the Bible. Facilities for trade and
other reasons made this city attractive to the Jews. Greek, however,
was the prevailing language of the community. Early in the third
century B. C. the proportion of Greek-speaking Jews became so large
that there was a call for their Scriptures in their adopted tongue. To
supply this religious need of the Jews, the Hebrew Bible was
translated (about 280-130 B. C.) into the Greek language. This Greek
Bible contained all the books of the Hebrew Bible, and several other
small books now called "the Apocrypha."

#5.# This Greek Bible, now called the Septuagint ("Seventy"), so named
because it was thought to have been translated from the Hebrew by
"seventy" men, became the Bible of the Old Testament for the
Greek-speaking world. In the time of our Lord it was largely used by
the New Testament writers. It was quoted by them, and especially by
Paul, almost everywhere. It was the Bible of the early Christian
church until the conquest of Rome and the Latin tongue required a
translation into Latin. These early Latin translations of the Old
Testament were all made from the Septuagint. There were also some
scholars in the church who, not being satisfied with the translation
of the Septuagint, made translations of their own. These were of some
value to scholars, such as that most famous of all Biblical students,
Origen (186-254 A. D.) who were trying to construct the best Greek
text of the Bible.

#6.# The many and differing Latin translations that were current in
the second, third, and fourth centuries led Jerome, a fully equipped
and competent scholar, to translate the whole Bible from the original
languages into good idiomatic Latin (384-405). His translation
differed so much from those versions in general use that it was
sharply and bitterly criticized by the less scholarly and more hostile
enemies of progress. But the faithfulness of his translation to the
original text commended it to the most thoughtful men of the Christian
church, and before many centuries it became the Bible of the
Latin-speaking and Latin-using world. That was the Bible adopted by
the Council of Trent, April 8, 1546, as the official Bible of the
Roman Catholic Church. With the exception of the Psalms, which is
simply a revision of an old Latin Psalter, and the apocryphal books
included in the collection, this is Jerome's translation, made
384-405, which was so drastically condemned when it first appeared.

#7.# In no