Letter of Aristeas

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The so-called Letter of Aristeas is a pseudepigraphical Hellenstic work. Josephus (Antiquities XII:ii passim) ascribes to a certain Aristeas a letter, written to a certain Philocrates, describing the Greek translation of the Jewish Law to seventy-two interpreters sent into Egypt from Jerusalem at the request of the librarian of Alexandria, resulting in the Septuagint translation.

Over twenty manuscripts of this letter are preserved and it is often mentioned and quoted in other texts.

The work relates how the king of Egypt, presumably Ptolemy II Philadephus, is urged by his librarian Demetrius of Phalarum to translate the Pentateuch. The king responds favorably, including giving freedom to Jews who had been taken into captivity by his fathers and sending lavish gifts (which are described in great detail) to the Temple in Jerusalem along with his envoys. The high priest Eleazar chooses exactly six men from each tribe, giving 72 in all; he gives a long sermon in praise of the Law. When the translators arrive in Alexandria the king weeps of joy and for the next seven days puts philosophical questions to the translators, the wise answers to which are related in full. The 72 translators then complete their task in exactly 72 days. The Jews of Alexandria, on hearing the Law read in Greek, request copies and lay a curse on anyone who would change the translation. The king then rewards the translators lavishly and they return home.

The author is noticeably pro-Greek, portraying Zeus as simply another name for Hashem, and while worshipping idols is criticised, together with Greek sexual ethics, the argument is phrased in such a way as to attempt to persuade the reader to change their habits, rather than just to attack them. Indeed, the manner in which the author concentrates on describing Judaism, and particularly its temple in Jerusalem, in glowing terms, could be viewed as an attempt to proselytise. The main goal of the author seems to be to establish the superiority of the Greek Septuagint text over any other version of the Hebrew Bible.

Early philological analysis claimed the letter was a forgery. In 1684, Humphrey Hody published Contra historiam Aristeae de LXX. interpretibus dissertatio, in which he argued that the so called "Letter of Aristeas" was the late forgery of a Hellenized Jew, originally circulated to lend authority to that version. Isaac Vossius (1618-1689), who had been librarian to Queen Christina of Sweden, published a rebuttal to it, in the appendix to his edition of Pomponius Mela.