Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/693

Rh S E P S E P 667 abscesses which have long been observed in some forms of blood-poisoning. It was at one time thought that the pus-cells in the original wound passed into the blood, and, being caught in the capillaries, were the cause of the abscess-formation in the parts distant from the wound; hence the term " pyaemia " or pus in the blood. The pus- cells may enter the blood-stream ; it is not, however, the cellular element that is the essence of the condition, but the organism which the cellular element may carry along with it. The hectic condition observed in a case of long- continued suppuration is in all probability a chronic form of blood-poisoning. In very acute cases, in which the poison is either concentrated, virulent, or in large quantity, death may occur within a very few hours. In other cases the condition may become chronic, and if the strength of the patient can be kept up by stimulants recovery often takes place. The chances of recovery are much greater when the condition is not truly an infective one. When the manufactory of the ptomaine is only in the wound, the organism may be there destroyed by the use of power- ful antiseptics or antifermentatives. The primary cause being removed, the patient may then be saved. When, however, the pathogenic organism gets into the blood- stream and distant foci of infection are formed, the chances of ultimate recovery are greatly diminished. Various un- successful attempts have been made by the internal admi- nistration of antifermentatives so to alter the blood that the micro-organism cannot find in it or the tissues a fit nidus. The point to attend to is to prevent organismal fermentation in wounds by careful antiseptic or rather antifermentative precautions. Just as the word "septic- aemia " has a more general application than can now be strictly allowed if we look to the derivation of the word and the present state of our knowledge, so the word " antiseptic " is applied to all substances which prevent organismal fermentation, although many of these organisms are undoubtedly non-septic in their character. SEPTUAGINT. The Septuagint (ol o, LXX.) or Alex- andrian version of the Old Testament seems to be named from the legend of its composition by seventy, or more exactly seventy-two, translators. In the Letter of Aristeas ( Aristseus) l this legend is recounted as follows. Demetrius Phalereus, keeper of the Alexandrian library, proposed to King Ptolemy II. Philadelphus to have a Greek translation of the Jewish law made for the library. The king con- sented and sent an embassy, of which the author of the letter was a member, to the high priest Eleazar at Jeru- salem asking him to send six ancient, worthy, and learned men from each of the twelve tribes to translate the law for him at Alexandria. Eleazar readily consented and sent the seventy-two men with a precious roll of the law. They were most honourably received at the court of Alexandria and conducted to the island (Pharus), that they might work undisturbed and isolated. When they had come to an agree- ment upon a section Demetrius wrote down their version ; the whole translation Avas finished in seventy-two days. The Jewish community of Alexandria was allowed to have a copy, and accepted the version officially, indeed a curse was laid upon the introduction of any changes in it. There is no question that this Letter is spurious. 2 Aristeas is represented as a heathen, but the real writer must have been a Jew and no heathen. Aristeas is repre- sented as himself a member of the embassy to Eleazar ; but the author of the Letter cannot have been a contem- porary of the events he records, else he would have known 1 Edited by S. Scliard (Frankfort, 1610), by Havercamp (in his Josephus), and by M. Schmidt (in Merx's Archiv, 1868). Comp. Lum- broso, in the Transactions of the Turin Academy, 1869. 2 Scaliger, In Eus. Chron. animadv., No. 1734 ; H. Hody, De Bibli- orum Textibus Oriyinalibus. that Demetrius fell out of favour at the very beginning of the reign of Philadelphus, being said to have intrigued against his succession to the throne. 3 Nor could a genuine honest witness have fallen into the absurd mistake of making delegates from Jerusalem the authors of the Alex- andrian version. The forgery, however, is a very early one. " There is not a court-title, an institution, a law, a magis- tracy, an office, a technical term, a formula, a peculiar phrase in this letter which is not found on papyri or in- scriptions and confirmed by them." 4 That in itself would not necessarily imply a very early date for the piece ; but what is decisive is that the author limits canonicity to the law and knows of no other holy book already translated into Greek. Further, what he tells about Judaea and Jeru- salem is throughout applicable to the period when the Ptolemies bore sway there and gives not the slightest sug- gestion of the immense changes that followed the conquest of Palestine by the Seleucids. Thus, too, it is probable that the Jewish philosopher Aristobulus, who lived under Pto- lemy Philometor (180-145), derived his account of the origin of the LXX. from this Letter, with which it corresponds. 5 If now the Letter is so old, it is incredible that it should contain no elements derived from actual tradition as to the origin of the LXX., and we must try to separate these from the merely fabulous. To this end we must consider what is the main aim and object of the forgery. The chief thing in the Letter is the description of a seven days' symposium of the seventy translators at the Alexandrian court, during which each of them has a question to answer, and raises the admiration of the king for the wisdom produced among the Jews by their knowledge of the law. Further, very great weight is laid on the point that the LXX. is the official and authoritative Bible of the Hellenistic Jews, having been not only formally accepted by the synagogue at Alexandria but authorized by the high priest at Jerusalem and the seventy elders who are in fact its authors. Other matters receive no special emphasis, and the presumption is that what is said about them is not deliberate fiction and in part at least is true. Thus it has always been taken as a fact that the version originated at Alexandria, that the law was translated first, and that this took place in the time of Ptolemy II. On the other hand, it has been thought difficult to believe that the scholarly tastes of the Alexandrians, personified in Deme- trius Phalereus as the presiding genius of the Alexandrian library, could have furnished the stimulus to reduce the translation to writing. One can hardly call this intrinsic- ally improbable in view of the miscellaneous literary tastes of the court of the Ptolemies. But it has been thought much more likely that the Septuagint was written down to satisfy the religious needs of the Jews by a translated Torah, ^since in fact the version is fitted for Jews and could have been intelligible only to them, and indeed never came to be circulated and known outside of their circles. Here, however, we must distinguish between written and oral interpretation. If interpretation was needed in the syna- gogue service, it was an oral interpretation that was given. It was not a natural thing for the Jews to write the trans- lation, indeed they had religious scruples against such a course. Only " Scripture " was to be written, and to put the contents of Scripture in writing in any other than the old holy form was deemed almost a profanation, a feeling of which there is evidence in the Letter itself. 6 It is well 3 Hermippus Callimachius, ap. Diog. Laert. , v. 78. 4 G. Lumbroso, Reckerches sur VEcon. Pol. de VEgypte sous les Lagides (Turin, 1870), p. xiii. 8 Clem. Alex., Strom., i. p. 342, ed. Sylb.; Euseb., Priep. Ev., ix. 6, p. 410 sq. ; comp. Valckeuaer, Diatribe de Aristobulo, Leyclen, 1806, reprinted in Gaisford's ed. of the Prsep. Ev. 8 In what is told of the authors Theopompus and Theodectes, who ventured to insert certain things out of the law in their profane works.