HAMILTON SCIENTIFIC ASSOCIATION 77 



and its tributaries passed under the rule of Ptolemy, one of 

 his favorites. When this founder of the Ptolemaic dynasty 

 died, the scepter passed to his son, Ptolemy the Second, at 

 whose instance the Septuagint translation is said to have 

 been made. 



The legendary version of the Septuagint is : Seventy- 

 two learned Jews of Alexandria, at command of King 

 Ptolemy Philadelphus, each secluded from the rest, made 

 seventy-two translations of the Hebrew Bible into Greek, and 

 on comparing the seventy-two versions they were found to be 

 miraculously alike. Critics have questioned this and other 

 legendary accounts concerning the Septuagint. The result 

 of such discussion is well summed up by Prof. Mahaffy in his 

 contribution to Petrie's Egypt. In substance, he says: 

 "After critics, as was their duty, applied to this subject 

 their sharpest tests, the broad fact remains that seventy 

 Alexandrine Jews, at the instance of Ptolemy Philadelphus, 

 did translate the Hebrew Bible into Greek. 



Thus with a rapidity suggesting modern enterprise, 

 Alexandria, that great city, with institutions compelling the 

 admiration of subsequent generations, was built up within a 

 century ; and the dream of Alexander had in part become a 

 reality. And that achievement embraced more than mere 

 material progress. For whatever were the d«fects of Ptolemy 

 the Second, to followers of the three great cults — Egyptian, 

 Grecian and Jewish — which for so long dominated the world, 

 he gave equal protection. With his sanction, if not at his 

 command, Manetho, high priest of Egypt, wrote a history of 

 that country; and the " Book of the Kings," the only frag- 

 ment of that history left, is still the corner-stone of Egyptian 

 chronology. He was also the patron of Grecian teachers, 

 who lived there and taught doctrines that afterwards 

 developed into the school of philosophy known as Neo- 

 Platonism. And the Greek version finished in his time, by 

 the .seventy, of the Old Testament was not only a welcome 

 gift to the Jews, but was a boon destined to aid in the promo- 

 tion of a religion greater than Judaism. 



