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19. the Letter of Aristeas and the Cultural Context of the Septuagint

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19. the Letter of Aristeas and the Cultural Context of the Septuagint 19. The Letter of Aristeas and the Cultural Context of the Septuagint The tale of the Hebrew Bible’stranslation into Greek is familiar and fascinating. Our earliest text on the subject, the Letter of Aristeas,offers the most elaborate version, one that had adeep influenceupon all subsequent retellings, however divergent they were.¹ Accordingtothe author,the initiative for this enterprise came from the top. PtolemyIIPhiladelphus, ruler of Egypt,commissioned the work, on the promptingofhis chief librarian Demetrius of Phalerum. Demetrius made his case persuasively and compellingly. To the king he extolled the value of having aGreek version of the “laws of the Jews” on the shelvesofthe great li- brary in Alexandria. Ptolemyunhesitatingly sanctionedthe venture, and aselect group of Jewishscholars, brought from Jerusalem, lavishlywelcomed and hosted in Alexandria, carried out the task. Such is the skeleton of the story.Debate and controversy have long swirled about the question of how much to believe. Manyscholars have found the nar- rative to be little more than creative fiction, an attractive fantasy without foun- dation in fact.Onthat view,the impetus for aGreek rendition of the Scriptures came not from the king of Egypt but from the Jews themselves. Pragmatic mo- tivesprompted the process. The Jewish community in Alexandria had lost fluen- cy and familiarity with Hebrew.Hence, whetherfor religious or educational pur- poses, or some combination thereof, they required aGreek text to servethe needs of diasporaexistence. Thisinterpretation has long held swayinthe scholarship.² Some recent contributions,however,accordgreater respect to the Aristeas narra- tive,oratleast to the coreofthe tale, namely that the inspiration for the Septua- The date of the Letter remains controversial. Scholars put it at various times in the nd century BCE, between ahalf century and acentury and ahalf after the events recorded; cf. M. Hadas, Aristeas to Philocrates (Letter of Aristeas) (JAL)(New York ), –;S.Jellicoe, TheSep- tuagintand Modern Study (Oxford, ), –;F.Parente, “La lettera di Aristeacomefonte per la storia del Giudaismo Alessandrino durante la prima meta del secolo a.C.”,AnnPisa . () –; . () –, –, –;P.M. Fraser, PtolemaicAlexan- dria. vols. (Oxford, ), II, –;E.Schürer, TheHistoryofthe JewishPeople in the Age of Jesus Christ. ANew English Version rev.byG.Vermes/F.Millar/M. Goodman, vol. III. (Edin- burgh, ), –.The most valuable edition of the work, with fullest commentary,re- mains that of R. Tramontano, La LetteradiAristea aFilocrate (Naples, ). On the variations and subsequent legacy of the tale, see A. Wasserstein/D.Wasserstein, TheLegend of the Sep- tuagintFromClassicalAntiquity to Today (Cambridge, ). E.g., Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria I, ;II, –;Schürer, History, –,with bib- liography; see also Wasserstein/Wasserstein, Legend, –. 414 19. The Letter of Aristeas and the Cultural Context of the Septuagint gint came from the Ptolemaic court.Onone theory,such atranslation would give the ruling power access to Jewish law, thus providingameanswhereby the Torahcould take its place among legal codes governing the diverse ethnic groups that made up the Ptolemaic kingdom, amatter of convenience for the adminis- tration of the realm.³ Or on another,perhaps more plausible, analysis,the stim- ulus arose from the culturalinterests of PtolemyPhiladelphus, arenowned pa- tron of literature and the arts, aman keenlydevoted to intellectual matters,and one who shared the burgeoning Greek interest in eastern peoples and eastern traditions.⁴ TheLetterofAristeas certainlypresents him in this guise. And Philo offers an even more elaborate and flatteringportrait of Ptolemy’sdevotion to the life of the mind.⁵ Atranslated edition of the Hebrew Bible (or,more pre- cisely, the Pentateuch) would lend further distinction to the King’srepute as a promoter of high culture. The question of motive admits of no easy answer.⁶ And it has perhapsbeen too much boundupinthe effort to ascertain the historicity of circumstances de- scribed in the Letter. Even thosescholars who are most inclined to find some re- ality behindthe traditions of the translation do not accept as historicalthe color- ful details and embellishments purveyed by the narrative of “Aristeas.” Few, for example, would endorse the legend of seventy twotranslators completingtheir work in preciselyseventy two days,orthe HighPriest’slecture on Jewishprac- tices to the envoys of Ptolemy, or the long and tedious interrogation of the Jewish elders at aGreek symposium in Alexandria. But all agree that the celebrated sagarecounted in the Letter of Aristeas comes from the pen of aJewish author, awriter clearlyathomeinPtolemaic Alexandria, familiar with the protocols of the court,evenwith the formulas of diplomatic correspondence – yetalso deeply committed to the principles of Judaism and the faith of the fathers. We can con- sequentlyforgo pronouncingupon the degree of historicitythatresides in the story of the origins of the Septuagint.The tale itself matters. It constitutes adocu- ment of highhistorical importance. The value of the narrative lies not in extract- E. Bickerman, Studies in Jewishand ChristianHistory I(Leiden, ), –;J.Mélèze- Modrzejewski, TheJews of Egypt: From Rameses II to Emperor Hadrian (Philadelphia, ), –. W. Orth, “Ptolemaios II. und die Septuaginta-Übersetzung,” in Im Brennpunkt: Die Septuagin- ta. Studien zur Entstehung und Bedeutung der Griechischen Bibel I, hrsg. v. H.-J. Fabry and U. Of- ferhaus (BWANT )(Stuttgart u.a., ), –, –;T.Rajak Translation and Sur- vival: The Greek Bible of the AncientJewishDiaspora (Oxford; New York: OxfordUniversity Press, ). Philo, Mos. .–. Forasummaryofcompetingopinions,see J.M. Dines, TheSeptuagint(Understanding the Bible and its World) (London/NewYork ), –. 19. The Letter of Aristeas and the Cultural Contextofthe Septuagint 415 ing nuggets of fact from alargely fictional facade, but in employing the text as a window upon the Jewish mentality in the circumstances of adiasporacommun- ity in Ptolemaic Alexandria. It offers an avenue towardunderstanding the self- fashioning of aJewish imageinthe intellectual and culturalworldofHellenistic society.⁷ The origin of the Septuagint,orrather the legend in which that origin is recounted, needs to be seen in abroader context.ItbelongstoJewishexperience in the culturalenvironment of Alexandria, in relation to contemporary or near contemporarywritingsthat endeavor to articulate Jewish identity and to its wider connections with the literate society of the Hellenistic world. That consti- tutes the essence of this investigation. First,afew words about the place of Jews in the social scene of Alexandria. The subject suffers from poor documentation. But,enough survivestoindicate a relatively comfortable and untroubled existence. What broughtJews there in the first place remains amatter of dispute in conflicting sources. The LetterofAris- teas reports that some had been deportedfrom Judaea by the Persians, but that the bulk came when PtolemyISoter,after subduingthe whole of Coele-Syria and Phoenicia, forciblyremoved up to 100,000 Jews to Egypt.Hetheninstalled 30,000 of them in garrisons and fortresses throughout his realm.⁸ Arosier por- trait derives from the pen of aJewish author,writing under the pseudonym of Hecataeus:Soter wassuch agentle and kindly conqueror that Jews followed him voluntarilytoEgypt,there to share in the affairs of thatland.⁹ Whatever the truth of the matter and however inflated the numbers maybe, the fact of Jew- ish soldiers serving in the Ptolemaic armies is amplyattested in the literary, epi- graphic, and papyrological record. Jews were not confined to garrison duty.They served in regular units of the armycould rise to officer rank, and receivedland grants like others enlistedinthe ranks of the king’sforces.¹⁰ Inscriptions in Ara- maic and Greek from Alexandrian cemeteries dating to the earlyPtolemaic peri- od recordJews, probablyasmercenary soldiers, buried alongside Greeks from all parts of the Hellenic world.¹¹ One does not have to believeJosephus when he claims thatPtolemyVIentrusted his entirekingdom to Jews.¹² But there can Cf. V. Tcherikover, “The Ideologyofthe Letter of Aristeas,” HTR () –;E.S. Gruen, Heritage and Hellenism: TheReinvention of JewishTradition (Berkeley, ), –,with bibliography; S.R. Johnson, Historical Fictions and Hellenistic JewishIdentity:Third Maccabees in its Cultural Context (Berkeley, ), –. Let. Aris., –, –, –.Cf. Jos. C. Ap. .;Jos. A. J. .. Jos. C. Ap. .–;Jos. A. J. .. See the documents collectedinCPJ,I,–.See also JIGRE, no. ;P.Köln, III, . JIGRE, nos. –.See the discussionofMélèze-Modrzejewski, TheJews of Egypt, –. Jos. C. Ap. .;cf. Jos. A. J. .–, .. 416 19. The Letter of Aristeas and the Cultural Contextofthe Septuagint be little doubt thatJews in substantial numbers could be found in the military ranks of the king.¹³ Jews, in fact,turn up, even in our scanty evidence, at various levels of the Ptolemaic administration in Egypt,astax-farmers and tax collec- tors,asbankers and granary officials.¹⁴ Philo records Alexandrian Jews as shop-owners, merchants, shippers, traders, and artisans.¹⁵ No obvious harriers prevented their engagement in the social and economic world of Ptolemaic Alex- andria. Furthermore, Jews evidentlyhad freerein in establishing their own religious institutions. Literary sources report aplethoraofsynagogues in Alexandria.¹⁶ Among them was the structure that Philo labeled as the largest and most cele- brated of synagogues, one that was subsequentlydescribed
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