Reference to a Greek version of the law, the prophets, and the other books is made by Jesus, son of Sirach, as early as 132 B. C. (Ecclus. prologue). It is possible that the work was re vised in the Maccabman period. The version is the work of many translators, as differences in style and method show, and its quality is unequal in different parts ; it is also much corrupted.
This translation holds a very important place in church history for the following reasons given by Dr. Henry Alford, the Dean of Canterbury : "And, first, for many ages it was the sole means by which the Old Testament was known to Chris tians. The Hebrew Scriptures were absolutely unknown in the West, and only partially known in the East ; and thus the church was unable to distinguish between what was genuine and what apocryphal. The old Latin version (Vetus Itala) was made from the Septuagint.
"An equally important service which it ren dered was that it prepared the Gentile world for the reception of Christ. Those devout men and women of whom we read so much in St. Paul's missionary tours were Gentiles whose hearts had been reached by the revelation in the Old Testa ment of the unity, holiness, omnipresence, and al mighty power of God; and it was the Septuagint which had given them this knowledge. Without this preparation, going on for nearly three cen turies, the Gentile world would not have been fit to receive doctrines so pure and refined as those of Christianity.
"To us a third most important use is that the Septuagint bears witness to the substantial ac curacy of the Hebrew text. Made in Egypt at a distance from the Palestinian schools, and by men evidently untrained in the vast traditional knowl edge of the scribes, it has preserved for us a text long current in Egypt, and made from manu scripts some of which may possibly have been carried thither in the times of Isaiah and Jere miah.
"Finally, this version rendered to Christianity a fourth and most important service ; for it formed the Greek of the New Testament both in its vocabulary and its grammar. The New Tes tament, humanly speaking, could not have been written unless the Septuagint had provided for it a language." Christ and his Apostles used the Septuagint frequently. In quoting passages from the Old Testament, sometimes they did so verbatim, or with unimportant verbal changes, from the Septuagint ; at others, they set it aside, and ap parently themselves translated from the original Hebrew. There are about three hundred and
fifty quotations from the Old Testament in the Gospels, the Acts, and the Epistles, of which only about fifty materially differ from the Greek. When Philip met the Ethiopian eunuch, the latter was reading the Septuagint (Acts viii :3o-33).
(2) Aquila. Aquila was a Jew of Pontus, who lived in the reign of Adrian, and undertook a Greek version of the Old Testament about A. D. 16o. It appears from Jerome (in E-ck. iii) that there were two editions of this version, the second more literal than the first. It was very highly prized by the Jews, and much preferred to the Septuagint, because the latter was em ployed as an authorized and genuine document by the early Christians in their disputations with the Hebrew opponents of the new religion. The very circumstance of its being adopted and valued by the Jews would tend to create a prejudice against it among the Fathers, independently of all perversion of Messianic passages.
(3) Symmachus. Symmachus appears to have been an Ebionite (Euseb. Hist. Eccles. vi. Demonstr. Evang. vii. i, Jerome, Pra'f in Ezram; Assemani, Bibl. Orient. ii. 278; iii. i, 17). His Greek version of the Old Testament was made after that of Theodotion, as may be inferred from the silence of Irenmus, and the language of Jerome in his commentary on the xxxviii chapter of Isaiah. The style of the work is good, and the diction perspicuous,pure, and elegant (Thieme, De puritate Synimachi; Hody, De Bibl. text. Original.). It is of less benefit in criticism than that of Aquila, but of greater advantage in in terpretation.
(4) Theodotion. Theodotion, like Symmachus, was an Ebonite. IrenTus states (Advers. Herres. iii. 24) that he belonged to Ephesus, and was a Jewish proselyte. His Greek version of the Old Testament appeared during the first half of the second century, and is first mentioned by Irenwus. He follows the Septuagint very closely, so that he appears to have intended to make a revision of its text, rather than a new version. He is not so scrupulously literal as Aquila nor so free as Symmachus. He was certainly not well ac quainted with Hebrew, as the numerous errors into which he has fallen demonstrates.