If we had had the three forms of the text,comparison would have been possible,and we could have reached an opinion concerning what the original might have been.Unfortunately,we do not have the slightest idea.Apart from the Dead Sea Scrolls(Cave of Qumran)dating from a pre-Christian era near the time of Jesus,a papyrus of the Ten Commandments of the Second century A.D.,presenting variations from the classical text,and a few fragments from the Fifth century A.D.(Geniza of Cairo),the oldest Hebrew text of the Bible dates from the Ninth century A.D.,The Septuagint was probably the first translation in Greek.It dates from the Third century B.C.,and was written by Jews in Alexandria.It Was on this text that the New Testament was based.It remained authoritative until the Seventh century A.D.,The basic Greek texts in general use in the Christian world are from the manuscripts catalogued under the title Codex Vaticanus in the Vatican City and Codex Sinaiticus at the British Museum,London.They date from the Fourth century A.D.,At the beginning of the Fifth century A.D.,Saint Jerome was able to produce a text in latin using Hebrew documents.It was later to be called the Vulgate on account of its universal distribution after the Seventh century A.D...For the record,we shall mention the Aramaic version and the Syriac(Peshitta)version,but these are incomplete.All of these versions have enabled specialists to piece together so-called (middle-of-the-road)texts,a sort of compromise between the different versions.Multi-lingual collections have also been produced which juxtapose the Hebrew,Greek,Latin,Syriac,Aramaic and even Arabic versions.This is the case of the famous Walton Bible(London,1667).For the sake of completeness,let us mention that diverging Biblical conceptions are responsible for the fact that the various Christian churches do not all accept exactly the same books and have not until now had identical ideas on translation into the same language.The Ecumenical Translation of the Old Testament is a work of unification written by numerous Catholic and Protestant experts now nearing completion[5]and should result in a work of synthesis.Thus the human element in the Old Testament is seen to be quite considerable.It is not difficult to understand why from version to version,and translation to translation,with all the corrections inevitably resulting,it was possible for the original text to have been transformed during the course of more than two thousand years.