Abstract
In mid-summer 2005 an editor charged with revision of the Encyclopaedia Judaica asked me to update the “Septuagint” article and its bibliography from the original 1972 edition.¹ The Septuagint is the oldest translation of the Hebrew Bible. Jews began to produce it around 275 BCE in Alexandria, Egypt. According to tradition, seventy (some say, seventy-two) Jewish scholars were responsible for the earliest portions of this translation.
The Latin word septuāgintā means “seventy”; hence the translation became known as either Septuagint or LXX, the number seventy using Roman numerals. When completed, the Septuagint included Greek versions of all the books of