Victor R. Claveau, MJ
One of the most valuable contributions of the Hellenistic period was the translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek. Because Greek was the international language of the world, it also was the language of the tens of thousands of Jews who knew no other home than Egypt.
The Jews of Hellenistic Egypt no longer knew Hebrew as their mother tongue. When the Greek language replaced Hebrew and Aramaic as their vernacular, and the Torah in its original Hebrew was no longer commonly understood, a translation into Greek was made for the Jewish community in Alexandria.
It came to pass that sometime between BC 250-200 devout Jews in Egypt began the translation of the Torah into Greek. This translation was called the Septuagint. The name Septuagint is Latin for “seventy,” from the tradition there were 72 scholars who did the work. A second possible explanation for the title is the 70 elders in Jerusalem supposedly approved the translation.
This translation was for Jews — as well as Christians — one of the most significant events in history. What had been previously known only in the sanctuary, only in Hebrew and only to the nation of Israel, was now made available and understandable for people of other languages and races. The carefully guarded door was thrown open as the Septuagint unlocked the treasures of the Hebrew religion to the entire Gentile world.
This, together with the vast network of synagogues in every country of the Dispersion and the many thousands of God-fearing people not yet committed to the Jewish religion, prepared the way for the advancement of Christianity and the extraordinary growth of the early Christian Church.
The legend of the origin of the Septuagint is told in an unauthenticated letter attributed to Aristeas of Alexandria to his brother Philocrates. As “Aristeas” tells the story, Demetrius of Phaleron (BC 285-246), a known statesman, philosopher and librarian of Ptolemy Philadelphus, was responsible for the building up of the library at Alexandria. For this purpose he desired copies of the Jewish Law.
Philadelphus sent envoys, including Aristeas, to the High Priest Eleazar in Jerusalem, requesting copies of the Torah. In response, Eleazar selected seventy-two rabbis, who would act as translators, to accompany the books of the Law to Egypt. The translators set to work on the island of Pharos off Alexandria, at the foot of one of the seven wonders of the world — the three-hundred-foot-high lighthouse, which Ptolemy Philadelphus had erected as a warning for shipping near and far, so the translators could work free of interruption. They worked no more than nine hours a day and, by continued comparison of one another’s work, completed the task in seventy-two days to the satisfaction of the Jews of Alexandria and Demetrius, and to the satisfaction of the Pharaoh.
The narrative contained in the letter of Aristeas, told and retold by Philo, Josephus, St. Justin Martyr, St. Irenæus and a long line of Christian and Jewish writers, may be entirely fictitious. Yet it has been argued this version of the facts is not improbable. The legend was further elaborated with exaggerated elements: Each of the translators, after intensive, isolated labor, arrived at identical translations.
The embellishments to the narrative were meant to demonstrate the inspired character of the translation.
The letter of Aristeas puts the Septuagint translation at the end of the first half of the third century BC. Modern scholars believe the translation was a composite work completed by the second half of the second century BC. Although the origin of the Septuagint may be shrouded in history, it was the work that became the Bible of the early Church — so much so that the Jews who continued in Judaism required new versions (e.g., the translation of Aquila) they could call their own. Christians understood the earlier translation, the Septuagint, in Christian terms.[1] In other words, Christians used the Septuagint to show the prefiqurement of Christ.
As to the other Hebrew books, the prophetical and historical, it was natural that the Alexandrine Jews should desire to read the remaining books, and they gradually were translated into Greek. It is not possible to accurately determine the precise time those translations were made, but it is certain the Law, the Prophets and at least part of the other books existed in Greek before the year BC 130.
By BC 100, a translation of all the Hebrew books had been completed. The entire collection of Scripture — those books originally written in Hebrew and those written in Greek — came to be known as the Septuagint.
The Septuagint is the most ancient translation of the Old Testament. Jews made use of it long before the Christian era. Because the language of the early Christian community was Greek, the Septuagint became its Bible. At the time of Christ, it was recognized as a legitimate text and was employed in Palestine even by the rabbis.
It is certain neither Christ nor the apostles ever challenged the value of the Septuagint. That the Apostles and evangelists used the Septuagint is not in question. Of approximately three hundred fifty quotations from the Old Testament in the New Testament, about three hundred are direct quotations from the Septuagint, and the remaining are paraphrases, especially in regard to the prophecies.
That the early Christian Church used the Septuagint is also not in question. As proof, here are quotes from what are considered reliable, yet non-Catholic, sources:
Encyclopedia Judaica:
“Together with the New Testament, the Septuagint constituted the Bible of the Christian Church, and is still the Bible of the Greek Orthodox Church. The Old Testament contains a translation of all the books of the Hebrew canon. It also embodies the deuterocanonical books of the Catholic Church (Judith, Tobit, 1 and 2 Maccabees, Wisdom of Solomon, Ben-Sira, 1 Baruch).”[2]
Another Jewish source is the TANAKH, The Holy Scriptures:
“With the growth of Christianity in the first century, the Church adopted the Septuagint as its Bible, and the Septuagint was translated into the languages of the various Christian communities.”[3]
Nelson’s Illustrated Bible Dictionary:
“When Christianity penetrated the world of the Greek-speaking Jews, and then the Gentiles, the Septuagint was the Bible used for preaching the gospel. Most of the Old Testament quotations in the New Testament are taken from this Greek Bible. In fact, the Christians adopted the Septuagint so wholeheartedly that the Jewish people lost interest in it. They produced other Greek versions that did not lend themselves so easily to Christian interpretation.
“The Septuagint thus became the “Authorized Version” of the early Gentile churches. To this day it is the official version of the Old Testament used in the Greek Orthodox Church. After the books of the New Testament were written and accepted by the early church, they were added to the Old Testament Septuagint to form the complete Greek version of the Bible.”[4]
It is readily apparent the Jews of the second half of the first century believed the Christians of that time were playing fast and loose with the Septuagint translation, using it to show the prefiqurement of Christ as the long-awaited Messiah.
Protestant scholar F.F. Bruce:
“There were two main reasons why the Jews lost interest in the Septuagint. One was that from the first century AD onwards the Christians adopted it as their version of the Old Testament, and used it freely in their propagation and defense of the Christian faith.”[5]
The World of the Bible:
“In antiquity, the Septuagint, the Bible of the Christians in the pre-Vulgate period, was translated into Latin (Vetus Latina), Syriac (the Syro-Palestinian translations), Coptic (Sahidic, Bohairic, and Akhmimic), Ethiopic, Armenian, Old Slavic, Gothic and Arabic.”[6]
The Septuagint contained the books found in the present Hebrew Bible and additional books and passages now known as deuterocanonical. This will be further discussed in Chapter 12.
[1] Di Bernardino, Angelo, and Studer, Basil, eds. History of Theology, Vol. 1 (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 1996), p. 110.
[2] “Bible,” Encyclopaedia Judaica, Vol. 4, pp. 852-853.
[3] TANAKH, The Holy Scriptures (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1985), p. xvi.
[4] Nelson’s Illustrated Bible Dictionary (Camden: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1986)
[5] Bruce, F. F., The Books and the Parchments: How we got our English Bible (Old Tappan: Fleming H. Revell Co., 1984), p. 141.
[6] Van Der Woude, A.S., Gen. ed. The World of the Bible (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1986), p. 177.