The name given to this collection of translations (together with the Apocrypha books in Greek which Hellenized Jews themselves added) was an indication of how proud Greek-speaking Jews were of their achievement; it became known as the Septuagint, from the Latin word for seventy. This was a reference to the seventy-two translators who, legend said, had produced it in seventy-two days, and who were themselves an image of the seventy elders who had been with Moses on the sacred mountain during the Exodus.
