - • : IС < > уѵ * erytl I «.л If х* hjBKimnoi -Ж J» оу цуі ««XI клінггі м гум мрі ілухккч*! I “і < і лр х ог*'КЗ V12XÍ XI пш> я у ». г улг у - ; ci ооіг ЛэН- ЧГлі/ук к I *rf |: >|>J Him л-л lyi oy.ííllH I I • V' гяыучю MJOXI ЛИ lì JS> У? ІГ ГЛ U>IH (7 IW рГрмЮ>' ѴМЛг T»sl'WX»«3l У«-,,‘ : fcs*Figure 6.1 Asterisks in the Codex Colberto-Sarravianus, a had taken up the project. The Hexapla’s very fame—considered, as it
vl'KfximrhloyîXxVfD' .
r I e If г « ’ « -i
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хупкчіити^уі'1 к-
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ÍWI'II IVX‘r*»p(«W»y fH
і>шмі^ніфу іоляііі 1
М1ЛЫОШ К'у-лия« J V- X
l-CTKIIJ рм X VI41
Г H СЛ* «ы г »
лр ouoyjuxK’M« rex* » о»
~ нлывуштуниихн«
іічхои err лу/ГЕэнв tHi
У. ИМИniMIJWJl W/O'1
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ре Г1ХЛН0 HI1'
fifth-century Greek Bible.
was, to be the text that most closely matched the original Hebrew-
caused these corrupted versions to be copied and recopied, sealing the
fate of what had been a monumental work of scholarship.27