Translation of the Septuagint

The Septuagint (commonly abbreviated LXX) is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible produced for the large Jewish community of Alexandria. The traditional account preserved in the Letter of Aristeas tells of Ptolemy II Philadelphus commissioning seventy-two Jewish scholars — six from each tribe — to render the Torah into Greek for the royal library, around 280 BC; "Septuagint" is Latin for "seventy." In reality the translation was made over a longer span: the Pentateuch in the mid-3rd century BC, the Prophets and the Writings progressively across the 2nd century, with some books still being revised into the 1st century BC. The result varies widely in style — careful and literal in the Torah, freer and more idiomatic elsewhere — and includes books not in the Hebrew canon (Tobit, Judith, the Wisdom literature, 1–4 Maccabees). For Greek-speaking Jews across the Mediterranean it became the working scripture; for the writers of the New Testament it was a primary source, and most quotations of the Old Testament in the Gospels and Paul follow the Septuagint rather than the Hebrew. It remained the Old Testament of the early Greek-speaking church and is still the scripture of the Eastern Orthodox churches today.