himself was one, was sent to Jerusalem to beg the high priest to send a copy of the Law, with competent scholars to translate it into Greek; how seventy-two Jewish scholars were selected in answer to this request, and bore the precious manuscript to Alexandria; how they were honourably entertained by King Ptoleıny, and displayed their wisdom before him; and how they then betook themselves to their work, and produced the translation of the Law which we find in the version thereafter known as the Septuagint, or the Version of the Seventy. Subsequent ages added touches of miracle to the story, extending it to all the books of the Septuagint (some of which were not yet written at the time), saying that the seventy-two translators, working without collaboration in seventy-two separate cells, completed their work in seventy-two days; and that when their versions were compared, they were found to agree with one another in every particular. Stripping off these later additions, and discounting much of what the original writer tells us as to the honours bestowed by the king on the Jewish scholars, the broad facts of the story remain probably true. There is no reason to doubt that the translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek began in the first half of the third century before Christ; that it was made in Alexandria, the chief town in Egypt alike for Greeks and for Jews; and that the Law was the first part to be translated. The other books were translated by different hands and at different times during that century and the next; and the Canon of the Septuagint was completed by the inclusion in it of the books which now form our Apocrypha, some of which were probably written in Alexandria itself, and never existed in any other language than Greek, while the rest, though originally written in Hebrew, failed finally to secure a place in the Canon of Scripture accepted by the Jews of Palestine. Whatever the exact process may have been, in the century before Christ the Greek Old Testament was completed, and became the accepted Bible of all Greek-speaking Jews. Even in Palestine itself, the Hebrew in which the sacred books were written had become a learned language, not the common dialect of every-day life. Greek was the general language of literature in the East, as Latin subsequently became in the West. If proof were needed of this, it might be found in the fact that all the books of the New Testament (unless we adopt the tradition that the Gospel of St. Matthew was originally composed in Aramaic) were written in Greek. The Septuagint was in fact the Bible of the earliest Christians, and most of the quotations from the Old Testament in the New are taken from the Septuagint, not from the Hebrew. In their controversies with their Jewish adversaries, adversaries, the Christian missionaries and apologists appealed boldly to the fulfilment of prophecy; and the form in which they quoted the prophets of the Old Testament was that in which they appeared in the Greek version. The It was this fact which led to a crisis in the history of the Greek Bible. At the end of the first century of our era, the line of demarcation between Jew and Christian was complete, and the Jew would not willingly use the same form of Scripture as the Christian. It was at this time that the type of Hebrew text, which subsequently became crystallised in the Massoretic revision, first came into being. How far it differed from other forms of the Hebrew text, current then or shortly before, we cannot tell; but it is certain that it differed greatly from the current text of the Septuagint. The Jewish controversialists declared that the Christians had perverted the Septuagint; Christian writers retorted that the Jews had mangled the Hebrew. The result was that they drew apart; the Christians adhered to the Septuagint, the Jews to the Hebrew. So far no particular harm had been done; and if we possessed the Septuagint now in the form in which it was current, say about A.D. 150, modern critical methods would probably be equal to the task of determining how far it represented a purer or a more debased form of the original Hebrew than that preserved in the Massoretic revision. But in the latter part of the second century began a period of confusion from the effects of which the Septuagint text has not yet recovered. First the Jews found that a Greek version of the Scriptures was necessary for practical purposes; and, as they distrusted the Septuagint, they had recourse to a new translation, made by one Aquila with extreme verbal fidelity from the received Hebrew text. Next, the Christians themselves became dissatisfied with the Septuagint. As their differences with the Jews became less acute, the divergencies between the Hebrew and Greek Bibles began to trouble them more; and towards the end of the second century a new translation was made by Theodotion, which, while avoiding the slavish exactness of Aquila, yet represented the Hebrew text of the second century after Christ, instead of that of the third century before Christ. Finally, an independent version was made about the same date by Symmachus, which aimed at better literary style and more idiomatic diction than any of the existing translations. Such was the state of affairs when Origen, the greatest Biblical scholar of the ancient Church, turned his attention to the text of the current Greek Bible. The old antagonism between the Christian Church and the Hebrew Bible had died away, and it seemed natural to look for the true form of the Hebrew Scriptures in Hebrew manuscripts rather than in translations. Hence Origen, like Jerome after him, regarded the Hebrew text as the ultimate standard of accuracy. Accordingly he set himself to bring the Septuagint text into conformity with the Hebrew; and it was with this object that he undertook the colossal work known as the Hexapla. Here, ranged side by side in parallel columns, stood six, and sometimes nine, different versions of the sacred text. In the first column was the Hebrew text in Hebrew characters, a language learned by Origen late in life; in the second, the Hebrew text transliterated into Greek characters, a somewhat superfluous labour, one would think, but no doubt intended to show the correct pronunciation of the Hebrew, at a time when vowelpoints were not indicated in the Hebrew writing. third, fourth, and sixth columns held respectively the versions of Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion, to which were added, in such passages as they were extant, the fragments of three other Greek translations discovered by Origen, whose authors were and still are unknown. But the column of most importance in subsequent history was the fifth, which contained the Septuagint text, as revised by Origen in conformity with the Hebrew standard. Passages found in the Septuagint but not in the Hebrew were not, indeed, expunged, but were indicated by an obelus or horizontal line; and where the Septuagint was deficient, the missing passage was supplied from one of the other versions (generally that of Theodotion), and the words so added were distinguished by an asterisk; a metobelus (a mark resembling an anchor) indicating in each case the end of the passage to which the obelus or asterisk applied. Origen's labours left an indelible mark on the history of the Septuagint. They seemed to supply a real want: they gave the Church back its old Greek Bible, but brought into accordance with the Hebrew text which was the ultimate standard of authority. Accordingly the fourth century saw the rise of three editions of the Septuagint for general use in different parts of the Greek-speaking Church, all based more or less on the Hexapla. Eusebius and Pamphilus simply transcribed, and re-issued as an independent work, Origen's fifth column; and this edition circulated mainly in Palestine. Lucian of Antioch issued a different edition, largely influenced by Origen, but with the characteristic Antiochian tendency to reconcile variant readings by accepting both, side by side; and this became the current Bible of Antioch and Constantinople. Finally Hesychius of Alexandria did a similar work for the Church in Egypt; Egypt; and although the influence of Origen appears here also, yet one would expect to find in Alexandria a higher standard of textual purity than elsewhere. Here our historical knowledge of the Septuagint ends, and at the same point we enter the region of textual testimony; for in the fourth century the evidence of actually extant manuscripts begins to be available. The manuscripts reveal, as might be expected after this history, very considerable discrepancies of text; and it will now be evident wherein the first portion, above alluded to, of the Septuagint problem consists. It is to retrace, so far as may be, the stages of development which have just been described; to recover the separate editions of Hesychius, Lucian, and Eusebius; to reconstitute the fifth column of the Hexapla, with all its asterisks and obeli; and thereby to determine what the text of the Septuagint was, before the well-meant but (for us) unlucky labours of Origen confused the record. This is the first stage in the criticism of the Septuagint; and some progress has been made in it during the past century. Field, Lagarde, Cornill, and Ceriani have, in particular, made important contributions towards the solution of the various problems above indicated. Dr. Field, of Trinity College, Cambridge, published in 1875 his splendid collection of all extant fragments of the Hexapla, gathering evidence from all quarters with admirable zeal and learning. Lagarde, a German scholar, was enabled by English pecuniary assistance to examine a considerable number of manuscripts, and to publish half of the Septuagint according to the edition of Lucian ; death unfortunately intervening to prevent the completion of his task. Cornill has contributed an able summary of the whole question, with especial reference to the text of Ezekiel. Ceriani, besides being the first to indicate the manuscripts in which the edition of Lucian might be found (a discovery also made independently by Field), has published a most important MS. of the Prophets, the Codex Marchalianus, which he believes to contain the edition of Hesychius, but with copious marginal annotations from a Hexaplar copy. In order that the work thus admirably begun may be carried forward on a sound basis, what is now required is the publication, in a trustworthy form, of additional evidence. It is here that the value of the Cambridge editions becomes evident. The larger edition, in particular, when it is completed, will give us precise and accurate collations of all the more important manuscripts, both uncial and minuscule, including some (such as the Codex Sinaiticus) which were not known to Holmes and Parsons, and and others which are only imperfectly represented in their edition. When the evidence is fairly collected in a trustworthy form, there is every reason to look with confidence for further progress along these lines. The manuscripts of the Septuagint present a difficult, but probably not an insoluble, problem to the student. The first requirement is to distinguish with fuller certainty the editions of Eusebius, Lucian, and Hesychius. For the former, there is a group of manuscripts furnished with the critical signs of Origen, the obelus and asterisk; foremost among which is the venerable Codex Sarravianus of the Octateuch, whose austerely severe and unadorned writing shows it to be about coeval with the Vaticanus and Sinaiticus of the fourth century. There is also an ancient copy of part of a Syriac translation, made in 617 by Bishop Paulus of Tella from the original manuscript of Origen's Hexapla, which was long preserved at Cæsarea, and furnished with the asterisks and obeli. Now it is clear that if we possessed even one MS. in which Origen's critical signs were accurately indicated, we could at once recover the pre-Hexaplar text by the simple process of putting the pen through all the passages marked with an asterisk. Unfortunately symbols such as these are just the things which the scribes of manuscripts easily omit, and still more easily misplace. It is certain that no Hexaplar MS. now extant is fully and accurately provided with this critical apparatus. The Syriac version is the most trustworthy authority, but even that is imperfect; and it remains for scholars to reconstitute the pre-Hexaplar text by a careful comparison of all the available evidence. With regard to the other editions, that of Lucian can be certainly recognised by the help of some precise quotations in the Fathers; and the identification has already been accomplished by Ceriani and Field. The group of authorities containing it includes one uncial MS. of the ninth century, with a small number of minuscules and the fragments of the Gothic version; it is from some of these that Lagarde has printed the Lucianic text for the first half of the Old Testament. The edition of Hesychius is less easy to identify, and some of the best authorities, such as Cornill and Ceriani, differ. It must, however, especially be looked for among the manuscripts which can be shown to have been written in Egypt, and the Egyptian versions should be of considerable value in the search. The Sahidic version, indeed, which was current in Upper Egypt, seems likely to prove very important for the history of the Septuagint, since there is good reason to suppose that it was originally made before the time of Origen's |