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nevertheless occupies a position in the history of divine revelation which forms a distinct epoch. For it was the first opportunity afforded to the gentile world of becoming acquainted with the Old Testament revelation, and thus the first introduction of Japheth into the tents of Shem. At the same time therewith, a distinct breaking down of the barriers of the Old Testament particularism was effected. The Alexandrine translation was, therefore, an event which prepared the way for that Christianity, in which the appointment of the religion of Israel to be the religion of the world is perfected. This version, at the outset, created for Christianity the language which it was to use; for the New Testament Scriptures are written in the popular Greek dialect (κοινή) with an Alexandrine colouring. And in a general way we may say that Alexandrinism moulded the forms beforehand, which Christianity was afterwards to fill up with the substance of the gospel. As the way of Jesus Christ lay by Egypt (Mat 2:15), so the way of Christianity also lay by Egypt, and Alexandria in particular.
Equally worthy of respect on account of its antiquity and independence, though not of the same importance as the lxx from a religio-historical point of view, is the Targum or Chaldee version of the Psalms: a version which only in a few passages assumed the form of a paraphrase with reference to Midrash interpretations. The date of its composition is uncertain. But as there was a written Targum to the Book of Job^[1] even during the time of the Temple, there was also a Targum of the Psalms, though bearing in itself traces of manifold revisions, which probably had its origin during the duration of the Temple. In distinction from the Targums of Onkelos to the Pentateuch and of Jonathan to the minor Prophets the Targum of the Psalms belongs to the so-called Jerusalem group,^[2] for the Aramaic idiom in which it is written-while, as the Jerusalem Talmud shows, it is always distinguished in no small degree from the Palestinian popular dialect as being the language of the literature-abounds in the same manner as the former in Greek words (as אנגּלין ἄγγελοι, אכסדרין ἐξέδραι, קירים κύριος),

1. Vid., Tosefta to Sabb. xvi. Jer. Sabb. xiv. 1, Bab. Sabb. 115a, Sofrim v., 15.
2. Vid., Geiger, Urschrift und Uebersetzungen der Bibel, S. 166f.