2. The terms _Old_ and _New Testament_ arose in the following way: God's dealings with the Israelitish people, under both the patriarchs and Moses, took the form of a _covenant_; that is, not a mutual agreement as between two equal parties, but an _arrangement_ or _dispensation_, in which God himself, as the sovereign Lord, propounded to the chosen people certain terms, and bound himself, upon condition of the fulfilment of these terms, to bestow upon them blessings temporal and spiritual. Now the Greek word _diatheke_, by which the Septuagint renders the Hebrew word for _covenant_, signifies both _covenant_, in the general sense above given, and _testament_, as being the final disposition which a man makes of his worldly estate. The new covenant introduced by Christ is, in a sense, a _testament_, as being ratified by his bloody death. Matt. 26:28; Mark 14:24; Luke 22:20. So it is expressly called in the epistle to the Hebrews, 9:15-17, where the new covenant, considered in the light of a testament, is contrasted with the old. It was probably in connection with this view that the _Old Latin_ version of the Bible (made in the Old Testament not from the original Hebrew, but from the Greek Septuagint) everywhere rendered the Greek word _diatheke_ by the Latin _testamentum_. When Jerome undertook the work of correcting this version, he did not everywhere pursue the same plan. The books of the Old Testament he rendered in general from the Hebrew; and here he employed for the Hebrew word denoting _covenant_ the appropriate Latin words _foedus_ and _pactum_. But in the Psalms, and the whole New Testament, from deference to established usage, he gave simply a revision of the Old Latin, leaving the word _testamentum_, by which that version had rendered the word _diatheke_, _covenant_, untouched. Hence in Latin usage we have in the New Testament the two covenants, the old and the new, expressed by the terms _old testament_ (_vetus testamentum_, _prius_ or _primum testamentum_) and _new testament_ (_novum testamentum_), and sometimes in immediate contrast with each other, as in 2 Cor. 3:6, 14; Heb. 9:15-18. The transfer of these terms from the covenants themselves to the writings which give an account of them was easy, and soon became established in general usage. Hence the terms _Old_ and _New Testament_ for the two great divisions of the Bible.