1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Septuagint

SEPTUAGINT, THE (Gr., Lat. LXX.), or the &ldquo;Alexandrian version of the Old Testament,&rdquo; so named from the legend of its composition by seventy (Lat. septuaginta), or more exactly seventy-two, translators. In the Letter of Aristeas to Philocrates this legend is recounted as follows: Demetrius of Phalerum, keeper of the Alexandrian library, proposed to King Ptolemy II. Philadelphus (285-247 ) to have a Greek translation of the Jewish law made for the library. The king consented and, after releasing 100,000 Jewish captives in his kingdom, sent an embassy with rich presents to the high priest Eleazar at Jerusalem asking him to send six ancient, worthy and learned men from each of the twelve tribes to translate the law for him at Alexandria. Eleazar readily sent the seventy-two men with a precious

roll of the law. They were honourably received at the court of Alexandria and conducted to the island (Pharos), that they might work undisturbed and isolated. When they had come to an agreement upon a section Demetrius wrote down their version; the whole translation was finished in seventy-two days. The Jewish community of Alexandria was allowed to have a copy, and accepted the version officially; indeed a curse was laid upon the introduction of any changes in it.

There is no question that this Letter (which is condensed in Josephus, Ant. xii. 2) is spurious. Aristeas, an official at Ptolemy's court, is represented as a heathen, but the real writer must have been a Jew and no heathen. Aristeas is represented as himself a member of the embassy to Eleazar; but the author of the Letter cannot have been a contemporary of the events he records, else he would have known that Demetrius fell out of favour at the very beginning of the reign of Philadelphus, on a charge of intriguing against his succession to the throne. Nor could a genuine honest witness have fallen into the absurd mistake of making delegates from Jerusalem the authors of the Alexandrian version. There are also one or two passages (&sect;&sect; 28, 182) where the author seems to forget that he is playing the rôle of Aristeas. The forgery, however, seems to be an early one. &ldquo;There is not a court-title, an institution, a law, a magistracy, an office, a technical term, a formula, a peculiar phrase in this letter which is not found on papyri or inscriptions and confirmed by them.&rdquo; That in itself would not necessarily imply a very early date for the piece; but what is decisive is that the author limits canonicity to the law and knows of no other holy book already translated into Greek. Nor does he claim any inspiration for the translators. Further, what he tells about Judaea and Jerusalem is throughout applicable to the period when the Ptolemies bore sway there and gives not the slightest suggestion of the immense changes that followed the conquest of Palestine by the Seleucids. It is probable that the Jewish philosopher Aristobulus, who lived under Ptolemy VI. Philometor (180-145 ), derived his account of the origin of the LXX. from this Letter, with which it corresponds. There seems good ground for believing that the letter contains some elements derived from actual tradition as to the origin of the LXX. Ptolemy Philadelphus was a king of eclectic literary tastes, and the welcome he gave to a Buddhist mission from India might well have been extended to Jews from Palestine. The letter lays great stress on the point that the LXX. is the official and authoritative Bible of the Hellenistic Jews, having not only been formally accepted by the synagogue at Alexandria, but authorized by the authorities at Jerusalem. This, and the fact that the style of the version is not that of a book intended for literary use, points to the conclusion that the translation was made to satisfy the religious needs of the Jews in Alexandria, and possibly also in the hope of gaining proselytes. In view of the Jewish prejudice against writing Scripture in any but the old holy form (the Targum, for instance, was for centuries handed down orally), it is quite possible that some impulse to the Alexandrian version came from without. Philadelphus may have encouraged it both to satisfy his own curiosity and to promote the use of Greek among the large Jewish population of the city. That the work is purely Jewish in character is

only what was inevitable in any case. The translators were necessarily Jews, though Egyptian and not Palestinian Jews, and were necessarily and entirely guided by the living tradition which had its focus in the synagogal lessons. And hence it is easily understood that the version was ignored by the Greeks, who must have found it barbarous and largely unintelligible, but obtained speedy acceptance with the Jews, first in private use and at length also in the synagogue service.

The next direct evidence which we have as to the origin of the LXX. is the prologue to Ecclesiasticus, from which it appears that about 130 not only the law but “the prophets and the other books” were extant in Greek. With this it agrees that the text of Ecclesiasticus and the other ancient relics of Jewish-Greek literature, preserved in the extracts made by Alexander Polyhistor (Eusebius, Praep. Ev. ix.), all show acquaintance with the LXX. The experiment on the Pentateuch (of which alone Aristeas speaks) had evidently been extended to other rolls as they arrived from Jerusalem. These later translations were not made simply to meet the needs of the synagogue, but express a literary movement among the Hellenistic Jews, stimulated by the favourable reception given to the Greek Pentateuch, which enabled the translators to count on finding an interested public. If a translation was well received by reading circles among the Jews, it gradually acquired public acknowledgment and was finally used also in the synagogue, so far as lessons from other books than the Pentateuch were used at all. But originally the translations were mere private enterprises, as appears from the prologue to Ecclesiasticus and the colophon to Esther. It appears also that it was long before the whole Septuagint was finished and treated as a complete work. We may grant that the Pentateuch (and perhaps part of Joshua) was translated in the 3rd century The other books followed, generally speaking, in the order in which they occur in the Hebrew Canon. Isaiah perhaps dates from c. 180, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the Twelve Prophets, as also 1 Kings (= 1 Samuel), c. 150. Most of the &ldquo;Writings,&rdquo; together with Judges and 2-4 Kings, were probably translated in the 1st century B.C., while Ecclesiastes and Daniel (the latter incorporated from Theodotion) date only from the 2nd century of the Christian era.

As the work of translation went on so gradually, and new books were always added to the collection, the compass of the Greek Bible came to be somewhat indefinite. The law always maintained its pre-eminence as the basis of the canon; but the prophetic collection changed its aspect by having various Hagiographa incorporated with it according to an arbitrary arrangement by subjects. The distinction made in Palestine between Hagiographa and Apocrypha was never properly established among the Hellenists. In some books the translators took the liberty of making considerable additions to the original, e.g. those to Daniel, and these additions became a part of the Septuagint. Nevertheless, learned Hellenists were quite well aware of the limits of the canon and respected them. Philo can be shown to have known the Apocrypha, but he never cites them, much less allegorizes them or uses them in proof of his tenets. And in some measure the widening of the Old Testament canon in the Septuagint must be laid to the account of Christians.

The Septuagint came into general use with the Grecian Jews even in the synagogue. Philo and Josephus use it, and so do the New Testament writers. But at an early date small corrections seem to have been introduced, especially by such Palestinians as had occasion to use the LXX., in consequence partly of divergent interpretation, partly of differences of text or of pronunciation (particularly of proper names). The Old Testament passages cited by authors of the first century of the Christian era, especially those in the Apocalypse, show many such variations from the Septuagint, and, curiously enough, these often correspond with the later versions (particularly with Theodotion), so that the latter seem to rest on a fixed tradition. Corrections in the pronunciation of proper names so as to come closer to the Massoretic pronunciation are especially frequent in Josephus. Finally a reaction against the use of the Septuagint set in among the Jews after the destruction of the temple &mdash; a movement which was connected with the strict definition of the canon and the fixing of an authoritative text by the rabbins of Palestine. But long usage had made it impossible for the Jews to do without a Greek Bible, and to meet this want a new version was prepared corresponding accurately with the canon and text of the Pharisees. This was the version of Aquila, which took the place of the Septuagint in the synagogues, and long continued in use there. On this, together with the versions of Theodotion and Symmachus, Origen's Hexapla, and the recensions of Hesychius and Lucian, see (Old Testament, &ldquo;Texts and Versions&rdquo;).


 * (A. J. G.)