The Septuagint (from the Latin: septuāgintā literally “seventy”; often abbreviated as 70 in Roman numerals, i.e., LXX; sometimes called the Greek Old Testament) is the earliest extant Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures. It is estimated that the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, known as the Torah or Pentateuch, were translated in the mid-3rd century BCE and the remaining texts were translated in the 2nd century BCE. The Septuagint was the Greek translation of the Hebrew Torah, Prophets and Writings (TaNaKh) and was in wide use by the time of the story of Jesus and Paul simply because most Jews could no longer read Hebrew. For this reason it is quoted more often than the Hebrew text in the New Testament, particularly in the Pauline epistles, by the Apostolic Fathers and later by the Greek Church Fathers.