NE step more, and we are at the fountain-head. It is but a short journey from the Septuagint, the Bible of the LXX. (as it is often called) to the original source from whence flows the stream of Old Testament inspiration.

      We have assumed that the date of the Greek version is the year 285, B. C., and that it was made by scholarly men from Hebrew manuscripts, and was the first ever so made.

      If we can find out anything about their Hebrew manuscripts, and be sure they were there, we should know where the Old Testament portion of our Bible came from, for we shall be at the original sources. Let us see.

      In the eighth chapter of the book of Nehemiah there is a marvelous description of the reading of the law which is worthy of careful attention. In a broad open space before one of the gate, of Jerusalem there [76] is an immense congregation. On a pulpit of wood Ezra stands up to read the law of God to the newly returned exiles. Assisted by the chief men, he translates and expounds the Word of the Lord. Day after day this continues. The effect of this is that a few weeks later all the people confess their sins, and enter into a solemn promise to keep and observe the Law.

      This is made all the more impressive by the fact that the priests, the Levites, and the chief men of the tribes solemnly sign their names on a parchment roll, and seal it as a sacred document to witness what they have done.¹

      The Jews tell us that the names on the list thus made formed the first members of the Great Synagogue. The chief work of the synagogue, which was a most important body, was to collect, select, and preserve to the world all the MSS. which compose the Hebrew Scriptures. Ezra was its first president; and at different times it had as members such men as Daniel, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi, Zerubbabel, and Nehemiah. It is supposed to have ceased about the year 300, B. C.²

      From the day when Ezra read the Hebrew Scriptures, and the solemn covenant was made by the [77] people, as recorded in Nehemiah, to the day when the Septuagint was made, there is a space of time of only about one hundred and sixty years. The reading of the Law took place about 445, B. C. And the Septuagint was completed about 285, B. c. This is but a short interval. The two dates are sufficiently near for us to assume that the men who made the Greek version used the best known manuscripts; many of them, no doubt, the actual original documents bearing the signatures of their inspired authors.

      We know how carefully and jealously the Hebrews guarded their sacred books. Josephus says: "During so many ages as have already passed, no one has as been so bold as to either add anything to them or take anything from them, or to make any change in them; but it becomes natural to all Jews, immediately and from their very birth, to esteem those books to contain Divine doctrines and to persist in them, and if occasion be, willingly to die for them."³

      We have now established the fact that the Septuagint was a Greek translation of the original Hebrew Bible--the messages which Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalmists, spoke to their fellow-countrymen, rendered in the Greek tongue. As our Old Testament contains the books of the Hebrew Scriptures, which [78] were translated into Greek for the Septuagint version, are we not safe in saying that the Old Testament portion of our precious Bible came from the men whom God in olden times inspired to tell forth His mind and will concerning the salvation of the world by Christ Jesus? [79]

[HWGI 76-79]