The Great Texts of the Bible. By S. F. Pells.
(Simpkin, Marshall and Co. ls. net.)—Mr. Pells is very anxious to establish the Septuagint as the Bible of the Christian Church. It certainly has the great advantage of being able to show a much older text. No Hebrew manuscript older than the ninth century, at the very earliest, exists. On the other hand, when we come to compare the two texts, it is difficult not to see a certain superiority in the Hebrew. Mr. Pens speaks of this " grand version made 280 years before Christ." This would seem to mean that he accepts the legend of the seventy, or rather seventy-two, elders (six from each of the twelve tribes) whom Ptolemy Philadelphus employed to translate the Hebrew Bible into Greek. The date seems a little early, even if the legend is true, for Ptolemy came to the throne in 283. A more serious difficulty is that the work is obviously not of one date ; it is rather a succession of versions than a version, and some of the books are much inferior to the others. We sympathise with Mr. Fells in his wish to give this most interesting work its due, but we cannot consent to make it the original of our Bible.
Previous page
