Septuagint (Gr. o' ó; Lat. Septuaginta, LXX., Alexandrian Version), the most ancient translation of the Old Testament, important as the version used by Christ and the apostles, and as the chief surviving witness to the purity of the text of the Hebrew Scriptures. It derives its name from the story of its origin, first told in the Letter of Aristæas, which purports to have been written by a Greek of Alexandria at the time of the events to which it refers. Aristæas relates how King Ptolemy Philadelphus (284-247 B.C.), when engaged in making a collection of the laws of all nations for the great Alexandrian library, was advised by his librarian, Demetrius Phalereus, to have the Jewish Scriptures translated into Greek; how the king sent an embassy to Jerusalem to request the help of the wise men of Israel; how seventy-two learned Jews (six out of each tribe) came to Alexandria and were sent to labour in the seclusion of the Island of Pharos; and how, in seventy-two days, they dictated to Demetrius the librarian a translation of the whole Scriptures, which soon became the authorised Bible of the Greek-speaking Jews. This story is a mixture of truth and romance. It is certain the Alexandrian version was the work of Hellenistic Jews. It is highly probable that it was a product of the great literary activity of the age of Ptolemy II. It is probable that the translation was begun at the king's instigation. It is possible that the king's aim was not the satisfaction of a pressing want among his Jewish subjects, but simply the gratification of personal curiosity. But the picturesque details of the story—the embassy to Jerusalem, the choice of seventy-two translators, the seventy-two day's sojourn on Pharos, and so on—are purely mythical. Internal evidence shows that the translators—who were certainly numerous—were not Palestinian but Egyptian Jews. And it can be demonstrated that they were not a public body meeting and deliberating daily for a short period, but private individuals working independently in different ages. Where there are many different styles of work and many degrees of excellence, we make the inference that there were many independent workmen; and nothing is more striking than the want of uniformity in the LXX. Some of the workmen were evidently more competent than others, some more conscientious. Some aimed at exact translation, some at writing good Greek. Some liked to condense, some to expand. Infinite care seems to have been bestowed upon the Pentateuch. The translators of the Psalms and the Prophets were hardly equal to their difficult task. Some books, such as Ecclesiastes, Canticles, and Chronicles, are rendered into extremely Hebraic Greek. Others, such as Job and Proverbs, of which the Greek is excellent, must be regarded as paraphrases rather than translations.
Taking these things into account, one is prepared to find in the LXX. numerous small deviations from the received Hebrew text, due partly to the unskilfulness, partly to the arbitrariness of some of the translators. But there are divergencies of a more important kind. The books are differently arranged. In some books the order of the chapters is quite different. Additions and omissions are alike frequent. Occasionally, as in the books of Job, Esther, and Daniel, the Greek text contains whole chapters for which there is no equivalent in Hebrew. These variations offer an interesting problem for solution. How are they to be accounted for? They cannot be regarded as mere mistakes or caprices of the translators. They seem clearly to indicate that the Hebrew text which formed the basis of the LXX. was not the text that has come down to us—that the LXX. is the translation of an ancient text which has been lost; as such it is invaluable. It may be used as practically a second, independent text of the Old Testament. It cannot indeed be trusted implicitly. As a translation it has blemishes, and in the course of transmission many corruptions have crept into the text. But with all drawbacks it is of immense service in textual criticism. It not only establishes the general accuracy of the Massoretic text, but supplies the means of solving many of the difficulties of that text.
The LXX. has also close and important bearings upon the New Testament. The historical links of connection between them are as follows: Ptolemy's gift of the LXX. to his Jewish subjects was gladly accepted. It soon began to be used in the synagogues. Before long it found its way from Egypt into Palestine, and by the time of Christ it had almost entirely superseded the original Hebrew text. Thus it became the Bible of Christ and the apostles. Not only was it the source from which the authors of the New Testament drew almost all their quotations, but it created the very language in which they wrote. The Egyptian Jews who adopted the Greek language never adopted Greek ideas; they modified the language to suit their own ideas; they gave a new content to many important words. Thus there arose a dialect which was Greek in form but entirely Semitic in spirit. The LXX. stereotyped that dialect, and the evangelists and apostles spoke and wrote it. Thus the LXX. is the key to the language of the New Testament. This fact is only now beginning to be duly appreciated. The great mistake of New Testament students has been to assume that the language of the New Testament is essentially that of classical Greek. It is never safe to assume that a word in the New Testament has its classical meaning. It is nearly always safe to assume that it has the meaning which it bears in the LXX.
The principal MSS. of the LXX. are the Alexandrian codex in the British Museum, the Vatican codex in Rome, and the Sinaitic (defective) in St Petersburg. The chief editions are the Complutensian (1514-17), the Aldine (Venice, 1518), the Sixtine (Rome, 1587). Reineccius (Leip. 1730), Parsons and Holmes (Oxford, 1798-1827), Tischendorf (Leip. 1850), Swete (Cambridge, vols. i. and ii., 1887-91). Important contributions have been made to the study of the LXX. in recent years by Lagarde, Wellhausen, Hatch, and others. Much, however, remains to be done before a satisfactory critical edition can be produced.
The Old Testament Apocrypha (q.v.) consists of books and parts of books in the LXX., and not included in our Hebrew Bibles. For other versions of the Hebrew, see BIBLE (Vol. II. p. 122), AQUILA, HEXAPLA, ORIGEN, POLYGLOT. The first part of a Concordance to the LXX., by Hatch and Redpath, appeared in 1891.