Vetus Testamentum Graecum: Septuagint with Latin Translation

that not everything is represented in them which could have been brought forward from the common writers either to confirm the Vatican readings or to fill in those things which are not held in the Seventy; since they are read in common books, anyone can acquire them from there without any effort. But those things found in manuscript books, which seemed to pertain either to indicating the varieties of ancient readings and interpretations (sometimes reported under the name of a "gloss," because their authorship was uncertain), or to establishing the Vatican text and illustrating its more obscure places, these certainly have not been passed over. The order of the books in the Vatican exemplar, while almost the same as that which circulates among the Greeks, varies from the common editions in that it has the twelve Prophets first, and these same ones disposed differently; then the remaining four, just as they are commonly published.

We understand that this order is the true one from the fact that the ancient ecclesiastical writers acknowledge and approve it. Although there is no division of chapters in the whole exemplar (for in the new edition, the convenience of the readers has been consulted), nevertheless, in the book of the four Prophets, a certain obscure distinction appears, almost similar to that which Saint Dorotheus the Martyr, who lived under Constantine the Great, describes. The books of the Maccabees are absent from this exemplar, and likewise almost the entire book of Genesis; for with the membranes consumed by long age, it is mutilated from the beginning of the book up to chapter XLVII. Likewise, the book of Psalms, which is defective from Psalm 105 to 138 due to excessive age. But these have been emended from the collation of other codices.

But if some things in this edition will appear, as Blessed Jerome says, either torn and inverted, because they were not supplied and distinguished by Origen under daggers and asterisks; or obscure and disturbed, because they do not agree with the Latin Vulgate and are held more openly and expressly in some other editions; the reader must be admonished that the industry of this polishing did not aim at making this edition, from the mixed interpretations of those who are named above (like that which Blessed Jerome writes was [created] by the Greek...