When the translators arrive in Alexandria the king weeps for 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.
A main goal of the 2nd-century author seems to be to establish the superiority of the Greek Septuagint text over any other version of the Hebrew Bible. The author is noticeably pro-Greek, portraying Zeus as simply another name for the god of Israel, and while criticism is lodged against idolatry and Greek sexual ethics, the argument is phrased in such a way as to attempt to persuade the reader to change, rather than as a hostile attack. The manner in which the author concentrates on describing Judaism, and particularly its temple in Jerusalem could be viewed as an attempt to proselytise.
Demetrios of Phaleron, a client of Ptolemy I Soter, is not a good candidate as a collaborator with Ptolemy II Philadelphus. Roger S. Bagnall notes that he made the strategic mistake at the beginning of the reign of supporting Ptolemy’s older half-brother, and was punished with internal exile, dying soon afterwards.
The Spanish humanist Luis Vives is sometimes quoted as having been the first to have exposed the fictitious character of the Letter, in his In XXII libros de civitate Dei commentaria (Basel: Frobenius, 1522), on Aug. Book XVIII, 42. But a lecture of the Latin text reveals that Vives only transmitted Jerome’s criticisms of the Aristeas story, and added nothing critical of his own account. The inconsistencies and anachronisms of the author, exposed by many 17th-century scholars were collected and presented with great erudition and wit by Humphrey Hody (1659—1706), Hody placed the writing closer to 170-130 BCE. His Oxford dissertation of 1685 provoked an “angry and scurrilous reply” from Isaac Vossius (1618–1689), who had been librarian to Queen Christina of Sweden, in the appendix to his Observations on Pomponius Mela, 1686, to which Hody conclusively replied in notes to his reprint of 1705. Due to this, the author of the letter of Aristeas is most often referred to as pseudo-Aristeas.
Page 12345678910111213141516171819202122232425262728293031323334353637383940414243444546474849505152535455565758596061626364656667686970717273747576777879808182
