Septuagint

The Septuagint, or Seventy, is the Greek Translation of the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh and forms the basis of the Old Testament in Christian Bibles, known as The Bible.
The word ‘Septuagint’ is from the Latin ‘Versio Septuaginta Interpretum’ meaning ‘the translation of the seventy’.

The Septuagint was first mentioned by Josephus, who referred to it as the work of the seventy.
It is also known as the ‘Greek Old Testament’ and in Latin as the ‘LXX’ (The seventy).
It is attributed to the decision by Greek King of Egypt Ptolemy II Philadelphus. He wished to translate the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible, into Koine Greek for inclusion into the Great Library of Alexandria.
A copy of the Tanakh was sent from Jerusalem at the request of the chief Librarian of the Great Library of Alexandria.
He asked 70 (or 72) Jewish Scholars to translate the Tanakh from Hebrew into Koine Greek, along with additional texts.
The translation started in the third century BCE and was completed by 132 BCE.
It was located in the Library in the Serapeum, which contained around 42,800 scrolls, according to the twelth century Johannes Tzetzes in his Prolegomena on Comedy XX.
Tertullian read the copy, and so did John Chrysostom.

The Books of the Septuagint form the basis of the Old Testament in Bibles of the Western Christian Churches.
However, the Septuagint is not only a translation of the Hebrew Bible, but includes additional texts.
The Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church include these additional texts in their Bibles, and refer to them as the Deuterocanonical Books and consider them to be canonical.
During the Reformation, the Protestant Churches excluded the Deuterocanonical Books from the Septuagint and referred to them as ‘Apocrypha’, preferring to translate from the original Masoritic Text (MT) of Hebrew Bible. They consider them to be non-canonical.
When the English King James Bible was published in 1611, it was decided to include the Apocrypha as a separate chapter, between the Old Testament and the New Testament.

The Apocrypha consist of I Esdras, 2 Esdras, 1 Maccabees, 2 Maccabees, Tobit, Letter of Jeremiah, Prayer of Manasseh, Prayer of Azariah, Judith, Suzanna, Additions to Esther, Wisdom of Solomon, Baruch, Bel and the Dragon.

The Modern Library of Alexandria, Egypt