The preface says: In dealing with the Septuagint in and for itself we feel that we are in a humble way acting as pioneers. For hitherto the Septuagint has been regarded only as an aid to the understanding of the Hebrew. We have reversed that procedure and have regarded the Hebrew only as an aid to the understanding of the Septuagint. This would be in a strict sense preposterous, were it not for the admitted fact that the Greek translation of the Old Testament has occasionally preserved traces of readings which are manifestly superior to those of the Massoretic text. That text, it should be remembered, was constituted centuries after the Septuagint was already in vogue in the Greek-speaking portion of the Jewish and Christian world.
Henry Barclay Swete (1835 - 1917), an English Biblical scholar, offered the selections of the Koine Greek version of the Hebrew Bible, translated in stages between the third and second Centuries BC in Alexandria.