Didascalicon, Book IV: the order and number of the divine books
Chapter V. On the interpreters
The interpreters of the Old Testament: first the Seventy, whom Ptolemy, surnamed Philadelphus, king of Egypt, most sagacious in all literature, when he emulated in the study of libraries Pisistratus the tyrant of the Athenians, who first among the Greeks established a library, and Seleucus, Nicanor, Alexander and the other earlier men who had applied themselves to wisdom, gathering into his library not only the writings of the Gentiles but also the divine letters, so that seventy thousand books were found at Alexandria in his time, asking of Eleazar the high priest, caused the Scriptures of the Old Testament to be interpreted into the Greek tongue from the Hebrew. But, each separated in separate cells, they interpreted all things so by the Holy Spirit that nothing was found in the codex of any of them which differed from the others even in the order of words; on which account theirs is one interpretation, but Jerome says that no faith is to be given to this report. The second and third and fourth are Aquila, Symmachus and Theodotion, of whom the first, Aquila, was a Jew. Symmachus and Theodotion were Ebionite heretics. Yet usage has prevailed that after the Seventy the Churches of the Greeks receive their copies and read them. The fifth is the common version, whose author is unknown, whence it specially claimed to itself to be called the fifth. The sixth and seventh are Origen’s, whose codices Eusebius and Pamphilus published. The eighth is Jerome’s, which is rightly preferred to the others, for it is both more faithful to the words and clearer in the perspicuity of the sense.