HistoricalChristian.Faith

Tertullian on the Origin of the Septuagint

Dates: c. AD 197 · Wikipedia
Summary: The Latin West's first telling — and a return to the plain form. In Apology 18, written to persuade pagan readers that the Christian Scriptures are ancient and publicly verifiable, Tertullian retells the origin without any inspiration miracle: Ptolemy Philadelphus, prompted by Demetrius of Phalerum, "applied to the Jews for their writings" and was given "seventy-two interpreters." He restores the seventy-two that Irenaeus had rounded to seventy, names Aristeas as his source, and — his distinctive touch — points the reader to where the proof can still be inspected: the libraries of Ptolemy "at the temple of Serapis," with "the identical Hebrew originals in them," read publicly by the Jews of Alexandria every Sabbath.

Claims & evidence

Ptolemy obtains the Jewish books through seventy-two interpreters — the bare commission, no cells

"Ptolemy, surnamed Philadelphus, the most learned of his race, a man of vast acquaintance with all literature, emulating, I imagine, the book enthusiasm of Pisistratus, among other remains of the past which either their antiquity or something of peculiar interest made famous, at the suggestion of Demetrius Phalereus, who was renowned above all grammarians of his time, and to whom he had committed the management of these things, applied to the Jews for their writings — I mean the writings peculiar to them and in their tongue, which they alone possessed… But that the understanding of their books might not be wanting, this also the Jews supplied to Ptolemy; for they gave him seventy-two interpreters — men whom the philosopher Menedemus, the well-known asserter of a Providence, regarded with respect as sharing in his views. The same account is given by Aristæus."

— Apology 18, source. Measured against the timeline's through-line, Tertullian is a step back from Irenaeus, not forward. Where Irenaeus (a generation earlier) had built the separate-cells machinery — the elders isolated, their identical drafts proving "the inspiration of God" — Tertullian keeps only the royal-commission frame of Aristeas and Josephus: a king, his librarian Demetrius, a request to the Jews, and seventy-two translators. There is no separation, no marvel of identical renderings, no inspiration claim at all. He even cites his authority openly — "the same account is given by Aristæus" — confirming that the plain Aristean narrative, not the miracle, is what a careful Latin reader of c. AD 197 took to be the story.

The proof on public display: the Hebrew originals at the Serapeum, read every Sabbath

"So the king left these works unlocked to all, in the Greek language. To this day, at the temple of Serapis, the libraries of Ptolemy are to be seen, with the identical Hebrew originals in them. The Jews, too, read them publicly. Under a tribute-liberty, they are in the habit of going to hear them every Sabbath."

— Apology 18, source. This is Tertullian's characteristic move and the key to why he tells the story at all. The Apology is addressed to pagan magistrates, and his argument is from antiquity and public availability: the Jewish Scriptures are older than all Greek letters, and anyone may go and check — the books are on the shelves of the Serapeum in Alexandria and read aloud in the synagogue every Sabbath. His interest is verification, not inspiration. (It is the same apologetic use to which Justin had put the legend a generation before: the prophecies are "on record" in Greek for the pagan reader to examine.) The accuracy of the detail is doubtful — the Septuagint was housed in the royal library, not originally the Serapeum, and "the identical Hebrew originals" is a flourish — but the rhetorical posture is what matters: the legend serves an evidential claim a hostile reader could in principle test, the opposite of an appeal to a hidden miracle.

Notes

• He restores the seventy-two. Irenaeus had written "seventy of their elders," the round number that gave the version its lasting name; Tertullian writes "seventy-two interpreters," the precise count of Aristeas (six from each of the twelve tribes). The particulars were fluid in this period, and a given father's figure tracks which source he had nearest to hand — Tertullian, citing Aristeas by name, has the Aristean number.
• He corrects the king, too. Where Irenaeus assigned the commission to "Ptolemy the son of Lagus" (Ptolemy I Soter), Tertullian names "Ptolemy, surnamed Philadelphus" — Ptolemy II, the king of the older tradition and the correct one. With Demetrius of Phalereus as librarian and Aristeas as cited source, his frame is the most faithful to the Letter of any Christian witness so far.
• Cells: absent. Inspiration: absent. This is the through-line datum for Tertullian. The physical "little cells" on Pharos and the autopsy claim "we ourselves have seen the traces" do not arrive until the Cohortatio ad Graecos (c. AD 260); Tertullian, like Aristeas and Josephus before him, has neither the cells nor the miracle they dramatize. The legend's inspiration-machinery is not a steadily rising line — Irenaeus runs ahead of it, Tertullian falls back to the plain commission — and only later does the miraculous form become standard.
• A Western, Latin voice. Tertullian is the first Latin-speaking witness on this timeline, and the account he transmits to the West is the unembellished one. The corruption-charge use of the legend — the inspired Greek wielded against a divergent synagogue text — is muted here; his quarrel in the Apology is with pagans, not with Aquila. The polemical edge that Irenaeus gave the story, defending Isaiah 7:14's "virgin," is the seed of the corruption charge; Tertullian sets it aside and uses the legend purely as an antiquity-and-availability proof.