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WHEN Alexander had reigned twelve years, and after him Ptolemy Soter
forty years, Philadelphus then took the kingdom of Egypt, and held it forty
years within one. He procured the law to be interpreted, and set free those
that were come from Jerusalem into Egypt, and were in slavery there, who
were a hundred and twenty thousand. The occasion was this: Demetrius Phalerius,
who was library keeper to the king, was now endeavoring, if it were possible,
to gather together all the books that were in the habitable earth, and
buying whatsoever was any where valuable, or agreeable to the king's inclination,
(who was very earnestly set upon collecting of books,) to which inclination
of his Demetrius was zealously subservient. And when once Ptolemy asked
him how many ten thousands of books he had collected, he replied, that
he had already about twenty times ten thousand; but that, in a little time,
he should have fifty times ten thousand. But be said he had been informed
that there were many books of laws among the Jews worthy of inquiring after,
and worthy of the king's library, but which, being written in characters
and in a dialect of their own, will cause no small pains in getting them
translated into the Greek tongue;
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that the character in which they are written seems to be like to that which
is the proper character of the Syrians, and that its sound, when pronounced,
is like theirs also; and that this sound appears to be peculiar to themselves.
Wherefore he said that nothing hindered why they might not get those books
to be translated also; for while nothing is wanting that is necessary for
that purpose, we may have their books also in this library. So the king
thought that Demetrius was very zealous to procure him abundance of books,
and that he suggested what was exceeding proper for him to do; and therefore
he wrote to the Jewish high priest, that he should act accordingly.