HISTORY OF THE BIBLE. 



rant of Hebrew, and therefore likely to believe 

 any wondrous tale about the merits of the Sep- 

 tuagint. Josephus, a little later, is familiar with 

 the letter of Aristeas, which he substantially repro- 

 duces in his Antiquities. Much earlier, however, 

 than either of these is the evidence of Aristobulus, 

 who flourished in the beginning of the 2d cen- 

 tury B.C. Unfortunately, this evidence is not 

 beyond dispute. It is only preserved at second- 

 hand in Clement of Alexandria and Eusebius, and 

 at best is rather obscure. The chief point of 

 difference in the statement of Aristobulus from 

 that of the pseudo-Aristeas is, that he assigns the 

 translation to the reign of Ptolemy ' Soter,' father 

 of ' Philadelphus.' There is also a passage in the 

 prologue to the apocryphal book called Jesus, j 

 the Son of Sirach, or Ecclesiasticus, which seems 

 to imply that a Greek version of the Old Testa- 

 ment then (2d century B.C.) existed. But it gives 

 no support to the Aristean myth. The later 

 testimony of the Church Fathers, Epiphanius, 

 Eusebius, Jerome, &c. is entirely without weight. 

 It is merely Aristeas over again, with such 

 modifications as they chose to make in the 

 original narrative. 



What, then, was probably the origin of the 

 Septuagint? First of all, it should be noted that 

 Aristeas, Aristobulus, Philo, Josephus, and the 

 Talmudists the real authorities speak only of 

 the translation of the Law i.e. the Pentateuch 

 while the Church Fathers, who are no authorities 

 at all, mention the entire Old Testament. It may 

 be allowed, on the authority of Aristobulus, that, in 

 the reign of one of the Ptolemies, a version of the 

 Pentateuch was made for the benefit of the large 

 Jewish community resident in Alexandria, to 

 whom Hebrew had become unknown or unfamiliar. 

 That the translators, however, were not Palestinian 

 but Egyptian Jews, appears equally clear, both 

 from the state of the text from which the transla- 

 tion must have been made, and from the intimate 

 acquaintance with Egyptian manners and customs 

 which it evinces. This text differs considerably 

 from our received text, but agrees in many in- 

 stances with the Samaritan. We have seen that j 

 no value whatever can be attached to the number 

 'seventy-two,' which is found in the Aristean 

 figment ; but a close examination of the Greek 

 has led to the conclusion, that several hands were 

 employed on the version of the Pentateuch. It is 

 not necessary to discuss the probable dates of the 

 translation of the remaining books of the Old 

 Testament : for the most part, there are no ex- 

 ternal data to go upon ; and even the internal are 

 slight, and only appreciable by scholars. But it 

 is generally assumed that the passage (previously 

 referred to) from the prologue to Ecclesiasticus 

 proves the whole to have been completed before 

 130 B.C. In some instances, it would appear as 

 if the translation had been made before the non- 

 pentateuchal books were united with the others 

 into one canon. This seems particularly evident 

 in the case of the book of Jeremiah, which, in the 

 translation, appears in a more primitive form 

 than in the state in which we possess it now. In 

 a less degree, the same discrepancy appears in 

 Job, the Proverbs, Daniel, and Esther ; of these, 

 however, our canon probably contains the original 

 form, while the Septuagint shews later variants. 

 Among the most successful versions are those of 

 parts of the Pentateuch, especially Leviticus and 



Deuteronomy, Proverbs, and EzekieL But, on 

 the whole, there is noticeable throughout the 

 Septuagint a want of mastery over both Hebrew 

 and Greek, a striving after minute fidelity in one 

 part, and an unbridled arbitrariness in another ; 

 everywhere we see tropical expressions freely 

 changed, anthropomorphic ideas toned down or 

 left out altogether, and words that were objection- 

 able to the refined taste of Alexandria quietly 

 ignored. 



The Septuagint was held in the very highest 

 repute among the Alexandrine Jews, while the 

 Palestinians looked upon it as a dangerous inno- 

 vation, and even kept the day of its completion as 

 a day of mourning. Gradually, however, it also 

 found its way into Palestine, and at the time of 

 the composition of the New Testament, it seems 

 almost to have superseded the original at least, 

 the writers quote almost invariably from it : out 

 of a sum-total of 225 quotations, 190 are expressly 

 taken from the Septuagint Christ himself fre- 

 quently uses it even where it departs consider- 

 ably from the Hebrew. For some centuries after 

 his time, it was read and interpreted in the syna- 

 gogues, until the increasing knowledge of the 

 original, fostered by the numerous Jewish acad- 

 emies and schools (Hebrew, like Latin, being first 

 thoroughly studied after it had become a dead 

 language), and by the frequent disputations with 

 the early Christians, brought more faithful and 

 literal translations into use, such as those of 

 Aquila (2d century A.D.), a Jewish proselyte of 

 Sinope, in Asia Minor, and Theodotion (2d cen- 

 tury A.D.), an Ebionite Christian ; and gradually 

 the Septuagint was wholly discarded in the syna- 

 gogue. The Christian Church, however, long 

 considered it equal in authority and inspiration 

 to the Hebrew text itself, and such is the opinion 

 of the Greek Church even at the present day. 

 Though itself only a translation, it gave birth to 

 a numerous family. The Itala, the Syriac, the 

 Ethiopic, the Coptic, Armenian, Georgian, Slavo- 

 nian, &c. owe their origin to this far-famed ver- 

 sion. The wide diffusion of the Septuagint among 

 both the Hellenistic Jews and the churches, the 

 absence of anything like a fixed text, the pious 

 desire to insert peculiar explanations of obscure 

 passages, the ignorance of copyists, and many 

 other causes, combined to render the manuscripts 

 not a little corrupt, and in some cases past mend- 

 ing. Nor were the endeavours of Origen, in his 

 Hexapla or six-fold edition of the Old Testament, 

 permanently successful in restoring a proper text. 

 His noble labour of thirty years is almost entirely 

 lost. Only fragments have come down to us, 

 the original having perished when Caesarea was 

 sacked by the Arabs in the 7th century. 



The Old Syriac Version. 



There is another version of the Scriptures 

 which ranks with the Samaritan Pentateuch and 

 the Septuagint, though less ancient than either 

 the old Syriac translation, called the Peshito, a 

 word which is commonly, but erroneously, ren- 

 dered by ' simple ' or ' faithful,' while it properly 

 means the ' explained ' or ' translated.' Among 

 the Syrian churches it is held in the greatest ven- 

 eration, being to them what the Vulgate is to the 

 Roman, or the Authorised Version to the English 

 churches. There are numerous traditions regard- 

 ing its origin. Thus, the translation of the Old 



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