SEVENTY, VERSION OF THE. — The oldest Greek version, and the oldest of all versions of the Old Testament. The name, in its full form “version of the seventy-two interpreters” (Tertullian), comes from the pseudonymous letter of Aristeas (v.), which attributes the Greek translation of the five books of Moses to 72 Jewish scholars, briefly referred to as “the Seventy.”
They are said to have been summoned by King Ptolemy Philadelphus (285–247 BC), who desired to have a copy of the Mosaic Law in his Library at Alexandria in Egypt, and they translated it in the remarkably short space of 72 days. Philo (v.) also recounts this legend, adding that, even though each translated separately, they all produced the same version. Later, the name “Seventy” was extended to the other books, which were translated subsequently. Although this term is legendary regarding the number of translators and inaccurate in its application beyond the Mosaic Law, it serves as a conventional name as well as, for example, that of the “Alexandrian version.” Today, similarly to the term “the Bible” (τὰ βιβλία), it is used as a singular feminine “the Seventy” (abbreviated: LXX) to denote the version itself.
The legendary character of the letter of Aristeas, clearly inspired by the desire to exalt the Jewish people and its literature in the eyes of pagans, was recognized as early as the 16th century and is now accepted by all. Nevertheless, it must be acknowledged that it contains a historical basis, since the Seventy was undoubtedly translated in Egypt, mainly at Alexandria (v.), as shown by the distinctly Egyptian color of the vocabulary used and other indications. There is no doubt either that the Pentateuch, given its supreme authority among the Jews and its importance in their liturgy, was the first part to be translated. Even the time suggested by the letter of Aristeas is approximately correct.
Seton, Elisabeth Anna — Portrait — Emmitsburg (Maryland), College of St. Joseph.
It is true that the first certain notice of the existence of the Seventy dates from the 2nd century BC, namely from the grandson of Joshua son of Sirach, who, some time after his arrival in Egypt (132 BC), translated the book of Ecclesiasticus into Greek, stating in the prologue that the Greek versions of the “Pentateuch, the prophetic books, and the other sacred books” already existed, without specifying them in detail. Considering the difficulties inherent in such a vast and complex translation, it is by no means unlikely that it began much earlier. Indeed, the Jewish writer Demetrius, a contemporary of Ptolemy Philopator (221–204 BC), used terms drawn from the Seventy to describe biblical events. It can therefore be considered certain that considerable parts of the Greek Old Testament already existed in the second half of the 3rd century BC.
The Seventy is not a work produced all at once nor by the same translators throughout. Already Humphrey Hody (1705), guided by unquestionable linguistic criteria, proved that the various books were translated by different authors, and more recently even within individual books different hands have been discovered, for example, in the books of Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Kings, and the minor prophets. Even in Isaiah, two translators were once distinguished, but this claim was later contested on the basis of more precise and detailed studies. Not only does the technique of translation vary from book to book, but the greater or lesser fidelity of the version betrays the plurality of translators. While the Seventy closely follows the Hebrew text in the Pentateuch, in other books it is freer and even paraphrastic, in the manner of the Aramaic Targum. Some of the translators handle the Greek language with a certain skill, while others often force II. Thus the version itself reveals something of the way in which it developed.
The earliest origins of the Seventy lie in obscurity. It is quite possible and even probable that, before the plan to create a complete version of the sacred books was conceived, there had been attempts, both by private scholars and by teachers in the course of instruction. Already at that time, the most important concepts of the Old Testament were probably partly formed and coined in Greek, and certain passages were even translated for the purpose of public reading in the synagogues. These were then used when the idea arose to undertake a systematic version, especially to make the Old Testament accessible to Hellenistic Jews who did not understand Hebrew. With good reason, Thackeray (1921) insists on the demands of liturgy as a motive for the version. It is possible that the translation was also aimed at Gentiles. It then grew through the slow and long work of generations, until it resulted in the monumental work that was the pride of Hellenistic Jews and celebrated every year in Alexandria with a festival.
It is not easy to evaluate the merits of the translators. Their knowledge of Hebrew and their proximity to the times of the Old Testament must have made their work easier. But considering the profound differences between Hebrew and Greek, the lack of linguistic resources and models, and the diversity of the cultural environment in which they lived, one must highly appreciate the result of their efforts.
The Seventy became the official Bible of Hellenistic Jews. For example, Philo, although he knew Hebrew, used exclusively the Greek version in his writings, even believing the translators to have been inspired by God. It is therefore not surprising that the Seventy spread widely and that its influence grew from century to century. Traces of the use of the Seventy are found in Greek Jewish inscriptions from Rheneia (Delos) dating to 100 BC (A. Deissmann, *Licht vom Osten*, 4th ed., Tübingen 1923, pp. 351–362). It was adopted by the disciples of Christ and is often cited in the New Testament. It became a true ally of the Gospel and a precious instrument in
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**FIG. 1.** Diagram of the Testament of St. (A. Deissmann, *Licht vom Osten*, 4th ed., Tübingen 1923, pp. 351–362). It was adopted by the disciples of Christ and is often cited in the New Testament. It became a true ally of the Gospel and a precious instrument in
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HOLY BIBLE
ACCORDING TO THE SEVENTY INTERPRETERS
MOST DILIGENTLY TRANSLATED
With grace and privilege of the Emperor.
(Letter of Privilege)
SEVENTY, VERSION OF THE — Title page of the *Sacra Biblia ad LXX interpretum fidem*, Basel 1526. Copy from the Vatican Library, deposited at the Biblical Institute — Rome.
corruptions, inevitable in every long hand-copied text: confusions of similar letters and words, incorrect word division, misinterpretation of abbreviations, and many others found in all ancient manuscripts. It was natural that orthography was modernized over the centuries or adapted to the new itacistic pronunciation. A frequent source of profound modifications was the fact that the Seventy was not an original work but a version, and an imperfect one. This invited learned readers to adapt it to the Hebrew text where it seemed too free, and to correct the Greek style where it was unsatisfactory, sometimes systematically, now in a methodical recension. All these factors altered the appearance of the version to the point that the various branches of transmission sometimes give the impression of being entirely different translations.
The best-known among these reviews or adjustments to the text is the one carried out by the most learned Origen (v. 1) in Palestine around 230–40 in his *Hexapla* (v.), where he assimilated the Greek text as closely as possible to the current Hebrew text, especially by supplying missing parts with recent Greek versions (v.). Around the year 300, the priest and martyr Lucian (v.) made another recension at Antioch in Syria. According to St. Jerome, a recension by Hesychius (v.) was in vogue in Egypt. In modern times, examination and comparison of manuscript texts have revealed further recensions, such as the one discovered by A. Rahlfs in the commentary chains called *catenae* (v.), which he believed to be slightly later than Origen’s.
All these major systematizations of the text, far from achieving the uniformity intended by their authors, instead contributed to increasing the already considerable variety of textual forms. Moreover, the form of the scroll or codex, used centuries before and after Christ, allowed only a limited number of columns, forcing the transmission of the various books to be more or less separate. This fact meant that not all books underwent the same vicissitudes, nor did it permit the establishment of a fixed order for the books.
From the fourth century onward, the codex format prevailed, capable of greater capacity, and from that time date the first great manuscripts containing more or less the entire Bible: the Vaticanus (B), the Sinaiticus (S), the Alexandrinus (A), and the Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus (C). A careful list of the numerous manuscripts of the Bible is provided by A. Rahlfs (*Verzeichnis der griechischen Handschriften des Alten Testaments*, Berlin 1914). Worthy of special Chester Beatty (v.) Scheide (v.) papyri from the second to fourth centuries AD. All these manuscripts are of Christian origin. Only the oldest fragments are from Jewish hands: the Rylands papyrus (v.) G. 458 from the second century BC and the Fuad papyrus no. 266 from the second to first century BC.
The fact that the Bible was the first version of an entire literature represented an enormous cultural advance for humanity. It also compelled the Western world to engage with Eastern ideas, to analyze them, and to take a dynamic stance toward them. Even today, the Bible remains of great importance. Apart from preserving the pronunciation of ancient Hebrew proper names and aiding the understanding of the Hebrew Old Testament, it is above all a valuable tool for correcting many textual corruptions. Since it derives from a different and older, albeit less pure, Hebrew text than the Masoretic text, it has preserved numerous original readings which, with necessary and methodical precautions, can in many cases be confidently recovered. It reveals the literary history of certain books, for example, Jeremiah, which has a different chapter arrangement and a shorter text than the Hebrew. A particular merit is its preservation of theological and religious ideas from Judaism during the transitional period from the Old to the New Testament, reflected in the free and paraphrastic style of the translation. For this reason, scholars investigating the origins of Christianity cannot dispense with a diligent study of the Bible, since, as has been said, it influenced the formulation of beliefs and the language of early Christian writers and nourished their religious conceptions. Finally, the Bible is a vast document of the *koine*, the vulgar Greek of the last centuries before Christ, to be exploited by philologists.
Yet all these critical, theological, literary, and philological investigations lack the necessary foundation if the original text of the Bible cannot be established as far as possible. It is therefore essential to eliminate textual corruptions. Considerable efforts and work have already been devoted to this task, and they continue to this day. It is impossible even to list them summarily here. The first printed editions of the Bible were those of the Complutensian Polyglot (1514–17) and the Venetian printer Aldo Manuzio (1518 ff.). The most influential, however, was the Sistine edition (1586–87), produced by order of Sixtus V to implement the recommendation of the Council of Trent; it is based on Codex Vaticanus (B) from the fourth century and later became the “Greek Vulgate.” Grabe’s edition (1657) made the text of Codex A accessible to learned investigation. But the decisive impetus for scholarly research on the Bible was given by the work published in Oxford by R. Holmes and J. Parsons, who, reproducing the text of the Sistine edition, added variants collected from about twenty uncial manuscripts, more than three hundred minuscules, the Church Fathers, and ancient versions derived from the Bible.
A new step forward was taken by P. de Lagarde (v.), who in 1863 advocated the publication of a critically restored text and expounded the problems inherent in such an undertaking and the principles to be followed; he also published many preparatory works for this task. Subsequently, with the aim of providing “clearly and with relative completeness the material for a future reconstruction of the text,” A. E. Brooke and N. McLean began in 1906 in Cambridge to publish, alongside the text of Codex B, a careful and well-selected critical apparatus without venturing to reconstruct the text itself. Up to 1940, the Pentateuch and almost all the historical books had appeared. The spiritual heirs of Lagarde in Göttingen, for their part, decided to undertake the arduous task of producing a critical text with an apparatus containing the various readings of all accessible manuscripts. Since no manuscript contains a pure text, the only rational approach is to select in each case, from all the variants, the reading that, according to principles derived from the facts themselves, has the greatest probability of being the original. The Göttingen Septuagint has produced Psalms (A. Rahlfs, 1931), 1 Maccabees (W. Kappler, 1936), Isaiah (J. Ziegler, 1939), and the Twelve Prophets (J. Ziegler, 1943): in many cases the emendation adopted is certain, in others more or less probable. In any case, the editor of the text provides his reasoned judgment for the less expert reader and a basis for further research for specialists.
An interesting theory on the origin of the Bible was advanced in 1925 by F. X. Wutz (v.), who claimed that the Bible was made from a Hebrew text transcribed in Greek characters and believed he had found a new criterion capable of opening fresh possibilities for reconstructing the original Hebrew prototype of the Bible and fundamentally reorienting the textual criticism of the Old Testament. However, after the initial enthusiasm, the theory did not withstand careful scrutiny.
Even more revolutionary are the ideas of P. Kahle (1941). According to him, the Jews of Egypt never possessed a complete normative Greek version of the Old Testament, but only of the Pentateuch. The Egyptian Jews, imitating the practice of Palestine, where in every synagogue after the reading of the sacred Hebrew text an interpreter would improvise on the spot a free Aramaic version, the basis of the future Targums, would also have created symbolically parallel Greek versions, first oral and then written, Greek Targums. Around 100 B.C., Jewish authorities would have made a selection from these versions and established an official translation of the Pentateuch. The Letter of Aristeas would have aimed to recommend and promote II. All other versions of the Mosaic Law and likewise versions of other books never officially recognized would have continued in use among many Jews and later also among Christians in the 1st and 2nd centuries A.D., as evidenced by biblical quotations in Philo and Matthew. In the 3rd century, the Church, choosing among the various versions, would have established a canonical version of the entire Old Testament, giving it the name of the Septuagint. The others would then have been lost, and the quotations in Philo and the New Testament, as well as the recensions of Lucian and Hesychius, would preserve the last traces of them. It would therefore be utopian to seek the original text of the Septuagint.
But this ingenious theory of Kahle raises serious doubts. If it was easy to improvise an Aramaic translation of the closely related Hebrew, it is entirely improbable that the same could be done for Greek. It is true that in some books the Greek version may be called targumic, but only in the sense that it is paraphrastic. The quotations in Philo and the New Testament require an explanation, but Kahle’s is not the only possible one, even if probable, and therefore his conclusion is not compelling. If the Septuagint, the result of the common work of generations, is not homogeneous, this does not detract from its unity, which derives from the purpose of forming a complete version. The urgent necessity therefore remains to reconstruct the primitive form that the Septuagint assumed in pre-Christian times, when it became complete and acquired normative value, and when other possible partial versions fell into oblivion.
SEPTUAGINT, VERSION OF — Title page of the *Vetus Testamentum* (iuxta septuaginta ex auctoritate Sixti V Pont. Max. editum, Rome 1587. Copy from the Vatican Library deposited at the Biblical Institute, Rome.