Septuagint

The Septuagint (from Latin septuaginta, "seventy"; abbreviated LXX) is the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament, produced in Alexandria beginning in the 3rd century B.C. The Letter of Aristeas (c. 130 B.C.) preserves the tradition that seventy-two elders — six from each of the twelve tribes — translated the Torah in seventy-two days at the request of Ptolemy II Philadelphus; the number was rounded to seventy and the legend extended to the entire OT. The Septuagint was the Bible of Greek-speaking Jews in the diaspora and became the primary OT text of the early church: the New Testament writers quote the OT predominantly in its LXX form, making textual comparisons between the LXX and the Masoretic Hebrew text essential for NT exegesis. It also preserves a number of books (the Apocrypha or Deuterocanonicals) not found in the Hebrew canon.