HistoricalChristian.Faith
HistoricalChristian.Faith
Dates: c. AD 93 · Wikipedia
Summary: The Jewish historian retells the origin story at length in Antiquities of the Jews XII and in brief in Against Apion II — and he does so by openly following the Letter of Aristeas, whose author "Aristeas" he names and to whose book he refers his reader. Because he follows Aristeas, he reproduces Aristeas's frame and nothing more: Ptolemy II Philadelphus, Demetrius of Phalerum, six elders from each tribe, the work finished in seventy-two days, read out and approved. There are no separate cells and no inspiration miracle. Writing a generation after Philo, the historian preserves the older, plainer version against which the Christian marvel is later measured.
"And for his successor Ptolemy, who was called Philadelphus… what was his greatest work of all, he had a great desire of knowing our laws, and of obtaining the books of our sacred Scriptures; accordingly, he desired that such men might be sent him as might interpret our law to him; and, in order to have them well compiled, he committed that care to no ordinary persons, but ordained that Demetrius Phalereus, and Andreas, and Aristeas; the first, Demetrius, the most learned person of his age, and the others, such as were intrusted with the guard of his body; should take care of this matter."
— Against Apion, II.4, source. Josephus gives the same royal-commission frame as the Letter of Aristeas — a learned Ptolemy II Philadelphus and Demetrius of Phalerum — adding the two bodyguards Andreas and Aristeas (the latter the supposed author of the Letter). The point in Against Apion is apologetic: a great Greek king sought out the Jewish Law, proof that the nation and its books were held "in great admiration."
"But he said he had been informed that there were many books of laws among the Jews worthy of inquiring after, and worthy of the king's library, but which, being written in characters and in a dialect of their own, will cause no small pains in getting them translated into the Greek tongue… Wherefore he said that nothing hindered why they might not get those books to be translated also…"
"We have also chosen six elders out of every tribe, whom we have sent, and the law with them. It will be thy part, out of thy piety and justice, to send back the law, when it hath been translated, and to return those to us that bring it in safety. Farewell."
— Antiquities of the Jews, XII.2, source. The long account in the Antiquities is a close paraphrase of Aristeas: Demetrius's memorandum on the missing books, the Hebrew script "like to that… of the Syrians," the high priest Eleazar's reply, and the same "six elders out of every tribe" — seventy-two in all — sent down with the Law.
"…he that pleases may learn the particular questions in that book of Aristeus, which he wrote on this very occasion."
— Antiquities of the Jews, XII.2, source. Josephus does not present an independent tradition: he names "Aristeus" as his source and sends the curious reader to that book for the details he omits. His value as a witness is therefore that of an early, datable reader of Aristeas (c. AD 93) — and what that reader found in it had no cells and no miracle.
"Now when the law was transcribed, and the labor of interpretation was over, which came to its conclusion in seventy-two days, Demetrius gathered all the Jews together to the place where the laws were translated, and where the interpreters were, and read them over. The multitude did also approve of those elders that were the interpreters of the law."
— Antiquities of the Jews, XII.2, source. As in Aristeas, the translation is finished "in seventy-two days," read aloud to the assembled Jews, and acclaimed. The translators are "where the laws were translated" together; there is no shutting of each elder in his own chamber, and no claim that they produced word-for-word identical Greek by divine prompting. Josephus reports a learned, approved version — not an inspired one.