Page 44
Scaliger's Fourth Objection.
If Eleazar and the Jerusalem Sanhedrim had approved this Translation, why did the Hebraizing Jews so hate it, as to keep an Annual Fast, and day of afflicting their Souls in remembrance of it? why did they say there was three days of darkness when the Law was translated? and apply to this time and action that of Solomon (Eccl. 3.) [There is a time to rent.] Thus pro∣ceeds that learned Man to Catechise his Readers: If a Puny, whose ambition it is to sit at the feet of that great Oracle, may have leave to solve these que∣ries, I would thus unty these knots with which he snarles this story.
The great Council appointed the Seventy to translate the Bible, to gratifie Ptolemy, but never intended that Translation should be used in Synagogues. Neither does Josephus (Antiq. 12. 2.) assert any thing of that tendency; but that the whole Assembly of the Jews of Aegypt, with their Magistrates and Elders passed their joynt Vote that it should be allowed to be read in their publick Assemblies. Now it was this Vote which the Hebrews abominat∣ed, it was not to the Translation it self: but what past towards the ratifying of it for this use, in those three days of darkness, wherein it was read to the Jews of Aegypt, and obtained this approbation, to which they applyed that Sentence of the Royal Preacher, [There is a time to rent,] the Aegyptian Jews, giving hereby to their Brethren of Judaea the like scandal to that, which the Latines gave the Greeks, by inserting [de filioque] into the common Creed, without common consent; and laying a Foundation for that Schism, which about an hundred Years after this, was perfected by Onias, who with the consent of Ptolemy Philometor, (Jos. Antiq. 13. 6.) (in pretence of fulfilling that Prophesie Isaiah 19. 18.) [There shall five Cities in Aegypt speak the Lan∣guage of Canaan, and one of them shall be the City of the Sun] erected, at He∣liopolis, a Temple after the similitude of that at Jerusalem, and a Church of Jews there (whereof he became High Priest) distinct from that in Judaea, (whereof Alcimus was his Priest) by the name of Helenists or Grecians; as Scaliger observes, and Doctor Hammond demonstrates, from (Act. 11. 20.) where they that upon St. Steven's Martyrdom, travell'd to Antioch, are said [To preach the Lord Jesus to the Greeks;] that is, to the Grecizing Jews; for it is said of the same men, in the preceding verse, that in that their Pe∣rambulation they preached to the Jews only. A plain proof that the com∣pellation of Greeks was not imposed upon them, from their living in Greece, but their holding of that Church, which used the Greek Translation of the Seventy.