'" Now as Origen, the
author of the Hexapla, must have understood Hebrew, we cannot suppose
that he would have urged this last text as so decisive, if the Greek
version had not agreed here with the Hebrew text; nor that these wise
Jews would have been at all distressed by this quotation, unless the
Hebrew text had read agreeably to the words "to death," on which the
argument principally depended; for by quoting it immediately, they would
have triumphed over him, and reprobated his Greek version. This,
whenever they could do it was their constant practice in their disputes
with the Christians. Origen himself, who laboriously compared the Hebrew
text with the Septuagint, has recorded the necessity of arguing with the
Jews from such passages only as were in the Septuagint agreeable to the
Hebrew. Wherefore, as Origen had carefully compared the Greek version of
the Septuagint with the Hebrew text; and as he puzzled and confounded
the learned Jews, by urging upon them the reading "to death" in this
place; it seems almost impossible not to conclude, both from Origen's
argument and the silence of his Jewish adversaries, that the Hebrew text
at that time actually had the word agreeably to the version of the
seventy.
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