Page "Symmachus (translator)" Paragraph 5

According to Eusebius Symmachus also wrote commentaries, then still extant, apparently written to counter the canonical Greek Gospel of Matthew, his Hypomnemata ; it may be related to the De distinctione præceptorum, mentioned in the catalogue of the Nestorian metropolitan Abdiso Bar Berika ( d. 1318 ).

Eusebius also records Origen's statement that he obtained these and others of Symmachus ' commentaries on the scriptures from a certain Juliana, who, he says, inherited them from Symmachus himself ( Historia Ecclesiae, VI: xvii ) Palladius of Galatia ( Historia Lausiaca, lxiv ) records that he 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, 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.