What is set down so far in this chapter relates to the Hebrew version of the Scriptures alone; but about three hundred years B. C., by some set down at 285 B. C., an event occurred which did much to preserve the integrity of the Hebrew Scriptures; by that I mean the probability of alterations being made in them was lessened, and they the more likely to be brought down to us just as they were written originally. At the date above given, Ptolemy Philadelphus, King of Egypt, was gathering up the books which constituted the splendid Alexandrian Library, and being informed by his librarian, Demetrius Phalerius, concerning the Hebrew Scriptures, he at once set himself at work to procure a Greek translation of them. The better to secure this object he set at liberty many Jews in his kingdom, and sent word to the high priest at Jerusalem, Eleazar, his desire, asking that six Elders from each tribe of Israel, such as were skilled in the law, should be sent to him to translate their Scriptures for him. This was done, and it is said that the work was completed in seventy-two days.[O] [Footnote O: For a full account of this matter see Antiquities of the Jews by Josephus, Book xii, chapter ii.] This translation is called the _Septuagint_, meaning the seventy, often represented by the Roman numerals LXX; but whether it is so called because it was translated by about seventy Elders, or for the reason that the translation occupied about seventy days is not clear. At any rate copies of this translation were multiplied, and in the days of Messiah's personal ministering in Judea was the version most in use, and the one he and his Apostles usually referred to, when sustaining their teachings by that which aforetime had been written by inspiration. That this is true is evident from the following facts: There are in the New Testament 225 quotations from the Old;[P] and of these over one half, that is 120, agree _verbatim_ with the Septuagint. "That these quotations," says an able writer, "must have been taken from the Septuagint is plain from the _copia verborum_, the remarkable fertility of expression, in the Greek language, which forbids us to believe that, had the quotations been from the Hebrew, the Greek rendering would have agreed _verbatim_ with the passages in the Septuagint version. Of any Old Testament passage made up of only ten words, there are not fewer than thirty modes of translating it into Greek; and such indeed are the possible varieties, that if thirty different persons were translating into Greek a Hebrew sentence of _three lines_, none of them, though all were to give a perfectly correct rendering, would be found exactly agreeing in the Greek words employed, or in the collection of these." [Footnote P: The only books in the Old Testament not quoted in the New are Ruth, I. and II. Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Lamentations, Obadiah, Nahum and Zephaniah.]