The Jews would have considered them as profaned in being exhibited to the view of pagan nations.

In fact, the learned men of other countries would not have been able to read them; for the Jews secluded themselves so closely from the rest of mankind, that their language was, in that age, scarcely ever heard beyond the confines of Judea and Galilee.
Ptolemy very naturally thought that a copy of these sacred books would be a great acquisition to his library.

They constituted, in fact, the whole literature of a nation which was, in some respects, the most extraordinary that ever existed on the globe.

Ptolemy conceived the idea, also, of not only adding to his library a copy of these writings in the original Hebrew, but of causing a translation of them to be made into Greek, so that they might easily be read by the Greek and Roman scholars who were drawn in great numbers to his capital by the libraries and the learned institutions which he had established there.

The first thing to be effected, however, in accomplishing either of these plans, was to obtain the consent of the Jewish authorities.