Excerpt from A Dissertation on the True Age of the World: In Which Is Determined the Chronology of the Period From Creation to the Christian EraIt is universally admitted that the Penta teuch was translated into Greek about three cen turies before Christ, for the use of the dispersed tribes of Israel, and particularly of the Jews, who had settled in Alexandria, and other parts of the Grecian Empire. Although the history of this translation given by Aristeas, Josephus, and others, savours too much of the marvellous for modern belief, yet all antiquity agrees that it was executed in the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus, and, according to some, at his request, by seventy two interpreters selected from the most learned and eminent men among the Jews by the High Priest and Sanhedrim at Jerusalem. It is more over asserted, that the other books of the Old Testament were translated about a century later than the Pentateuch; and this assertion is in some measure proved by a considerable diversity of style and sentiment. It is quite certain, how ever, that the Greek version of the whole of the Hebrew Scriptures, now called the Septuagint, was in public use at least a century before the Christian era; and that the Evangelists and Apostles made citations from this version in the New Testament, in preference to the original text.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.