HistoricalChristian.Faith
HistoricalChristian.Faith
Dates: c. AD 30 · Wikipedia
Summary: The Hellenistic-Jewish philosopher of Alexandria is the first witness to add the inspiration miracle to the origin story. He keeps the royal-commission frame of Aristeas, but reports that the translators, working in seclusion on Pharos, were "like men inspired" and independently produced word-for-word identical Greek — proof, he says, that they were "not mere interpreters but hierophants and prophets." Notably he has them working together in one place: the separate-cells detail that later writers add is not yet present.
"He, then, being a sovereign of this character, and having conceived a great admiration for and love of the legislation of Moses, conceived the idea of having our laws translated into the Greek language; and immediately he sent out ambassadors to the high-priest and king of Judea… And having explained his wishes, and having requested him to pick him out a number of men, of perfect fitness for the task, who should translate the law, the high-priest… with great care selected the most respectable of the Hebrews whom he had about him, who in addition to their knowledge of their national scriptures, had also been well instructed in Grecian literature, and cheerfully sent them."
— On the Life of Moses, II.31–33, source. Philo inherits the basic frame of the Letter of Aristeas — a learned Ptolemy II Philadelphus, a request to the high priest, picked translators — but tells it more briefly and without the figure of Demetrius or the count of seventy-two.
"Therefore, being settled in a secret place, and nothing even being present with them except the elements of nature… they, like men inspired, prophesied, not one saying one thing and another another, but every one of them employed the self-same nouns and verbs, as if some unseen prompter had suggested all their language to them. And yet who is there who does not know that every language, and the Greek language above all others, is rich in a variety of words… But this, they say, did not happen at all in the case of this translation of the law, but that, in every case, exactly corresponding Greek words were employed to translate literally the appropriate Chaldaic words."
— On the Life of Moses, II.37–38, source. This is the earliest appearance of the marvel that becomes the heart of the Christian legend: the translators do not merely agree in sense but coincide word for word, against all the odds of a language "rich in a variety of words" — a result Philo treats as evidence of divine prompting. The Letter of Aristeas had only the translators conferring and comparing "by collation"; Philo is the first to make their unanimity a miracle.
"…they would admire and reverence them both as sisters, or rather as one and the same both in their facts and in their language; considering these translators not mere interpreters but hierophants and prophets to whom it had been granted in their honest and guileless minds to go along with the most pure spirit of Moses."
— On the Life of Moses, II.40, source. The translators' status is raised from craftsmen to prophets: the Greek is not a derivative copy but a second authentic original, the equal of the Hebrew "as sisters." Philo adds that the achievement is still commemorated by an annual festival on Pharos, "reverencing the place in which the first light of interpretation shone forth" (II.41).