PREFACES

OF THE GREEK ROMAN EDITION.

TO SIXTUS V,

ANTONIO CARAFA, CARDINAL,

It is now almost the eighth year since Your Holiness, out of your singular zeal for deserving well of the sacred letters, was the author to Pope Gregory XIII, of blessed memory, that the sacrosanct Bibles of the Seventy interpreters, which the Church, both Greek and Latin, has used since the times of the apostles, should be amended according to the faith of the most approved codices. For since Your Holiness, due to your accurate diligence in reading the divine Scriptures, had noticed that almost infinite passages from them were not cited by the ancient sacred writers in the same way they were circulated in the common Greek editions of the Bibles, and had thought that this variety of readings had flowed from no other source than from a multiple and confused ancient interpretation; you most rightly judged that one should appeal to copies of the best quality, from which, as far as could be done, the true and sincere Scripture of the Seventy interpreters might be elicited. From this it happens that I greatly admire not only your piety but also your wisdom, when I see that the same thing occurred to your Holiness to polish the Greek Bibles many years later as I learned that those holy Fathers, gathered at Trent, led by authority and reverence, had once thought regarding the true and pure Septuagint interpretation, the acts of which Council are not yet published.