At some time, probably towards the middle of the third century the Christian chronographer Julius Africanus heard the preacher and biblical commentator Origen, in the course of a public debate, cite the story of the virtuous Susanna and the lascivious elders, which is found in Christian Bibles as part of the book of Daniel. Africanus subsequently wrote a short letter to Origen, chiding him gently for not realising that the story, although not without charm, is a relatively recent forgery, and not part of the original book. Origen replied at considerable length, defending his use of the story. The correspondence survives in Greek, in a catena on Daniel.

Edmon L. Gallagher's book, which is based on a doctoral dissertation submitted to the Hebrew Union College in 2010, can be read as an extended commentary on the letters, or at least on the arguments that they present concerning the Jewish and Christian sacred Scriptures, and the relationship between them.

Africanus puts forward, very briefly, a number of reasons for impugning the authenticity of the story of Susanna; one of them is that the story contains puns that only work in Greek, not Hebrew, and another is that the story is lacking from the Book of Daniel current among the Jews. Origen, in his much longer reply, does not deny the latter claim, but argues that it is not appropriate for the Church to be guided in such matters by Jewish practice: he goes so far as to suggest that the story was maliciously omitted from the Jewish texts because it reflected badly on the Jewish elders. As for the puns, he remains unconvinced that something similar could not have existed in a lost Hebrew original.

Both Africanus and Origen, in Gallagher's view, accept without question that the existence of a Hebrew original is a key criterion for acceptance of a Scripture in the Church, whereas they differ on what he terms the ‘synagogal’ criterion. The rest of his book investigates the issue of the Hebrew language and the Hebrew Scriptures, mainly in Origen, Jerome and Augustine (‘the three greatest and most influential Christian authors in the classical patristic period’, p. 209), who are depicted, not unconventionally, as maintaining three distinctively different attitudes on the subject.

This exceptionally thorough study is organised around four distinct questions, all related in some way to the Hebrew language: the canon of the Old Testament; the possible exclusion from the canon of texts not translated from Hebrew; patristic views of the Hebrew language; and recourse to the Hebrew in establishing the correct text of the Greek Old Testament. The author has amassed a substantial body of relevant documents, and explores issues which are too rarely taken seriously in accounts of the early development of Christianity, a religion which, in apparently stark contrast to Judaism and Islam, embraces linguistic diversity in liturgy and scriptural study, and whose attitude to the Hebrew language is paradoxical to say the least.

Why did the Church, unlike the Jews, abandon the use of the Hebrew Bible? Some years ago I argued that this is a mistaken way of posing the question (‘The revival of the Hebrew language in the third century ce.’, Jewish Studies Quarterly iii [1996], 342–58). Christianity, I suggested, developed at a time when the Hebrew Bible was not nearly as important within Judaism as it later became. It is only from the third century that we find the rabbinic movement, and also perhaps some other strands in Judaism, espousing the use of Hebrew; in the second century one is hard put to it to find any use of Hebrew. Origen lived at the time of this revival and witnessed it at close quarters; he tried conscientiously to incorporate it into his own biblical study. (Jerome, by contrast, lived in Palestine at a time when the place of the Hebrew Bible in Judaism was more secure).

Eamon Gallagher does not attempt to rebut my argument; he prefers to see Hebrew as having a strong role within Judaism from the time of the Hasmoneans; even Philo, he claims, acknowledged the primacy of the Hebrew over the Greek Scriptures. Although at several points he recognises that not all Jews in the time of Origen read the Torah in Hebrew, and indeed that Jews went on using the Septuagint translation long after other translations became available, more often he seems to exaggerate the place of Hebrew in Judaism, particularly in the types of Judaism with which the Fathers were acquainted.

Africanus, like Origen, was a witness of the enhanced status of Hebrew in the synagogue. In his letter, after mentioning the puns that he says would be impossible in Hebrew, he adds, in explanation of his raising the issue of translation from Hebrew, ‘All the texts considered by the Jews as belonging to the Old Testament were translated into Greek from Hebrew’ (Letter to Origen, 5). This is, incidentally, an important testimony to the fact that in the Judaism that he knew the Scriptures were read in Greek translation. My reading of Africanus follows my edition of the text (Sources Chrétiennes cccii, 1983). Gallagher (pp. 65–8) prefers a radical emendation, omitting ‘by the Jews’ from this sentence, which is thus transformed from an observation about the Jewish Scriptures to a criterion for establishing the Christian canon. I have to say that I am no more convinced by this conjecture (first proposed by W. Reichard in 1909) today than I was thirty years ago when I edited the text. Gallagher claims that my text makes Africanus repeat himself when he points out that the Jewish texts of Daniel lack the story of Susannah, but that is an entirely different point, unrelated to the question of a Hebrew original.

Notwithstanding these points, and some others on which I do not feel able to agree, this is an original and critical study of a complex and important subject, and one which deserves to be taken seriously.