Edom, and of all the heathen upon whom my name is called, saith the Lord that doeth this." The authors of the Septuagint version altered the twelfth verse into: "That the residue of men may seek after the Lord and all the Gentiles upon whom my name is called, saith the Lord who doeth these things."(1) It is perfectly clear that the prophet does not, in the original, say what James is here represented as stating, and that his own words refer to the national triumph of Israel, and not to the conversion of the Gentiles. Amos in fact prophesies that the Lord will restore the former power and glory of Israel, and that the remnant of Edom and the other nations of the theocracy shall be re-united, as they were under David. No one questions the fact that the original prophecy is altered, and those who desire to see the singular explanations of apologists may refer to some of the works indicated.(2) The question as to whether James or the author of the Acts is responsible for the adoption of the Septuagint version is felt to be a serious problem. Some critics affirm that in all probability James must have spoken in Aramaic;(3) whilst others maintain that he delivered this {251} address in Greek.(1) In the one case, it is supposed that he quoted the original Hebrew and that the author of the Acts or the document from which he derived his report may have used the Septuagint; and in the other, it is suggested that the lxx. may have had another and more correct reading before them, for it is supposed impossible that James himself could have quoted a version which was actually different from the original Hebrew. These and many other similar explanations, into which we need not go, do little to remove the difficulty presented by the fact itself. To suppose that our Hebrew texts are erroneous in order to justify the speech is a proceeding which does not require remark. It will be remembered that, in the Acts, the Septuagint is always employed in quotations from the Old Testament, and that this is by no means the only place in which that version is used when it departs from the original. It is difficult to conceive that any intelligent Jew could have quoted the Hebrew of this passage to support a proposal to free Gentile Christians from the necessity of circumcision and the observance of the Mosaic Law. It is equally difficult to suppose that James, a bigoted leader of the Judaistic party and the head of the Church of Jerusalem, could have quoted the Septuagint version of the Holy Scriptures, differing from the Hebrew, to such an assembly. It is useless to examine here the attempts to make the passage quoted a correct interpretation of the prophet's meaning, or seriously to consider the proposition that this alteration of a prophetic utterance is adopted as better {252} expressing "the mind of the Spirit." If the original prophecy did not express that mind, it is rather late to amend the utterances of the prophets in the Acts of the Apostles.