The Bible's first translation was made for Jews who could no longer read it

Alexandria in the third century BCE held the largest Jewish community outside the land of Israel, and its language was Greek. Grandchildren of immigrants could no longer follow the Hebrew scrolls read in the synagogue. So, beginning around 250 BCE with the Torah and continuing for over a century, the scriptures were translated into Greek, the first time the Bible crossed into another language.

A famous legend grew around the project. The Letter of Aristeas tells how King Ptolemy II requested the translation for the great Library of Alexandria and how seventy-two elders produced it, a story later retellings embellished until each translator, working alone, produced the identical text by miracle. Scholars read Aristeas as legend written well after the fact, but the legend preserved the number: the translation is called the Septuagint, from the Latin for seventy. Behind the miracle story is a plainer fact: a community rebuilt its scripture inside its new language rather than lose it.

The consequences are still on every page of the New Testament, whose authors overwhelmingly quote this Greek version. Sometimes it differs from the Hebrew, and the seam is visible to anyone. Where Psalm 40:6 says "You have opened my ears," with a Hebrew verb that literally means dug, the Greek reads "you prepared a body for me," and it is the Greek wording the letter to the Hebrews quotes and builds on. Two ancient wordings of one verse, one in each Testament.