Vetus Testamentum Graecum: Septuagint with Latin Translation

However, the goodness of the Vatican book was not perceived so much from the wonderful consensus of these codices as from those places which are partly cited and partly explained by the ancient sacred writers, who almost never fail to exhibit and restore the readings of this copy, unless they are citing some place from other translators, not the Seventy. Since their edition was to be polished with a new emendation, it was rightly polished according to the norm of this book, which is by far the most ancient of all and alone is inscribed "According to the Seventy." Or rather, the book itself has been expressed, as far as could be done, word for word, whether through ancient orthography or through the errors of the copyist. For that old and now obsolete spelling of that age has not been represented in some places; yet in all other respects, unless where a manifest slip of the copyist appeared, not even a hair's breadth, as they say, has been departed from the authority of this book, not even in those things which, if not lacking a fault, certainly seemed not to lack the suspicion of a fault. For it seemed better that places even somewhat suspect (for it is impossible that some stain does not remain in an exemplar, however purged) be left as they are in the archetype, rather than be emended by the ingenuity or conjecture of someone. This proved true, as many things which at first seemed either faulty or mutilated in this codex were later found to be true and sincere when compared with other books.

For in the books of the Prophets, which most especially in this exemplar (with the exception of Daniel) taste of the pure edition of the Seventy, it is wonderful how many things are not contained, which were nonetheless understood to be rightly absent and not of those translators, both from the commentaries of ancient Greek and Latin writers and from manuscript books in which those things were added under asterisks. And this method was also preserved in the notations, in which, although many things are sought from Greek commentaries—which circulate in manuscript codices partly mutilated and partly written in various ways in some places—they have been described exactly as they are found in the archetypal exemplars, so that they may be restored at the discretion of each individual, with the aid of books. Nor should that be omitted which also pertains to the notations: