SEPTUAGIXT. 



409 



Christian Fathers, as to the miraculous accuracy of 

 the translation. 



Contrary to the opinion now commonly held, the 

 booki which it was proposed to put iu the kind's 

 library were, it' the testimony iu the case is to 

 he believed, not the books of the I'enlateuch merely, 

 but the book-s of the Jewish law iu the wider sense 

 of the term. In the article in the ENCYCLOPAEDIA 

 BKITAXMCA it is said that the author of the letter 

 of Aristaeus ' limits canouicity to the law and 

 knows of no other holy book already translated into 

 Greek." Now it is true that the author of the letter 

 el. situates the books that were to be translated as 

 the law, but he nowhere gives any hint that he 

 m-.-ans by the term the five books of Moses as dis- 

 tinguished from other works of prophetic origin. 

 Tufoughout the Old Testament, the word law is 

 used in a sense wide enough to include all divine 

 requirements made known through the prophets, 

 and therefore, of course, all requirements so made 

 known in writing. In the New Testament, it is 

 frequently u<ed in the same wider meaning. There 

 is no prosumptioii against its having (his same wide 

 iiu'.aiimg iu the accounts of the origin of the Scp- 

 tn.igint, as given by Aristtous and Josephus. We 

 are not now inquiring, let us remember, whether 

 tlie testimony i.< to the effect that the plan was 

 actually carried out, so that the other books wrre 

 translated at the same time with the Fentateneh ' 

 n >r are we directly inquiring whether the Old Testa- 

 ment canon was then complete in the shape in 

 which it is now accepted. Whatever be the answer 

 to either of these questions, it is evident that the 

 Aristasan account may supposably mean, by the 

 term law, not the Pentateuch by ilself, but the 

 whole range of writings that were- "then regarded as 

 having been divinely given through the prophets, 

 the IVntateueh being of course included. 



It is not only true that this may be the meaning, 

 but that this is the most natural meaiiini'. \<> one 

 disputes that most (not to say all) of the Old Testa- 

 ment books had then been written and were well 

 known ; or that they were attributed to prophets, 

 and therefore regarded as of the nature of prophe- 

 tic ToraJi. The Alexandrian library was an affair 

 of tens of thousands of volumes. The king proposed 

 to gather into it all the literature of the world. It 

 is not natural to hold that he would be content 

 with only a small section of the Judeean saered litera- 

 ture, unless the evidence distinctly speciiies that this 

 was the case ; and there is no such specification. On 

 the contrary, the language currently employed both 

 in AristaMis and in Josephus is such as constantly 

 to suggest that the books spoken of are a consider- 

 able number of volumes a more extensive litera- 

 ture, certainly, than the five books of the Penta- 

 teuch. Among the expressions employed are : "The 

 books of the law of the Jews, with some few others," 

 "the books of the legislation of the Jews, with 

 others," " many volumes of their usages <ox.o . . . 

 TU^ rtop 1 avfotf vo^u^iwc oiryypajiaTa)," " make a collec- 

 tion of them," "the Jewish books." When the 

 seventy come to the king, they bring, not the one 

 roll of the Pentateuch, but several volumes, made 

 each of skins so closely joined that the king could 

 not find the seams ; and when the king had inspected 

 them, they restored the various documents (nvzi) 

 to their proper order. In view of the advice of 

 Demetrius to take measures for obtaining these 

 Judsean writings, it is represented that the king 

 ' thought that Demetrius was very zealous to pro- 

 cure for him the multitude of the books." It needs 

 no pressure upon these and similar phrases to 

 make them justify the inference already drawn from 

 them. Indeed, if by the law we understand the Old 

 Testament canon, then the phrase " the books of 

 the law of the Jews, with some few others," is an 

 accurate description of the Scptuagint as it has 



actually existed since the second century B. C., 

 while it would be difficult to give a precise definition 

 to the phrase, ou the stipposiliou that by the law it 

 means the Pentateuch. 



But it is sometimes alleged that Josephus has 

 testitied to his own opinion ol' the proper interpreta- 

 tion of this testimony, in the tollo\\in>; pas-sage in 

 the Prelace to the AiiUquitiin, sec. 3, \\here he ta\s 

 of Ptolemy : 



"For he did not succeed in obtaining all the record 

 (iiaypi^.), but those who were sent to Alexandria in tlie 

 matter of the exegesis transmitted only what was of tlie 

 law, while the allairs published through the sacred lite- 

 rature (>fa/u/ua7ai>) are myriads." 



Many take it for granted that by the law Josephus 

 here means the Pentateuch, and by tlie recoids and 

 the sacred literature he nuans Ihe other Old Testa- 

 ment books. But if this were tlie case, his position 

 would be loo evidently false to lie plausible. He sa\ s 

 that tlie one reason lor v riling his Ant?qviii(s 'is 

 that lie may place within the run h of the Greeks 

 such of the contents of this "record" and "sacrid 

 literature" as had not been rendered accessible by 

 the translation of Ptolemy; but when he penned 

 this, nil the Old Testament and ><;nie e>t the Apoc- 

 rypha had been thus accessible for two centuries or 

 more, whether Ptokmy made the translation or not. 

 Unless this ps's-sage in Jnse] hus is im re nonsense, 

 the other saered lit< ratiirc \\ hich he here proposes 

 to open to the Greeks must be the secondary s-acnel 

 books which he uses in ditlerint parts of his narra- 

 tive, and the law, whose translation he here ascribes 

 to Ptolemy, is the Old Testament, and not the Pen- 

 tateuch alone. 



Tlie extra-Arislfean testimony to the same effect 

 is explicit and abundant. We have found Aribto- 

 hulus testifying that the history eif the exodus and 

 of the conquest and all the legislation, that is. np- 

 parcntly, the contents of the Hexateuch, had l-een 

 translated before Ptokmy Phiiadelphus, and that, 

 in contrast with (his, the work of Phiiadelphus was 

 the whole translation of all things pertaining to the 

 hiw. Clement held that the works translated under 

 Demetrius were " the Scriptures, both of the law 

 and the prophetical." The whole line of the Chris- 

 tian patristic testimony is to tlie same effect, with 

 great abundance of details. Pliilo and the other 

 earlier Jewish witnesses arc simply silent ; their 

 testimony occurs in pass-ages where only the Pcntn- 

 tcuch is under consideration, and nothing at all is 

 either said or implied concerning the other beieiks. 



Among the great questions now under discussion 

 by scholars there are two in regard to which Ihe 

 testimony of the Septuagint is of especial import- 

 ance : the question of the cnnon of the Old Testa- 

 ment, and the question of its text. 



The fact that copies of the Septungint contain 

 writings not found in the Hebrew is sometimes urged 

 in proof that the Alexandrian canon e>f the Old 

 Testament differed materially from that accepted 

 in Palestine. That the truth of this view depends 

 partly on the definition given to it, and that it is 

 untrue in any sense that would justify the inference 

 that the canon of the Old Testament was still un- 

 settled among the Jews of the century before Christ 

 and later has been shown in the article on CANON, 

 in this work. 



Among the groups of scholars who- formerly most 

 insisteel on the alleged differences between the 

 Alexandrian and the Palestinian canons, there 

 seems to have been some change of opinion during 

 the years sine-e the present edition of the ENCYCLO- 

 PAEDIA BHITANNICA began to appear. Prof. Well- 

 lianscn, in the article on the SEPTUAGINT, distinctly 

 says that "in some me-asnre the widening of the 

 Old Testament canon in the Septuagint must be laiel 

 to the account of Christians ;" and he is speaking 



