and Lamentations (with the addition of the apocryphal Epistle of Jeremiah—­an inconsistency, or rather oversight, to be explained from his constant habit of using the Septuagint version).  In the present text of Eusebius, the book of the twelve Minor Prophets is wanting.  But this is simply an old error of the scribe, since it is necessary to complete the number of twenty-two.  Jerome’s list (Prologus galeatus) is the same, only that he gives the contents of the Law, the Prophets, and the Hagiographa in accordance with the Hebrew arrangement, placing Daniel in the last class, and adding that whatever is without the number of these must be placed among the Apocryphal writings.  Smith’s Dict. of the Bible, Art.  Canon.  The catalogue of these two distinguished Christian scholars—­Origen of the Eastern church, and Jerome of the Western, both of whom drew their information immediately from Hebrew scholars—­is decisive, and we need add nothing further.

19.  The Apocryphal books of the Old Testament were incorporated into the Alexandrine version called the Septuagint; but they were never received by the Jews of Palestine as a part of the sacred volume.  Concerning them and their history, see further in the Appendix to this part.

CHAPTER XVI.

ANCIENT VERSIONS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.

In the present chapter only those versions of the Old Testament are noticed which were made independently of the New.  Versions of the whole Bible, made in the interest of Christianity, are considered in the following part.

I. THE GREEK VERSION CALLED THE SEPTUAGINT.

1.  This is worthy of special notice as the oldest existing version of the holy Scriptures, or any part of them, in any language; and also as the version which exerted a very large influence on the language and style of the New Testament; for it was extensively used in our Lord’s day not only in Egypt, where it originated, and in the Roman provinces generally, but also in Palestine; and the quotations in the New Testament are made more commonly from it than from the Hebrew.

2.  The Jewish account of its origin, first noticed briefly by Aristobulus, a Jew (as quoted by Clement of Alexandria and Eusebius), then given at great length in a letter which professes to have been written by one Aristeas, a heathen and a special friend of Ptolemy Philadelphus, king of Egypt, and the main part of which Josephus has copied (Antiq. 12. 2), is for substance as follows:  Ptolemy Philadelphus (who reigned from B.C. 285 to 247), at the suggestion of his librarian Demetrius Phalereus, after having first liberated all the Jewish captives found in his kingdom, sent an embassy with costly gifts to Eleazar the high priest at Jerusalem, requesting that he would send him chosen men, six from each of the twelve tribes, with a copy of the Jewish law, that it might be interpreted from