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    surprised to learn , that these opposite deductions have been drawn From the very same premises , with this simple but important difference , that the Dean has gone to Eusebius himself for his authority , and that the Doctor , by his own confession , had no copy of Eusebius at hand to consult , * when he wrote his Dissertation . The real circumstances of the case are these r

    Anstobulus , in a work which he is said to have dedicated to Ptolemy Philometor , asserts that , before the time of Alexander and the Persian empire , act account of the institutions of Moses and of the Israelites from their departure out of Egypt to their settlement in the land of Canaan , existed in a Greek translation , and that Plato and Pythagoras both made use of this translation ;

    and he then goes on to state that a complete version of the Pentateuch was made in the reign of Ptolemy Phiiadelphus , under the superintendence of Demetrius Phalereus , keeper of the celebrated library at Alexandria . The expression of Aristobulus is ?} ox ?? ypfAevsta row ha rov vojxov TtavTuy , " the entire interpretation of allthinas vertainina to the law " " and the Tpferpno * entire interpretation of all things pertaining to the law ; and the reference

    should have been , not to the first book of the Preparatio Evangelica , as Dr . Brett has erroneously stated above , but to the twelfth chapter of the thirteenth book , as correctly given by the learned writer f whose accuracy he so wantonly and groundlessly impeaches . It will be universally admitted , that the Jews have , at all times , manifested a strong partiality for the books of the law . This has , no doubt , been in

    some measure owing to the circumstance of these books having been longer in use than the rest ; but it has probably arisen also , in a very considerable degree , from the circumstance of their containing the history of Moses , together with a full account of those institutions to which they owe all the peculiarities of their character and their very existence as a separate people * These books which , in their collective form , are generally known among them by the name of " the law , " were not only first written , but likewise

    continued to be publicly read , to the exclusion of the rest , amidst all the vicissitudes < of the Jewish state , till the time of Antiochus Epiphanes . ! £ then , as some have thought , the Septuagmt Version was undertaken , in the first instance , for the accommodation of those Jews who spoke the Greek language , no supposition can be more natural than that the part which was publicly read in their synagogues prior to the time above mentioned , should be first translated : or if , as Aristeas has asserted , and as later writers have

    maintained , it was made at the request of Ptolemy Phiiadelphus , and undet the sanction of Eleazer , the Jewish High Priest , to be deposited among the literary treasures of the Alexandrine library , a variety of circumstances concur to render it probable that the books containing an account of the institutions of Moses would be the grand object of interest to strangers , since it was by the observance of these institutions alone that the Jews attracted the attention of heathen nations . Besides , it is well known that the version

    of the five books of Moses is more accurate than that ot the remaining books ; and this is easily accounted for on the supposition that the law was first translated , because a difference in the general merits of the version necessarily implies a difference in the qualifications of the translators . But if we . suppose , with Dr . Brett and others , that the whole version was completed at once and by the same individuals , one of two things must have been the consequence , either of which is sufficient to overturn this hypothesis . No perceptible difference would , in that case , have existed between the transla-• P . 26 . t The bid and New Testament connected , i&c > , Vol . JJ . p . 29 , Note k .

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    Canonical Authority of the Books of the Prophets . ^ 03

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 2, 1827, page 503, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1798/page/31/