in that story, one of which is that seventy men
should have made the same mistakes without
depending on each other. In addition, it is not
historically supported, and the fact seems to be
that the Septuagint was a long and slow growth,
issuing from the impulse to make the Sacred
Book speak the familiar tongue. And, though
it was a Greek translation, it virtually displaced
the original, as the English Bible has virtually
displaced the Hebrew and Greek to-day. The
Septuagint was the Old Testament which Paul
used. Of one hundred and sixty-eight direct
quotations from the Old Testament in the New
nearly all are from the Greek version--from the
translation, and not from the original.

We owe still more to translation. While there
is accumulating evidence that there was spoken
in Palestine at that time a colloquial Greek, with
which most people would be familiar, it is yet
probable that our Lord spoke neither Greek
nor Hebrew currently, but Aramaic. He knew
the Hebrew Scriptures, of course, as any well-
trained lad did; but most of His words have come
down to us in translation. His name, for example,
to His Hebrew mother, was not Jesus, but
Joshua; and Jesus is the translation of the Hebrew
Joshua into Greek. We have His words as they
were translated by His disciples into the Greek,
in which the New Testament was originally written.