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December 27: The Septuagint

lawrencebush
December 27, 2011

According to legend, the translation of the Hebrew Pentateuch into Koine Greek — the lingua franca of the Mediterranean civilizations for centuries after Alexander the Great’s death — was completed on this date in 175 BCE. The Septuagint (Latin for “Seventy”), which is now the oldest extant version of the Bible, was said to be commissioned by Ptolemy II Philadelphus, King of Egypt, and created by 72 Israelites, six from each tribe, in 72 days. It became the source text for much of the Jewish world as well as early Christians, and became the canonical version of the Old Testament for the Orthodox Church. The Talmud’s tractate Megillah tells the legend as follows: Ptolemy brought the rabbis to Alexandria and placed them “in 72 chambers, each of them in a separate one, without revealing to them why they were summoned. He entered each one’s room and said: ‘Write for me the Torah of Moses, your teacher.’ God put it in the heart of each one to translate identically as all the others did.” Numerous books collectively known as the Apocrypha were included in the Septuagint.

“It was only the humanists of the early 16th century who rediscovered [the Hebrew Bible] for Western Christianity – above all for the churches of the Reformation. For Oriental and Byzantine Christianity, the Septuagint remains the definitive text of the Old Testament.” —The German Bible Society