Because I shall have oft occasion to make mention of the seventy Interpreters of1 the Old Testament into Greek, who are oft expressed by these Letters LXX, I think it meet at this first mention of them, distinctly to set down their History, as an ancient Father hath left it upon record, thus; Ptolemy the Son of Lagus, desirous that the Library which he had made in Alexandria, might be replenished with worthy Books of all sorts, prayed the Jews at Jerusalem to have their Scriptures interpreted into the Greek Tongue; thereupon they who were then under the Macedonians, sent to Ptolemy seventy Elders, such as perfectly understood the Scriptures, and the Hebrew and Greek Tongue, according to his desire: He willing to make proof of them, and fearing lest they should conceal by their Interpretation that truth which was in the Scriptures, by a mutual consent, severed them one from another, and commanded every one of them to interpret the same Scripture, and this he did in all the Books. But when they met together in one before Ptolemy, and compared their Interpretations, God was glorified and the Scriptures believed to be truly divine; all of them rehearsing the same Scripture, both in the same words and in the same names, from the beginning to the end; that even the present Gentiles might know, that by the inspiration of God the Scriptures were interpreted.
Because I shall have oft occasion to make mention of the seventy Interpreters of1 the Old Testament into Greek, who are oft expressed by these Letters LXX, I think it meet at this first mention of them, distinctly to set down their History, as an ancient Father hath left it upon record, thus; Ptolomy the Sonne of Lagus, desirous that the Library which he had made in Alexandria, might be replenished with worthy Books of all sorts, prayed the Jews at Ierusalem to have their Scriptures interpreted into the Greek Tongue; thereupon they who were then under the Macedonians, sent to Ptolomy seventy Elders, such as perfectly understood the Scriptures, and the Hebrew and Greek Tongue, according to his desire: He willing to make proof of them, and fearing lest they should conceal by their Interpretation that truth which was in the Scriptures, by a mutual consent, severed them one from another, and commanded every one of them to interpret the same Scripture, and this he did in all the Books. But when they met together in one before Ptolomy, and compared their Interpretations, God was glorified and the Scriptures beleeved to be truly divine; all of them rehearsing the same Scripture, both in the same words and in the same names, from the beginning to the end; that even the present Gentiles might know, that by the inspiration of God the Scriptures were interpreted.
- 1The History of the LXX Interpreters of the Bible taken out of Irenaeus advers. haeres. l. 3. c. 25.
