8.  In the beginning of Christianity the Septuagint enjoyed, as we have seen, a high reputation among the Jews; and as a natural consequence, among the Jewish converts also, as well as the Gentile Christians.  To the great body of Gentile believers it was for the Old Testament the only source of knowledge, as they were ignorant of the Hebrew original.  They studied it diligently, and used it efficiently against the unbelieving Jews.  Hence there naturally arose in the minds of the latter a feeling of opposition to this version which became very bitter.  They began to disparage its authority, and to accuse it of misrepresenting the Hebrew.  The next step was to oppose to it another version made by Aquila, which was soon followed by two others, those of Theodotion and Symmachus.

9. Aquila is represented to have been a Jewish proselyte of Pontus, and to have lived in the second century.  His version was slavishly literal, following the Hebrew idiom even where it is contrary to that of the Greek.  For this very reason, not withstanding all the barbarisms thus introduced, the Jews highly valued it, calling it the Hebrew verity.  All that remains of it to us is contained in the fragments of Origen’s Hexapla.  See below, No. 12.  Had we the whole work, its extremely literal character would give it great value in a critical point of view, as it would shed much light on the state of the Hebrew text when it was executed.

10. Theodotion was, according to Irenaeus, an Ephesian.  Jerome calls him and Symmachus Ebionites, Judaizing heretics, and semi-Christians.  He is supposed to have made his version in the last half of the second century.  According to the testimony of the ancients, it had a close resemblance in character to the Septuagint.  He seems to have had this version before him, and to have made a free use of it.  Of the three later versions, that of Theodotion was most esteemed by the Christians, and they substituted his translation of the book of Daniel for that of the Seventy.

11. Symmachus, called by the church fathers an Ebionite, but by some a Samaritan, seems to have flourished not far from the close of the second century.  His version was free, aiming to give the sense rather than the words.  His idiom was Hellenistic, and in this respect resembled the Septuagint, from the author’s familiarity with which, indeed, it probably took its complexion.

Of other ancient Greek versions discovered by Origen in his Eastern travels and made by unknown authors it is not necessary to speak.