Ptolemy II’s Gift to the Temple in the Letter of Aristeas

The translation techniques in the five books of the Pentateuch differ from one another in translation equivalents between Hebrew and Greek and style, convincing scholars that the books were translated by different people. In one rabbinic tradition, the number of translators is five. See Abot according to Rabbi Nathan, version B, ch. 37. Tractate Soferim1:7 has both traditions (5 and 72) back to back.

For accessible introductions to the LXX and the scholarly study of the Greek translations, see Jennifer Dines, The Septuagint (London: T&T Clark, 2004); Karen H. Jobes and Moisés Silva, Invitation to the Septuagint, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2015).

Some versions of the story have the translators cooperating, as in the Letter of Aristeas; others have them working independently and producing the same translation, as in this version from the Babylonian Tractate. On the different versions of the legend, see Abraham Wasserstein and David J. Wasserstein, The Legend of the Septuagint from Classical Antiquity to Today (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

For a translation and commentary on the Letter of Aristeas, see Benjamin G. Wright III,The Letter of Aristeas: ‘Aristeas to Philocrates’ or ‘On the Translation of the Law of the Jews’, Commentaries on Early Jewish Literature (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2015). Another version of the story, briefer than and a variant of the Letter of Aristeas, can be found in the Hellenistic Jewish writer Aristobulus. The two writers do not appear to depend on one another; they likely relied upon an earlier Alexandrian tradition about the translation.

Josephus (Antiquities 12.43) identifies this high priest as the brother of the Oniad Simon I. Scholars are divided over whether the Eleazar in the Letter of Aristeas is the same person as Josephus’s Eleazar. James C. VanderKam, From Joshua to Caiaphas: High Priests After the Exile (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2004), 167 believes that he is, while Erich S. Gruen, “The Letter of Aristeas,” in Outside the Bible: Ancient Jewish Writings Related to Scripture, ed. Louis H. Feldman et al. (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2013), 3:2716 is skeptical of this identification.

Editor’s note: For more on this, see Joshua Garroway, “The Earliest Explanation for Kosher: Allegory in the Hellenistic World,” TheTorah.com (2016).

There is no evidence in the Letter of Aristeas that Pseudo-Aristeas knew any Hebrew. Although most scholars recognize the essentially fictional nature of its story, some find historical nuggets in it. Some scholars even retain the idea of royal involvement and argue for its ultimate deposit in the Alexandrian library. See, for example, Tessa Rajak, Translation & Survival: The Greek Bible of the Ancient Jewish Diaspora (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009) and Sylvie Honigman, The Septuagint and Homeric Scholarship in Alexandria: A Study in the Narrative of the Letter of Aristeas (London: Routledge, 2003). No evidence survives from the third century B.C.E. about the motivation for the translation of the Pentateuch. Scholars have suggested several possibilities, such as education, liturgy, or law. See the introductions in n. 2 for more detail.

For example, the Greek writer Athenaeus (2nd–3rd c. C.E.) in his work Deipnosophistscites the History of Alexandria by Callixenus of Rhodes (a contemporary of Ptolemy II), who described a grand procession of Ptolemy and a lavish banqueting tent that held one hundred and thirty couches.

Two other passages, 3 Kgdms (=1 Kings) 7:48 and 2 Chr 4:19, briefly mention that Solomon constructed a table for his Temple, but this description contains no details, in contrast to the table described in Exodus. In any event, other than the Greek Pentateuch, it is unlikely that Pseudo-Aristeas knew any (translated) biblical books beyond the Pentateuch; he never refers or alludes to any.

On the various tables that were in the temple according to Jewish tradition, see Wright,Letter of Aristeas, 180–81.

Later in Exod 38:9-11, when Moses makes the table, unlike the Masoretic Text and Samaritan Pentateuch, which describe the formation of the table in detail, the LXX has only a short note saying that he indeed made the table of gold.

I will be quoting from the LXX (NETS trans.), since this is what the author was using.

This phrase is found in Josephus’s report of the Letter of Aristeas but not in manuscripts of it, and many scholars think it was part of the text. The carats indicate that some uncertainty remains.

It is not clear exactly what this phrase means in light of the preceding “pure gold.” The point seems to be that rather than gold leaf or a veneer, the gold was solid in the form of a thick plate attached to some kind of base.

Editor’s note: “Twisted molding” is the LXX’s rendering of the obscure Hebrew term זר. For a discussion of what the biblical text may be picturing, see Raanan Eichler, “The Zer,” TheTorah.com (2015).

Although Pseudo-Aristeas does not reproduce these registers exactly as they would appear on a cornice or capital, he uses the architectural term kuma, wave molding, in §64 rather than the phrase strepta kumatia of Exodus, which he does use earlier in §58 to refer to the twisted molding.

On Pseudo-Aristeas’s Greek education and the rhetorical devices he uses, see Benjamin G. Wright III, “Greek Paideia and the Jewish Community in the Letter of Aristeas,” in Second Temple Jewish >Paideia< in Context, ed. Jason M. Zurawski and Gabriele Boccaccini (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2017), 93–112.