The Old Testament was written mostly in Hebrew. The words did not contain any vowels or vowel points, which were marks placed above a consonant to represent the vowel sound. There were only 22 books before certain ones were divided and the Minor Prophets separated. The Hebrew alphabet consisted of 22 letters.
Our English Old Testament was translated from numerous Hebrew manuscripts—the Prophets—from a copy made about 916 A.D. of the Massoretic text, and other parts from various similar sources. The recently discovered (and oldest) Dead Sea Scrolls of Isaiah, and fragments of all save the book of Esther, confirm the text as we have it.
About 280 B. C. The Septuagint was begun. According to the Bible Treasury, December 1856, “the king of Egypt, Ptolemy Philadelphus (or his father—it is uncertain which), anxious to cultivate the friendship of the Jews, requested of the high priest at Jerusalem to procure competent scribes for him, who might translate the laws of Moses from the Hebrew into the Greek... It seems to have been gradually followed at different times by translations of other parts of the Jewish Scriptures; and the whole executed indeed by various hands, and completed sometime before the advent of Christ.
“This simple account, in substance quoted by one Aristobulus, is cited by Eusebius in his Ecclesiastical History; and it is corroborated in the Prologue to the Apocryphal book of Ecclesiasticus, written in the time of Ptolemy Physcon, more than 100 years before Christ. From 280 B. C. to 120 B. C. may therefore be safely taken as the period of its execution.
“Extravagant stories were current as to its source. Josephus says that seventy-two elders were chosen for the work, six from each tribe, and their labors occupied exactly seventy-two days. Philo even asserts that these seventy-two men were shut up in separate cells; that each of them translated the entice Bible apart from all intercourse with his coadjutors and that these seventy-two independent translations were found to agree exactly, in every particular, with each other ... the name of Septuagint (i. e. seventy) arose from the fiction of the seventy-two elders... there is positive internal evidence that the several books were executed at different times, and by different hands that the translators were natives of Alexandria and not of Palestine.” W. H. J.
The Pentateuch, Psalms and Proverbs were better than the rest. It became commonly used in the days of the Lord Jesus Christ and His apostles who often quoted from it. It has been marvelously preserved so that very few major difficulties arise as to the true text, while it does fail in many more or less minor defects. In at least some cases where the Holy Spirit did not quote from the Septuagint, He caused the New Testament writers to make such changes as suited His design. Theodotion’s translation of Daniel is usually preferred to that of the Septuagint. However, the Septuagint can never take the place of the Hebrew Scriptures.
The Apocrypha, (meaning “hidden”) consists of 14 books from a late Greek translation and which was attached to the Septuagint. They have been rightly disowned as spurious by both the Jews (“unto them were committed the oracles of God”) including Josephus and Cyril of Jerusalem; and also the early Christians, including the Greek Church Council of 363 A. D. Nevertheless the Church of Rome, at the Council of Trent, 1546, formally adopted them! These books do not claim to be the word of God and neither the Lord Jesus nor any of the apostles quoted from them. Many additional books of an apocryphal nature have been discovered.