SF.I'TfACINT. 



translators itito paint, mnd upon the miraculous 

 correspondence of their Greek with the original, or 

 of the. changes made liy some of the translator- with 

 those independently made, by others. Not to dwell 

 upon these, two p.. ll of many may IK- cited, 



as containing matters ol special interest. The tirst 

 i- tho testimony of Aristobulua, as given to Kuse- 

 bins, /v.i./,. KI'HIHJ.. XIII. xi. i8ee Mlgne's 1'nir. 

 Qraec., Vol. xxi., col. K!H. Also the Strmiuitii 

 of Clement, 1. xv., xxii., in Miguc, Vol. viii. 7M, 

 889-8U3;: 



" It (a evident that Plato followed our law, and he wu 

 evidently a careful iludrnl of evrryllilnir in It. For there 

 bad Ix'pn translated before Demetrius Pnulcreus, through 

 ol ben, before the conqucat of Alexander ami tin- IVrlani. 

 the matter* pertaining to the f'iii^ lorth of the ]I< J I< 

 our fellow citizen*, Irom Esypl, and the manifestation of 

 all that happened to them, and I lie conquest of the land, 



ami the detailed account of the whole legislation 



But the whole translation of all tiling pertaining to the law 

 waa In the lime of him called King I'hiladelphug, thy an- 

 cestor, .... Demetritu Phaleruiu being active in these 

 mattera " 



These words are addressed to Ptolemy Philomctor, 

 who reigned B. C. 181-140. The other passage is from 

 tho Struntntn of Clement (,f Alexandria, who lived, 

 ay, A. D. 100-21.-). (Migne, Vol. viii. 894; : 



"They say the Scriptures, both of the law and the pro- 

 phetical, to have been Interpreted from the dialect of the 

 Hebrews Into the (JreeU tongue In the time of Kiin; 

 Ptolemy Lagus, or, us Mime tay, of the one culled I'hlladcl- 

 phu, Ueineirins I'lmlereiift bringing to this the greatest 

 ambition, and providing the things concerning tlie inter- 

 pretation." 



Probably no one doubts that the conclusions of 

 Clement, though he was a Christian, fairly repre- 

 sent the Alexandrian Hellenistic traditions. 



There is no room in this article to exhibit a col- 

 lection of the numerous items of evidence of which 

 these are specimens, or to discuss their text, or their 

 relative historicity ; but attention should he called 

 to certain statements of fact which are greatly 



neglected, but which are a part of the evidct as 



it stands. To the extent to which these ditler from 

 opinions commonly received, they are here pre- 

 sented rather as questions for inquiry than us final 

 bets. 



It is generally agreed, on the basis of the intcral 

 character of tlie Svplnagtnt, and in opposition to 

 most of the external testimony, that the translation 

 is certainly the work of Alexandrian .lews, and not 

 of men whose education was Palestinian. It is 

 further agreed that the translations of the different 

 parts of the canonical books arc not all by the same 

 groups of men, or of the same date. 



On the strength of the external testimony, nncon- 

 tradictcd by any of the internal marks, or by any 

 of the probabilities of the case, we ought to hold 

 that about 25 B. C., the date at which Ptolemy 

 Philadelphia succeeded Ptolemy Soter, some 

 arrangement was made for potttog the Jewish 

 acred books in th:- Alexandrian library, and some, 

 correspondence was had with the Palestinian Jews 

 for this purpose. Very hkelv much that is said of 

 the agency of Demetrius in the matter is fabulous; 

 but he seems to have had something to do with it, 

 and that fixes the date, an we have seen, to a time 

 when Lagus was vet living. Pcrhn|M I-agus really 

 had as much to do with it as Philadelphia, tboogn 

 the latter, surviving Lagus and Demetrius, got the 

 credit. Any possible use to which these books were 

 put, in the synagogues or tho schools, would of 

 course not interfere with their availability for the 

 library. 



In a great variety of ways. Ixitli directly and by 

 Implication, the testimony affirms that portions of 

 tin- .Icwi-h sacred Ixxiks were accessible to Grcek- 



kpcaking people, in Egypt, before this translation 



was made, and that Greek philosophers and literary 

 men actually used them and drew from them a"s 

 sources. \Ve have found Aristolmlns asserting that 

 tliis was the ca-c even More the conquests ol Alex- 

 ander and the Persians. This kUileinciil is very 

 generally regarded as unreasonable; critics on one 

 side ridicule it as discrediting the whole pas-age, 

 while those on the other side oiler explanation- ! 

 it. But recent explorations conliru. the statement* 

 of the Hellenists in regard to Gnek elements in 

 K'.'Vpt as early as the times of Nebuchadnezzar, and 

 .-how it to be not unlikely that Jeremiah and his 

 fellow exiles in Kgypt may there have come into 

 contact with Greeks". But laying all this aside, there 

 is every probability that for a generation or more 

 before the accession of Philadelphia, the Grcck- 

 speaking Samaritans and .lews in Alexandria, with 

 Greeks who were interested in foreign literatures, 

 had made some progress in turning the Scriptures 

 into both oral and written (in i k 



Among the neglected points in the testimony is 

 the statement, often repealed, that Ptolemy had the 

 sacred hooks transcribed, as well as translated. 

 Demetrius said to the king : " It has -been told me 

 tliat there arc laws (mpiita.) of the Jews worthy of 

 being transcribed and placed in the library." In 

 reply to the king's question as to what d'illiculty 

 there was in the way of acquiring them, Demetrius 

 mentioned, among other things, their being written 

 in a peculiar character, like that of the Syrians, 

 though not the same with it, Ariatirvs in'llody, 

 page ii. hater. l>i inctrins says: "For the laws 

 ( voitaKaiaf) , which we wish not only to transcrilx! 

 but to interpret, concern all the Jews," page iii., 

 and Jos. Ant. XII. ii., -. And so the account pro- 

 ceeds throughout Aristreus and Joscphns. Kpiphan- 

 ius >ays Mili.-tanlially the same thing, and Li;jht- 

 foot has shown (in several places, sec index of his 

 works) that the Talmudic passages referring to 

 what was done by Ptolemy contemplate a trans- 

 cription ; the more natural understanding. Light- 

 foot's inference is that the Tahnudist- recognize no 

 translation, but only a transcription ; the more 

 natural understanding of the whole testimony is 

 thai, there was both a transcription (perhaps a trans- 

 literation of the Hebrew in Greek letters! nnd a 

 translation, and that the traditions have largely 

 confused the two, occasionally asserting of the 

 one something that would he true of the other. In 

 this way, for example, the tradition concerning the 

 participation of the Jerusalem Jews in the afair 

 miiiht he plausibly accounted for. It is certain that 

 they had not mm'h to do with the translation, hut 

 their assistance may have been very important in 

 preparing the transcription. 



This laconics the more important when we notice 

 that, according to the testimony, the great cnre 

 taken by Ptolemy was for the purpose of securing 

 a correct text, Ilody, page v.. .los. Ant. XII. ii., :<, 

 10 (4, 11), etc. So far as appears, the king might 

 have ordered a copy of the Jewish hooks for his 

 library from any large vendor of books, but what he 

 wanted was not some copy or other, but a perfectly 

 anthcntiontedcopy. There is nothing to contradict 

 the idea that the transcription, supposing it to be 

 true that there was a tran-i ! -ipiion, may have 

 been such a copy. The idea of taking pains to 

 secure such a copy, even at very great cost. i quite 

 in accord with other things that were done in Alex- 

 andria in those days. And if the Jewish wribei- of 

 the law wen 1 then :i- painstaking as they were a 

 few centuries later, and had here an op|x>rliinity to 

 show their highest skill, it must have seemed to the 



appreciative urtiers of the king KO wonderful as 



to attract attention ; it would be a plausible theory 

 that this fact of the wonderful accuracy of the trans- 

 cription was the nucleus around which, later, 

 gathered the fables transmitted by Philo and thu 



