Septuagint, the first Bible translation – 3

The Aristeas purpose was really to establish and defend the authority of this Greek translation of the Pentateuch. That purpose lies implicit in much of the letter. It comes to the fore, near the end, in the description of the public reading and ratification of the translation:

“Demetrius assembled the company of the Jews in the place where the task of the translation had been finished, and read it to all, in the presence of the translators, who received a great ovation from the crowded audience for being responsible for great blessings.… As the books were read, the priests stood up, with the elders from among the translators and from the representatives of the ‘Community,’ and with the leaders of the people, and said, ‘Since this version has been made rightly and reverently, and in every respect accurately, it is good that this should remain exactly so, and there should be no revision.’ There was general approval of what they said, and they commanded that a curse should be laid, as was their custom, on anyone who should alter the version by any addition or change to any part of the written text, or any deletion either.  This was a good step taken, to ensure that the words were preserved completely and permanently in perpetuity” (verses 308–311).

What we have here is a close parallel to the Israelites’ ratification of the Torah at Mt. Sinai, as described in Exodus 19 and 24:

“Moses went and repeated to the people all the commands of the Lord and all the norms; and all the people answered with one voice, saying, ‘All things that the Lord has commanded we will do!’… Then he took record of the covenant and read it aloud to the people. And they said, ‘All that the Lord has spoken we will faithfully do’” (Exodus 24:3, 7).

For the author of the Letter of Aristeas, the Greek translation constituted Holy Writ as authentic and binding as the Hebrew text associated with Moses. The Hebrew text was divinely inspired; equally so was the Greek translation we call the Septuagint.  [1]

There is a contemporary parallel to this in the way the King James Version, despite its many well-known errors, is regarded as sacred by many believers. One writer recently described what he called the “still widespread belief that the King James Version is the original Word of God and that any translation that differs from it is a perversion, a devil’s masterpiece produced by people with a low view of Scripture.” [2]  That same attitude often plagues modem translators in their efforts to improve Bible translations.

Perhaps the author of the Letter of Aristeas, writing a hundred years or so after the Septuagint’s translation of the Pentateuch, felt the need to defend it against a rival translation or revision.  Perhaps this “rival” Greek text was produced by Jews for whom the Hebrew text retained a unique sanctity and authority. When they read the Septuagint, they noted—as do modern readers—many passages where it differed from the Hebrew text. And they felt it was their duty to revise the Greek so as to reflect this Hebrew truth.

Such rival Greek texts eventually led to a series of Jewish revisions of the Septuagint, culminating in the Greek rescensions attributed to Aquila, Theodotion and Symmachus. Although these three Jewish revisers were not active until the second century CE., similar activity on the pan of others can be traced back to pre-Christian times. The appearance of one or another of these “antecedents” may have stimulated the author of the Letter of Aristeas to prepare his defense of an older, more original form of the Pentateuch, a defense that would later be expanded to cover the earliest Greek translation of the entire Old Testament.

Today, when scholars are confronted with differences between the Septuagint and the received, or Masoretic Hebrew text, they seriously consider the possibility that the Greek reading may be superior because differences may result from the fact that the earliest Greek translators used a different Hebrew Vorlage (underlying text). Such an explanation, however, was far from the minds of the Jews being described here.

It would be nice if we knew more about the Letter of Aristeas and its author. But perhaps part of its fascination lies in its enigmas. In any event, it remains our chief ancient witness to the origins and nature of the Septuagint, the earliest translation of the Bible.

NOTES:

[1]  A number of scholars have made this point, none more effectively than Harry M. Orlinsky in “The Septuagint as Holy Writ and the Philosophy of the Translators,” Hebrew Union College Annual 46 (1975), pp. 89–114.
[2]  Robert G. Bratcher in The Word of God: A Guide to English Versions of the Bible, ed. Lloyd R. Bailey (Atlanta: John Knox, 1982), p. 165.