II · The Great Collection · c. 280–250 BCE

The Torah translated into Greek

Known · ProbableKnown · ProbableThe translation in 3rd-century AlexandriaLegend · Told storyThe seventy-two elders and the royal commission

The Jewish community of Alexandria probably produces the Greek Pentateuch in these decades, the core of the Septuagint. It becomes the Bible of Philo, the Gnostics and the Greek Church.

What the evidence supports: A century later the Letter of Aristeas gives the translation a royal and library setting, with seventy-two elders working seventy-two days. Whether the court or the Library had any part in it is unknown.

Who and what

Told stories

Legend: told story

The seventy-two elders

The Letter of Aristeas tells that Demetrius of Phalerum urged Ptolemy II to have the Jewish Law translated for his library, and that seventy-two elders came from Jerusalem and finished the work in seventy-two days on the island of Pharos.

Told by The Letter of Aristeas, c. 150–100 BCE, about a century after the translation

What the evidence supports

The Torah was translated into Greek in Alexandria in the 3rd century BCE; its Greek is that of Ptolemaic Egypt. Whether the court had any part in it, or whether a copy was placed in the Library, is unknown.

Sources (4)
  • Letter of Aristeas 9–11, 28–51, 301–311
  • Philo, Life of Moses 2.25–44
  • S. Honigman, The Septuagint and Homeric Scholarship in Alexandria: A Study in the Narrative of the Letter of Aristeas (London: Routledge, 2003)
  • T. Rajak, Translation and Survival: The Greek Bible of the Ancient Jewish Diaspora (Oxford, 2009)
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Legend: told story

Letters to every king

Epiphanius tells that the king wrote to every king and ruler on earth, asking them to send the works of their poets, historians, physicians and philosophers.

Told by Epiphanius, 392 CE, some six centuries after Ptolemy II

What the evidence supports

The ambition to hold the writings of every people is attested from the Letter of Aristeas on. The letters are a story; no such correspondence is known.

Sources (2)
  • Epiphanius, On Weights and Measures 9
  • Letter of Aristeas 9–11
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Sources (6)
  • Letter of Aristeas 9–11, 28–51, 301–311
  • Philo, Life of Moses 2.25–44
  • Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 12.11–118
  • S. Honigman, The Septuagint and Homeric Scholarship in Alexandria: A Study in the Narrative of the Letter of Aristeas (London: Routledge, 2003)
  • T. Rajak, Translation and Survival: The Greek Bible of the Ancient Jewish Diaspora (Oxford, 2009)
  • B. G. Wright III, The Letter of Aristeas: 'Aristeas to Philocrates' or 'On the Translation of the Law of the Jews' (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015)