InJewish tradition,Ptolemy II Philadelphus ordered 72 Jewish elders to translate theTorah intoGreek; the result was theSeptuagint (from theLatin for "seventy"). The Roman numeral seventy, LXX, is the scholarly symbol for the Septuagint.
In Islamic history and in Islamic interpretation the number 70 or 72 is most often and generally hyperbole for an infinite amount:
UnderSocial Security (United States), the age at which a person can receive the maximum retirement benefits (and may do so and continue working without reduction of benefits).
Look upseventy in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
Several languages, especially ones withvigesimal number systems, do not have a specific word for 70: for example,French:soixante-dix,lit.'sixty-ten';Danish:halvfjerds, short forhalvfjerdsindstyve,'three and a half score'. (For French, this is true only in France, Canada and Luxembourg; other French-speaking regions such asBelgium,Switzerland,Aosta Valley andJersey useseptante.)[4]
^Peter Higgins,Number Story. London: Copernicus Books (2008): 19. "Belgian French speakers however grew tired of this and introduced the new names septante, octante, nonante etc. for these numbers".
