The Scriptures having perished in the captivity of Nabuchodonozar, Esdras, the Levite, the priest, in the times of Artaxerxes, king of the Persians, having become inspired, in the exercise of prophecy restored again the whole of the ancient Scriptures.(331) One must have a strong belief in “Esdras,” and especially in his good faith, to accept the now‐existing copies as genuine Mosaic Books; for: Assuming that the copies, or rather phonographs which had been made by Hilkiah and Esdras, and the various anonymous editors, were really true and genuine, they must have been wholly exterminated by Antiochus; and the versions of the Old Testament which now subsist must have been made by Judas, or by some unknown compilers, probably from the Greek of the Seventy, long after the appearance and death of Jesus.(332) The _Bible_, therefore, as it is now (the Hebrew texts, that is), depends for its accuracy on the genuineness of the _Septuagint_; this, we are again told, was written miraculously by the Seventy, in Greek, and the original copy having been lost since that time, our texts are re‐ translated back into Hebrew from that language. But in this vicious circle of proofs we once more have to rely upon the good faith of two Jews—Josephus and Philo Judæus of Alexandria—these two Historians being the only witnesses that the Septuagint was written under the circumstances narrated. And yet it is just these circumstances that are very little calculated to inspire one with confidence. For what does Josephus tell us? He says that Ptolemy Philadelphus, desiring to read the Hebrew Law in Greek, wrote to Eleazar, the high‐priest of the Jews, begging him _to send him six men from each of the twelve tribes_, who should make a translation for him. Then follows a truly miraculous story, vouchsafed by Aristeas, of these seventy‐two men from the twelve tribes of Israel, who, shut up in an island, compiled their translation in exactly seventy‐two days, etc. All this is very edifying, and one might have had very little reason to doubt the story, had not the “ten lost tribes” been made to play their part in it. How could these tribes, lost between 700 and 900 B.C., each send six men some centuries later, to satisfy the whim of Ptolemy, and to disappear once more immediately afterwards from the horizon? A miracle, verily.