HistoricalChristian.Faith

Zacharias of Mitylene on the Origin of the Septuagint

Dates: c. AD 518 · Chronicle (the Syriac compilation), Book 12, ch. 7
Summary: The legend in its barest providential form, drawn straight from Eusebius. The Syriac Chronicle transmitted under the name of Zacharias Rhetor (Zacharias Scholasticus, later bishop of Mitylene) reports the origin of the Greek Scriptures in a single sentence that cites "the Chronicle of Eusebius of Caesarea" by name: Ptolemy Philadelphus freed the Jewish captives, sent offerings to Jerusalem, and "assembled seventy men learned in the law" to translate the Holy Scriptures from Hebrew into Greek. There is no separate-cells miracle and no marvel of identical independent renderings — only the plain commission and an explicitly providential, Trinitarian frame: the king "was indeed moved by God… for the calling of the nations… that they might be true worshippers of the glorious Trinity through the ministration of the Spirit."

Claims & evidence

"Seventy men learned in the law" — a plain commission, no cells

The whole notice is a single sentence, set inside a chapter otherwise given over to a world-map ascribed to Ptolemy Philometor:

"Now Ptolemy Philadelphus, king of Egypt, as the Chronicle of Eusebius of Caesarea declares, two hundred and eighty years and more before the birth of our Lord, at the beginning of his reign, set the Jewish captives in Egypt free and sent offerings to Jerusalem to Izra‘el, who was priest at that time; and he assembled seventy men learned in the law and had the Holy Scriptures translated from the Hebrew tongue into Greek; and he stored them up and kept them with him; for in this matter he was indeed moved by God, in order to prepare for the calling of the nations who should attain to knowledge, that they might be true worshippers of the glorious Trinity through the ministration of the Spirit."¹

For the through-line this timeline traces — whether each teller carries the separate-cells miracle and the inspiration claim — Zacharias carries neither. He has "seventy men" (not the seventy-two of Aristeas), no Demetrius, no Eleazar (the high priest is garbled into "Izra‘el," much as Justin had written "Herod"), no Pharos, no cells, and no marvel of word-for-word agreement. The story is back to the plain royal commission of Tertullian's and Josephus's form — which is unsurprising, since Zacharias is here doing nothing but abridging Eusebius, whom he names as his source and whose round "seventy" he keeps.

The providential frame, sharpened to a Trinitarian point

What Zacharias adds is not narrative detail but theological gloss. Eusebius had read the translation as God's providence for the Gentile mission — "God put it into the mind of King Ptolemy" so the prophecies of Christ stood ready in Greek "for the calling of the nations" before He came. Zacharias compresses that frame and gives it a later, conciliar edge: the king "was indeed moved by God, in order to prepare for the calling of the nations… that they might be true worshippers of the glorious Trinity through the ministration of the Spirit." The providential reading is Eusebius's; the explicitly Trinitarian and pneumatological language — "the glorious Trinity," "the ministration of the Spirit" — is the sixth-century chronicler's own, the same instinct that led Cyril of Jerusalem to say the work was "of the Holy Ghost accomplished" and Augustine that "the one Spirit had been in them all." Zacharias states the inspiration of the occasion (God moved Ptolemy) without claiming the inspiration of the translating (no identical-renderings miracle): the providence is in the commissioning, not in any wonder at the desk.

Notes

• What the source actually is. The Chronicle that carries this passage is the Syriac compilation conventionally called Pseudo-Zachariah Rhetor: an anonymous sixth-century author wove the lost Greek Ecclesiastical History of Zacharias (which ran only to 491) into a larger world-chronicle, of which Book 12 — where this notice stands — is the compiler's own continuation, not Zacharias's. The work is named for Zacharias because his history furnishes its middle books (3–6).² It is placed on this timeline at c. AD 518 — Zacharias's own floruit, the conventional anchor used for the witness — though the compilation itself was assembled a half-century later. Either way it is a late, derivative teller, valuable for showing how the Eusebian form of the legend traveled into Syriac and was given a Miaphysite, Trinitarian cast.
• A muddle of Ptolemies. The chapter heading assigns its world-map to "Ptolemy Philometor, king of Egypt," and the geographical epitome that follows the Septuagint notice is in fact the work of Claudius Ptolemaeus, the second-century AD geographer — whom the chronicler has mistaken for an Egyptian king. The translators of the 1899 edition omit that long geography as serving "no good purpose." The confusion is the compiler's, not part of the Septuagint tradition proper, but it marks how loosely the notice sits in its surroundings.
• Drawn from Eusebius, by name. Unlike most tellers, Zacharias cites his authority outright — "as the Chronicle of Eusebius of Caesarea declares" — and even reproduces a Eusebian chronological figure ("two hundred and eighty years and more before the birth of our Lord"). He is thus a clean witness to the reception of Eusebius's Chronicon in the Syriac world, the same Eusebian notice that this timeline records at c. AD 313.

Sources