race from sacrilegious contact with alien nations abhorred by the God of Israel. But when, after the conquests of Alexander, Hebrew colonies had been established in regions where Greek became the familiar language of expatriated Jews, a demand arose for a Greek version of the Hebrew Scriptures, which was accordingly produced at Alexandria, about B.c. 280, first as a translation of the Pentateuch, and subsequently as the full Greek version known as the Septuagint, the origin and authorship of which is invested with the marvels of legendary fiction.

Justin Martyr and Irenæus,' the primitive canonmakers of the New Testament, declare that Ptolemy Lagi being desirous of adding a Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures to the literary treasures of his famous Alexandrian library, the Jews of Jerusalem sent seventy elders, skilled in both languages, to Alexandria, where they were placed in separate cells on their arrival, with the marvellous result that all produced independent versions exactly agreeing throughout in every word and sentence, so that it was clearly shown that the Hebrew Scriptures had been translated by the inspiration of God. If Orthodoxy accepts apostolic Gospels from the hands of Irenæus, why not also the verbal inspiration of the Septuagint, sustained by even the weighty authority of that great Latin saint, Augustine?

The more practical Origen, who devoted inexhaustible industry to the correction of the text, however, candidly admits that there are evidently great discrepancies in the copies of the Septuagint, whether 1 Irenæus, Against Heresies, iii. 21.

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attributable to the carelessness of scribes, or to the rash and pernicious alteration of the text by some, and the unauthorised interpolations and omissions of others— a view fully confirmed by modern criticism of both uncial and cursive MSS. dating from the fourth to the fourteenth century, which disclose in numerous discrepancies the unrevised work of different translators, imperfectly acquainted with the original Hebrew, and using the Macedonic dialect, corrupted by Egyptian words.

Some instances of departure from the Hebrew original are traceable rather to theological design than to human error; thus Hellenistic Jews, desirous of cloaking Mosaic anthropomorphism, translate ‘the mouth' by the word, and the hand' by the power of Jehovah variations which some apologetic theologians explain by the divine purpose of adapting Hebrew Scripture to the minds of the heathen, who therefore had higher conceptions of Divinity than the Chosen Race!

The Greek version of the Sacred Scriptures, therefore, became the Holy Bible of Hebrew colonists, scattered throughout the Roman Empire at the period immediately preceding the Christian era. But, more especially at Alexandria, the populous centre of Hellenistic Judaism was the Septuagint industriously studied and interpreted in harmony with the fashionable philosophy of Alexandrian sages, who had transformed the anthropomorphic imagery of effete mythologies into mere symbols of philosophic mysticism. The allegorical system of exegesis was, therefore, fully adopted by the Hellenistic apologists of Moses and the prophets, who would, doubtless, have heard with amazement, could they have risen from the dead, that whilst uttering what they

honestly believed to be the oracles of divine wisdom, they were simply obscurely symbolising the more spiritual systems of heathen philosophy, reserved for the enlightenment of future generations; and thus had called down the vengeance of Jehovah on the unhappy children of Israel, for neglecting a theological system unintelligible to all, until explained by Plato and his disciples.

About four centuries before the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, Plato, an illustrious Athenian, having applied the highest faculties of human genius to sublime speculation on the attributes of Divinity, conceived that the Supreme Being is of Trinitarian essence, namely, the selfexistent First Cause, the Logos or Reason emanating from the First Cause, and the Spirit of the universe—a scheme of Oriental mysticism which was doubtless suggested to Plato during his Eastern travels throughout regions where divine Emanations and Avatars have been the imaginative creations of Indian theosophists from time immemorial.

If a mere heathen philosopher could fuse so sublime a system with the mythology of Greece, what marvels might not the Oriental imagination of Hebrew sages accomplish through the spiritual interpretation of Mosaic materialism! Alexandrine Jews accordingly Hellenised Hebrew annals, rendered the precepts of Leviticus into verse, dramatised Exodus in the name of Ezekiel, and sustained the immortality of the soul through the Wisdom of Solomon, published as the autogram of a monarch who nearly eight centuries previously had declared, ‘There is nothing better for a man than that he should eat and drink, for that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth

them; as one dieth so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath: so that a man hath no pre-eminence over a beast for all is vanity.'1

The zealous author of this philosophic movement had successfully anticipated evangelical apologists, in showing that Hebrew oracles mean something very different from what they seem to utter, when Philo Judæus, one of the most gifted sons of Israel, appeared upon the scene (B.c. 20-A.D. 50), attained pre-eminence among the Alexandrine sages of Judah, and outPlatoed Plato through the startling discovery, in the pages of the divinely translated Septuagint, that the Logos of philosophy, the rpwróyovos, or first-born of God, was the Jehovah of Moses and the prophets !

The philosophic mysticism of the Alexandrine school, thus sanctioned by the greatest of the Hebrew disciples of Plato, necessarily exercised an important influence on the Judaism of Palestine; and Paul, educated in the Rabbinic school of Jerusalem, owes more to the Platonism of Philo of Alexandria, than to the gospel of Jesus of Nazareth.

We speak of Alexandria as the cosmopolitan centre of Platonic Judaism; but facility of intercourse throughout the Roman Empire brought numerous other colonies of Hellenistic Jews in contact with theosophic mysticism. When, therefore, Paul went forth to evangelise numerous cities inhabited by both Jews and Gentiles, he did not merely meet with ritualistic votaries of Judaism, and pious worshippers of Olympian gods, but earnest thinkers, moved by the spirit of their age to turn from ancient shrines to modern ideals of Divinity,

Ecclesiastes ii. 24, iii. 19.

and prepared to embrace with enthusiasm any theological system harmonising with their spiritual dreams.

Philo had declared that the Septuagint had been the work 'not of mere translators, but of men divinely chosen and appointed, to whom it was given to understand and clearly express the full sense and meaning of Moses.' This alien version of Hebrew Scripture, allegorically interpreted in Alexandrian schools, therefore became the corrupted source of inspiration to the compilers of gospels and the authors of epistles, who relied more on imaginative interpretation of ancient Scripture than on the actual facts of the life and teaching of Jesus of Nazareth. Thus in the Epistle to the Hebrews, the unknown author's exaggerated symbolism at once discloses the presence of a pupil of Philo, rather than of a disciple of Jesus.

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The Jews and Gentiles evangelised by Paul, doubtless followed the example of the Bereans in studying the Scriptures daily through the Alexandrine version but instead of being instructed in its spiritual meaning through the revelations said to have been personally made by Jesus to the Galilean apostles after his resurrection, the source of interpretation is found in the school of Philo. Now, a certain Jew named Apollos, an Alexandrine by race, a learned man, came to Ephesus; and he was mighty in the Scriptures. This man had been instructed in the way of the Lord, and being fervent in spirit, he spake and taught carefully the things concerning Jesus, knowing only the baptism of John.'1 But being further instructed in a more advanced Christianity by Priscilla and Aquila, mere

1 Acts xviii. 24, 25.