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1.
The translation of the law was made in the time of Philadelphus.
2.
It was undertaken at the desire of the King and for the royal library.
3.
The translators and the Hebrew rolls which they used were brought from Jerusalem.
4.
Their translation, when completed, was welcomed both by Jews and Greeks.
Philadelphus accumulated books, and built a second library to receive the overflow
from the library which was already established at the palace. He was catholic in outlook,
welcoming a Buddhist mission from the Ganges, and patronizing other literary efforts
outside the circle of the Egyptian religion. There is, moreover, evidence that the book of
Genesis was translated into Greek early in his reign, for it is quoted by Demetrius in his
treatise Peri ton en te Ioudaia Basileia (Demetrius is assigned to the reign of the
fourth Ptolemy).
There is some reason to suspect the statement that the LXX was the official royal
version, for it contains many words that indicate the common people; but that it was
produced by a people strongly under the influence of Egypt is manifest by the choice of
words having Egyptian origin. To quote the words of Prof. Mahaffy:--
"In the vocabulary of the papyri (recently discovered in the sands of Egypt) we find a
closer likeness to the Greek of the LXX than to any other book I could name."
The evidence of the papyri concerning the language both of the LXX and of the N.T.
is a subject demanding a series to itself, and this we hope to give later.
We mentioned earlier that, while the title Septuagint is used to-day of the whole Greek
version, it strictly belongs to the five books of Moses only. This fact was pointed out by
Jerome, who had considerable intercourse with Jewish Rabbis. About a hundred years
after the commencement of the Septuagint version of the Law of Moses, the writer of the
prologue to the Apocryphal book, Sirach, alludes to a translation that included not only
the Law, but the Prophets and the Hagiographa:--
"For the same things uttered in Hebrew, when translated into another tongue, have not
the same force in them: and not only the present work, but the Law itself and the
Prophets, and the rest of the books, have no small difference, when they are spoken in
their own language. For in the eight and thirtieth year coming into Egypt, when
Euergetes was King, etc., etc."
This quotation is sufficient to establish the fact that by the thirty-eighth year of
Euergetes, the Alexandrian Jews had, in addition to the LXX translation of the Law, a
translation of the Prophets also, and "the rest of the books". We assume, as the writer
was a Palestinian Jew, that he referred to the complete canon of the Old Testament,
known to us now as "The Law, the Prophets and the Psalms".
References to the Greek Chronicles and to the Greek Book of Psalms are found in the
Book of the Maccabees; Aristeas (not the writer whom we have already mentioned)
quotes the book of Job according to the LXX; and the Greek Book of Esther has a
footnote stating that it was brought into Egypt in the fourth year of "Ptolemy and