Septuagint, the first Bible translation – 1

It often comes as a surprise to laypeople to learn that ancient copies of the Bible vary, sometimes in minor ways, but sometimes, also, in important ways. Variation exists between any two manuscripts of the Bible, even when they are written in the same language. But apart from minor variations among ancient manuscripts, when all the evidence from antiquity is compared, two important traditions of the biblical text emerge. They are the Masoretic text and the Septuagint. The Masoretic text (MT, for short) is the Hebrew text as standardized by Jewish scribes in the tenth century CE Although our oldest extant copy of the MT is about a hundred years later, the texts these scribes worked with were obviously much older than the tenth century CE and were directly linked to still earlier texts, as we now know from the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The Septuagint, often referred to as LXX, is a translation of one form of the Hebrew Bible into Greek. It is the source of this version with which we will be concerned in this article. The earliest surviving complete copies of this Greek Septuagint date to the fourth and fifth centuries CE As we shall see, the translation itself was made in the third century BC, and the Hebrew manuscripts on which the translation was based are even earlier. Moreover, it is clear that the Hebrew texts on which the Septuagint was based varied considerably from the Hebrew Bible that has come down to us in the MT. Sometimes, scholars prefer the reading in the MT; other times, the reading in the LXX seems more reliable.

Our interest here, however, is not in the MT or even the LXX as such, but rather in a famous document, called the Letter of Aristeas, that tells us how the Septuagint came into being.

The Letter of Aristeas purports to be written in the Egyptian metropolis of Alexandria by a certain Aristeas to a certain philocrates, whom he calls his “brother.” The subject is how the Pentateuch—in Hebrew, the Torah, the Five Books of Moses—happened to be translated from Hebrew into Greek. According to the letter, the intellectually curious Ptolemy II (Philadelphus) (285–247 BC), who ruled his empire from Alexandria, wanted his librarian Demetrius to assemble a library containing a copy of every book in the world. When Demetrius had collected over 200,000 books, he so advised the king, adding that he hoped to increase the number soon to 500,000. Among the books still missing was “the lawbooks of the Jews [which] are worth translation and inclusion in your royal library” (verse 10). [1]

The king replied, “What is there to prevent you from doing this? Everything for your needs has been put at your disposal” (verse 11).
Demetrius replied, “Translation is needed. They use letters characteristic of the language of the Jews, just as Egyptians use the formation of their letters in accordance with their own language.”

The king then ordered a letter to be written in his name to Eleazar, the high priest of the Jews in Jerusalem. At the same time, the king ordered the release of over 100,000 Jews forcibly removed to Egypt some years earlier by the king’s father. In Ptolemy’s letter to the high priest, Eleazar was requested to dispatch 72 men skilled in the law (six from each of the 12 tribes) to Alexandria to make an accurate translation of the law into Greek. The translators were to be “elders of exemplary lives, with the experience of the law and ability to translate it.”

In reply, Eleazar wrote:

 

“Eleazar the high priest to King Ptolemy, dear friend, greeting. Good health to you and to Queen Arsinoe, your sister and to your children … On receipt of your letter we rejoiced greatly because of your purpose and noble plan … we selected elders, honorable men and true, six from each tribe, whom we have sent with the law in their possession” (verses 41–42, 46).

When the translators arrived in Alexandria, they were accorded unusual honor:

“The king was anxious to meet the members of the deputation, so he gave orders to dismiss all the other court officials and to summon these delegates. The unprecedented nature of this step was very clear to all, because it was an established procedure that important bona fide visitors should be granted an audience with the king only four days after arrival, while representatives of kings or important cities are [were] rarely admitted to the court within thirty days. However, he deemed the present arrivals to be deserving of greater honor, having regard to the preeminence of him who had sent them. So he dismissed all the officials whom he considered superfluous and remained walking among the delegates until he had greeted the whole delegation” (verses 174–175).

The translators showed the king the Hebrew scrolls they had brought with them, “fine skins on which the law had been written in letters of gold in Jewish characters; the parchment had been excellently worked, and the joining together of the letters was imperceptible” (verse 176). In response, the king did obeisance about seven times, and said, “I offer to you my thanks, gentlemen, and to him who sent you even more, and most of all to the God whose oracles these are” (verse 177).

The king then held a week-long series of banquets for the translators and set them up in “the finest apartments … near the citadel” (verse 181).

Three days later the librarian Demetrius took the 72 translators across a jetty to an island a mile out into the Mediterranean Sea. There the translators were installed in a sumptuous building to begin their labors. They completed their work in exactly 72 days (verses 301–307).

The resulting translation was then read to the local community of Jews, who acclaimed it with a great ovation (verse 308). The king rejoiced greatly because his purpose had been accomplished (verse 312). When the translation was read to him, “he marveled profoundly at the genius of the lawgiver” (verse 312). On the departure of the translators, he gave “to each one three robes or the finest materials, two talents of gold, a cup worth a talent, and complete furnishing for a dining room” (verse 319).

Before asking how reliable this account is, we should first ask whether we are working from an accurate copy of Aristeas’s letter. The Letter of Aristeas has survived in about two dozen medieval manuscripts. The earliest of these is from the 11th century CE, more than a millennium after the document’s composition. To bridge that gap, scholars have sifted through the works of ancient Jewish authors (such as Philo, Josephus and rabbinic sources) and Christian writers (Justin, Jerome and Eusebius, for example) for any wording that might be an authentic fragment of the Letter of Aristeas. They have also carefully compared the medieval manuscripts of the letter. In this way, they have arrived at a Greek text that approaches, if it does not precisely duplicate, the original letter of Aristeas.

Although Aristeas claims to be an eyewitness to, even a participant in, the events he describes (which would mean he lived and wrote about 270 BC), there is virtually no scholar today who would uphold that claim. Dates anywhere from the late third century BC to the first century CE have been proposed for this document’s composition. Most scholars, however, now agree on the mid-second century BC as the most likely period for the composition of the letter.

The entire letter, now divided into 322 verses, is not long—about the size of the Gospel of John. Although the subject of the letter is, broadly speaking, the translation of the Law for the king’s library, very little space is devoted to the translation itself, only verses 9–11, 28–50 and 301–317. The rest of the letter is, however, more or less tangentially related to the translation. For example, verses 51–82 contain a detailed description of the gifts sent by the king to the High Priest Eleazar, and about a third of the work—from verse 187 to verse 294—is given over to a display of each translator’s wisdom.

The third-century Christian leader Eusebius used the title “Concerning the Translation of the Law of the Jews,” and this may have been the letter’s original title. [2]

At the very least, Eusebius’s title preserves the topic that was of greatest interest to almost all ancient and modern readers.

Note that Aristeas claims that the impetus for the translation came not from the Jews, but from royal Egyptian authority. In support of this claim, some contemporary scholars make reference to Ptolemy’s documented interest in all sorts of literature, especially of subject peoples like the Jews. In addition, in Greek translation, the Law could serve as a sort of constitution for the semiautonomous Jewish community of Alexandria. [3]

NOTES:

[1] The English translation used in this article is from R.J.H. Shutt, “Letter of Aristeas (A New Translation and Introduction),” which can be found in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, vol. 2, ed. James H. Charlesworth (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1985). The well-known collection of ancient documents edited by R.H. Charles (The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament in English, 2 vols. [Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1913]) also contains an English translation of the Letter of Aristeas prepared by H.T. Andrews. Shutt’s renderings are more up to date, but Andrews’s introduction and notes are fuller.

[2] See Jellicoe, The Septuagint and Modern Study, p. 30.

[3] Scholars who support royal patronage, for these or other reasons, include Dominique Barthélemy, “Pourquoi la Torah a-t-elle été traduite en grec?” in On Language, Culture and Religion: In Honor of Eugene A. Nida, ed. Matthew Black and William A. Smalley (The Hague: Mouton, 1974) (reprinted in Barthélemy, Etudes d’histoire du text de l’Ancien Testament (Fribourg, Switz.: Editions Universitaires, 1978); and Elias J Bickerman, “The Septuagint as a Translation,” in Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 28 (1959), pp. 1–39.