THE LETTER OF ARISTEAS

THE SEPTUAGINT AND THE LETTER OF ARISTEAS

A CRITIQUE of the APOCRYPHAL BOOK "THE LETTER OF ARISTEAS"

University of St. Andrews, Scotland.

(Summary of a lecture by J. Davila on 11 February 1999)

Dr.James R. Davila - Lecturer in Early Jewish Studies, St. Mary's College, University of St. Andrews, Fife, Scotland.

Note: The scholar who wrote this is not a King James Only man, and he accepts the widespread idea that there was some kind of Greek translation of the Old Testament. This makes his research all the more devastating to those who promote the idea of a Pre-Christian LXX version. The LXX defenders like to use quotes from people like Josephus, Philo, Augustine, Epiphaneus, Eusebius, Irenaeus and Justin Martyr who refer to the Letter of Aristeas as proof of this LXX version, and who themselves further embellished the accounts of this alleged Greek translation.

The account given by Josephus, who is merely repeating the information found in the Letter of Aristeas, can be seen here: http://www.earlyjewishwritings.com/text/josephus/ant12.html

For another account of how the Letter of Aristeas is a work of fiction, see Mr. Daniels article here: http://www.scionofzion.com/septuagint1.htm

We quote here the more pertinent facts Dr. Davila has put together and capitalized various phrases for emphasis, but you can see the whole article at the site provided. Nothing has been taken out of context. - WK

Professor Davila states: "The title of Aristeas in the MSS is not "the letter of," rather just "Aristeas to Philocrates." OUR EARLIEST WITNESS, the first century CE Jewish historian JOSEPHUS, gives the title as "the book of Aristaeus." Eusebius (the fourth century CE church historian) calls it "On the Translation of the Law of the Jews." The work PURPORTS TO BE an account of the translation of the Pentateuch and to be written in the middle of the 3rd century BCE, BUT IT IS UNIVERSALLY AGREED THAT ARISTEAS IS PSEUDONYMOUS AND WAS COMPOSED MUCH LATER..

Aristeas also gives us an unusual answer to one important question we ask of many OT Pseudepigrapha: is it a Jewish or a Christian composition? A straightforward solution is often impossible, but there is one for Aristeas: it was transmitted in a MS tradition by Christians, it claims to be composed by a pagan, yet it was clearly written by a Jew and perhaps went through a couple of Jewish editions. The basic story tells how the Egyptian king Ptolemy II had a Greek translation of the Pentateuch made for the Library of Alexandria.

Josephus, as we shall see, gives us reason to believe that THE TEXT WE HAVE IS INTERPOLATED...In 1968 Sidney Jellicoe knew of 23 MSS dating from the 11th century CE on (i.e., all MS evidence for Aristeas is medieval or later). I am not aware of any new MSS recovered since then .

Aristeas was quite influential in early Christian circles because the Greek translation of the Old Testament (the LXX) was adopted by Christians as their inspired scripture to go with the Greek NT.

[Commentator's Note: Dr. Davila apparently has not yet connected all the dots in his own arguments. He still believes the party line about the existence of an authoritative Greek translation of some kind, that supposedly was used and quoted by the New Testament writers. It is the Catholic church that first propagated the idea that the Hebrew texts had become corrupted and that, in places, it was the alleged LXX translation that "restored" the true text. Today, most evangelicals hold to this same theory, and most modern bible versions are based on the Catholic N.T. texts as well. We live in interesting times. - W.K.]

AUGUSTINE (in _City of God_ 18.42-43, written by 427 AD) IS CLEARLY DEPENDENT ON ARISTEAS IN HIS RETELLING OF THE STORY. He mentions that the king was Ptolemy Philadelphus, that Eleazar was the high priest, and that there were 72 translators--6 from each tribe. He also notes that in his time the translation was called the Septuagint. Named after 70 translators, presumably because the "Septuaginta et duum" was too much of a bother to say. But HIS STORY IS AN IMPROVED VERSION which we can trace back at least to the first century CE: the translators independently produced identical translations, thus proving the divine authority of the LXX.

JEROME (a contemporary of Augustine; see his _Preface to the Pentateuch_) knew both Hebrew and Greek and could compare the LXX with the Hebrew Bible, SO HE KNEW AUGUSTINES'S STORY WAS NONSENSE AND SAID SO in the preface to his translation of the Pentateuch from Hebrew into Latin. He does seem to think that whole HB (not just the Pentateuch) was done at once under Ptolemy Lagus (the father of Philadelphus) and he asserts that the translation was distorted because Ptolemy was a Platonist and the translators didn't want to offend him. Jerome's agenda was to justify his own translation of the HB from Hebrew.

EPIPHANIUS (c. 315-403; in _On Weights and Measures_ 3-11) has the wildest version of story. It is partly dependent on Aristeas, but is full of detail about how Ptolemy shut the translators up in pairs and took strict measures to keep them from collusion (even giving them separate cooks, and skylights rather than windows). Having taken these precautions, he then fed each pair of translators one book at a time until each pair had translated every book of the HB, plus the 22 books of the Apocrypha. The king then had the 36 translations compared before him and, of course, they were found to be identical.

IRENAEUS (c. 175 CE; _Against the Heresies_ 3.21.2) tells a brief version of the story, perhaps based on Aristeas, although it contains much else. Ptolemy son of Lagus had 70 elders brought from Jerusalem. He had them do the translations separately so they wouldn't conspire to hide things in their scriptures from him. But when translations were compared, they were found to be identical... Irenaeus uses the story to defend the divine inspiration of the LXX so he can use it for messianic prophecies even when it disagrees with the original Hebrew.

JUSTIN MARTYR (fl. c. 100-165 CE; _Apology_ 1.31), the first extant Christian writer to tell the story of LXX origins. In the context of a discussion of the Hebrew prophets, he relates that Ptolemy king of Egypt SENT TO HEROD (SIC!) king of the Jews and asked for a copy of the books of prophecies. When he found he couldn't read them (they were in Hebrew, after all), he sent again for translators and the books were translated into Greek. There is nothing in this version of the story about separating the translators, but Justin is the first recorded interpreter who misunderstood that whole HB was translated at once, rather than the Pentateuch alone. By implication he was defending the veracity of the LXX, since he goes on to condemn the Jews for disbelieving in Christian claims about messianic prophecies in the OT (including Isa 7:14). JUSTIN MAY HAVE READ ARISTEAS, BUT IT IS ALSO POSSIBLE THAT HE IS JUST WORKING FROM GENERAL LEGEND (perhaps even oral traditions?) ABOUT LXX ORIGINS.

III. Despite its importance for early Christian writers and despite its own claim to be an Egyptian pagan work, the final edition of Aristeas is clearly Jewish.

IV. There is also some evidence for the function of Aristeas (and the translation story in general) during time it was transmitted in Jewish circles. The most important data come from:

JOSEPHUS (_Antiquites_ 12.1-118), who gives a close paraphrase of the work as part of his overall agenda to justify Judaism for a hellenistic/Roman audience. He puts no more emphasis on the translation itself than did the original Aristeas; the real interest of the story for Josephus seems to be the good relations it shows between Jews and the Egyptian king as well as the king's deep respect for Jewish tradition.

It is worth noting that Josephus seems to handle the text of Aristeas with reasonable care. He abbreviates, but there is little indication of deliberate distortion. He changes the name Aristeas to Aristeaus; his numbers frequently vary from our MSS of Aristeas; the details of the king's dedicatory offerings (paras. 57-84) are sometimes different, but this whole passage is very difficult and Josephus may not have understood it much better than we do; he gives the name of the high priest as Elisha (Elissaios) not Eleazar (paras. 97). All these could be variants in the Aristeas MS Josephus had before him rather than deliberate changes by Josephus. Otherwise, he makes a small alteration of the sense of v. 18 in para. 23; he adds a little of own material from another source in paras. 43-44; he adds an interpretive comment in para. 91; he waters down the curse on anyone who alters the translation in para. 109; and makes perhaps one or two other small changes. BUT BASICALLY HE SEEMS TO HAVE SUMMARIZED THE TEXT HE HAD BEFORE HIM.

(Note: In other words, the first person to witness to the alleged translation of a formalized Pre-Christian LXX version, is not an independent witness, but was copying information he had before him from the Letter of Aristeas, which was later repeated and further embellished by other Christians. Most scholars now admit the Letter of Aristeas is a false document, yet the idea of a widespread and authoritative LXX persists.)

PHILO OF ALEXANDRIA (around the turn of the era; _Vita Mosis_ 2.25-44) also tells the story of a translation of the Pentateuch under Philadelphus with and outline very similar to Aristeas (IT IS QUITE LIKELY HE READ THE WORK). The king sends an embassy to Judea to get some translators; he treats them to feasting with witty and virtuous conversation and questioning; the translation takes place on the island of Pharos. But Philo seems to be the first to add that by prophetic inspiration all the translators produced exactly the same Greek text independently.

ARISTOBULOS may have written around the middle of the second century BCE; his work is lost except for quotations preserved by Eusebius and Clement of Alexandria. (These are translated in OTP 2, pp. 830-42, esp. 839-40). HE CLAIMS THAT THERE WERE EARLIER TRANSLATIONS EVEN BEFORE ALEXANDER'S TIME (and that Pythagoras and Plato were influenced by them). He refers to a translation under Ptolemy Philadelphus, managed by Demetrius Phalereus. THE LATTER DETAIL IS PROBABLY UNHISTORICAL AND IT IS ONLY KNOWN ELSEWHERE FROM ARISTEAS, so Aristobulus may have read him (or conceivably, the other way around). He uses the story to argue for the primacy of Jewish traditions over Greek philosophy.

V. The content and shape of the original edition of Aristeas is a complicated problem, as Hadas has shown, and as far as I've been able to find, this problem has been surprisingly neglected by scholars. Of 322 total verses, Josephus uses or alludes to vv. 9-81, 172-305 (with 187-292 summarized very briefly in paras. 100-102), and 308-21. Perhaps it's not surprising that he would leave out the introduction and conclusion, but it is more problematical to say he deliberately omitted the other material. Given his care in handling the details of the document, it seems likely that the journey to Jerusalem and Eleazar's comments (vv. 82-171) weren't in the MS he had. This may also be true of the defense of ritual hand-washing in vv. 306-7. In my view IT IS QUITE LIKELY THAT THEY ARE SECONDARY ADDITIONS AFTER THE TIME OF JOSEPHUS.

Finally, a word about the date of composition of the first edition. BASICALLY, WE CAN SAY THAT IT WAS OLD ENOUGH TO FOOL JOSEPHUS, but young enough for THE WRITER NOT TO HAVE ACCURATE KNOWLEDGE OF SOME IMPORTANT HISTORICAL MATTERS regarding the reign of Ptolemy II. A good guess might be 100 BCE +/- 125 years. I find it difficult to refine the possible date any further, although others have tried, drawing on more ambiguous evidence such as the political situation presupposed by the work, the geographical and architectural details it presents, its linguistic usage, and parallels with the papyri, especially the Zenon corpus. We have no evidence of the date of the redaction of the second edition (the one in our MSS), except that Josephus didn't have it and therefore it may well have been written after his time.

DR. James R. Davila, Divinity School of the University of St. Andrews, 1999

htp://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~www_sd/aristeas.html

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