THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
1891-1902, Appendices by D. Reichling, Munich, 1905-06; W. T. Lowndes, Bibliographer's Manual, 4 vols., London, 1S57-64; J. C. Brunet, Manuel du Libraire, 7 vols., Paris, 1860—78. Consult also the works of Loisy, Copinger, and Kenyon given under Bible Text, I; the table of Bible Translations in J. S. Dennis, Centennial Survey of Foreign Missions, New York, 1904; T. Haring, Das Verstandniss der Bibel in der Entwicklung der Menschheit, Tubingen, 1905, and DB, iv, 848-855, extra volume, 236- 271, 402-420.
A. Ancient Versions.
I. Greek Versions. — 1. The Septuagint: The Bible version most important in every respect is the Alexandrian translation of the Old Testament, the so-called Septuagint. " Custom now holds to the version which is called the Septuagint," writes Augustine (De civitate Dei, xviii, 42). The term " Septuagint " is an abbreviation of secundum septuaginta interpretes ; the subscription of Genesis in the Codex Vaticanus is " According 1. Origin, to the Seventy "; Codex A has before Isaiah, "the Edition of the Seventy "; this is based on the story that King Ptolemy Philadelphus, by the advice of his librarian Demetrius Phalereus, asked from the high priest Eleazar of Jerusalem seventy-two scholars, who translated for him in seventy-two days the law, and, after a later form of the legend, in seventy-two (or thirtysix) cells, the seventy-two or thirty-six copies being found without any variation when brought together and compared. The story is first told in the so-called "Letter of Aristeas" (see Aristeas), who pretends to be one of the officers sent by Philadelphus to Jerusalem, and is wholly unhistorical.
As the date of the version ancient chronicles mention the 2d, 7th, 17th, 18th, 19th, or 20th year of Philadelphus, the year 1734, 35, 36, or 37 of Abraham; as its day the 8th of Tebeth, a day of darkness like that on which the golden calf was made (cf. Margoliouth, in the Expositor, Nov., 1900, 348-349). Philo relates, on the contrary, that the Jews of Alexandria kept in his time an annual festival "in commemoration of the time when the interpretation first shone out, and they praised God for his works in times new and old." He knows that the interpreters asked God's blessing on this undertaking; " for he answered their prayers that more and more the whole race of men might be assisted to correctness of life in thought and deed." This aspiration was fulfilled when the version became one of the chief instruments for the preparation and propagation of Christianity (on this aspect of the version cf. E. W Grinfield, Apology for the Septuagint, London, 1850; W. R. Churton, The Influence of the Septuagint on the Progress of Christianity, London, 1861; A. Deissmann, Die Hellenisierung des semitischen Monotheismus, Leipsic, 1903). It is not yet certain whether the translation is due, as the legend purports, to the literary interest of a king who was a bibliophile; or, as is the common view at present, to the religious wants of the Jewish community of Alexandria; or to the needs of an intended Jewish propaganda. For the latter view the prologue of Ecclesiasticus may be mentioned, which ia, at the same time, the first witness to speak
of all three parts of the Hebrew Bible as already extant in Greek; Aristeas, Philo, and Josephus speak only of the law. Of the several books of the Old Testament only Esther has a statement about the translation of the book, which is referred generally to Soter II (114 B.C.), but by H. Willrich (Judaica, Gottingen, 1900) to Ptolemy XIV (48 B.C.). At the end of Job is the strange notice: "This is interpreted from the Syrian book."
The first part of the Septuagint to be multiplied by the printing-press was the Psalms in the Greek and Latin Psalter of Bonacursius (Milan, Sept. 20, 1481; in Greek alone, Venice, 1486, and again by Aldus Manutius about 1497). The complete editions fall into four classes according as they are derived from one or another of four original editions, „ p . of which the first (designated as c) is
Editions *^e Complutensian Polyglot of Cardinal Ximcnes, printed 1514-17 but not published until 1521 (see Bibles, Polyglot, I; cf. Franz Delitzsch, Studien zur Entstehungsgeschichte der Polyglottenbibel des Cardinals Ximenes, Leipsic, 1871, supplemented 187S-S6; T. H. Darlow and F. H. Moule, Historical Catalogue of the BEBS, ii, London, 1908, 1 sqq.). Of the manuscripts used for the Greek Old Testament we know with certainty Vat. Gr. 330 and 346, and Venet. 5 (= Holmes-Parsons 108, 248, and 68). The second (a) is the Aldine Bible published by Andreas Asulanus, father-in-law of the elder Aldus (Venice, 1518). Among the manuseripts used were Holmes-Parsons 29, 68, 121, all of Venice. The third and most important is the Editio Sixtina (6), published by Pope Sixtus V (Rome, 1586 [1587]) on the basis of Codex Vat. Gr. 1209 ( = B, in the article Bible Text, II, 1, § 9). Besides c and a, the manuscripts Holmes-Parsons 16, 19, 23, 51 seem to have been used, especially for the scholia, which were collected chiefly by Petrus Morinus and enlarged by Flaminius Nobilius in the Latin translation published 1588. The fourth edition (4 vols, folio and 8 vols. 8vo, Oxford, 1707-20) was begun by Johannes Ernst Grabe (q.v.), who published vols, i and iv (1707, 1709), and after his death (1711) was completed by Francis Lee (vol. ii, 1719) and George Wigan (vol. iii, 1720). It is based on the Codex Alexandrinus (A; see Bible Text, II, 1, § 9) with use of other sources, especially Origen's Hexapla, has useful prolegomena, and possesses a merit of its own.
These editions have been often reproduced — the Sixtine edition most frequently — with more or less of editorial labor (for list of reprints, etc.; also mention of the more important editions of single books of the Greek Old Testament, cf. the Hauck- Herzog RE, iii, 4-9 and Swete, Introduction, 171— 194). But no existing edition of the Septuagint satisfies present wants, for none gives an exact reproduction of the manuscript or manuscripts which it follows, nor does any provide a full apparatus criticus. The first attempt to satisfy the latter want was made in the great work begun by Robert Holmes (q.v.) and completed after his death (1805) by James Parsons, Vetus Testamentum Grcccum cum variis lection Urns (5 vols., Oxford, 1798-1827; cf. Swete, Introduction, 184-1 X7; Church