Septuagint and Greek as a sacred language

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Sun Dec 26 11:29:33 EST 1999


At 11:04 AM -0500 12/26/99, Cindy Smith wrote:
>I've gotten into a discussion with someone on another list about the
>Septuagint and the Greek language.  I told the story of the 70
>scholars translating the Hebrew into Greek, and how, for Diaspora
>Jews, Greek was once considered a sacred language.  I was basically
>told that all of this is false by this person.  Rather than get into a
>debating contest, I was wondering if someone on b-greek could
>recommend scholarly book or two giving information on this subject?
>Thanks in advance.

Although it's out of print, lots of libraries should have copies of Moses
Hadas' "Aristeas to Philocrates," a translation of the Greek letter that
first sets forth the legend of the 70 (or 72) translators who supposedly
were housed in tents on the island of Pharos and produced identical
translations of the Pentateuch in respose to Ptolemy's desire to have a
copy of the Jewish scriptures in the Library at Alexandria. Hadas was at
Columbia for many years, respected as both a Jewish scholar and as a
Classical scholar (as well as in many other regards), and as I recall, he
sorts out what's legendary from what is truthful in the accounts of the
origins of the Septuagint pretty well. Another out-of-print work worth
consulting is Martin Hengel's _Judaism and Hellenism : Studies in Their
Encounter in Palestine During the Early Hellenistic Period_. I'm sure that
there are other works more recent than these, but these came immediately to
my mind with regard to the question.


Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics/Washington University
One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018
Home: 7222 Colgate Ave./St. Louis, MO 63130/(314) 726-5649
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
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