The linguistic background and the tradition of the Hebrew language of the Secunda (second column of Origen's Hexapla)

The term Secunda refers to the second column of Origen’s synopsis of Hexapla. This synopsis consisted of six columns, from which comes the name Hexapla employed to designate it: the first column contained the original Hebrew text of the Old Testament, the second (Secunda) its phonetic transcription in Greek characters, the other four the different Greek translations of the Bible. The presence of Greek vowel graphemes in the Secunda makes possible to conduct a comprehensive grammatical study of that source, phonetically and morphologically. At present there is still a lack of research that develops the relationship between the Hebrew language tradition of the Secunda, as emerging from the transcription, and the other attested Hebrew language traditions: those without vowel graphemes (i.e., the Samaritan tradition and the Qumran corpus) and the later, vocalized in the medieval period (the Tiberian, Babylonian and the Palestinian). The latter point is precisely the subject of this thesis, which aims to better understand the Hebrew language status of Secunda, its relation to other traditions of Hebrew and its place in the history of the language. This issue is approached through different stages: moving from a phonetic and morphological study of the Hebrew language of the column, we arrive at a dating hypothesis that allows for a direct comparison between the hexaplaric Hebrew and the other traditions mentioned above. The comparison between the Secunda and the other traditions is crucial to correctly situating the Secunda in the history of the Hebrew language: at the synchronic level, it serves the function of highlighting its dialectal elements, documented in the transcriptions of the Secunda and in the traditions of the same epoch; at the diachronic level, it provides a terminus ante or post quem for phenomena well attested in the late traditions.