SEMMES SEPTUAGLNT. 



467 



government expenses. In 1887 they were reported 

 as numbering 3000, who all wear citizens' dress ; 

 1200 use English sufficiently for ordinary conversa- 

 tion and 800 can read. There are 8 churches with 

 500 church members. They have about 0000 acres 

 under fence and cultivated. Efforts have been made 

 in recent years to set apart homesteads in Florida 

 fir those still remaining there, but no land lias been 

 found unlocated which the Indians are willing to 

 accept. These are said to number 892. 



(J. P. L.) 



SKMMES, RAPHAEL (1809-1877), Confederate 

 naval officer, was born in Charles county, Md., 

 Sept. 27. 1809. He entered the U. S. navy in 1S2(!, 

 but afterwards resigned and engaged in the practice 

 of law in his native State. In the Mexican war he 

 ngain entered the service, and when his vessel was 

 lost iluring the siege of Vera Cruz, he joined Gen. 

 Scott's arir.y as a volunteer. His experience then 

 furnished '.nateria! for his Service Ajbxtt and Aslvrre 

 (\^~>\), and Cinnjtiiifjn of General Scott (1852). In 

 18.",."i he attained the rank of coritmander, and he 

 was made secretary of the Lighthouse Board. When 

 the Southern Confederacy was organized he resigned 

 and went to X'ew Orleans. Taking command of 

 tin; sidewheel steamer Sumter. he dashed through 

 the blockading squadron at the mouth of the Mis- 

 sissippi. His career of destruction has been nar- 

 rated under ALABAMA CLAIMS (a. r.J. Before the 

 war closed he had returned to Mobile, and on Us 

 capture he was imprisoned fur some months, but 

 WHS released without trial. He was afterwards an 

 editor at Memphis, then a professor in Xew < )rleans, 

 nnd a lawyer in Mobile. He published Cruise nf 

 tlie AlubaiHH (lKb'4), and Mtni'iir nf Serni-e A_flfKtt 

 duriii'j tlif H'nr iHtirern tlit States ^180'.)]. He died 

 near Mobile, Aug. 30, 1877. 



SKNKCA FALLS, an incorporated village of 

 Seneca co., X. Y., is on the Seneca River, 10 miles 

 from Seneca Lake, and 2 miles W. of Cayuga Luke. 

 It is lii miles from Auburn and Crj miles from 

 Roi-hestrr. on the Auburn Branch of the New York 

 Central Railroad. It has short railroads to Water- 

 loo and to Cayuga Lake. It contains an opera- 

 house, a national bank and 2 other banks, 4 hotels, 

 7 churches, 5 schools and has 2 weekly newspapers. 

 The river hens falls 50 feet and furnishes motive 

 power for 4 flouring mills, 1 woolen mill, 1 knitting 

 mill, 5 foundries, and manufactories of steam fire 

 engines, pumps and agricultural implements. The 

 village is lighted with gas and has waterworks and 

 a park. Its property was valued at 190,000,000; 

 the public debt is $30,000 and the yearly expenses 

 S-J.VOOH. It was settled in 1787 by Job Smith, and 

 was incorporated in 1831. The population iu 1880 

 was 5880. 



SEX K< 'AS. See IROQUOIS. 



SEPTUAGINT. A few years ago, it was custo- 

 mary among scholars utterly to discredit 

 X^| V ''fi68 v ' ie traditional accounts of the origin of 

 (p m Am. l ' le Septuagint, and to assign very Into 

 Rep.). ' dates to the making of the successive 

 parts of this translation. Of late years, 

 there has been a decided and healthy reaction 

 ngainst this extreme opinion. A majority of living 

 scholars, probably, would agree with Prof. J. Well- 

 ImiM-n. in his statement in the ENCYCLOPEDIA 

 BIUTANNICA, that the letter of Aristams, the prin- 

 cipal source of information concerning the origin of 

 the Septuagint, was written as early as the earlier 

 half of the. second century B. C., and that the trans- 

 lation itself may probably have been begun in the 

 times of Ptolemy Philadelphia, and was certainly 

 finished, so far as the canonical books are concerned, 

 some time before 130 B. ('. When, however, ho 

 savs that the Septuagint " was in great part com- 

 posed before the close of the canon nay, before 

 some of the Hagiogrnphu were written," his impli- 



cation as to the lateness of the date of some of the 

 Hagiographa, and of the closing of the canon would 

 not be so widely accepted. 



Beyond certain general facts, no statements now 

 made concerning the Septuagint can be regarded as 

 final. Good preliminary work is now being done 

 on it in the way of textual criticism, but ripe results 

 in regard to the text are still an affair of the future. 

 And any one who has read the statements currently 

 made as to the external testimony to the Septuagint, 

 and has dipped somewhat into the original sources 

 of this testimony, knows that a wider and better 

 induction of facts is as much needed in this field as 

 in that of Septuagint textual criticism. 



The article in the ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA 

 avoids the very common mistake of attributing to 

 Aristieus or Josephus the statement that the Sep- 

 tuagint had miraculous sanctions. An account of 

 these alleged miracles is given by Philo, and a 

 different account by Epiphanius, and the miracles 

 are alluded to by other Christian writers, but there 

 is nothing of the kind in Aristreus. Our author 

 further mentions certain guarantees of its own an- 

 tiquity and of trustworthiness in at least some 

 points, found in the letter of Aristanis itself the 

 ante-Seleucid character of what it says about the 

 Jews, tor example, and its peculiar correctness in 

 details, ns confirmed by papyri and inscriptions of 

 the times of Ptolemy Philadelphia. He regards it 

 as not intrinsically improbable " that the scholarly 

 taste of the Alexandrians, personified in Demetrius 

 Phalereus as the presiding genius of the Alexandrian 

 library, could have furnished the stimulus to reduce 

 the translation to writing." Thfit this was actually 

 the case, however, he seems to deny, holding that 

 Dtmietriusdied so enrly in the reign of Philadelphia 

 that he cannot possibly have done this work. But 

 the epistle of Ari.-treus does not so much as mention 

 that the king of whom it speaks is Philadelphia, 

 though ihc reader may gather this fact by inference. 

 In some of the other traditions, the name of Ptolemy 

 Lagns is connected with the Septungint. Remember- 

 ing Ibis, and remembering that Ptolemy Lagus 

 lived perhaps two years afler he placed Philndel- 

 phus on the throne, 285 B. C., we see that it is not 

 improbable that Demetrius may have had some- 

 thing very important to do with the actual placing 

 of the Jfuhean sacred books in the Alexandrian 

 library. So far as appears from all known sources of 

 evidence, he may have remained in Alexandria, and 

 may have been employed in literary work there, till 

 after the death of Lagus ; and this fact must be 

 allowed to limit the statement that he " fell out of 

 favor at the very beginning of the reign of Phila- 

 delphus. " The statement of Aristtcus that when 

 the interpreters had agreed upon a section, Demet- 

 rius wrote it down, may naturally mean, as some 

 of the Christian Fathers seem to have understood 

 it to mean, that he furnished professional writers to 

 do the writing. On the whole, it is hardly fair to 

 the letter of Arista-us to call it a forgery and spu- 

 rious and accuse its author of mendacity. The letter 

 seems to be a professed fiction based on fact, 

 designed largely to place the philosophical questions 

 it discusses in an interesting light. The problem is 

 to distinguish, if possible, the historical basis of 

 fact from the fiction based upon it. 



From various Jewish and Christian sources there 

 may be gleaned a few statements of fact in regard 

 to the origin of the Septuagint, that are indepen- 

 dent of Aristwus. In the Rabbinical writings may 

 he found the mention of the live scribes who wrote 

 for Ptolemy, and various other allusions to the 

 translation, coupled with a most scrupulous ab- 

 stinence from directly recognizing it by citing from 

 it. In Philo and in Justin Martyr, Epiphanius, and 

 other Christian Fathers, we have details of circum- 

 stances, especially dwelling upon the division of 



