The Letter of Aristeas
A Greek narrative in the form of a letter, telling how seventy-two elders from Jerusalem translated the law of Moses for the library of Ptolemy II. It is an early account of the origin of the Septuagint, written by an Alexandrian Jew of the second century BC.
Read the text at attalus.org ↗Sections 183–322 in the same translation (Attalus) ↗Greek text (Attalus) ↗
The writer calls himself Aristeas and presents himself as an official at the court of Ptolemy II, sent on the king’s embassy to the high priest Eleazar. He addresses his account to his brother Philocrates. Most of the work is taken up with the king’s gifts to the temple, a description of Jerusalem, the high priest’s defence of the food laws and a seven-day banquet at which the king questions the translators. The translation itself is told in a few paragraphs near the end (sections 301–311).
Scholars agree that the author was a Jew of Alexandria writing in the second century BC, a century or more after the reign in which he sets his story, and that the work is a defence of the Greek Pentateuch and of Jewish life under Greek rule, not an eyewitness report; see Benjamin G. Wright III, The Letter of Aristeas (2015). It is evidence for how Alexandrian Jews of that time thought about their Greek Scriptures, and it is the source from which Philo, Josephus and the church fathers took the story. See the Hebrew Scriptures Are Translated into Greek.
Cited in
- about 250 BC, estimated date