During the five or six centuries immediately preceding the birth of Christ Jesus, large numbers of Jews left Palestine and settled at various points throughout the then known world. This migratory movement had started with the enforced sojourn of the Hebrew people in Babylon, while, as the years went by, numerous Jewish colonies sprang up in Cyprus and in Asia Minor, in Greece and in Italy, and particularly by the Nile. Many of those who now lived in Egypt had originally been brought there as prisoners of war, while others had chosen to settle in that region in furthering their business enterprises. Eventually there came to be a very large and prosperous Jewish population especially in and around Alexandria near the mouth of the Nile. Those Jews who had been born in Egypt very naturally learned the use of Greek, which was fast becoming the language of commerce and of daily intercourse in Alexandria and Rome, as well as in Athens and Corinth—and the Hebrew so dear to their ancestors was virtually a dead language as far as these Jewish expatriates were concerned. However, they retained their love for the Hebrew religion, and there arose among them an ever-increasing desire for a version of the Jewish Bible in the Greek to which they were accustomed. That desire at length bore fruit in the preparation of the famous Greek translation commonly described as "the Septuagint" —derived from the Latin term "septuaginta," meaning "seventy"—the approximate number of those who are said to have carried out the rendering.
Tradition provides us with a more picturesque, if in some respects less historical explanation of the inception of this famous translation. An early writer relates that a certain Ptolemy Philadelphus, ruler of Egypt in the third century B.C., was desirous of obtaining a rendering of the Hebrew Bible for his library at Alexandria, and that he sent to Eleazar the high priest of the temple at Jerusalem, to obtain a copy of the Jewish Scriptures together with seventy-two competent scholars, six to be selected from each of the twelve tribes of Israel. The record continues that as an expression of gratitude to Eleazar and his countrymen for complying with these requests, the Egyptian monarch agreed to purchase the release of no fewer than one hundred thousand Jewish captives who were then living in his dominions, a statement which, of itself, plainly points to the residence in Egypt of a very large Jewish population.
This account of the origin of the Septuagint bears witness to the undoubted veneration with which that important version of the Old Testament was regarded from a very early period. Moreover, there is general agreement among scholars that it was indeed commenced in Egypt during the third century B.C., and completed either then or during the following century under the auspices of one or more of the kings of that period, while the fact remains that the underlying necessity for its publication is surely to be sought in the practical needs of Jewish colonists who lived there in such large numbers.
