3.The earliest extant version of the Old Testament is the translation executed in Alexandria in the third century before the Christian era; this version became known as the Septuagint and more recently, the Alexandrian version.It was commissioned at the behest of the Egyptian King, Ptolemy, who wished to expand the celebrated library of Alexandria to include the wisdom of all the ancient religions of the world. Because Greek was the language of Alexandria, the Scriptures therefore had to be translated into that language.The earliest writer who gives an account of the Septuagint version is Aristobulus, a Jewish author who lived at the commencement of the second century B.C. In his Letter of Aristeas, he explains that the version of "the Law into Greek" was completed under the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus, and that Demetrius Phalerus had been employed about it. Since it is documented that Demetrius Phalerus died at the beginning of the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus, it has been reasonably inferred that Aristobulus was a witness that the work of translation had been commenced under Ptolemy Soter.Ptolemy contacted the chief priest, Eleazar, in Jerusalem and asked him to send translators. Six were chosen from each of the twelve tribes of Israel, giving us the commonly accepted number of seventy-two. (Other accounts have the number at seventy or seventy-five.) Only the Torah (the first five books) was translated initially, but eventually other translations (and even compositions) were added to the collection. By the time of our Lord, the Septuagint was the Bible in use by most Hellenistic Jews.Thus, when the Apostles quote the Jewish Scripture in their own writings, the overwhelmingly dominant source for their wording comes directly from the Septuagint (LXX). Given that the spread of the Gospel was most successful among the Gentiles and Hellenistic Jews, it made sense that the LXX would be the Bible for the early Church. Following in the footsteps of those first generations of Christians, the Orthodox Church continues to regard the LXX as its only canonical text of the Old Testament. There are a number of differences between the canon of the LXX and that of Roman Catholic Church and Protestant Christians, based on differences in translation tradition or doctrine.Pentateuch: https://orthodoxwiki.org/PentateuchSeptuagint:Koine Greek:Koine Greek is the popular form of Greek which emerged in post-Classical antiquity (c.300 BC – AD 300)