The Greek Translation of the Hebrew Bible: The Septuagint

The Septuagint (abbreviated LXX), the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, is the earliest known biblical translation, first of the Pentateuch and later of the entire Hebrew Bible. It is an important witness to the development of the biblical text during the Second Temple period and served as the sacred text of the Greek-speaking Jewish community of Hellenistic Egypt. As it came to be accepted by Christian communities in the early centuries of the Christian era, it subsequently fell out of favor among Jews.

The work is named to reflect the miraculous legend of its translation by seventy-two independent scholars, six from each of the twelve tribes of Israel, all of whom translated the text identically. Legends of its translation circulated as early as the mid-second century BCE in the pseudepigraphic Letter of Aristeas, in which the author, claiming to be a non-Jewish official in the court of King Ptolemy II Philadelphus (r. 285–246 BCE), explains to his brother Philocrates the reasons for and events surrounding the translation. Further embellished variations of the legend appear in the writings of Philo and Josephus, and then later in the Babylonian Talmud. Philo’s version exhibits both additions and omissions when compared to the Letter of Aristeas and emphasizes divine and royal favor in the text’s translation. Josephus paraphrases large sections of the Letter of Aristeas to reflect his own political sentiments. The rabbinic version emphasizes the unanimous translation and points to intentional changes made to the Hebrew text—that is, where the Septuagint differs from the Masoretic Text—knowledge of which suggests the rabbis’ familiarity with the Septuagint’s contents.

Scholars debate the historicity of the legend surrounding the translation of the Septuagint and suggest that the true origins and motivations for this translation may be found among the increasingly Greek-speaking Jewish community of Alexandria prior to the third century. According to this argument, the legend developed to imbue the translation with its own measure of divine authority and to encourage Jews to accept it on par with the authoritative Hebrew text (the Masoretic Text). A number of Hebrew and Aramaic works that are not included in the Masoretic Text, and that are therefore not in Jewish Bibles today, were only subsequently translated and included in the larger Septuagint collection.