19. The truth itself he has reserved to its readers to understand. The second book is called Coheleth, which in the Greek is Ecclesiastes, in Latin, Concionator, because its discourse is not especially addressed to one, as in Proverbs, but generally to all, teaching that all things which we see in the universe are perishable and short-lived, and for this reason little to be desired. 20. The third book he called Sir hassirim, which is translated Cantica Canticorum in the Latin, where in a marriage song he sings in mystic fashion the union of Christ and the church.... 21. The songs in these three books are said to be written in hexameter and pentameter verse as Josephus and Hieronymus say. 40. These are the four Evangelists whom the holy spirit indicated in Ezechiel in the four animals. And there are four animals, because the faith of the Christian religion is spread by their preaching through the four quarters of the world. 41. And they were called animals (_animalia_) because the Gospel of Christ is preached by them on account of the soul (_anima_) of man. And they were full of eyes within and without, since they perceive that what was said by the prophets and what had been promised was being fulfilled. 42. And their legs were straight because there is nothing crooked in the Gospels. And as for the six wings apiece that cover their legs and faces, those things which were hid are revealed at the coming of Christ. 50. These are the writers of the sacred books who, speaking by the holy spirit for our edification, wrote both the precepts of living and the rule for believing. 51. In addition to these there are other volumes called apocrypha, and they are called apocrypha, that is, set aside, because they are doubted. For their origin is hidden and was not clear to the Fathers from whom the authority of the genuine scriptures has come down to us by a most certain and well-known tradition. In these apocrypha, although some truth is found, there is no canonic authority, on account of the many things that are false, and it is rightly judged by the wise that they ought not to be believed [to be the work] of those to whom they are ascribed. 52. For many [works] were brought forward by the heretics under the name of the prophets, and many of later origin under the name of the apostles, and all of those after careful examination were separated from the authority of the canon, under the name of apocrypha. Chapter 4. On translators. 1. This man [Ptolemy Philadelphus] asked Eleazer the high-priest for the Scriptures of the Old Testament, and had them translated from Hebrew into Greek by seventy translators, and kept them in the library of Alexandria. 2. Being placed separately in separate cells they so translated all, by the influence of the holy spirit, that nothing was found in the text of any one of them, that was different in the rest, even in the order of the words.