The Rabbis Discuss the Septuagint

And it is taught [in another baraita that] R. Judah said: Even when our rabbis permitted Greek, they permitted it only in a Torah scroll [and not for other books of the Bible, which must be written only in Hebrew].

[The Gemara continues:] And [this was] due to the incident of King Ptolemy, as it is taught [in a baraita: There was] an incident involving King Ptolemy [of Egypt,] who assembled seventy-two elders [from the sages of Israel,] and put them into seventy-two [separate] rooms, and did not reveal to them for what [purpose] he assembled them [so that they would not coordinate their responses]. He entered [and] approached each and every one, and said to [each of] them: Write for me [a translation of] the Torah of Moses your teacher. The Holy One placed wisdom in the heart of each and every one, and they all agreed to one [common] understanding. [Not only did they all translate the text correctly, they all introduced the same changes into the translated text.]

And they wrote for him: God created in the beginning [be-re’shit], [reversing the order of the words in the first phrase in the Torah that could be misinterpreted as: Be-re’shit created God (Genesis 1:1). They did so to negate those who believe in the preexistence of the world and those who maintain that there are two powers in the world: One is Be-re’shit, who created the second, God.]

[And they wrote:] I shall make man in image and in likeness, [rather than: Let us make man in our image and in our likeness (Genesis 1:26), as from there too one could mistakenly conclude that there are multiple powers and that God has human form]. [ . . . ]

[Instead of: Come, let us go down, and there confound their language (Genesis 11:7), which indicates multiple authorities, they wrote in the singular:] Come, let me go down, and there confound their language. [In addition, they replaced the verse: And Sarah laughed within herself [be-kirba] (Genesis 18:12) with:] And Sarah laughed among her relatives [bi-kroveha]. [They made this change to distinguish between Sarah’s laughter, which God criticized, and Abraham’s laughter, to which no reaction is recorded. Based on the change, Sarah’s laughter was offensive because she voiced it to others.] [ . . . ]

[Instead of: And the residence of the children of Israel, who resided in Egypt, was four hundred and thirty years (Exodus 12:40), which when read literally is imprecise, for they did not dwell in Egypt that long, they wrote:] And the residence of the children of Israel, who resided in Egypt and in other lands, was four hundred years. [Instead of: And he sent the youth of the children of Israel, who brought burnt-offerings (Exodus 24:5), which evokes the question of why young men were sent to perform that service, they wrote:] And he sent the elect of the children of Israel. [The same term was substituted again several verses later, rendering the verse: And upon the nobles of the children of Israel He laid not His hand (Exodus 24:11) as:] And upon the elect of the children of Israel He laid not His hand.

[Instead of Moses’ assertion: I have not taken one donkey (ḥamor) from them (Numbers 16:15), they wrote in more general terms:] “I have not taken one item of value [ḥemed¹] from them,” [to prevent the impression that Moses took other items. To the verse that discusses the worship of the sun and the moon, about which it is written: Which the Lord your God has allotted to all the nations (Deuteronomy 4:19), they added a word to make it read:] “Which the Lord your God has allotted to give light to all the nations.” [This is in order to prevent the potential misinterpretation that the heavenly bodies were given to the gentiles so that they may worship them.]

[The verse:] And has gone and served other gods, [and worshipped them, either the sun, or the moon, or any of the host of heaven,] which I have not commanded (Deuteronomy 17:3) [could be understood as indicating that God did not command their existence, i.e., these entities created themselves. Therefore, when these elders translated the verse, they added a word to the end of the verse to make it read: Which I have not commanded] to serve them.

And [in the list of unclean animals] they wrote for him: The short-legged beast [tse’irat ha-raglayim]. And they did not write for him: And the hare [’arnevet] (Leviticus 11:6), since the name of Ptolemy’s wife [was] Arnevet, so that he would not say: The Jews have mocked me and inserted my wife’s name in the Torah. [Therefore, they did not refer to the hare by name, but by one of its characteristic features.]