Symmachus the Ebionite

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Symmachus the Ebionite (late second century CE), was the author of one of the Greek versions of the Old Testament that were included by Origen in his Hexapla and Tetrapla, which compared various versions of the Old Testament side by side with the Septuagint. Some fragments of Symmachus' version that survive in what remains of the Hexapla inspire scholars to remark on the purity and idiomatic elegance of Symmachus' Greek, which was admired by Jerome, who used it freely in composing the Vulgate.

The Ebionites were a sect of practicing Jews, mainly in Israel, Syria and Cappadocia, who apparently accepted Jesus as a prophet during the early centuries of the Common Era, but rejected his divinity.

Symmachus also wrote commentaries, not extant, apparently written to counter the canonical Greek Gospel of Matthew, his Hypomnemata;^[1] it is probably identical with De distinctione præceptorum, mentioned by Ebed Jesu^[2] Origen states that he obtained these and others of Symmachus' commentaries on the scriptures from a certain Juliana, who, he says, inherited them from Symmachus himself (Eusebius, Historia Ecclesiae. VI: xvii). Palladius (Historia. Laus. lxiv) found in a manuscript that was "very ancient" the following entry made by Origen: "This book I found in the house of Juliana, the virgin in Caesarea^[3], when I was hiding there; who said she had received it from Symmachus himself, the interpreter of the Jews". The date of Origen's stay with Juliana was probably 238-41, but Symmachus's version of the Scriptures had already been known to Origen when he wrote his earliest commentaries, ca 228. Epiphanius unreliably states^[4] that Symmachus was a Samaritan who having quarrelled with his own people converted to Judaism.

From the language of many later writers who speak of Symmachus, he must have been a man of great importance among the Ebionites, for "Symmachians" remained a term applied by Catholics even in the fourth century to the Nazarenes or Ebionites, as we know from the pseudepigraphical imitator of Ambrose, the 'Ambrosiaster', Prologue to the Epistle to the Galatians, and from Augustine's writings against heretics.

[edit] Notes

^ Mentioned in Eusebius, Historia Ecclesiae, VI, xvii; Jerome, De viris illustribus liv
^ Assemani, Bibl. Or., III, 1
^ The context makes clear that Caesarea Mazaca in Cappodocia is intended.
^ De mens. et pond. 14