The Ante-Nicene Church · AD 180–313 · External witness

Symmachus the Translator

fl. late 2nd century (death unrecorded) · Ebionite translator of the Greek Old Testament · unknown (Palestine or Cappadocia)

External witness

Who Symmachus the Translator was

The Ebionite — a Jewish Christian who held Christ a mere man — whose smooth, idiomatic Greek Old Testament earned the fourth column of the Hexapla and Jerome's stylistic admiration. Origen, Eusebius records, obtained Symmachus's own books from a woman named Juliana, who had received them from the translator himself: a manuscript's provenance preserved across a century.

Also listed in non-christian witnesses.

Common questions

When was Symmachus active?

Symmachus the Translator is dated fl. late 2nd century (death unrecorded) in the archive, which places Symmachus in the Ante-Nicene Church (AD 180–313).

What did Symmachus write?

Symmachus the Translator has 1 catalogued writing in the archive: The Greek Old Testament of Symmachus.

Which early sources mention Symmachus?

Symmachus the Translator is named in 2 primary-source passages catalogued here, drawn from Eusebius of Caesarea and Jerome of Stridon. Every passage is quoted from a named public-domain translation, earliest first.

Where was Symmachus from?

The archive associates Symmachus the Translator with unknown (Palestine or Cappadocia).

Writings (1)

The Greek Old Testament of Symmachus

The idiomatic Ebionite version, in Hexapla fragments and Syro-Hexapla margins
[Fragments via Origen's fourth column and the margins of the Syro-Hexapla]

Earliest witness · Cairo Genizah palimpsests (Cambridge, T-S 12.184 etc.) (6th c. under-writing)

Read the interlinear source text →

Primary-source mentions (2)

Every passage below is quoted from a named public-domain translation, earliest first.

Ecclesiastical History VI.17

c. AD 325
As to these translators… Symmachus was an Ebionite… and memoirs of Symmachus are still extant; Origen states that he obtained these from a certain Juliana, who, he says, received the books from Symmachus himself.
Eusebius of Caesarea · VI.17 · source text

Prefaces to the Vulgate (Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion weighed throughout)

c. AD 390
Jerome of Stridon · Preface to Job · source text

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