HistoricalChristian.Faith

Augustine of Hippo on the Origin of the Septuagint

Dates: c. AD 425 · The City of God XVIII.42
Summary: The legend received into the Latin West's most authoritative voice — and pressed one step further. Augustine, bishop of Hippo, retells the origin in The City of God with the full Aristean frame (Eleazar the high priest, Ptolemy Philadelphus, seventy-two interpreters, six from each tribe) and keeps the separate-cells form — the elders working "each one apart" yet agreeing so exactly that it was "as if the translators had been one, because in very deed the one Spirit had been in them all." In the chapter that follows he draws the consequence the legend had been moving toward: the Seventy had the same prophetic Spirit as the prophets, so where their Greek differs from the Hebrew, both readings are to be received as inspired — the Latin West's charter for the Septuagint's authority, and the premise that, turned against the synagogue's later Hebrew, becomes the corruption charge gathered on the rabbinic-corruption page.

Claims & evidence

The royal commission and the seventy-two

"But another Ptolemy, called Philadelphus, who succeeded him, permitted all whom he had brought under the yoke to return free; and more than that, sent kingly gifts to the temple of God, and begged Eleazar, who was the high priest, to give him the Scriptures, which he had heard by report were truly divine, and therefore greatly desired to have in that most noble library he had made. When the high priest had sent them to him in Hebrew, he afterwards demanded interpreters of him, and there were given him seventy-two, out of each of the twelve tribes six men, most learned in both languages, to wit, the Hebrew and Greek and their translation is now by custom called the Septuagint."

— The City of God XVIII.42, source.¹ Augustine keeps the precise Aristean frame that the earlier Christian tellers had blurred and Cyril had restored: Eleazar named as high priest, Ptolemy Philadelphus (he even distinguishes him from his predecessor, "the son of Lagus," who had carried Jews captive), six men from each of the twelve tribes making seventy-two, "most learned in both languages." He alone among these witnesses pauses to explain the name — the version "is now by custom called the Septuagint" — registering that the round "seventy" had already become the fixed title whatever the precise count.

The cells, the agreement, and "the one Spirit in them all"

"It is reported, indeed, that there was an agreement in their words so wonderful, stupendous, and plainly divine, that when they had sat at this work, each one apart (for so it pleased Ptolemy to test their fidelity), they differed from each other in no word which had the same meaning and force, or, in the order of the words; but, as if the translators had been one, so what all had translated was one, because in very deed the one Spirit had been in them all. And they received so wonderful a gift of God, in order that the authority of these Scriptures might be commended not as human but divine, as indeed it was, for the benefit of the nations who should at some time believe, as we now see them doing."

— The City of God XVIII.42, source. Augustine keeps the separate-cells proof — the elders shut up "each one apart" so Ptolemy could "test their fidelity," exactly Irenaeus's and the Cohortatio's device — but he tells it in the plainer form: no row of cots on Pharos, no eyewitness ruins, no paired chambers, only the bare isolation and the matching result, reported with a careful "it is reported, indeed." What he sharpens is the theology of the agreement: where Philo had an "unseen prompter" and Cyril the "Holy Ghost," Augustine makes the unity of the translation mirror the unity of its source — "as if the translators had been one, so what all had translated was one, because in very deed the one Spirit had been in them all." The miracle's purpose, too, is named as the Gentile mission, the same providential frame Eusebius had given it: the gift was given "that the authority of these Scriptures might be commended not as human but divine… for the benefit of the nations who should at some time believe."

Where the Greek differs from the Hebrew, both are prophetic

In the chapter immediately following, Augustine takes the inspiration claim a decisive step further. Because "the same Spirit" was in the Seventy as in the prophets who first spoke the Hebrew, the Septuagint's divergences from the Hebrew are not errors to be corrected but a second, equally prophetic utterance: "the same Spirit who was in the prophets when they spoke these things was also in the seventy men when they translated them," so where the Greek and the Hebrew differ, the Spirit is to be understood as having said both — through the prophets in the one, through the translators in the other, "thus showing that both were prophets."² This is the same reversal Epiphanius had made in the East a generation earlier — the Greek's differences turned from a problem into a proof — now stated for the Latin West by its most authoritative theologian. It is also the hinge between the two doctrines this page sits astride: if the Septuagint's divergence from the Hebrew is itself the work of the prophetic Spirit, then the synagogue's later, differing Hebrew and its rival Greek versions look not like a faithful original but like a falling-away — the charge collected on the rabbinic-corruption timeline.

Notes

• The plain cells, not the elaborated ones. By Augustine's day the legend had two competing forms of the miracle: the elaborated, physical cells of the Cohortatio (cots on Pharos, claimed still visible) and Epiphanius (thirty-six paired chambers), and the bare isolation of Irenaeus. Augustine takes the bare form — "each one apart" — and adds no physical detail, prefacing even that with "it is reported." The vividness peaks with the Cohortatio and does not keep climbing; Augustine, like Tertullian before him, transmits a soberer telling.
• The Latin West's charter — and the seed of the later skepticism. Augustine's endorsement made the inspired-Septuagint a fixture of Western theology. It is also what set him at odds with his contemporary Jerome, who was then translating the Old Testament afresh from the Hebrew and who flatly rejected the cells as a fable; their correspondence over the authority of the Hebrew "truth" (Hebraica veritas) versus the Septuagint is the great early fault-line between the legend and its skeptics, the counter-tradition this timeline also traces.
• Date and text. The City of God was written across 413–426; Book XVIII belongs to the later stretch, conventionally c. 425. The English above is the standard Marcus Dods translation (New Advent / Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers). Augustine is placed on the timeline at c. 425, after Epiphanius of Salamis.

Sources