The Septuagint

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Septuagint


A translation of the Hebrew bible and Deuterocanonical books into Koine (common) Greek.
Stands for 70, abbreviated LXX (roman numeral for 70)

After the death of Alexander the Great in 3rd century BC, the Grecian empire was split up into 3 factions.   Ptolemy II, Greek King of Egypt,  commissed a team of about 70 to translate into the language of Alexandria, Egypt at that time.  The purpose was to include it in the extensive Library at Alexandria.  But it also made it accessible to the Jewish that no  longer had a background in Hebrew after the dispersion.
The complete translation ended about 132 BC.

This is not the same as the Greek Translation of the Old Testament.  Most of those are lost, but some are here:  Of these, the most important are "the three:" those by Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion.



he Septuagint is the basis for the Old Latin, Slavonic, Syriac, Old Armenian, Old Georgian and Coptic versions of the Christian Old Testament.^[20]

Some scripture of ancient origin are found in the Septuagint but are not present in the Hebrew. These additional books are Tobit, Judith, Wisdom of Solomon, Wisdom of Jesus son of Sirach, Baruch, Letter of Jeremiah (which later became chapter 6 of Baruch in the Vulgate), additions toDaniel (The Prayer of Azarias, the Song of the Three Children, Susanna and Bel and the Dragon), additions to Esther, 1 Maccabees, 2 Maccabees, 3 Maccabees, 4 Maccabees, 1 Esdras, Odes, including the Prayer of Manasseh, the Psalms of Solomon, and Psalm 151.

Pre-Christian Jews, Philo and Josephus considered the Septuagint on equal standing with the Hebrew Masoretic text.^[30] Manuscripts of the Septuagint have been found among the Qumran Scrolls in the Dead Sea, and were thought to have been in use among Jews at the time.

The New Testament writers, when citing the Jewish scriptures, or when quoting Jesus doing so, freely used the Greek translation, implying that Jesus, his Apostles and their followers considered it reliable.^[2][21][34]

In the Early Christian Church, the presumption that the Septuagint was translated by Jews before the era of Christ, and that the Septuagint at certain places gives itself more to a christological interpretation than 2nd-century Hebrew texts was taken as evidence that "Jews" had changed the Hebrew text in a way that made them less christological.


For example, Irenaeus concerning Isaiah 7:14: The Septuagint clearly writes of a virgin (Greek παρθένος) that shall conceive.^[35] While the Hebrew text was, according to Irenaeus, at that time interpreted by Theodotion and Aquila(both proselytes of the Jewish faith) as a young woman that shall conceive. According to Irenaeus, the Ebionites used this to claim that Joseph was the (biological) father of Jesus. From Irenaeus' point of view that was pure heresy, facilitated by (late) anti-Christian alterations of the scripture in Hebrew, as evident by the older, pre-Christian, Septuagint.^[36]

http://www.kalvesmaki.com/LXX/index.htm
http://www.kalvesmaki.com/LXX/Texts.htm


http://jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/3269-bible-translations#3077
http://orthodoxengland.org.uk/zot.htm