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It is not only important, but, in a degree necessary, that the people of this country, should have an American Dictionary of the English language; for, although the body of the language is the same as in England, and it is desirable to perpetuate that sameness, yet some differences must exist. Language is the expression of ideas; and if the people of one country cannot preserve an identity of ideas, they cannot retain an identity of language. |
SEP'TUAGINT, n. [L. septuaginta, seventy; septem, seven, and some word signifying ten.] A Greek version of the Old Testament, so call because it was the work of seventy, or rather of seventy-two interpreters. This translation from the Hebrew is supposed have been made in the reign and by the order of Ptolemy Philadelphus, king of Egypt, about two hundred and seventy or eighty years before the birth of Christ.
SEP'TUAGINT, a. Pertaining to the Septuagint; contained in the Greek copy of the Old Testament.
The Septuagint chonology makes fifteen hundred years more from the creation to Abraham, than the present Hebrew copies of the Bible. Encyc.
A Greek version of the Old
Testament; -- so called because it was believed to be the work of
seventy (or rather of seventy-two) translators.
* The causes which produced it [the Septuagint], the number and names of the translators, the times at which different portions were translated, are all uncertain. The only point in which all agree is that Alexandria was the birthplace of the version. On one other point there is a near agreement, namely, as to time, that the version was made, or at least commenced, in the time of the early Ptolemies, in the first half of the third century b.c. Dr. W. Smith (Bib. Dict.) Septuagint chronology, the chronology founded upon the dates of the Septuagint, which makes 1500 years more from the creation to Abraham than the Hebrew Bible. | ||||||||