HistoricalChristian.Faith

al-Makin Ibn al-‘Amid on the Origin of the Septuagint

Dates: c. AD 1273 · al-Majūmū‘ al-Mubārak (The Blessed Collection) · Wikipedia
Summary: The Simeon-the-Just legend told whole, and the separate-place test restored. Jirjis al-Makīn Ibn al-‘Amīd — the Coptic-Egyptian historian whose universal chronicle drew openly on Ibn al-Rāhib a generation before — gives the origin of the Greek Scriptures a fuller notice than any of the thirteenth-century Arabic chain. Where Ibn al-Rāhib had folded Sam’ān al-kahin (the Simeon of Luke 2) into the band of translators in a single clause, al-Makīn spells out the whole story: the translator, grieving over the messianic prophecies he renders, prays for length of days, lives three hundred and fifty years, and at last takes the Christ-child in his arms in the Temple and dies with the Nunc Dimittis on his lips. And where Ibn al-Rāhib carried neither cells nor miracle, al-Makīn restores the separate-place test: the king "placed each of them in a place on his own," then had the versions "compared," and "they were seen to be identical" — the marvel of independent agreement, though without the named Holy Spirit.

Claims & evidence

The notice in the Blessed Collection

al-Makīn, like his source Ibn al-Rāhib, is a chronicler, and the Septuagint enters his universal history as an annotated entry on the reign of Ptolemy — but he expands the entry far past the king-list note, gathering the messianic legend, the martyr, and the rival count into one paragraph. He names his predecessors openly (Ibn al-Bṭrīq — Eutychius of Alexandria — and Ibn al-Rāhib for the reign-length, al-Munajjim for the alternative figure):

“Batlamiyus called also al-Iskandarus… was called Batlamiyus Philadelphus, that is lover of his brother; and this king was a lover of wisdom and he desired to read histories and he heard about the laws and the precepts and regulations that the prophet Musa and the (later) prophets had brought… so he sent to Jerusalem and summoned 72 elders of the elders and learned men of Israel, among them Sam’an the priest (Ar. al-kahin); and the king Batlamiyus ordered them to interpret the Torah and the books of the prophets, and they translated them from Hebrew into Greek. And he placed each of them in a place on his own. And when that was done he ordered that the versions be compared and they were seen to be identical, and he sealed them with his seal and placed them in the house of his gods; and he treated these elders well, and freed for them the prisoners whom they had… in Egypt.

And Sam’an al-kahin, whenever he translated something of the Torah and the books of the prophets and the prophecies which they contain about the appearance of the lord Messiah, this would hurt him in his heart, and he would say When will this be? And he asked God, may He be exalted, to lengthen his life so that he could see the lord Messiah; and God, may He be exalted, did lengthen his life, and he lived 350 years, until the Masih was born and they brought him over to the Temple, and Sam’an placed him on his arms and said Now, O Lord, release thy servant in peace, for my eyes have seen thy salvation, and he died at once. And one of the seventy elders was El’azar, whom Antiyakhus the king slew when he did not bow down to his idol (Ar. li-sanamihi), and El’azar’s age when he slew him was 90 years.”¹

He then adds a competing version drawn from Yusuf ibn Kuriyun al-‘Ibrani (the Hebrew Josippon), in which a Macedonian named Talmay, made king by the Egyptians, "summoned from Jerusalem 70 elders" who "translated for him the Torah and the books of the prophets" — the round seventy set beside his own seventy-two, the chronicler laying his sources side by side rather than choosing between them.

The Simeon-the-Just legend told in full

This is al-Makīn’s chief contribution to the legend on this timeline. Ibn al-Rāhib, his source, had given only the identification — "Sam’an al-kahin who carried our lord in his arms," one of the Seventy — leaving the reader of Luke 2 to supply the rest. al-Makīn unfolds the whole drama: as Sam’ān translates "the prophecies… about the appearance of the lord Messiah," the words "hurt him in his heart"; he prays for length of days "so that he could see the lord Messiah"; God grants it, and he lives three hundred and fifty years "until the Masih was born," takes the infant in his arms in the Temple, sings the Nunc Dimittis ("Now, O Lord, release thy servant in peace, for my eyes have seen thy salvation"), "and he died at once." It is the Simeon-the-Just legend in its developed Eastern form — the translator of the messianic prophecies kept alive to behold their fulfilment — the motif that binds the origin story to the proof-text it everywhere serves. In the fuller Coptic redactions of the same legend (the Arab Jacobite Synaxarium) the anxiety is sharpened to a single verse: Simeon balks at writing the "virgin" of Isaiah 7:14, softens it to "girl," and is condemned to wait three hundred years until he holds the Child — the messianic-proof-text strand of the corruption charge dramatized inside the origin legend itself. al-Makīn carries the framework (the grief over the prophecies, the long life, the Temple) without yet naming Isaiah 7:14, the seed in Ibn al-Rāhib here grown to its stem.

Eleazar the martyr, with his age

Like Ibn al-Rāhib, al-Makīn names one translator besides Simeon and makes the same conflation: "El’azar, whom Antiyakhus the king slew when he did not bow down to his idol" — the Eleazar who in Aristeas is the high priest sending the translators, here become one of the Seventy and merged with the aged scribe martyred under Antiochus IV in 2 Maccabees 6. al-Makīn adds a detail Ibn al-Rāhib lacks — "El’azar’s age when he slew him was 90 years," the round age the martyr-narrative of 2 Maccabees gives him — tightening the identification with the Maccabean martyr even as the chronology (Ptolemy II in the third century BC, Antiochus IV in the second) remains impossible. The translation is again a meeting-place for the worthies of the Greek-Jewish past.

The separate-place test restored — cells implicit, the Spirit unspoken

For the question this timeline follows — whether each witness carries the separate-cells device and the miracle of independently-identical drafts — al-Makīn diverges from his source. Ibn al-Rāhib had carried neither: his elders simply "interpreted for him the book of the Torah and the prophets." al-Makīn restores the apparatus in its functional form: the king "placed each of them in a place on his own," and "when that was done he ordered that the versions be compared and they were seen to be identical." The isolation and the agreement-test are both here — the separate places doing the work the named cells did in Cyril of Jerusalem, Epiphanius, and the Syriac bar Kepha and Michael — but he stops, as bar Kepha and Michael did, at the demonstrated agreement without naming the Holy Spirit. The inspiration is shown, not stated: the drafts proved identical, sealed with the royal seal, and laid up "in the house of his gods." His one new concrete note is that sealing — the king authenticating the matched copies with his own seal before depositing them, a chronicler’s touch of officialdom on the old marvel.

Notes

• The work. The al-Majūmū‘ al-Mubārak (The Blessed Collection) is al-Makīn’s universal chronicle in two parts: a history from Adam to the rise of Islam, and a continuation to his own day. The Septuagint notice falls in the first part, among the Ptolemaic kings. The first part was translated into Latin by Erpenius (Thomas van Erpe) as the Historia Saracenica (Leiden, 1625); the Septuagint passage is preserved in the Arabic and printed in translation by the Wassersteins.
• Who he was. Jirjis (George) al-Makīn Ibn al-‘Amīd (1205–1273), a Coptic Christian official of Ayyubid and early Mamluk Egypt and a historian of the last generation of the Copto-Arabic golden age. He drew heavily on his older contemporary Ibn al-Rāhib, and through al-Makīn’s widely-read chronicle the legend passed on to the great Muslim historians.
• Cells and inspiration. The separate places and the agreement-test are present (restored against Ibn al-Rāhib, who had dropped both); the Holy Spirit is not named — the marvel of identical drafts shown but its pneumatology left unspoken, as in bar Kepha and Michael.
• What he adds. The Simeon-the-Just legend told whole (the grief over the messianic prophecies, the prayer for length of days, the 350 years, the Temple, the Nunc Dimittis) where Ibn al-Rāhib gave only the identification; Eleazar’s martyr-age of 90 years; the royal seal on the matched copies; and a rival 70-elder version from the Hebrew Josippon set beside his own 72.
• Text and provenance. ⚠ This block is cited from the verbatim English translation printed by Abraham & David J. Wasserstein, The Legend of the Septuagint (Cambridge, 2006); the underlying Arabic of the Blessed Collection has not been independently collated against a critical edition.

Sources