Symmachus the Ebionite (late 2nd 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 practising Jews, mainly in Israel, Syria and Cappadocia, who accepted Jesus as the Messiah, without accepting the virgin birth and other dogma that were increasingly insisted upon by Pauline Christians, who eventually rejected the Ebionites as heretics.

Symmachus also wrote commentaries, not extant, apparently attacking the Gospel of Matthew. 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 (Hisoria. 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 [in Cappadocia], 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 was already known to Origen (ca 228) when he wrote his earliest commentaries. Epiphanius unreliably states 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 4th century to the Nazareans or Ebionites, as we know from the imitator of Ambrose (the 'Ambrosiaster' (Prologue to the Epistle to the Galatians) and from Augustine's writings against heretics.

External link

• Symmachus the Ebionite (http://www.ccel.org/w/wace/biodict/htm/iii.xix.lxxxii.htm)