An ancient translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek, undertaken by Jews resident in Alexandria for the benefit of Jews who had forgotten their Hebrew (well before the birth of Jesus); abbreviated as LXX. The LXX is the untranslated standard version of the Old Testament for the Greek Orthodox Church, but not for the Western Church, which since Jerome, has adhered to the Masoretic text. In the original Greek New Testament, when Jesus quotes the Old Testament, he is made to quote the LXX, which tends to disagree with the Masoretic text
{i} oldest known Greek translation of the Old Testament (dated to the 3rd century BC, and supposedly translated by 72 Hebrew scholars)
Earliest extant Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures from the original Hebrew, presumably made for the use of the Jewish community in Egypt when Greek was the lingua franca. The Pentateuch was translated near the middle of the 3rd century BC; the rest of the Hebrew scriptures were translated in the 2nd century BC. The name Septuagint was derived from a legend that 72 translators worked on the project. Its influence was far-reaching. The Septuagint rather than the original Hebrew Bible was the main basis for the Old Latin, Coptic, Ethiopic, Armenian, Georgian, Slavonic, and some Arabic translations of the Bible
An ancient translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek, undertaken by Jews resident in Alexandria for the benefit of Jews who had forgotten their Hebrew (well before the birth of Jesus); abbreviated as LXX ("the seventy", for the reputed 70 scholars who did the work). The LXX is the untranslated standard version of the Old Testament for the Greek Orthodox Church, but not for the Western Church, which since Jerome, has adhered to the Masoretic text. In the original Greek New Testament, when Jesus quotes the Old Testament, he is made to quote the LXX, which tends to disagree with the Masoretic text