Re: Septuagint and Greek as a sacred language

From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Sun Dec 26 1999 - 11:29:33 EST


<x-rich>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
<color><param>0000,7777,0000</param>_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.
</color>

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@artsci.wustl.edu

WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/

</x-rich>



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sat Apr 20 2002 - 15:40:52 EDT