HistoricalChristian.Faith

Clement of Alexandria on the Origin of the Septuagint

Dates: c. AD 200 · Wikipedia
Summary: Inspiration kept, the cells dropped. In the Stromata, arguing that the Greek philosophers borrowed from Moses, Clement reports the Septuagint as itself an inspired work: the people of Jerusalem sent "seventy elders" who, when their separately-made drafts were "compared together," "agreed both in meaning and expression," for the God "who gave the prophecy" also "produced the translation, and made it as it were Greek prophecy." He keeps the inspiration claim and the Esdras parallel that Irenaeus had introduced, but drops Irenaeus's separate-cells device — his translators reach their agreement by comparison, not by isolation. He counts "seventy," not seventy-two, and is openly unsure which Ptolemy commissioned the work.

Claims & evidence

An inspired translation: the agreement reached by comparison, not by separate cells

"It is said that the Scriptures both of the law and of the prophets were translated from the dialect of the Hebrews into the Greek language in the reign of Ptolemy the son of Lagos, or, according to others, of Ptolemy surnamed Philadelphus; Demetrius Phalereus bringing to this task the greatest earnestness… the king being ambitious of adorning the library he had at Alexandria with all writings, desired the people of Jerusalem to translate the prophecies they possessed into the Greek dialect. And they being the subjects of the Macedonians, selected from those of highest character among them seventy elders, versed in the Scriptures, and skilled in the Greek dialect, and sent them to him with the divine books. And each having severally translated each prophetic book, and all the translations being compared together, they agreed both in meaning and expression. For it was the counsel of God carried out for the benefit of Grecian ears. It was not alien to the inspiration of God, who gave the prophecy, also to produce the translation, and make it as it were Greek prophecy."

— Stromata I.22, source. Clement stands between his two nearest predecessors on the timeline. With Irenaeus (c. AD 175) he affirms the translation is inspired — not a feat of human skill but God reproducing his own prophecy in Greek; against Tertullian (c. AD 197), who had retold the story a few years earlier as a bare royal commission with no miracle at all, Clement restores the inspiration claim. But he does not reproduce Irenaeus's distinctive proof-mechanism: there are no "little cells," no elders "separated from each other" so that their unforeseeable identical drafts would compel belief. In Clement the translators each render the books and then their versions are "compared together," and the agreement is the marvel. The wonder is asserted; the device that dramatizes it is absent.

The Esdras parallel — Scripture once before restored by inspiration

"Since the Scriptures having perished in the captivity of Nebuchadnezzar, Esdras the Levite, the priest, in the time of Artaxerxes king of the Persians, having become inspired in the exercise of prophecy restored again the whole of the ancient Scriptures."

— Stromata I.22, source. This is the same brace Irenaeus had used: the inspired Greek translation is no harder for God than the inspired restoration of the lost Hebrew by Esdras after the exile. Clement takes the pairing over from Irenaeus almost intact — a sign he is working in the same line of Christian argument, in which the LXX's authority rests on the Spirit's guidance and is defended by appeal to an earlier act of inspired transmission. (Clement caps the chapter by quoting Aristobulus "in his first book addressed to Philometor" and Numenius's tag that Plato is "Moses speaking in Attic Greek" — the borrowing-from-Moses thesis the whole retelling serves.)

Notes

• Cells: absent. Inspiration: present. This is the through-line datum for Clement, and it shows the legend's miraculous machinery is not a steadily rising line. Philo had the inspiration but translators working together; Irenaeus added the isolation that turns agreement into proof; Tertullian dropped the miracle entirely; Clement, writing alongside Tertullian, keeps the inspiration but — like Philo — has the elders compare their work together rather than in sealed chambers. The physical "little cells" on Pharos and the autopsy claim "we ourselves have seen the traces" arrive only with the Cohortatio ad Graecos (c. AD 260).
• "Seventy," not seventy-two. Like Irenaeus, Clement writes "seventy elders" — the round number that gave the version its name — rather than the precise seventy-two of Aristeas. Tertullian, citing Aristeas by name, had just restored the seventy-two; Clement reverts to the round figure, another sign the particulars were fluid and tracked whichever source a father had nearest to hand.
• Unsure of the king. Clement does not decide between "Ptolemy the son of Lagos" (Ptolemy I Soter, Irenaeus's choice) and "Ptolemy surnamed Philadelphus" (Ptolemy II, the older and correct tradition), reporting both. The candor is characteristic: he begins the whole notice with "It is said that…," handling the story as received tradition rather than fixed fact.
• Scope widened to the prophets. Where Aristeas, Josephus, and Tertullian have the Law translated, Clement says "the Scriptures both of the law and of the prophets" and "the prophecies they possessed" — the same widening Justin made, fitting the Christian interest in the messianic prophecies now on record in Greek. (Clement does not yet draw the polemical edge against Aquila and the later Jewish versions that Irenaeus had given the story and that becomes the seed of the corruption charge; his quarrel is with the Greek philosophers, whom he means to show were Moses' debtors.)