See Also: septuagint(medicine)
Septuagint(dictionary)
Septuagint(encyclopedia)

Septuagint (sh)




Earliest extant Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures from the original Hebrew, presumably made for the use of the Jewish community in Egypt when Greek was the lingua franca.

The Pentateuch was translated near the middle of the 3rd century BC; the rest of the Hebrew scriptures were translated in the 2nd century BC. The name Septuagint was derived from a legend that 72 translators worked on the project. Its influence was far-reaching. The Septuagint rather than the original Hebrew Bible was the main basis for the Old Latin, Coptic, Ethiopic, Armenian, Georgian, Slavonic, and some Arabic translations of the Bible.