v 32 Ptolemy’s plan backfires because the God-fearing Jews pay to restore their already limited permissions as conquered people.
v 33 They gladly trusted God for future aid and also excommunicated and shunned the defectors to Ptolemy.
Assuming the LATER meaning of “absolute sway or power,” I would suggest that in all of this, the ONLY person with authentia is Ptolemy Philopater.
The Jews themselves devised a way to have their “previous condition” restored by payment. It was not in the original decree that this was an option. It seems to me that in either scenario, that it is not possible that the text says that these people would be “restored to their previous condition of being, to some degree, masters of themselves.” Rather, does not the text say that their permissions would have drastically changed for the better or the worse?
However, I propose this alternative interpretation of authentia, itself entirely possible from the context and the other associated authent– words with a meaning of “to slay” (and by sacrifice).
Ptolemy’s entire motivation for this edict was to avenge himself of the humiliation of not being freely allowed to make a gift to YHWH. Now, if the Jews want to offer THEIR gifts, they need his “PERMISSION TO KILL” by sacrifice. To compound their humiliation, it will be restricted to only those who will be publicly disgraced by bearing the branding mark of a god whose worshippers were notoriously violent and orgiastic.
Does not “permission” or “authority to kill” as a translation of authentia also provide an excellent semantic route into its later meaning of “absolute sway and authority” when it is over people? But here, it is permission to kill birds and animals in sacrifice.