• That the predervatioti of Aristeas goes back to the library of Cu-uurea has been Bu^jgewtcd liy Weiuiland. It may have hhii a place in one of the Bible XISS issued by Eiisebius and FainphiluM.— Add to the ' testimonia ' collected by MendelaHobn- Wendland the strant,'u statement from pscndo-KuHcbiu!! on the .Star (publ. by W. Wright in Jouni. uj Sacred Literature^ ISCit, vol ix. 117, X. 150), that the version was made under a king didido-ih[S] ( = Artaxerxe«?); and the notice, translated from Greek into Syriac at the end of the Fourth Book of Kinpi in the Syro-Ilexapla, that the men came from Tiberiat {OriffenU froiimenta, ed. Lagarde, 3.')6 ; BMujlUcca Synaca, 264). Cf. further the notice of F. Nau on ' Fragments d'une chronique Syriaque Maronite' (/{«ru« de [Orient Chrtlien, iv. (18MJ 318), In which the names are given of the 72 translators who pro- duced 3tl identical versions. Nau has not printed ttie nameSL See on the names : 7'As Hook of the Bee, by Salomo of llasra, ed. by A. WalliH Budge (Anealnfa OxfmienJtia, Semitic Series, vol. i. part ii., Oxt. 1S8I), 4' p. li!Of.). The last but one of the inter- preters has the strange name 'Aa-itiM in the Greek text, Dia'3K ill one of the .Syriac lists. Ahhih/ii in another. It this stands for the I Jitiii name A vitue, the list would be late. But this identi- hcAtion is ratiier uncertain. An Arabic chronicle combines the two tlgiires 72 and 70 by the supposition that two of the inter- preUTs died on the way. On the Jemnh notices about the origin of the version and its (^13) deviations from the Hebrew text, see the literature quoted in Vrt. p. (i3, and by Oikonomos, 11. filkS, lil. 43. Zosiraus l'ano|>olitanua {de Zythorum coi\fectume. ed. tininer, 1814, p. 6) relates that .Simon the high priest of Jerusalem sent to Ptolemy La^, ' Ei>u«t*. u ^^^r.riMri wkwmt rq« Uwuia iUnorr, aai <><>vrTirT< (UikODOmos, IL 328)l
Kal irayKciXois OiardypiaiTi.
This aspiration was fullilled when the work became one of the chief aids to the spread of Christianity. As this was at the same time the first attempt made on a larger scale, in the domain of Grajco- Roman or Mediterranean culture, to translate a literary work from one language into another, it is the more interesting to ask w hether this attempt, as the above story relates, was due to the literary interest felt by a bibliophile king — <pi\6Ka\os Kal <pi\6\oyos, as he is styled by Epiph- anius * — or to the wants of a religious community. The latter view now generally prevails (cf. Wend- land in Kautzsch, P.cui/epigrciphen, ii. 1; ZNTWi. 268). A third view is, that tlie undertaking was intended as an aid to Jewish propagandism. This explanation may tiiid some support in the words of Philo (who expresses the hope that these laws will obscure those of the other nations, as the rising sun obscures the stars), and in the very first document which speaks of (E, namely the pro- logue of the Bk. of Sirach (compare the whole, especially dXXd koX rots ^ktos buvao$ax royy 0tXo/xa- douvTas xpTjalp.ous chai Kai Xiyovras Kal ypd^ovTas).
This last passage is also the first to speak of all three parts of the Hebrew Bible [I'ip.os, tt po<t>ffTai, Kal TO, axXa viTpia. pi^Xla) as already extant in Greek ; Aristeas, Philo, and Josephus restrict their language to the Law, a fact to which Jerome emphatically called attention. H the LXX version was due to the wants of the synagogue, it is all but certain that the Torah was the first part trans- lated. How soon and in what order the ether parts of the OT were overtaken is not made out ; nor has even the question how many dill'erent hands may be distinguished in the present collec- tion yet been sutficiently investigated. Two books only contain a notice bearing on this point.
{I) Ejithcr (see Jacob, ZATIV, IS'JO, 241 ff. ; Willrich, Judaica, Giilt. 1900, 211'. ; art. ESTUER, vol. i. 744). Willrich tliinks that the fourth year of Ptolemy and Cleopatra, in which a priest and Levite, Dositheus and his sou Ptolemy, are said to have brought ttiv TrpoK€ifj.ivTjv itriaToX^v i^v ^(poAraf thai Kal ipp,rivevK4vax Avaip-axov llroXc/xalov tCiv iv 'ItpovaaXiiix (Est H'), was not that of Philometor (B.C. 166-165) nor of Soter II. (B.C. 114), but that of Ptolemy XIV. (B.C. 48-47); but this seems very doubtful.
(2) The second note, which is equally obscure, stands at the end of Job (in Cod. A even twice, with strange variations) : oOtos ipixr)yeieTai ix n^s XvpiaKTii /3i/iXou (cf. art. JOB, vol. ii. 660, where it is translated, ' this man is described in the Syrian book as living,' etc.).
In accordance with the usage of the ancienc Church, we include in this article not only those books, the original of which was or is in the Hebrew Bible, but also those which were originally written in Greek, as the Wisdom of Solomon, or not received into all MSS or editions, as the Prayer of Miinasses. In an appendix we shall refer briefly to similar literary productions, as the Psalms of Solomon, the Bk. of Enoch, and other ' Pseudepi- grapha ' (see p. 450'').
As (5 was the Bible of the Early Church, it has a most intricate and complicated history ; it seems practical to begin with the history of the printed text, and to work our way backward as far as possible.