Having thus indicated to the _unlearned_ reader the particular nature of that interest which invests this earliest translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, viz., that in fact this translation was the earliest _publication_ to the human race of a revelation which had previously been locked up in a language destined, as surely as the Welsh language or the Gaelic, to eternal obscurity amongst men, I go on to mention that the learned Jews selected for this weighty labor happened to be in number seventy-two; but, as the Jews systematically reject fractions in such cases (whence it is that always, in order to express the period of six weeks, they say _forty days_, and not, as strictly they should, _forty-two days_), popularly, the translators were called 'the seventy,' for which the Latin word is _septuaginta_. And thus in after ages the translators were usually indicated as 'The LXX,' or, if the work and not the workmen should be noticed, it was cited as _The Septuagint_. In fact, this earliest of Scriptural versions, viz., into Greek, is by much the most famous; or, if any other approaches it in notoriety, it is the Latin translation by St. Jerome, which, in this one point, enjoys even a superior importance, that in the Church of Rome it is the authorized translation. Evidently, in every church, it must be a matter of primary importance to assign the particular version to which that church appeals, and by which, in any controversy arising, that church consents to be governed. Now, the Jerome version fulfils this function for the Romish Church; and accordingly, in the sense of being published (_vulgata_), or publicly authorized by that church, it is commonly called _The Vulgate_.