HistoricalChristian.Faith
HistoricalChristian.Faith
Dates: c. AD 350 · Catechetical Lecture 4.34
Summary: The separate cells, and the Holy Ghost named. Cyril,
bishop of Jerusalem, sets the origin story into the catechism itself — teaching candidates for baptism which Scriptures
the Church receives, he tells them how the Greek came to be. His version is the fullest patristic narration so far: he
restores the precise frame of Aristeas — Ptolemy Philadelphus, Demetrius Phalereus, Eleazar
the High Priest, six interpreters from each of the twelve tribes, seventy-two days — and keeps the physical separate
chambers on Pharos that the Cohortatio had made concrete; but he adds
the explicit pneumatology none before him had stated outright: the translation "spoken by the Holy Ghost, was of the
Holy Ghost accomplished."
"For after the death of Alexander, the king of the Macedonians, and the division of his kingdom into four principalities, into Babylonia, and Macedonia, and Asia, and Egypt, one of those who reigned over Egypt, Ptolemy Philadelphus, being a king very fond of learning, while collecting the books that were in every place, heard from Demetrius Phalereus, the curator of his library, of the Divine Scriptures of the Law and the Prophets, and judged it much nobler, not to get the books from the possessors by force against their will, but rather to propitiate them by gifts and friendship; and knowing that what is extorted is often adulterated, being given unwillingly, while that which is willingly supplied is freely given with all sincerity, he sent to Eleazar, who was then High Priest, a great many gifts for the Temple here at Jerusalem, and caused him to send him six interpreters from each of the twelve tribes of Israel for the translation. Then, further, to make experiment whether the books were Divine or not, he took precaution that those who had been sent should not combine among themselves, by assigning to each of the interpreters who had come his separate chamber in the island called Pharos, which lies over against Alexandria, and committed to each the whole Scriptures to translate. And when they had fulfilled the task in seventy-two days, he brought together all their translations, which they had made in different chambers without sending them one to another, and found that they agreed not only in the sense but even in words. For the process was no word-craft, nor contrivance of human devices: but the translation of the Divine Scriptures, spoken by the Holy Ghost, was of the Holy Ghost accomplished."
— Catechetical Lecture 4.34, source. Cyril's telling gathers the legend's strands into their fullest classical shape and adds the theological key. He recovers the detail the previous Christian tellers had lost or blurred: Aristeas's precise seventy-two (six from each of twelve tribes) rather than the round "seventy" of Irenaeus, Clement, and the Cohortatio; the High Priest Eleazar by name, whom Justin had garbled into "Herod" and others had dropped; the correct king, Ptolemy Philadelphus, against Irenaeus's Ptolemy I; and Demetrius the librarian. He keeps the physical isolation the Cohortatio had built — a "separate chamber" for each man on Pharos — so the agreement "not only in the sense but even in words" is the same unforeseeable-unanimity proof that Irenaeus introduced. What is new is the explicit naming of the agent: where Philo had said the translators wrote "as if some unseen prompter had suggested" their words and Irenaeus that the Gentiles "perceived … the inspiration of God," Cyril states it doctrinally — the work was "spoken by the Holy Ghost," "of the Holy Ghost accomplished" — the Septuagint's inspiration spelled out in the language of the Spirit and set, as catechesis, among the things a candidate for baptism is taught to believe.