Origen
Origen of Alexandria, ''Ōrigénēs''; Origen's Greek name ''Ōrigénēs'' () probably means "child of Horus" (from , "Horus", and , "born"). ( 185 – 253), also known as Origen Adamantius, was an early Christian scholar, ascetic, and theo ...
Hebrew Bible
The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach" '' As such it serves as an important document for Hebrew
philology
Philology () is the study of language in oral and written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defined as th ...
There is contention as to whether the Secunda was written by Origen, a contemporary, or was a copy of a preexisting older text. Some suppose that Origen wrote the text himself, perhaps with Jewish helpers. Others suppose that the Secunda was a preexisting text, added into the Hexapla as an aid for the reader. There is evidence that Jews of the time made use of transcriptions; for instance a passage in the Jerusalem Talmud describing how the Jews of Caesarea would misread the
tetragrammaton
The Tetragrammaton (; ), or Tetragram, is the four-letter Hebrew theonym (transliterated as YHWH), the name of God in the Hebrew Bible. The four letters, written and read from right to left (in Hebrew), are ''yodh'', '' he'', '' waw'', and ...
as the graphically similar <πιπι>, suggesting the use of transcribed texts with the tetragrammaton preserved in Hebrew characters. There is also phonetic evidence for the Secunda being a preexisting text. By the time of Origen <η αι> were pronounced ː ɛː a merger which had already begun around 100 BCE, while in the Secunda they are used to represent Hebrew /eː aj/.
iota
Iota (; uppercase: Ι, lowercase: ι; ) is the ninth letter of the Greek alphabet. It was derived from the Phoenician letter Yodh. Letters that arose from this letter include the Latin I and J, the Cyrillic І (І, і), Yi (Ї, ї), and ...
(<ι> to <ϊ>) precisely when iota occurs after a vowel, except when <ει> indicates /iː/. This is completely independent of whether the segment is consonantal or vocalic in Hebrew, as the following examples attest:
: <αλαϊ> /a.la.i/ = Tiberian /ʕaːlaj/
: <φεδιων> /pʰɛ.di.on/ = Tiberian /piːð.joːn/
The diaeresis was a later addition of the 8th or 9th century to the Secunda.
The use of rough and
smooth breathing
The smooth breathing ( grc, ψιλὸν πνεῦμα, psilòn pneûma; ell, ψιλή ''psilí''; la, spīritus lēnis) is a diacritical mark used in polytonic orthography. In Ancient Greek, it marks the absence of the voiceless glottal fric ...
signs does not follow an obvious pattern; for example, compare <ἀμιμ> /a.mim/ = Tiberian /ʕam'miːm/ versus <ἁφαρ> /(h)a.pʰar/ = Tiberian /ʕaːfaːr/. These signs were also an addition of the 8th or 9th century.
The use of accents in the Secunda does not correspond with stress in Masoretic Hebrew; their presence remains a puzzle.