Abstract
Dated to approximately 275 BCE, the Septuagint, or Greek Pentateuch, or LXX, the topic of chapter 1, is the earliest recorded written version of Scripture in a language other than Hebrew. At one time scholars believed that the Hebrew Bible itself contains evidence of its translation or interpretation several centuries earlier, but academic researchers now essentially discount this view.
The discredited theory focuses upon Nehemiah 8. In a scene from this chapter, dated to the mid-fifth century BCE, Ezra the scribe, having returned from Babylon, stood before an assembly of the people at Jerusalem’s Water Gate, reading in Hebrew from