losophy. To their court were gathered the
chief poets, savants, and thinkers of their age. The Museum was the
most celebrated literary academy, and the Library the most noted
collection of books in the world. Dwelling in this atmosphere of
culture and research, the Hebrew mind rapidly expanded and began to
take its part as an active force in civilization. It acquired the love
of knowledge in a wider sense than it had recognized before, and
assimilated the teachings of Hellas in all their variety. Within a
hundred years of their settlement Hebrew or Aramaic had become to the
Jews a strange language, and they spoke and thought in Greek. Hence it
was necessary to have an authoritative Greek translation of the Holy
Scriptures, and the first great step in the Jewish-Hellenistic
development is marked by the Septuagint version of the Bible.

Fancy and legend attached themselves early to an event fraught with
such importance for the history of the race and mankind as the
translation of the Scriptures into the language of the cultured world.
From this overgrowth it is difficult to construct a true narrative;
still, the research of latter-day scholars has gone far to prove a
basis of truth in the statements made in the famous letter of the
pseudo-Aristeas, which professes to describe the origin of the work.
We may extract from his story that the Septuagint was written in the
reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus, about 250 B.C.E., with the approval, if
not at the express request, of the king, and with the help of rabbis
brought from Palestine to give authority to the work. But we need not
believe with later legend that each of the seventy translators was
locked up in a separate cell for seventy days till he had finished the
whole work, and that when they were let out they were all found to
have written exactly the same words. Philo gives us a version of the
event, romantic, indeed, but more rational, in his "Life of
Moses."[19] He tells how Ptolemy, having conceived a great admiration
for the laws of Moses, sent ambassadors to the high priest of Juddea,
requesting him to choose out a number of learned men that might
translate them into Greek. "These were duly chosen, and came to the
king's court, and were allotted the Isle of Pharos as the most
tranquil spot in the city for carrying out their work; by God's grace
they all found the exact Greek words to correspond to the Hebrew
words, so that they were not mere translators, but prophets t