There are writings, more ancient than those of the Mosaic manuscripts, which have come down to us from long before the time of Moses; such are the so-called “Books of the Dead,” found in the tombs of Egypt;[139] but these writings, as soon as they were finished, were immediately locked up amid the spices, the darkness and protection of the tomb, till recently brought out, while the contents of the books of the Mosaic Law, and other manuscripts of Scripture, have come percolating down through the ages, doing battle all that time with thousands of scribes, and indeed with any transcriber who felt inclined to copy a book; and that work of transcribing has continued from the period when the Mosaic manuscripts were completed down to the period of the return from the captivity, or of the close of the Canon――that is over a thousand years――and from that period to the present. Excepting variations in some numerical figures and in a few names, which may be accounted for, and in some cases corrected, all the rest of the variations are of so small importance that the Bible, as we possess it, may well be considered a literary monument, standing alone and unexampled amid the literature of all time. And this not only for its singular preservation, but for that evident unity of purpose, persistent through all its variety of subjects and authors, until the time when the last prophetic utterance closed the Canon. Then there stood out in luminous form a finished work, whose pages exhibit the proof of a systematic plan, designed from the very beginning to fill out progressively its mysterious pages, until the last letter was complete, in order that a world might see, in one volume, the object of creation, the necessity of law, the illustrations of judgment and of providence, and the redemption and coming salvation of the race. THE SEPTUAGINT, B. C. 286‒285. (?) =20. The conquest of the Persians= under Alexander introduced the Greek language into Western Asia and other lands. This introduction prepared the way for a very extensive circulation of the entire Old Testament writings throughout the surrounding nations and even the world. For up to this time all the Old Testament was in the Hebrew language; but as soon as the translation into the Greek was made, of which we shall now speak, even those who could not speak Greek could easily find those who could, because among the learned and unlearned there were many who knew Greek who did not understand the Hebrew. When, therefore, the death of Alexander was followed by the partition of his conquests among his generals, Egypt became, in B. C. 322, governed by the Ptolemies, the second of whom, Ptolemy Philadelphus, B. C. 286‒247, had the Law of Moses, that is the =first five books=, translated from the Hebrew into the Greek.