The printed texts of the Septuagint fall naturally into two classes, viz. (1) those which contain or were intended to exhibit the whole of the Greek Old Testament; (2) those which are limited to a single book or to a group of books.

COMPLETE EDITIONS.

1. The first printed text of the whole Septuagint is that which forms the third column in the Old Testament of the great Complutensian Polyglott. This great Bible was printed at Alcalà (Complutum) in Spain under the auspices of Francisco Ximenes de Cisneros, Cardinal Archbishop of Toledo. Ximenes, who, in addition to his ecclesiastical offices, was Regent of Castile, began this undertaking in 1502 in honour of the birth of Charles V. (1500—1558), and lived to see the whole of the sheets pass through the press. He died Nov. 8, 1517, and the fourth volume, which completes the Old Testament and was the last to be printed, bears the date July 10, 1517. But the publication of the Polyglott was delayed for more than four years: the papal sanction attached to the N.T. volume is dated May 22, 1520, and the copy which was intended for the Pope seems not to have found its way into the Vatican Library until Dec. 5, 1521. The title of the complete work (6 vols. folio) is as follows: “Biblia sacra Polyglotta complectentia V.T. Hebraico Graeco et Latino idiomate, N.T. Graecum et Latinum, et vocabularium Hebraicum et Chaldaicum V.T. cum grammatica Hebraica necnon Dictionario Graeco.[…]”