HistoricalChristian.Faith

Aristobulus of Alexandria on the Origin of the Septuagint

Dates: c. 150 BC (a Jewish philosopher of Alexandria who dedicated his exegesis of the Law to Ptolemy VI Philometor, r. 180–145 BC) · Wikipedia
Summary: The earliest datable mention of the Greek translation. Aristobulus was a Hellenistic-Jewish philosopher who wrote an allegorical commentary on the Law for the Ptolemaic court; his work survives only in fragments quoted by Eusebius and Clement of Alexandria. Arguing that the Greek philosophers borrowed from Moses, he remarks in passing that "the entire translation of all the contents of our Law" was made under Ptolemy II Philadelphus through Demetrius of Phalerum — and that partial renderings of the exodus story and the Law had circulated even earlier. His notice is barer than the Letter of Aristeas: there are no seventy-two elders, no separate cells, no inspiration miracle — just a royal commission. It is the baseline of the baseline.

Claims & evidence

The whole Law was translated under Ptolemy Philadelphus, managed by Demetrius

"For others before Demetrius Phalereus, and prior to the supremacy of Alexander and the Persians, have translated both the narrative of the exodus of the Hebrews our fellow countrymen from Egypt, and the fame of all that had happened to them, and the conquest of the land, and the exposition of the whole Law… But the entire translation of all the contents of our law was made in the time of the king surnamed Philadelphus, thy ancestor, who brought greater zeal to the work, which was managed by Demetrius Phalereus."

— Aristobulus, quoted in Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica XIII.12, source. The whole point of the passage is apologetic — to show that Plato and Pythagoras drew on Moses — and the translation is mentioned only to date how the Law became available in Greek. Already the durable core is here: a complete rendering of the Law, under Ptolemy II Philadelphus, with Demetrius of Phalerum directing it. Aristobulus adds a detail the later legend drops: that incomplete Greek versions of the exodus and the Law had existed even before Demetrius — a sober, unmiraculous picture of a text translated more than once.

Addressed to a Ptolemy — the dating anchor

"And Aristobulus, in his first book addressed to Philometor, writes in these words: 'And Plato followed the laws given to us, and had manifestly studied all that is said in them.'"

— Clement of Alexandria, Stromata I.22, source. Both Clement and Eusebius preserve that Aristobulus dedicated his work to a reigning Ptolemy ("thy ancestor" Philadelphus addressed to a later king); the addressee is Ptolemy VI Philometor (r. 180–145 BC), which fixes Aristobulus around the middle of the second century BC — making this the earliest external reference to the Septuagint's making, a generation or so before the Letter of Aristeas took the same story and elaborated it into a full narrative.

Notes

• The barest form of all. Aristobulus has even less than Aristeas: no count of translators, no twelve tribes, no seventy-two days, and — emphatically — no separate-cells miracle and no claim of inspired unanimity. The supernatural marvel that later writers (after Philo, Irenaeus, the Cohortatio, Cyril of Jerusalem, Epiphanius, Augustine) make the heart of the story is simply absent at the tradition's earliest layer. He even preserves what the legend later forgets — that partial Greek versions predated the official one — which cuts against the picture of a single, once-for-all, divinely-sealed translation.
• Earliest by date, but the priority is debated. By the conventional dating Aristobulus (c. 150 BC) precedes the Letter of Aristeas (c. 130 BC), so he leads this timeline; but the two are close in time, and scholars dispute which depends on which — whether Aristobulus's notice draws on an early form of the Aristeas tradition or is independent of it. Either way his version is the slighter and plainer, and the Letter remains the fuller literary fountainhead the later tradition inherits.
• Later enrolled among "the Seventy." In a striking sign of how the legend grew, Aristobulus — a witness to the translation — was eventually folded into it as one of the translators. Anatolius of Laodicea, quoted by Eusebius, calls him "the famous Aristobulus, who was chosen among the seventy interpreters of the sacred and divine Hebrew Scriptures by Ptolemy Philadelphus and his father" — an anachronism (Aristobulus lived a century too late), but a telling one: the tradition reached back and gathered its own sources into the miracle.