HistoricalChristian.Faith

Isidore of Seville on the Origin of the Septuagint

Dates: c. AD 636 · Etymologiae VI.iii–iv
Summary: The legend folded into an encyclopedia entry on libraries and translators. Isidore, bishop of Seville and the great compiler of late-antique Latin learning, gives the origin of the Greek Scriptures two terse paragraphs in his Etymologies: Ptolemy Philadelphus, emulating Pisistratus in his zeal for libraries, gathered "seventy thousand books" at Alexandria and, requesting the Old Testament from the high priest Eleazar, "took care to have it translated… by seventy translators," each "separated in his own cell," who rendered everything "through the Holy Spirit" so that no copy "differed from the rest even in the order of words." The inspiration miracle and the separate cells are both present — in the plain round-seventy form (one cell per translator, no Pharos, no eyewitness ruins, no number of days) — carried into the medieval West's most-copied schoolbook.

Claims & evidence

"Each separated in his own cell… through the Holy Spirit" — the miracle in plain seventy form

Isidore's notice on translators (De interpretibus) compresses the whole legend into two sentences:

"Hic etiam et ab Eleazaro pontifice petens Scripturas Veteris Testamenti, in Graecam vocem ex Hebraica lingua per septuaginta interpretes transferre curavit, quas in Alexandrina bibliotheca habuit. Siquidem singuli in singulis cellulis separati ita omnia per Spiritum sanctum interpretati sunt, ut nihil in alicuius eorum codice inventum esset quod in ceteris vel in verborum ordine discreparet."¹

"He also, requesting the Scriptures of the Old Testament from the high priest Eleazar, took care to have them translated from the Hebrew tongue into the Greek language by seventy translators, and he kept them in the library at Alexandria. For each one, separated in his own cell, translated everything through the Holy Spirit in such a way that nothing was found in the codex of any one of them that differed from the rest even in the order of words."

For the through-line this timeline traces — whether each teller carries the separate cells and the inspiration claim — Isidore carries both. He keeps the cells (singuli in singulis cellulis separati, "each separated in his own cell") and the explicit inspiration (per Spiritum sanctum), with the agreement reaching down "even to the order of words" (in verborum ordine) — the strong form. But he keeps them in the plainest, most reduced shape on the timeline: the round "seventy" translators of Eusebius and Clement (not the seventy-two of Aristeas), one cell apiece (not the Cohortatio's cots on Pharos, nor Epiphanius's thirty-six paired chambers), no claim of surviving ruins, and no count of days. He does restore the high priest Eleazar by name — where the Syriac Zacharias a century earlier had garbled him into "Izra‘el" — and names Ptolemy correctly as Philadelphus. In substance the form is Augustine's (cells, one Spirit, agreement to the word) reduced to seventy and pressed into an encyclopedia gloss.

The encyclopedist's interest in numbers — seventy thousand books, seventy translators, seventy cells

The companion entry, on libraries (De bibliothecis), supplies the setting and Isidore's most characteristic note — a cataloguer's eye for round figures:

"…maxime Ptolomaeus cognomento Philadelphus omnis litteraturae sagacissimus, cum studio bibliothecarum Pisistratum aemularetur, non solum gentium scripturas, sed etiam et divinas litteras in bibliothecam suam contulit. Nam septuaginta milia librorum huius temporibus Alexandriae inventa sunt."²

"…above all Ptolemy surnamed Philadelphus, most discerning in all literature, since in his zeal for libraries he emulated Pisistratus, brought into his library not only the writings of the nations but also the divine writings. For seventy thousand books were found at Alexandria in his time."

Isidore's distinctive contribution is not narrative but enumeration: he knows there were seventy thousand books in the library, seventy translators, and seventy cells — but, tellingly, not how many days the work took, a figure the fuller tellers from Aristeas on never omit. The "seventy" runs through everything, absorbing the translators and their chambers into the same round number as the library's holdings. The frame is the library-history one — Ptolemy as a second Pisistratus, the Greek tyrant credited with founding the first public library — into which the Jewish Scriptures are slotted as one more acquisition "of the divine writings," the origin legend now a paragraph in a reference work rather than an apology or a polemic.

Notes

• What the source is. The Etymologiae (or Origines) is Isidore's vast encyclopedia of all knowledge in twenty books, left unfinished at his death in 636 and the single most-copied secular text of the Latin Middle Ages. Book VI treats "the books and offices of the Church"; chapters iii (De bibliothecis, "On libraries") and iv (De interpretibus, "On translators") carry the Septuagint notice. Its placement is itself the point: the legend has passed out of controversy and into the curriculum, a settled fact handed to every medieval schoolroom that owned a copy.
• Whom he is following. Isidore depends on the Latin reception of the legend, above all Augustine (cells, the one Spirit, agreement to the very word) and the chronicle tradition behind Eusebius and Jerome — which is why he keeps the round "seventy" rather than the seventy-two of Aristeas and Augustine's own fuller telling. He adds nothing to the machinery; his service to the tradition is transmission, fixing a compact inspired-cells form in the West's reference shelf for six centuries of copyists.
• Text and translation. The Latin is quoted verbatim from W. M. Lindsay's 1911 Oxford critical edition (Isidori Hispalensis Episcopi Etymologiarum sive Originum Libri XX); the English is the editor's own rendering of it. The standard modern English is Stephen A. Barney, W. J. Lewis, J. A. Beach & Oliver Berghof, The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville (Cambridge University Press, 2006).

Sources