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The Hebrew Scriptures Are Translated into Greek

about 250 BC, estimated dateEstimated date

Jews in Egypt translate the law of Moses into Greek, by tradition at Alexandria under Ptolemy II, and the other books follow. This version, the Septuagint, is the form in which most early Christians read the Old Testament.

After Alexander the Great, Egypt was ruled from Alexandria by Greek kings, the Ptolemies. The Letter of Aristeas says that the first of them, Ptolemy son of Lagus, brought a hundred thousand Jews into Egypt as captives and soldiers (Letter of Aristeas 12–14).

The same Letter tells how the law of Moses came to be translated. Its author presents himself as an official of Ptolemy II. Demetrius of Phalerum, in charge of the royal library, tells the king that the laws of the Jews deserve a place in it but must first be translated (Letter of Aristeas 9–11). The king writes to the high priest Eleazar in Jerusalem, who sends seventy-two elders, six from each tribe, with a copy of the law (Letter of Aristeas 35–50). The king receives them at Alexandria and bows before the scrolls (Letter of Aristeas 172–180). They are taken to a quiet house on the island of Pharos, where they work each day, compare their drafts and agree on a text. The work is finished in seventy-two days (Letter of Aristeas 301–307). The translation is read to the Jewish community, which approves it and lays a curse on anyone who alters it (Letter of Aristeas 308–311).

Later writers repeat the story and add to it. Josephus retells the Letter at length and speaks of “the seventy elders” (Josephus, Antiquities 12.11–118). From that round number the translation takes its name, the Septuagint, “the Seventy”. Philo of Alexandria, in the first century AD, says that the translators wrote as if inspired, each using the same words, and that Jews and others still kept a yearly festival on Pharos in memory of the work (Philo, Life of Moses 2.37–44 (Yonge, book 2, chapter VII, pp. 82–83)). About AD 180 the Christian bishop Irenaeus tells of seventy elders whom the king kept apart from one another and who all produced the same translation, word for word. He applies the story to all the Scriptures, where the Letter speaks only of the law (Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.21.1–2).

The other books followed. The grandson of Ben Sira, who translated his grandfather’s book in Egypt late in the second century BC, could already speak of the law, the prophets and the rest of the books as read in Greek, and he remarks that they differ not a little from the original (Septuagint Sirach, prologue).

The New Testament was written in Greek, and its writers often quote the Old Testament in the wording of the Septuagint. Hebrews cites a psalm in the form “you prepared a body for me” (Hebrews 10:5), which is the reading of the Greek Psalter (Septuagint Psalm 39:7 (Psalm 40:6 in English Bibles)); the Hebrew has “You have opened my ears” (Psalm 40:6). Irenaeus defends the Septuagint’s “virgin” at Isaiah 7:14 against newer Greek versions that read “young woman” (Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.21.1–2), the verse Matthew quotes of the birth of Jesus (Matthew 1:22–23).

How this is dated

Estimated date. A scholarly estimate from primary evidence, with a margin of years.

No contemporary record of the translation survives. The Letter of Aristeas places it under the son of Ptolemy son of Lagus (Letter of Aristeas 12–14), that is Ptolemy II Philadelphus, who reigned from 285 to 246 BC. The Letter is written as if by a Greek courtier of that king, but scholars agree that its author was an Alexandrian Jew of the second century BC, a century or more after the reign he describes: see Benjamin G. Wright III, The Letter of Aristeas (2015). Its story is therefore tradition, not a report.

That the five books of Moses were put into Greek in Egypt in the third century BC is nevertheless the general view. The Greek of the translation matches that of Egyptian papyri of that century: see John A. L. Lee, A Lexical Study of the Septuagint Version of the Pentateuch (1983), and Jennifer M. Dines, The Septuagint (2004). The date of about 250 BC stands for that judgment.

Two fixed points come later. The translator of Sirach says that he came to Egypt in the thirty-eighth year of King Euergetes and that the law, the prophets and the other books could by then be compared in Greek and Hebrew (Septuagint Sirach, prologue). Only Ptolemy VIII Euergetes reigned so long, and his thirty-eighth year is 132 BC. And fragments of a Greek Deuteronomy copied in Egypt in the second century BC survive (Papyrus Rylands 458). The remaining books were translated over the following two centuries (see Dines).

Primary sources

Scripture

Links open the passage in the NRSVUE at BibleGateway.

The Letter of Aristeas

2nd century BC · Greek

Jewish Antiquities

Flavius Josephus · AD 93–94 · Greek

On the Life of Moses

Philo of Alexandria · first half of the 1st century AD · Greek

Against Heresies

Irenaeus of Lyons · c. AD 180 · Greek, preserved complete only in an early Latin translation

The Septuagint

3rd–2nd century BC · Greek

Papyrus Rylands 458

2nd century BC · Greek · John Rylands Library, University of Manchester (Greek P 458)

Every citation on this page was independently checked against its source on 3 October 2026.

In context

Grows out of

  1. 332 BC, firm date
    Alexander the Great Conquers the Near East
  2. 458 BC, estimated date
    Ezra Brings the Law to Jerusalem

Leads to

  1. about AD 203 to AD 254, estimated date
    Origen and the School of Alexandria
  2. c. 382–405, estimated date
    Jerome Translates the Latin Vulgate

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